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  • Boost singleton trouble

    - by Ockonal
    Hi guys, I have some class which uses boost singleton. It calls some function from own c++ library. This library is written in make file as dependence. Now I have another singleton class and it should call first singleton class. After this code I got linkers error about undefined references for functions which are used in first singleton. When I remove calling first singleton class from second the errors remove. Maybe there is something wrong?

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  • Only get the value if a condition is true

    - by Autolycus
    I am checking to see if element1, element 2 or element 3 exists and then add them to finalData if they exist. However if one of those dont exist or are not true then I just want to add the elements whose bool value is true! Below is my code bool hasElement1 = ( from Playlist in loaded.Descendants("Node") select Playlist.Descendants("Element1").Any() ).Single(); bool hasElement2 = ( from Playlist in loaded.Descendants("Node") select Playlist.Descendants("Element2").Any() ).Single(); bool hasElement3 = ( from Playlist in loaded.Descendants("Node") select Playlist.Descendants("Element2").Any() ).Single(); var finalData = from x in loaded.Descendants("Node") select new { Element1 = x.Descendants("Element1").First().Value, Element2 = x.Descendants("Element2").First().Value, Element3 = x.Descendants("Element3").First().Value, };

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  • Changing the values of a class returned by the array [] operator

    - by devdept
    The question is: at the end of this code the value of ptArray[0].X is 3.33 or 1.11? Thanks. class MyPoint { public double X, Y; public MyPoint(double x, double y) { X = x; Y = y; } } MyPoint[] ptArray = new MyPoint[2]; ptArray[0] = new MyPoint(1.11, 2.22); MyPoint first = ptArray[0]; // Am I changing ptArray[0] here or not? first.X = 3.33; first.Y = 4.44;

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  • Windows Phone 7 Control Caching - 'Element is already the child of another element'

    - by will
    I'm trying to speed up my windows phone 7 page load times. I have a 'static' page that has a dynamically created in a Panorama control - static meaning that the content never changes. On the first load I look at my config file, create the individual PanoramaItem controls and add them to the main Panorama control. I'm trying to keep a List in a static place so that the initial creation would only happen once and I could just add a fully rendered version to my Panorama control when the page was rendered. Works fine on first load, but when I try to add the cached PanoramaItems to the Panorama control I get the message "Element is already the child of another element". This makes sense since I already added before. But I can see a way to disconnect the PanoramaItems with the first Panorama control... I could be going about the control caching thing all wrong as well... Let me know if there's another way to do this.

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  • Changing input button to image?

    - by user2970202
    You can view the page I'm referring to here: http://portal.escalatehosting.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=9 Just enter a random domain name and then you'll see 2 buttons at the bottom. The first button (smaller one) works properly, but the second button (bigger one) isn't adding the order to the shopping cart. Here's the code for the first button: <input type="button" value="{$LANG.checkout} &raquo;" class="checkout" onclick="addtocart();" /> Here's the code for the second button that isn't working: <input type="image" src="http://www.escalatehosting.com/images/continueorder.jpg" style="border:0px;" onclick="addtocart();" /> I'm simply trying to replace the first button with the second one so that an image is being used, but can't seem to get the second button to work properly. What have I done wrong? I changed the type to image and the added a src.

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  • Is it possible to make a TListView search by the caption of a different column in Delphi?

    - by James
    Hi, When you set the Caption of a TListItem it seems to always set the Text for the first column in the row. When you start typing in the ListView it will search & select the closest match based on the caption of the first column. I have a situation where I need the caption of the first row to be empty, but still need the search functionality to work as normal (in this case the data I would be searching for may be in the 2nd/3rd column). Is this possible without using any 3rd party controls?

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  • Using traversal by pointer to check whether a string is repeated

    - by Bob John
    bool repeat_char(char *s, int n); //R: s is a C-string of at least n non-NUL characters and n > 0 //E: returns true if the first n characters are fully repeated throughout the string s, false // otherwise. I'm having trouble implementing this function using traversal by pointer. I was thinking that I could extract the first n characters from s, then use that in a comparison with s, but I'm not sure how I could do that. If I'm traversing through s one character at a time, how can I check that it matches a block of text, such as the first n characters of s? Thanks!

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  • Some tables mixed together

    - by DJPython
    Hello. I have 2 different tables in my database. They have some variables common and some different. For example: Table1: ID Date Name Address Fax Table2: ID Date Name e-mail Telephone number I want to display data together sorted by date & ID but from both tables. For example, first displayed will be the newest record from first table, but the second one will be the record from another table posted right after first one. Hope everybody understand, sorry for my English. Cheers.

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  • php: parse error on mysql query

    - by dwstein
    I'm getting the following error: Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in /home/a4999406/public_html/willingLog.html on line 48 on the following code (line 48 is first row of this code): $rows = mysql_num_rows($result); for ($j=0; $j<$rows: ++$j) { echo 'ID: ' . mysql_result($result, $j, 'id') . '<br />'; echo 'First: ' . mysql_result($result, $j, 'first') . '<br />'; echo 'Last: ' . mysql_result($result, $j, 'last') . '<br />'; echo 'Email: ' . mysql_result($result, $j, 'email') . '<br />'; } Anyone know what i'm doing wrong?

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  • Best way to ignore less specific click event with jquery?

    - by acidzombie24
    I have the code below. The main code is in the 2nd function however the first is called which is interfering with the more specific a.One code. Whats the best way to not run code in the first function if the div i click is a .main .a.One event? $('.main .a').live('click', function () { alert('first'); //2 lines of code }); $('.main .a.One').live('click', function () { alert('second'); //lots of logic });

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  • Count, inner join

    - by Urosh
    I have two tables: DRIVER (Driver_Id,First name,Last name,...) PARTICIPANT IN CAR ACCIDENT (Participant_Id,Driver_Id-foreign key,responsibility-yes or no,...) Now, I need to find out which driver participated in accident where responsibility is 'YES', and how many times. I did this: Select Driver_ID, COUNT (Participant.Driver_ID)as 'Number of accidents' from Participant in car accident where responsibility='YES' group by Driver_ID order by COUNT (Participant.Driver_ID) desc But, I need to add drivers first and last name from the first table(using inner join, I suppose). I don't know how, because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause. Please help :)

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  • efficientcy effort: grep with a vectored pattern or match with a list of values

    - by Elad663
    I guess this is trivial, I apologize, I couldn't find how to do it. I am trying to abstain from a loop, so I am trying to vectorize the process: I need to do something like grep, but where the pattern is a vector. Another option is a match, where the value is not only the first location. For example data (which is not how the real data is, otherswise I would exploit it structure): COUNTRIES=c("Austria","Belgium","Denmark","France","Germany", "Ireland","Italy","Luxembourg","Netherlands", "Portugal","Sweden","Spain","Finland","United Kingdom") COUNTRIES_Target=rep(COUNTRIES,times=4066) COUNTRIES_Origin=rep(COUNTRIES,each=4066) Now, currently I got a loop that: var_pointer=list() for (i in 1:length(COUNTRIES_Origin)) { var_pointer[[i]]=which(COUNTRIES_Origin[i]==COUNTRS_Target) } The problem with match is that match(x=COUNTRIES_Origin,table=COUNTRIES_Target) returns a vector of the same length as COUNTRIES_Origin and the value is the first match, while I need all of them. The issue with grep is that grep(pattern=COUNTRIES_Origin,x=COUNTRIES_Target) is the given warning: Warning message: In grep(pattern = COUNTRIES_Origin, x = COUNTRIES_Target) : argument 'pattern' has length > 1 and only the first element will be used Any suggestions?

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  • Right-Time Retail Part 3

    - by David Dorf
    This is part three of the three-part series.  Read Part 1 and Part 2 first. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Right-Time Marketing Real-time isn’t just about executing faster; it extends to interactions with customers as well. As an industry, we’ve spent many years analyzing all the data that’s been collected. Yes, that data has been invaluable in helping us make better decisions like where to open new stores, how to assort those stores, and how to price our products. But the recent advances in technology are now making it possible to analyze and deliver that data very quickly… fast enough to impact a potential sale in near real-time. Let me give you two examples. Salesmen in car dealerships get pretty good at sizing people up. When a potential customer walks in the door, it doesn’t take long for the salesman to figure out the revenue at stake. Is this person a real buyer, or just looking for a fun test drive? Will this person buy today or three months from now? Will this person opt for the expensive packages, or go bare bones? While the salesman certainly asks some leading questions, much of information is discerned through body language. But body language doesn’t translate very well over the web. Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle earlier this year, reads internet body language. By tracking the behavior of the people visiting your web site, Eloqua categorizes visitors based on their propensity to buy. While Eloqua’s roots have been in B2B, we’ve been looking at leveraging the technology with ATG to target B2C. Knowing what sites were previously visited, how often the customer has been to your site recently, and how long they’ve spent searching can help understand where the customer is in their purchase journey. And knowing that bit of information may be enough to help close the deal with a real-time offer, follow-up email, or online customer service pop-up. This isn’t so different from the days gone by when the clerk behind the counter of the corner store noticed you were lingering in a particular aisle, so he walked over to help you compare two products and close the sale. You appreciated the personalized service, and he knew the value of the long-term relationship. Move that same concept into the digital world and you have Oracle’s CX Suite, a cloud-based offering of end-to-end customer experience tools, assembled primarily from acquisitions. Those tools are Oracle Marketing (Eloqua), Oracle Commerce (ATG, Endeca), Oracle Sales (Oracle CRM On Demand), Oracle Service (RightNow), Oracle Social (Collective Intellect, Vitrue, Involver), and Oracle Content (Fatwire). We are providing the glue that binds the CIO and CMO together to unleash synergies that drive the top-line higher, and by virtue of the cloud-approach, keep costs at bay. My second example of real-time marketing takes place in the store but leverages the concepts of Web marketing. In 1962 the decline of personalized service in retail began. Anyone know the significance of that year? That’s when Target, K-Mart, and Walmart each opened their first stores, and over the succeeding years the industry chose scale over personal service. No longer were you known as “Jane with the snotty kid so make sure we check her out fast,” but you suddenly became “time-starved female age 20-30 with kids.” I’m not saying that was a bad thing – it was the right thing for our industry at the time, and it enabled a huge amount of growth, cheaper prices, and more variety of products. But scale alone is no longer good enough. Today’s sophisticated consumer demands scale, experience, and personal attention. To some extent we’ve delivered that on websites via the magic of cookies, your willingness to log in, and sophisticated data analytics. What store manager wouldn’t love a report detailing all the visitors to his store, where they came from, and which products that examined? People trackers are getting more sophisticated, incorporating infrared, video analytics, and even face recognition. (Next time you walk in front on a mannequin, don’t be surprised if it’s looking back.) But the ultimate marketing conduit is the mobile phone. Since each mobile phone emits a unique number on WiFi networks, it becomes the cookie of the physical world. Assuming congress keeps privacy safeguards reasonable, we’ll have a win-win situation for both retailers and consumers. Retailers get to know more about the consumer’s purchase journey, and consumers get higher levels of service with the retailer. When I call my bank, a couple things happen before the call is connected. A reverse look-up on my phone number identifies me so my accounts can be retrieved from Siebel CRM. Then the system anticipates why I’m calling based on recent transactions. In this example, it sees that I was just charged a foreign currency fee, so it assumes that’s the reason I’m calling. It puts all the relevant information on the customer service rep’s screen as it connects the call. When I complain about the fee, the rep immediately sees I’m a great customer and I travel lots, so she suggests switching me to their traveler’s card that doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. That technology is powered by a product called Oracle Real-Time Decisions, a rules engine built to execute very quickly, basically in the time it takes the phone to ring once. So let’s combine the power of that product with our new-found mobile cookie and provide contextual customer interactions in real-time. Our first opportunity comes when a customer crosses a pre-defined geo-fence, typically a boundary around the store. Context is the key to our interaction: that’s the customer (known or anonymous), the time of day and day of week, and location. Thomas near the downtown store on a Wednesday at noon means he’s heading to lunch. If he were near the mall location on a Saturday morning, that’s a completely different context. But on his way to lunch, we’ll let Thomas know that we’ve got a new shipment of ASICS running shoes on display with a simple text message. We used the context to look-up Thomas’ past purchases and understood he was an avid runner. We used the fact that this was lunchtime to select the type of message, in this case an informational message instead of an offer. Thomas enters the store, phone in hand, and walks to the shoe department. He scans one of the new ASICS shoes using the convenient QR Codes we provided on the shelf-tags, but then he starts scanning low-end Nikes. Each scan is another opportunity to both learn from Thomas and potentially interact via another message. Since he historically buys low-end Nikes and keeps scanning them, he’s likely falling back into his old ways. Our marketing rules are currently set to move loyal customer to higher margin products. We could have set the dials to increase visit frequency, move overstocked items, increase basket size, or many other settings, but today we are trying to move Thomas to higher-margin products. We send Thomas another text message, this time it’s a personalized offer for 10% off ASICS good for 24 hours. Offering him a discount on Nikes would be throwing margin away since he buys those anyway. We are using our marketing dollars to change behavior that increases the long-term value of Thomas. He decides to buy the ASICS and scans the discount code on his phone at checkout. Checkout is yet another opportunity to interact with Thomas, so the transaction is sent back to Oracle RTD for evaluation. Since Thomas didn’t buy anything with the shoes, we’ll print a bounce-back coupon on the receipt offering 30% off ASICS socks if he returns within seven days. We have successfully started moving Thomas from low-margin to high-margin products. In both of these marketing scenarios, we are able to leverage data in near real-time to decide how best to interact with the customer and lead to an increase in the lifetime value of the customer. The key here is acting at the moment the customer shows interest using the context of the situation. We aren’t pushing random products at haphazard times. We are tailoring the marketing to be very specific to this customer, and it’s the technology that allows this to happen in near real-time. Conclusion As we enable more right-time integrations and interactions, retailers will begin to offer increased service to their customers. Localized and personalized service at scale will drive loyalty and lead to meaningful revenue growth for the retailers that execute well. Our industry needs to support Commerce Anywhere…and commerce anytime as well.

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  • Of transactions and Mongo

    - by Nuri Halperin
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/nuri/archive/2014/05/20/of-transactions-and-mongo-again.aspxWhat's the first thing you hear about NoSQL databases? That they lose your data? That there's no transactions? No joins? No hope for "real" applications? Well, you *should* be wondering whether a certain of database is the right one for your job. But if you do so, you should be wondering that about "traditional" databases as well! In the spirit of exploration let's take a look at a common challenge: You are a bank. You have customers with accounts. Customer A wants to pay B. You want to allow that only if A can cover the amount being transferred. Let's looks at the problem without any context of any database engine in mind. What would you do? How would you ensure that the amount transfer is done "properly"? Would you prevent a "transaction" from taking place unless A can cover the amount? There are several options: Prevent any change to A's account while the transfer is taking place. That boils down to locking. Apply the change, and allow A's balance to go below zero. Charge person A some interest on the negative balance. Not friendly, but certainly a choice. Don't do either. Options 1 and 2 are difficult to attain in the NoSQL world. Mongo won't save you headaches here either. Option 3 looks a bit harsh. But here's where this can go: ledger. See, and account doesn't need to be represented by a single row in a table of all accounts with only the current balance on it. More often than not, accounting systems use ledgers. And entries in ledgers - as it turns out – don't actually get updated. Once a ledger entry is written, it is not removed or altered. A transaction is represented by an entry in the ledger stating and amount withdrawn from A's account and an entry in the ledger stating an addition of said amount to B's account. For sake of space-saving, that entry in the ledger can happen using one entry. Think {Timestamp, FromAccountId, ToAccountId, Amount}. The implication of the original question – "how do you enforce non-negative balance rule" then boils down to: Insert entry in ledger Run validation of recent entries Insert reverse entry to roll back transaction if validation failed. What is validation? Sum up the transactions that A's account has (all deposits and debits), and ensure the balance is positive. For sake of efficiency, one can roll up transactions and "close the book" on transactions with a pseudo entry stating balance as of midnight or something. This lets you avoid doing math on the fly on too many transactions. You simply run from the latest "approved balance" marker to date. But that's an optimization, and premature optimizations are the root of (some? most?) evil.. Back to some nagging questions though: "But mongo is only eventually consistent!" Well, yes, kind of. It's not actually true that Mongo has not transactions. It would be more descriptive to say that Mongo's transaction scope is a single document in a single collection. A write to a Mongo document happens completely or not at all. So although it is true that you can't update more than one documents "at the same time" under a "transaction" umbrella as an atomic update, it is NOT true that there' is no isolation. So a competition between two concurrent updates is completely coherent and the writes will be serialized. They will not scribble on the same document at the same time. In our case - in choosing a ledger approach - we're not even trying to "update" a document, we're simply adding a document to a collection. So there goes the "no transaction" issue. Now let's turn our attention to consistency. What you should know about mongo is that at any given moment, only on member of a replica set is writable. This means that the writable instance in a set of replicated instances always has "the truth". There could be a replication lag such that a reader going to one of the replicas still sees "old" state of a collection or document. But in our ledger case, things fall nicely into place: Run your validation against the writable instance. It is guaranteed to have a ledger either with (after) or without (before) the ledger entry got written. No funky states. Again, the ledger writing *adds* a document, so there's no inconsistent document state to be had either way. Next, we might worry about data loss. Here, mongo offers several write-concerns. Write-concern in Mongo is a mode that marshals how uptight you want the db engine to be about actually persisting a document write to disk before it reports to the application that it is "done". The most volatile, is to say you don't care. In that case, mongo would just accept your write command and say back "thanks" with no guarantee of persistence. If the server loses power at the wrong moment, it may have said "ok" but actually no written the data to disk. That's kind of bad. Don't do that with data you care about. It may be good for votes on a pole regarding how cute a furry animal is, but not so good for business. There are several other write-concerns varying from flushing the write to the disk of the writable instance, flushing to disk on several members of the replica set, a majority of the replica set or all of the members of a replica set. The former choice is the quickest, as no network coordination is required besides the main writable instance. The others impose extra network and time cost. Depending on your tolerance for latency and read-lag, you will face a choice of what works for you. It's really important to understand that no data loss occurs once a document is flushed to an instance. The record is on disk at that point. From that point on, backup strategies and disaster recovery are your worry, not loss of power to the writable machine. This scenario is not different from a relational database at that point. Where does this leave us? Oh, yes. Eventual consistency. By now, we ensured that the "source of truth" instance has the correct data, persisted and coherent. But because of lag, the app may have gone to the writable instance, performed the update and then gone to a replica and looked at the ledger there before the transaction replicated. Here are 2 options to deal with this. Similar to write concerns, mongo support read preferences. An app may choose to read only from the writable instance. This is not an awesome choice to make for every ready, because it just burdens the one instance, and doesn't make use of the other read-only servers. But this choice can be made on a query by query basis. So for the app that our person A is using, we can have person A issue the transfer command to B, and then if that same app is going to immediately as "are we there yet?" we'll query that same writable instance. But B and anyone else in the world can just chill and read from the read-only instance. They have no basis to expect that the ledger has just been written to. So as far as they know, the transaction hasn't happened until they see it appear later. We can further relax the demand by creating application UI that reacts to a write command with "thank you, we will post it shortly" instead of "thank you, we just did everything and here's the new balance". This is a very powerful thing. UI design for highly scalable systems can't insist that the all databases be locked just to paint an "all done" on screen. People understand. They were trained by many online businesses already that your placing of an order does not mean that your product is already outside your door waiting (yes, I know, large retailers are working on it... but were' not there yet). The second thing we can do, is add some artificial delay to a transaction's visibility on the ledger. The way that works is simply adding some logic such that the query against the ledger never nets a transaction for customers newer than say 15 minutes and who's validation flag is not set. This buys us time 2 ways: Replication can catch up to all instances by then, and validation rules can run and determine if this transaction should be "negated" with a compensating transaction. In case we do need to "roll back" the transaction, the backend system can place the timestamp of the compensating transaction at the exact same time or 1ms after the original one. Effectively, once A or B visits their ledger, both transactions would be visible and the overall balance "as of now" would reflect no change.  The 2 transactions (attempted/ reverted) would be visible , since we do actually account for the attempt. Hold on a second. There's a hole in the story: what if several transfers from A to some accounts are registered, and 2 independent validators attempt to compute the balance concurrently? Is there a chance that both would conclude non-sufficient-funds even though rolling back transaction 100 would free up enough for transaction 117 (some random later transaction)? Yes. there is that chance. But the integrity of the business rule is not compromised, since the prime rule is don't dispense money you don't have. To minimize or eliminate this scenario, we can also assign a single validation process per origin account. This may seem non-scalable, but it can easily be done as a "sharded" distribution. Say we have 11 validation threads (or processing nodes etc.). We divide the account number space such that each validator is exclusively responsible for a certain range of account numbers. Sounds cunningly similar to Mongo's sharding strategy, doesn't it? Each validator then works in isolation. More capacity needed? Chop the account space into more chunks. So where  are we now with the nagging questions? "No joins": Huh? What are those for? "No transactions": You mean no cross-collection and no cross-document transactions? Granted - but don't always need them either. "No hope for real applications": well... There are more issues and edge cases to slog through, I'm sure. But hopefully this gives you some ideas of how to solve common problems without distributed locking and relational databases. But then again, you can choose relational databases if they suit your problem.

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  • Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

    - by Sterling
    I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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  • Struts 1 ActionForm - retrieving a collection from pure HTML

    - by Yaneeve
    Hi all I have (just like the rest) inherited some struts 1 code. I have had need to add a few more pages to this project. What I cannot figure out is how to map several distinct but similarly natured input elements to the my ActionForm. Let me elaborate. I create a new <Input> element dynamically as the user inputs more and more items (I use the YUI autocomplete form element and for each entered input I add it as an input element to my form and draw a new YUI autocomplete - complex sounding, I know) So... My form looks a bit like (... after some prettifying and some such...): <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>My Cool App - Test Case Builder</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../script/yui/fonts/fonts-min.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../skins/myCoolApp/button/button.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../script/yui/autocomplete/assets/skins/sam/autocomplete.css" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="../skins/myCoolApp/testcase.css" /> <!-- YUI JAVA SCRIPTS --> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/element/element-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/button/button-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/datasource/datasource-min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/yui/autocomplete/autocomplete-min.js"></script> <!-- APP JAVA SCRIPTS --> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/myCoolApp.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/stack.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/testcase.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/default-data.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/data-structs.js" ></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="../script/myCoolApp/testcase/ui-elements.js" ></script> </head> <body class="cf010"> <div id="wrap"> <div id="header"> <div id="main-header"> COOL APP </div> </div> <div id="main-body"> <div id="content"> <div class="col main"> <div id="main"> <form method="post" id="testcaseForm" class="typea" action=""> <fieldset> <legend>Test Case Builder</legend> <div id="tk1" class="tabcontrol"> <ul class="tabs"> <li class="first active"> <a href="#"> <span>General</span> </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a href="#"> <span>Parameters</span> </a> </li> </ul> <div id="tab0" class="tc-panel"> <dl class="cls9"> <dt> <label for="scenario">Choose Scenario:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="scenario" name="scenario" class="text" /> <span id="scenarioToggle"></span> <div class="auto-complete" id="scenarioContainer"></div> </dd> <dt> <label for="ruleID">Choose Rule ID:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="ruleID" name="ruleID" class="text" /> <span id="ruleIDToggle"></span> <div class="auto-complete" id="ruleIDContainer"></div> </dd> <dt> <label for="Test Case Name" accesskey="t"><span class="accesskey">T</span>est Case Name:</label> </dt> <dd> <input type="text" id="testCaseName" name="testCaseName" class="text" /> </dd> </dl> </div> <div id="tab1" class="tc-panel hidden"> <div class="toolbar" id="action-bar"> <ul> <li class="first"> <a title="select all" href="#" id="btmSelectAll" class="button"> <span>select all</span> </a> </li> <li> <a title="remove row" href="#" id="btmRemove" class="button"> <span>remove row</span> </a> </li> <li> <a title="undo last" href="#" id="btmRollBack" class="button disabled"> <span>undo last</span> </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a title="accept row" href="#" id="btmAccept" class="button disabled"> <span>accept row</span> </a> </li> </ul> </div> <div id="param.list" class="gridclip"> <table id='param.list.tbl' class='grid modela' > <caption>Test Case Summary</caption> <col/><col/><col/> <thead> <tr> <th class='hl center first'> <input class='grid-select-all' type='checkbox' /> <th> <th scope='col'>Row</th> <th scope='col'>Parameter</th> <th scope='col' class='last'>Value</th> </tr> </thead> <tfoot> <tr> <th scope='row'>Total</th> <td colspan='3'>2 parameters as Test Case input</td> </tr> </tfoot> <tbody id='param.list.tbl.body'> <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param1###value1' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>1</td> <td>param1</td> <td class='last'>value1</td> </tr> <tr class='even'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param2###value2' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>2</td> <td>param2</td> <td class='last'>value2</td> </tr> <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first' /> <td class='id'><em>new</em></td> <td> <dl class='clsTable'> <dt> <input type='text' id='param' name='param' class='text paramInput' /> </dt> <dd> <span id='paramToggle' /> </dd> <div class='auto-complete' id='paramContainer' /> </dl> </td> <td class='last'> <dl class='clsTable'> <dt> <input type='text' id='value' name='value' class='text valueInput' /> </dt> </dl> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> </div> <!-- tabcontrol --> </fieldset> <div class="submit-box"> <input type="submit" name="formRun" id="formRun" class="form-save" value="Execute" accesskey="x" title="Run: Press Alt + [Shift] + x" /> <input type="submit" name="formSave" id="formSave" value="Save" accesskey="s" title="Save: Press Alt + [Shift] + s" /> <input type="submit" name="formLoad" id="formLoad" value="Load" accesskey="l" title="Load: Press Alt + [Shift] + l" /> <input type="submit" name="formCancel" id="formCancel" class="form-cancel" value="Cancel" accesskey="c" title="Cancel: Press Alt + [Shift] + c" /> </div> </form> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> As you can see the following is pretty much a duplicate: <tr class='odd'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param1###value1' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>1</td> <td>param1</td> <td class='last'>value1</td> </tr> <tr class='even'> <td class='rowcheck center first'> <input value='param2###value2' id='cb1' name='SelectedRows' class='grid-select-row' type='checkbox'/> </td> <td class='id'>2</td> <td>param2</td> <td class='last'>value2</td> </tr> The relevant part of my stuts-config.xml file is: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE struts-config PUBLIC "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 1.2//EN" "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-config_1_2.dtd"> <struts-config> <data-sources /> <form-beans> <form-bean name="TestCaseForm" type="com.blahblah.mycoolapp.forms.TestCaseForm" /> </form-beans> <action-mappings> <action path="/pages/SaveTestCase" name="TestCaseForm" type="org.springframework.web.struts.DelegatingActionProxy" scope="request"> </action> </action-mappings> <message-resources parameter="MessageResources" /> </struts-config> I also use spring 2.56 (The relevant part being): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd"> <bean name="/pages/SaveTestCase" class="com.blahblah.mycoolapp.actions.TestCaseBuilderSaveAction" /> </beans> My Java ActionForm class (from what I had learned off the net) is: package com.blahblah.mycoolapp.forms; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List; import org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm; public class TestCaseForm extends ActionForm { private static final long serialVersionUID = 2352146257739099766L; private String scenario; private String ruleID; private String testCaseName; private List<String> SelectedRows = new ArrayList<String>() ; public String getScenario() { return scenario; } public void setScenario(String scenario) { this.scenario = scenario; } public String getRuleID() { return ruleID; } public void setRuleID(String ruleID) { this.ruleID = ruleID; } public String getTestCaseName() { return testCaseName; } public void setTestCaseName(String testCaseName) { this.testCaseName = testCaseName; } public List<String> getSelectedRows() { return SelectedRows; } public void setSelectedRows(int index, String value) { this.SelectedRows.add(value); } } The question is why do I get an empty SelectedRows in my TestCaseBuilderSave Action? Thanks all who have the patience to read such a long question... and (hopefully) thanks to all you potential saviors :)

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  • How to compile a C++ source code written for Linux/Unix on Windows Vista (code given)

    - by HTMZ
    I have a c++ source code that was written in linux/unix environment by some other author. It gives me errors when i compile it in windows vista environment. I am using Bloodshed Dev C++ v 4.9. please help. #include <iostream.h> #include <map> #include <vector> #include <string> #include <string.h> #include <strstream> #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> using namespace std; template <class T> class PrefixSpan { private: vector < vector <T> > transaction; vector < pair <T, unsigned int> > pattern; unsigned int minsup; unsigned int minpat; unsigned int maxpat; bool all; bool where; string delimiter; bool verbose; ostream *os; void report (vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > &projected) { if (minpat > pattern.size()) return; // print where & pattern if (where) { *os << "<pattern>" << endl; // what: if (all) { *os << "<freq>" << pattern[pattern.size()-1].second << "</freq>" << endl; *os << "<what>"; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < pattern.size(); i++) *os << (i ? " " : "") << pattern[i].first; } else { *os << "<what>"; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < pattern.size(); i++) *os << (i ? " " : "") << pattern[i].first << delimiter << pattern[i].second; } *os << "</what>" << endl; // where *os << "<where>"; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < projected.size(); i++) *os << (i ? " " : "") << projected[i].first; *os << "</where>" << endl; *os << "</pattern>" << endl; } else { // print found pattern only if (all) { *os << pattern[pattern.size()-1].second; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < pattern.size(); i++) *os << " " << pattern[i].first; } else { for (unsigned int i = 0; i < pattern.size(); i++) *os << (i ? " " : "") << pattern[i].first << delimiter << pattern[i].second; } *os << endl; } } void project (vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > &projected) { if (all) report(projected); map <T, vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > > counter; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < projected.size(); i++) { int pos = projected[i].second; unsigned int id = projected[i].first; unsigned int size = transaction[id].size(); map <T, int> tmp; for (unsigned int j = pos + 1; j < size; j++) { T item = transaction[id][j]; if (tmp.find (item) == tmp.end()) tmp[item] = j ; } for (map <T, int>::iterator k = tmp.begin(); k != tmp.end(); ++k) counter[k->first].push_back (make_pair <unsigned int, int> (id, k->second)); } for (map <T, vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > >::iterator l = counter.begin (); l != counter.end (); ) { if (l->second.size() < minsup) { map <T, vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > >::iterator tmp = l; tmp = l; ++tmp; counter.erase (l); l = tmp; } else { ++l; } } if (! all && counter.size () == 0) { report (projected); return; } for (map <T, vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > >::iterator l = counter.begin (); l != counter.end(); ++l) { if (pattern.size () < maxpat) { pattern.push_back (make_pair <T, unsigned int> (l->first, l->second.size())); project (l->second); pattern.erase (pattern.end()); } } } public: PrefixSpan (unsigned int _minsup = 1, unsigned int _minpat = 1, unsigned int _maxpat = 0xffffffff, bool _all = false, bool _where = false, string _delimiter = "/", bool _verbose = false): minsup(_minsup), minpat (_minpat), maxpat (_maxpat), all(_all), where(_where), delimiter (_delimiter), verbose (_verbose) {}; ~PrefixSpan () {}; istream& read (istream &is) { string line; vector <T> tmp; T item; while (getline (is, line)) { tmp.clear (); istrstream istrs ((char *)line.c_str()); while (istrs >> item) tmp.push_back (item); transaction.push_back (tmp); } return is; } ostream& run (ostream &_os) { os = &_os; if (verbose) *os << transaction.size() << endl; vector <pair <unsigned int, int> > root; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < transaction.size(); i++) root.push_back (make_pair (i, -1)); project (root); return *os; } void clear () { transaction.clear (); pattern.clear (); } }; int main (int argc, char **argv) { extern char *optarg; unsigned int minsup = 1; unsigned int minpat = 1; unsigned int maxpat = 0xffffffff; bool all = false; bool where = false; string delimiter = "/"; bool verbose = false; string type = "string"; int opt; while ((opt = getopt(argc, argv, "awvt:M:m:L:d:")) != -1) { switch(opt) { case 'a': all = true; break; case 'w': where = true; break; case 'v': verbose = true; break; case 'm': minsup = atoi (optarg); break; case 'M': minpat = atoi (optarg); break; case 'L': maxpat = atoi (optarg); break; case 't': type = string (optarg); break; case 'd': delimiter = string (optarg); break; default: cout << "Usage: " << argv[0] << " [-m minsup] [-M minpat] [-L maxpat] [-a] [-w] [-v] [-t type] [-d delimiter] < data .." << endl; return -1; } } if (type == "int") { PrefixSpan<unsigned int> prefixspan (minsup, minpat, maxpat, all, where, delimiter, verbose); prefixspan.read (cin); prefixspan.run (cout); }else if (type == "short") { PrefixSpan<unsigned short> prefixspan (minsup, minpat, maxpat, all, where, delimiter, verbose); prefixspan.read (cin); prefixspan.run (cout); } else if (type == "char") { PrefixSpan<unsigned char> prefixspan (minsup, minpat, maxpat, all, where, delimiter, verbose); prefixspan.read (cin); prefixspan.run (cout); } else if (type == "string") { PrefixSpan<string> prefixspan (minsup, minpat, maxpat, all, where, delimiter, verbose); prefixspan.read (cin); prefixspan.run (cout); } else { cerr << "Unknown Item Type: " << type << " : choose from [string|int|short|char]" << endl; return -1; } return 0; }

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  • Using FiddlerCore to capture HTTP Requests with .NET

    - by Rick Strahl
    Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on my Web load testing utility West Wind WebSurge. One of the key components of a load testing tool is the ability to capture URLs effectively so that you can play them back later under load. One of the options in WebSurge for capturing URLs is to use its built-in capture tool which acts as an HTTP proxy to capture any HTTP and HTTPS traffic from most Windows HTTP clients, including Web Browsers as well as standalone Windows applications and services. To make this happen, I used Eric Lawrence’s awesome FiddlerCore library, which provides most of the functionality of his desktop Fiddler application, all rolled into an easy to use library that you can plug into your own applications. FiddlerCore makes it almost too easy to capture HTTP content! For WebSurge I needed to capture all HTTP traffic in order to capture the full HTTP request – URL, headers and any content posted by the client. The result of what I ended up creating is this semi-generic capture form: In this post I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to build this HTTP Capture Form.  If you want to jump right in here are the links to get Telerik’s Fiddler Core and the code for the demo provided here. FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore on NuGet Show me the Code (WebSurge Integration code from GitHub) Download the WinForms Sample Form West Wind Web Surge (example implementation in live app) Note that FiddlerCore is bound by a license for commercial usage – see license.txt in the FiddlerCore distribution for details. Integrating FiddlerCore FiddlerCore is a library that simply plugs into your application. You can download it from the Telerik site and manually add the assemblies to your project, or you can simply install the NuGet package via:       PM> Install-Package FiddlerCore The library consists of the FiddlerCore.dll as well as a couple of support libraries (CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll) that are used for installing SSL certificates. I’ll have more on SSL captures and certificate installation later in this post. But first let’s see how easy it is to use FiddlerCore to capture HTTP content by looking at how to build the above capture form. Capturing HTTP Content Once the library is installed it’s super easy to hook up Fiddler functionality. Fiddler includes a number of static class methods on the FiddlerApplication object that can be called to hook up callback events as well as actual start monitoring HTTP URLs. In the following code directly lifted from WebSurge, I configure a few filter options on Form level object, from the user inputs shown on the form by assigning it to a capture options object. In the live application these settings are persisted configuration values, but in the demo they are one time values initialized and set on the form. Once these options are set, I hook up the AfterSessionComplete event to capture every URL that passes through the proxy after the request is completed and start up the Proxy service:void Start() { if (tbIgnoreResources.Checked) CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = true; else CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources = false; string strProcId = txtProcessId.Text; if (strProcId.Contains('-')) strProcId = strProcId.Substring(strProcId.IndexOf('-') + 1).Trim(); strProcId = strProcId.Trim(); int procId = 0; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strProcId)) { if (!int.TryParse(strProcId, out procId)) procId = 0; } CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId = procId; CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain = txtCaptureDomain.Text; FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete += FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; FiddlerApplication.Startup(8888, true, true, true); } The key lines for FiddlerCore are just the last two lines of code that include the event hookup code as well as the Startup() method call. Here I only hook up to the AfterSessionComplete event but there are a number of other events that hook various stages of the HTTP request cycle you can also hook into. Other events include BeforeRequest, BeforeResponse, RequestHeadersAvailable, ResponseHeadersAvailable and so on. In my case I want to capture the request data and I actually have several options to capture this data. AfterSessionComplete is the last event that fires in the request sequence and it’s the most common choice to capture all request and response data. I could have used several other events, but AfterSessionComplete is one place where you can look both at the request and response data, so this will be the most common place to hook into if you’re capturing content. The implementation of AfterSessionComplete is responsible for capturing all HTTP request headers and it looks something like this:private void FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete(Session sess) { // Ignore HTTPS connect requests if (sess.RequestMethod == "CONNECT") return; if (CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId > 0) { if (sess.LocalProcessID != 0 && sess.LocalProcessID != CaptureConfiguration.ProcessId) return; } if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain)) { if (sess.hostname.ToLower() != CaptureConfiguration.CaptureDomain.Trim().ToLower()) return; } if (CaptureConfiguration.IgnoreResources) { string url = sess.fullUrl.ToLower(); var extensions = CaptureConfiguration.ExtensionFilterExclusions; foreach (var ext in extensions) { if (url.Contains(ext)) return; } var filters = CaptureConfiguration.UrlFilterExclusions; foreach (var urlFilter in filters) { if (url.Contains(urlFilter)) return; } } if (sess == null || sess.oRequest == null || sess.oRequest.headers == null) return; string headers = sess.oRequest.headers.ToString(); var reqBody = sess.GetRequestBodyAsString(); // if you wanted to capture the response //string respHeaders = session.oResponse.headers.ToString(); //var respBody = session.GetResponseBodyAsString(); // replace the HTTP line to inject full URL string firstLine = sess.RequestMethod + " " + sess.fullUrl + " " + sess.oRequest.headers.HTTPVersion; int at = headers.IndexOf("\r\n"); if (at < 0) return; headers = firstLine + "\r\n" + headers.Substring(at + 1); string output = headers + "\r\n" + (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(reqBody) ? reqBody + "\r\n" : string.Empty) + Separator + "\r\n\r\n"; BeginInvoke(new Action<string>((text) => { txtCapture.AppendText(text); UpdateButtonStatus(); }), output); } The code starts by filtering out some requests based on the CaptureOptions I set before the capture is started. These options/filters are applied when requests actually come in. This is very useful to help narrow down the requests that are captured for playback based on options the user picked. I find it useful to limit requests to a certain domain for captures, as well as filtering out some request types like static resources – images, css, scripts etc. This is of course optional, but I think it’s a common scenario and WebSurge makes good use of this feature. AfterSessionComplete like other FiddlerCore events, provides a Session object parameter which contains all the request and response details. There are oRequest and oResponse objects to hold their respective data. In my case I’m interested in the raw request headers and body only, as you can see in the commented code you can also retrieve the response headers and body. Here the code captures the request headers and body and simply appends the output to the textbox on the screen. Note that the Fiddler events are asynchronous, so in order to display the content in the UI they have to be marshaled back the UI thread with BeginInvoke, which here simply takes the generated headers and appends it to the existing textbox test on the form. As each request is processed, the headers are captured and appended to the bottom of the textbox resulting in a Session HTTP capture in the format that Web Surge internally supports, which is basically raw request headers with a customized 1st HTTP Header line that includes the full URL rather than a server relative URL. When the capture is done the user can either copy the raw HTTP session to the clipboard, or directly save it to file. This raw capture format is the same format WebSurge and also Fiddler use to import/export request data. While this code is application specific, it demonstrates the kind of logic that you can easily apply to the request capture process, which is one of the reasonsof why FiddlerCore is so powerful. You get to choose what content you want to look up as part of your own application logic and you can then decide how to capture or use that data as part of your application. The actual captured data in this case is only a string. The user can edit the data by hand or in the the case of WebSurge, save it to disk and automatically open the captured session as a new load test. Stopping the FiddlerCore Proxy Finally to stop capturing requests you simply disconnect the event handler and call the FiddlerApplication.ShutDown() method:void Stop() { FiddlerApplication.AfterSessionComplete -= FiddlerApplication_AfterSessionComplete; if (FiddlerApplication.IsStarted()) FiddlerApplication.Shutdown(); } As you can see, adding HTTP capture functionality to an application is very straight forward. FiddlerCore offers tons of features I’m not even touching on here – I suspect basic captures are the most common scenario, but a lot of different things can be done with FiddlerCore’s simple API interface. Sky’s the limit! The source code for this sample capture form (WinForms) is provided as part of this article. Adding Fiddler Certificates with FiddlerCore One of the sticking points in West Wind WebSurge has been that if you wanted to capture HTTPS/SSL traffic, you needed to have the full version of Fiddler and have HTTPS decryption enabled. Essentially you had to use Fiddler to configure HTTPS decryption and the associated installation of the Fiddler local client certificate that is used for local decryption of incoming SSL traffic. While this works just fine, requiring to have Fiddler installed and then using a separate application to configure the SSL functionality isn’t ideal. Fortunately FiddlerCore actually includes the tools to register the Fiddler Certificate directly using FiddlerCore. Why does Fiddler need a Certificate in the first Place? Fiddler and FiddlerCore are essentially HTTP proxies which means they inject themselves into the HTTP conversation by re-routing HTTP traffic to a special HTTP port (8888 by default for Fiddler) and then forward the HTTP data to the original client. Fiddler injects itself as the system proxy in using the WinInet Windows settings  which are the same settings that Internet Explorer uses and that are configured in the Windows and Internet Explorer Internet Settings dialog. Most HTTP clients running on Windows pick up and apply these system level Proxy settings before establishing new HTTP connections and that’s why most clients automatically work once Fiddler – or FiddlerCore/WebSurge are running. For plain HTTP requests this just works – Fiddler intercepts the HTTP requests on the proxy port and then forwards them to the original port (80 for HTTP and 443 for SSL typically but it could be any port). For SSL however, this is not quite as simple – Fiddler can easily act as an HTTPS/SSL client to capture inbound requests from the server, but when it forwards the request to the client it has to also act as an SSL server and provide a certificate that the client trusts. This won’t be the original certificate from the remote site, but rather a custom local certificate that effectively simulates an SSL connection between the proxy and the client. If there is no custom certificate configured for Fiddler the SSL request fails with a certificate validation error. The key for this to work is that a custom certificate has to be installed that the HTTPS client trusts on the local machine. For a much more detailed description of the process you can check out Eric Lawrence’s blog post on Certificates. If you’re using the desktop version of Fiddler you can install a local certificate into the Windows certificate store. Fiddler proper does this from the Options menu: This operation does several things: It installs the Fiddler Root Certificate It sets trust to this Root Certificate A new client certificate is generated for each HTTPS site monitored Certificate Installation with FiddlerCore You can also provide this same functionality using FiddlerCore which includes a CertMaker class. Using CertMaker is straight forward to use and it provides an easy way to create some simple helpers that can install and uninstall a Fiddler Root certificate:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } return true; } InstallCertificate() works by first checking whether the root certificate is already installed and if it isn’t goes ahead and creates a new one. The process of creating the certificate is a two step process – first the actual certificate is created and then it’s moved into the certificate store to become trusted. I’m not sure why you’d ever split these operations up since a cert created without trust isn’t going to be of much value, but there are two distinct steps. When you trigger the trustRootCert() method, a message box will pop up on the desktop that lets you know that you’re about to trust a local private certificate. This is a security feature to ensure that you really want to trust the Fiddler root since you are essentially installing a man in the middle certificate. It’s quite safe to use this generated root certificate, because it’s been specifically generated for your machine and thus is not usable from external sources, the only way to use this certificate in a trusted way is from the local machine. IOW, unless somebody has physical access to your machine, there’s no useful way to hijack this certificate and use it for nefarious purposes (see Eric’s post for more details). Once the Root certificate has been installed, FiddlerCore/Fiddler create new certificates for each site that is connected to with HTTPS. You can end up with quite a few temporary certificates in your certificate store. To uninstall you can either use Fiddler and simply uncheck the Decrypt HTTPS traffic option followed by the remove Fiddler certificates button, or you can use FiddlerCore’s CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts() which removes the root cert and any of the intermediary certificates Fiddler created. Keep in mind that when you uninstall you uninstall the certificate for both FiddlerCore and Fiddler, so use UninstallCertificate() with care and realize that you might affect the Fiddler application’s operation by doing so as well. When to check for an installed Certificate Note that the check to see if the root certificate exists is pretty fast, while the actual process of installing the certificate is a relatively slow operation that even on a fast machine takes a few seconds. Further the trust operation pops up a message box so you probably don’t want to install the certificate repeatedly. Since the check for the root certificate is fast, you can easily put a call to InstallCertificate() in any capture startup code – in which case the certificate installation only triggers when a certificate is in fact not installed. Personally I like to make certificate installation explicit – just like Fiddler does, so in WebSurge I use a small drop down option on the menu to install or uninstall the SSL certificate:   This code calls the InstallCertificate and UnInstallCertificate functions respectively – the experience with this is similar to what you get in Fiddler with the extra dialog box popping up to prompt confirmation for installation of the root certificate. Once the cert is installed you can then capture SSL requests. There’s a gotcha however… Gotcha: FiddlerCore Certificates don’t stick by Default When I originally tried to use the Fiddler certificate installation I ran into an odd problem. I was able to install the certificate and immediately after installation was able to capture HTTPS requests. Then I would exit the application and come back in and try the same HTTPS capture again and it would fail due to a missing certificate. CertMaker.rootCertExists() would return false after every restart and if re-installed the certificate a new certificate would get added to the certificate store resulting in a bunch of duplicated root certificates with different keys. What the heck? CertMaker and BcMakeCert create non-sticky CertificatesI turns out that FiddlerCore by default uses different components from what the full version of Fiddler uses. Fiddler uses a Windows utility called MakeCert.exe to create the Fiddler Root certificate. FiddlerCore however installs the CertMaker.dll and BCMakeCert.dll assemblies, which use a different crypto library (Bouncy Castle) for certificate creation than MakeCert.exe which uses the Windows Crypto API. The assemblies provide support for non-windows operation for Fiddler under Mono, as well as support for some non-Windows certificate platforms like iOS and Android for decryption. The bottom line is that the FiddlerCore provided bouncy castle assemblies are not sticky by default as the certificates created with them are not cached as they are in Fiddler proper. To get certificates to ‘stick’ you have to explicitly cache the certificates in Fiddler’s internal preferences. A cache aware version of InstallCertificate looks something like this:public static bool InstallCertificate() { if (!CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.createRootCert()) return false; if (!CertMaker.trustRootCert()) return false; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", null); App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = FiddlerApplication.Prefs.GetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", null); } return true; } public static bool UninstallCertificate() { if (CertMaker.rootCertExists()) { if (!CertMaker.removeFiddlerGeneratedCerts(true)) return false; } App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert = null; App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key = null; return true; } In this code I store the Fiddler cert and private key in an application configuration settings that’s stored with the application settings (App.Configuration.UrlCapture object). These settings automatically persist when WebSurge is shut down. The values are read out of Fiddler’s internal preferences store which is set after a new certificate has been created. Likewise I clear out the configuration settings when the certificate is uninstalled. In order for these setting to be used you have to also load the configuration settings into the Fiddler preferences *before* a call to rootCertExists() is made. I do this in the capture form’s constructor:public FiddlerCapture(StressTestForm form) { InitializeComponent(); CaptureConfiguration = App.Configuration.UrlCapture; MainForm = form; if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert)) { FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.key", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Key); FiddlerApplication.Prefs.SetStringPref("fiddler.certmaker.bc.cert", App.Configuration.UrlCapture.Cert); }} This is kind of a drag to do and not documented anywhere that I could find, so hopefully this will save you some grief if you want to work with the stock certificate logic that installs with FiddlerCore. MakeCert provides sticky Certificates and the same functionality as Fiddler But there’s actually an easier way. If you want to skip the above Fiddler preference configuration code in your application you can choose to distribute MakeCert.exe instead of certmaker.dll and bcmakecert.dll. When you use MakeCert.exe, the certificates settings are stored in Windows so they are available without any custom configuration inside of your application. It’s easier to integrate and as long as you run on Windows and you don’t need to support iOS or Android devices is simply easier to deal with. To integrate into your project, you can remove the reference to CertMaker.dll (and the BcMakeCert.dll assembly) from your project. Instead copy MakeCert.exe into your output folder. To make sure MakeCert.exe gets pushed out, include MakeCert.exe in your project and set the Build Action to None, and Copy to Output Directory to Copy if newer. Note that the CertMaker.dll reference in the project has been removed and on disk the files for Certmaker.dll, as well as the BCMakeCert.dll files on disk. Keep in mind that these DLLs are resources of the FiddlerCore NuGet package, so updating the package may end up pushing those files back into your project. Once MakeCert.exe is distributed FiddlerCore checks for it first before using the assemblies so as long as MakeCert.exe exists it’ll be used for certificate creation (at least on Windows). Summary FiddlerCore is a pretty sweet tool, and it’s absolutely awesome that we get to plug in most of the functionality of Fiddler right into our own applications. A few years back I tried to build this sort of functionality myself for an app and ended up giving up because it’s a big job to get HTTP right – especially if you need to support SSL. FiddlerCore now provides that functionality as a turnkey solution that can be plugged into your own apps easily. The only downside is FiddlerCore’s documentation for more advanced features like certificate installation which is pretty sketchy. While for the most part FiddlerCore’s feature set is easy to work with without any documentation, advanced features are often not intuitive to gleam by just using Intellisense or the FiddlerCore help file reference (which is not terribly useful). While Eric Lawrence is very responsive on his forum and on Twitter, there simply isn’t much useful documentation on Fiddler/FiddlerCore available online. If you run into trouble the forum is probably the first place to look and then ask a question if you can’t find the answer. The best documentation you can find is Eric’s Fiddler Book which covers a ton of functionality of Fiddler and FiddlerCore. The book is a great reference to Fiddler’s feature set as well as providing great insights into the HTTP protocol. The second half of the book that gets into the innards of HTTP is an excellent read for anybody who wants to know more about some of the more arcane aspects and special behaviors of HTTP – it’s well worth the read. While the book has tons of information in a very readable format, it’s unfortunately not a great reference as it’s hard to find things in the book and because it’s not available online you can’t electronically search for the great content in it. But it’s hard to complain about any of this given the obvious effort and love that’s gone into this awesome product for all of these years. A mighty big thanks to Eric Lawrence  for having created this useful tool that so many of us use all the time, and also to Telerik for picking up Fiddler/FiddlerCore and providing Eric the resources to support and improve this wonderful tool full time and keeping it free for all. Kudos! Resources FiddlerCore Download FiddlerCore NuGet Fiddler Capture Sample Form Fiddler Capture Form in West Wind WebSurge (GitHub) Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler Book© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in .NET  HTTP   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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  • Dynamic JSON Parsing in .NET with JsonValue

    - by Rick Strahl
    So System.Json has been around for a while in Silverlight, but it's relatively new for the desktop .NET framework and now moving into the lime-light with the pending release of ASP.NET Web API which is bringing a ton of attention to server side JSON usage. The JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray objects are going to be pretty useful for Web API applications as they allow you dynamically create and parse JSON values without explicit .NET types to serialize from or into. But even more so I think JsonValue et al. are going to be very useful when consuming JSON APIs from various services. Yes I know C# is strongly typed, why in the world would you want to use dynamic values? So many times I've needed to retrieve a small morsel of information from a large service JSON response and rather than having to map the entire type structure of what that service returns, JsonValue actually allows me to cherry pick and only work with the values I'm interested in, without having to explicitly create everything up front. With JavaScriptSerializer or DataContractJsonSerializer you always need to have a strong type to de-serialize JSON data into. Wouldn't it be nice if no explicit type was required and you could just parse the JSON directly using a very easy to use object syntax? That's exactly what JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray accomplish using a JSON parser and some sweet use of dynamic sauce to make it easy to access in code. Creating JSON on the fly with JsonValue Let's start with creating JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure. JsonValue uses the dynamic  keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JsonValue:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueOutputTest() { // strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // dynamic expando instance you can add properties to dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1977; album.Songs = new JsonArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces proper JSON just as you would expect: {"AlbumName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","Artist":"AC\/DC","YearReleased":1977,"Songs":[{"SongName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","SongLength":"4:11"},{"SongName":"Love at First Feel","SongLength":"3:10"}]} The important thing about this code is that there's no explicitly type that is used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. I am essentially creating this value structure on the fly by adding properties and then serialize it to JSON. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JsonObject() to create a new object and immediately cast it to dynamic. JsonObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JsonValue/JsonObject these values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the DynamicObject functionality in .NET. The syntax gets a little tedious only if you need to create child objects or arrays that have to be explicitly defined first. Other than that the syntax looks like normal object access sytnax. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JsonValue instance directly and get access to the underlying type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JsonValue internally stores properties keys and values in collections and you can iterate over them at runtime. You can also manipulate the collections if you need to to get the object structure to look exactly like you want. Again, if you've used ExpandoObject before JsonObject/Value are very similar in the behavior of the structure. Reading JSON strings into JsonValue The JsonValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JsonValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"",""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JsonValue object and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JsonPrimitive and I have to assign them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons. The dynamic properties will automatically cast to the right type expected as long as the compiler can resolve the type of the assignment or usage. The AreEqual() method oesn't as it expects two object instances and comparing json.Company to "West Wind" is comparing two different types (JsonPrimitive to String) which fails. So the intermediary assignment is required to make the test pass. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1977, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008BXJ4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""67280fb8"", ""AlbumName"": ""Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"", ""Artist"": ""Foo Fighters"", ""YearReleased"": 2007, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mtlesQPVL._SL500_AA280_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UFAURI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000UFAURI"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""The Pretender"", ""SongLength"": ""4:29"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Let it Die"", ""SongLength"": ""4:05"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Erase/Replay"", ""SongLength"": ""4:13"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; dynamic albums = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName ); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName);}   It's pretty sweet how easy it becomes to parse even complex JSON and then just run through the object using object syntax, yet without an explicit type in the mix. In fact it looks and feels a lot like if you were using JavaScript to parse through this data, doesn't it? And that's the point…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET  Web Api  JSON   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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  • LLBLGen Pro v3.0 with Entity Framework v4.0 (12m video)

    Today I recorded a video in which I illustrate some of the database-first functionality available in LLBLGen Pro v3.0. LLBLGen Pro v3.0 also supports model-first functionality, which I hope to illustrate in an upcoming video. LLBLGen Pro v3.0 is currently in beta and is scheduled to RTM some time in May 2010. It supports the following frameworks out of the box, with more scheduled to follow in the coming year: LLBLGen Pro RTL (our own o/r mapper framework), Linq to Sql, NHibernate and Entity Framework...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • SQL SERVER – 2008 – Introduction to Snapshot Database – Restore From Snapshot

    - by pinaldave
    Snapshot database is one of the most interesting concepts that I have used at some places recently. Here is a quick definition of the subject from Book On Line: A Database Snapshot is a read-only, static view of a database (the source database). Multiple snapshots can exist on a source database and can always reside on the same server instance as the database. Each database snapshot is consistent, in terms of transactions, with the source database as of the moment of the snapshot’s creation. A snapshot persists until it is explicitly dropped by the database owner. If you do not know how Snapshot database work, here is a quick note on the subject. However, please refer to the official description on Book-on-Line for accuracy. Snapshot database is a read-only database created from an original database called the “source database”. This database operates at page level. When Snapshot database is created, it is produced on sparse files; in fact, it does not occupy any space (or occupies very little space) in the Operating System. When any data page is modified in the source database, that data page is copied to Snapshot database, making the sparse file size increases. When an unmodified data page is read in the Snapshot database, it actually reads the pages of the original database. In other words, the changes that happen in the source database are reflected in the Snapshot database. Let us see a simple example of Snapshot. In the following exercise, we will do a few operations. Please note that this script is for demo purposes only- there are a few considerations of CPU, DISK I/O and memory, which will be discussed in the future posts. Create Snapshot Delete Data from Original DB Restore Data from Snapshot First, let us create the first Snapshot database and observe the sparse file details. USE master GO -- Create Regular Database CREATE DATABASE RegularDB GO USE RegularDB GO -- Populate Regular Database with Sample Table CREATE TABLE FirstTable (ID INT, Value VARCHAR(10)) INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(1, 'First'); INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(2, 'Second'); INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(3, 'Third'); GO -- Create Snapshot Database CREATE DATABASE SnapshotDB ON (Name ='RegularDB', FileName='c:\SSDB.ss1') AS SNAPSHOT OF RegularDB; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO Now let us see the resultset for the same. Now let us do delete something from the Original DB and check the same details we checked before. -- Delete from Regular Database DELETE FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO When we check the details of sparse file created by Snapshot database, we will find some interesting details. The details of Regular DB remain the same. It clearly shows that when we delete data from Regular/Source DB, it copies the data pages to Snapshot database. This is the reason why the size of the snapshot DB is increased. Now let us take this small exercise to  the next level and restore our deleted data from Snapshot DB to Original Source DB. -- Restore Data from Snapshot Database USE master GO RESTORE DATABASE RegularDB FROM DATABASE_SNAPSHOT = 'SnapshotDB'; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Clean up DROP DATABASE [SnapshotDB]; DROP DATABASE [RegularDB]; GO Now let us check the details of the select statement and we can see that we are successful able to restore the database from Snapshot Database. We can clearly see that this is a very useful feature in case you would encounter a good business that needs it. I would like to request the readers to suggest more details if they are using this feature in their business. Also, let me know if you think it can be potentially used to achieve any tasks. Complete Script of the afore- mentioned operation for easy reference is as follows: USE master GO -- Create Regular Database CREATE DATABASE RegularDB GO USE RegularDB GO -- Populate Regular Database with Sample Table CREATE TABLE FirstTable (ID INT, Value VARCHAR(10)) INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(1, 'First'); INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(2, 'Second'); INSERT INTO FirstTable VALUES(3, 'Third'); GO -- Create Snapshot Database CREATE DATABASE SnapshotDB ON (Name ='RegularDB', FileName='c:\SSDB.ss1') AS SNAPSHOT OF RegularDB; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Delete from Regular Database DELETE FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Restore Data from Snapshot Database USE master GO RESTORE DATABASE RegularDB FROM DATABASE_SNAPSHOT = 'SnapshotDB'; GO -- Select from Regular and Snapshot Database SELECT * FROM RegularDB.dbo.FirstTable; SELECT * FROM SnapshotDB.dbo.FirstTable; GO -- Clean up DROP DATABASE [SnapshotDB]; DROP DATABASE [RegularDB]; GO Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM Released

    - by shiju
     The ASP.NET team has released RTM version of ASP.NET MVC 3. You can download the ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM from here and source code of ASP.NET MVC 3 can download from here. Microsoft has released the following products along with ASP.NET MVC 3.NuGetIIS Express 7.5SQL Server Compact Edition 4Web Deploy and Web Farm Framework 2.0Orchard 1.0WebMatrix 1.0 You can read more details from ScottGu's blog post Announcing release of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL CE 4, Web Farm Framework, Orchard, WebMatrix .You can upgrade your ASP.NET MVC 2 projects to ASP.NET MVC 3 using MVC 3 Project Upgrade Tool. You can read more details about the MVC 3 Upgrade Tool from here. Demo Web App using ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM  You can download a demo web app using ASP.NET MVC 3 RTM from here. The demo app is explained in the below blog postsDeveloping web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part 1Developing web apps using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part 2

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  • SQL SERVER – Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time – SQL Server Magazine

    - by pinaldave
    I am glad to announce that along with SQLAuthority.com, I will be blogging on the prominent site of SQL Server Magazine. My very first blog post there is already live; read here: Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time. My association with SQL Server Magazine has been quite long, I have written nearly 7 to 8 SQL Server articles for the print magazine and it has been a great experience. I used to stay in the United States at that time. I moved back to India for good, and during this process, I had put everything on hold for a while. Just like many things, “temporary” things become “permanent” – coming back to SQLMag was on hold for long time. Well, this New Year, things have changed – once again, I am back with my online presence at SQLMag.com. Everybody is a beginner at every task or activity at some point of his/her life: spelling words for the first time; learning how to drive for the first time, etc. No one is perfect at the start of any task, but every human is different. As time passes, we all develop our interests and begin to study our subject of interest. Most of us dream to get a job in the area of our study – however things change as time passes. I recently read somewhere online (I could not find the link again while writing this one) that all the successful people in various areas have never studied in the area in which they are successful. After going through a formal learning process of what we love, we refuse to stop learning, and we finally stop changing career and focus areas. We move, we dare and we progress. IT field is similar to our life. New IT professionals come to this field every day. There are two types of beginners – a) those who are associated with IT field but not familiar with other technologies, and b) those who are absolutely new to the IT field. Learning a new technology is always exciting and overwhelming for enthusiasts. I am working with database (in particular) for SQL Server for more than 7 years but I am still overwhelmed with so many things to learn. I continue to learn and I do not think that I should ever stop doing so. Just like everybody, I want to be in the race and get ahead in learning the technology. For the same, I am always looking for good guidance. I always try to find a good article, blog or book chapter, which can teach me what I really want to learn at this stage in my career and can be immensely helpful. Quite often, I prefer to read the material where the author does not judge me or assume my understanding. I like to read new concepts like a child, who takes his/her first steps of learning without any prior knowledge. Keeping my personal philosophy and preference in mind, I will be blogging on SQL Server Magazine site. I will be blogging on the beginners stuff. I will be blogging for them, who really want to start and make a mark in this area. I will be blogging for all those who have an extreme passion for learning. I am happy that this is a good start for this year. One of my resolutions is to help every beginner. It is totally possible that in future they all will grow and find the same article quite ‘easy‘ – well when that happens, it indicates the success of the article and material! Well, I encourage everybody to read my SQL Server Magazine blog – I will be blogging there frequently on various topics. To begin, we will be talking about performance tuning, and I assure that I will not shy away from other multiple areas. Read my SQL Server Magazine Blog: Beginning SQL Server: One Step at a Time I think the title says it all. Do leave your comments and feedback to indicate your preference of subject and interest. I am going to continue writing on subject, and the aim is of course to help grow in this field. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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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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  • 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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