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• Remove Office 2010 Beta and Reinstall Office 2007

  - by Matthew Guay

  Have you tried out the Office 2010 beta, but want to go back to Office 2007?  Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on how to remove your Office 2010 beta and reinstall your Office 2007. The Office 2010 beta will expire on October 31, 2010, at which time you may see a dialog like the one below.  At that time, you will need to either upgrade to the final release of Office 2010, or reinstall your previous version of Office. Our computer was running the Office 2010 Home and Business Click to Run beta, and after uninstalling it we reinstalled Office 2007 Home and Student.  This was a Windows Vista computer, but the process will be exactly the same on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.  Additionally, the process to reinstall Office 2007 will be exactly the same regardless of the edition of Office 2007 you’re using. However, please note that if you are running a different edition of Office 2010, especially the 64 bit version, the process may be slightly different.  We will cover this scenario in another article. Remove Office 2010 Click to Run Beta: To remove Office 2010 Click to Run Beta, open Control Panel and select Uninstall a Program. If your computer is running Windows 7, enter “Uninstall a program” in your Start menu search. Scroll down, select “Microsoft Office Click-to-Run 2010 (Beta)”, and click the Uninstall button on the toolbar.  Note that there will be two entries for Office, so make sure to select the “Click-to-Run” entry. This will automatically remove all of Office 2010 and its components.  Click Yes to confirm you want to remove it. Office 2010 beta uninstalled fairly quickly, and a reboot will be required.  Once your computer is rebooted, Office 2010 will be entirely removed. Reinstall Office 2007 Now, you’re to the easy part.  Simply insert your Office 2007 CD, and it should automatically startup the setup.  If not, open Computer and double-click on your CD drive.   Now, double-click on setup.exe to start the installation. Enter your product key, and click Continue…   Click Install Now, or click Customize if you want to change the default installation settings. Wait while Office 2007 installs…it takes around 15 to 20 minutes in our experience.  Once it’s finished  close the installer. Now, open one of the Office applications.  A popup will open asking you to activate Office.  Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and click next; otherwise, you can select to activate over the phone if you do not have internet access. This should only take a minute, and Office 2007 will be activated and ready to run. Everything should work just as it did before you installed Office 2010.  Enjoy! Office Updates Make sure to install the latest updates for Office 2007, as these are not included in your disk.  Check Windows Update (search for Windows Update in the Start menu search), and install all of the available updates for Office 2007, including Service Pack 2. Conclusion This is a great way to keep using Office even if you don’t decide to purchase Office 2010 after it is released.  Additionally, if you’re were using another version of Office, such as Office 2003, then reinstall it as normal after following the steps to remove Office 2010. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add or Remove Apps from the Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 SuiteDetect and Repair Applications In Microsoft Office 2007Save and Restore Your Microsoft Office SettingsDisable Office 2010 Beta Send-a-Smile from StartupHow to See the About Dialog and Version Information in Office 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 If Web Browsers Were Modes of Transportation Google Translate (for animals) Out of 100 Tweeters Roadkill’s Scan Port scans for open ports Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows

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• Integrate Nitro PDF Reader with Windows 7

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like a lightweight PDF reader that integrates nicely with Office and Windows 7?  Here we look at the new Nitro PDF Reader, a nice PDF viewer that also lets you create and markup PDF files. Adobe Reader is the de-facto PDF viewer, but it only lets you view PDFs and not much else.  Additionally, it doesn’t fully integrate with 64-bit editions of Vista and Windows 7.  There are many alternate PDF readers, but Nitro PDF Reader is a new entry into this field that offers more features than most PDF readers.  From the creators of the popular free PrimoPDF printer, the new Reader lets you create PDFs from a variety of file formats and markup existing PDFs with notes, highlights, stamps, and more in addition to viewing PDFs.  It also integrates great with Windows 7 using the Office 2010 ribbon interface. Getting Started Download the free Nitro PDF Reader (link below) and install as normal.  Nitro PDF Reader has separate versions for 32 & 64-bit editions of Windows, so download the correct one for your computer. Note:  Nitro PDF Reader is still in Beta testing, so only install if you’re comfortable with using beta software. On first run, Nitro PDF Reader will ask if you want to make it the default PDF viewer.  If you don’t want to, make sure to uncheck the box beside Always perform this check to keep it from opening this prompt every time you use it. It will also open an introductory PDF the first time you run it so you can quickly get acquainted with its features. Windows 7 Integration One of the first things you’ll notice is that Nitro PDF Reader integrates great with Windows 7.  The ribbon interface fits right in with native applications such as WordPad and Paint, as well as Office 2010. If you set Nitro PDF Reader as your default PDF viewer, you’ll see thumbnails of your PDFs in Windows Explorer. If you turn on the Preview Pane, you can read full PDFs in Windows Explorer.  Adobe Reader lets you do this in 32 bit versions, but Nitro PDF works in 64 bit versions too. The PDF preview even works in Outlook.  If you receive an email with a PDF attachment, you can select the PDF and view it directly in the Reading Pane.  Click the Preview file button, and you can uncheck the box at the bottom so PDFs will automatically open for preview if you want.   Now you can read your PDF attachments in Outlook without opening them separately.  This works in both Outlook 2007 and 2010. Edit your PDFs Adobe Reader only lets you view PDF files, and you can’t save data you enter in PDF forms.  Nitro PDF Reader, however, gives you several handy markup tools you can use to edit your PDFs.  When you’re done, you can save the final PDF, including information entered into forms. With the ribbon interface, it’s easy to find the tools you want to edit your PDFs. Here we’ve highlighted text in a PDF and added a note to it.  We can now save these changes, and they’ll look the same in any PDF reader, including Adobe Reader. You can also enter new text in PDFs.  This will open a new tab in the ribbon, where you can select basic font settings.  Select the Click To Finish button in the ribbon when you’re finished editing text.   Or, if you want to use the text or pictures from a PDF in another application, you can choose to extract them directly in Nitro PDF Reader.  Create PDFs One of the best features of Nitro PDF Reader is the ability to create PDFs from almost any file.  Nitro adds a new virtual printer to your computer that creates PDF files from anything you can print.  Print your file as normal, but select the Nitro PDF Creator (Reader) printer. Enter a name for your PDF, select if you want to edit the PDF properties, and click Create. If you choose to edit the PDF properties, you can add your name and information to the file, select the initial view, encrypt it, and restrict permissions. Alternately, you can create a PDF from almost any file by simply drag-and-dropping it into Nitro PDF Reader.  It will automatically convert the file to PDF and open it in a new tab in Nitro PDF. Now from the File menu you can send the PDF as an email attachment so anyone can view it. Make sure to save the PDF before closing Nitro, as it does not automatically save the PDF file.   Conclusion Nitro PDF Reader is a nice alternative to Adobe Reader, and offers some features that are only available in the more expensive Adobe Acrobat.  With great Windows 7 integration, including full support for 64-bit editions, Nitro fits in with the Windows and Office experience very nicely.  If you have tried out Nitro PDF Reader leave a comment and let us know what you think. Link Download Nitro PDF Reader Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Install Adobe PDF Reader on Ubuntu EdgySubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single ClickChange Default Feed Reader in FirefoxFix for Windows Explorer Folder Pane in XP Becomes Grayed OutRemove "Please wait while the document is being prepared for reading" Message in Adobe Reader 8 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere) 10 Superb Firefox Wallpapers OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes

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• Help with Design for Vacation Tracking System (C#/.NET/Access/WebServices/SOA/Excel) [closed]

  - by Aaronaught

  I have been tasked with developing a system for tracking our company's paid time-off (vacation, sick days, etc.) At the moment we are using an Excel spreadsheet on a shared network drive, and it works pretty well, but we are concerned that we won't be able to "trust" employees forever and sometimes we run into locking issues when two people try to open the spreadsheet at once. So we are trying to build something a little more robust. I would like some input on this design in terms of maintainability, scalability, extensibility, etc. It's a pretty simple workflow we need to represent right now: I started with a basic MS Access schema like this: Employees (EmpID int, EmpName varchar(50), AllowedDays int) Vacations (VacationID int, EmpID int, BeginDate datetime, EndDate datetime) But we don't want to spend a lot of time building a schema and database like this and have to change it later, so I think I am going to go with something that will be easier to expand through configuration. Right now the vacation table has this schema: Vacations (VacationID int, PropName varchar(50), PropValue varchar(50)) And the table will be populated with data like this: VacationID | PropName | PropValue -----------+--------------+------------------ 1 | EmpID | 4 1 | EmpName | James Jones 1 | Reason | Vacation 1 | BeginDate | 2/24/2010 1 | EndDate | 2/30/2010 1 | Destination | Spectate Swamp 2 | ... | ... I think this is a pretty good, extensible design, we can easily add new properties to the vacation like the destination or maybe approval status, etc. I wasn't too sure how to go about managing the database of valid properties, I thought of putting them in a separate PropNames table but it gets complicated to manage all the different data types and people say that you shouldn't put CLR type names into a SQL database, so I decided to use XML instead, here is the schema: <VacationProperties> <PropertyNames>EmpID,EmpName,Reason,BeginDate,EndDate,Destination</PropertyNames> <PropertyTypes>System.Int32,System.String,System.String,System.DateTime,System.DateTime,System.String</PropertyTypes> <PropertiesRequired>true,true,false,true,true,false</PropertiesRequired> </VacationProperties> I might need more fields than that, I'm not completely sure. I'm parsing the XML like this (would like some feedback on the parsing code): string xml = File.ReadAllText("properties.xml"); Match m = Regex.Match(xml, "<(PropertyNames)>(.*?)</PropertyNames>"; string[] pn = m.Value.Split(','); // do the same for PropertyTypes, PropertiesRequired Then I use the following code to persist configuration changes to the database: string sql = "DROP TABLE VacationProperties"; sql = sql + " CREATE TABLE VacationProperties "; sql = sql + "(PropertyName varchar(100), PropertyType varchar(100) "; sql = sql + "IsRequired varchar(100))"; for (int i = 0; i < pn.Length; i++) { sql = sql + " INSERT VacationProperties VALUES (" + pn[i] + "," + pt[i] + "," + pv[i] + ")"; } // GlobalConnection is a singleton new SqlCommand(sql, GlobalConnection.Instance).ExecuteReader(); So far so good, but after a few days of this I then realized that a lot of this was just a more specific kind of a generic workflow which could be further abstracted, and instead of writing all of this boilerplate plumbing code I could just come up with a workflow and plug it into a workflow engine like Windows Workflow Foundation and have the users configure it: In order to support routing these configurations throw the workflow system, it seemed natural to implement generic XML Web Services for this instead of just using an XML file as above. I've used this code to implement the Web Services: public class VacationConfigurationService : WebService { [WebMethod] public void UpdateConfiguration(string xml) { // Above code goes here } } Which was pretty easy, although I'm still working on a way to validate that XML against some kind of schema as there's no error-checking yet. I also created a few different services for other operations like VacationSubmissionService, VacationReportService, VacationDataService, VacationAuthenticationService, etc. The whole Service Oriented Architecture looks like this: And because the workflow itself might change, I have been working on a way to integrate the WF workflow system with MS Visio, which everybody at the office already knows how to use so they could make changes pretty easily. We have a diagram that looks like the following (it's kind of hard to read but the main items are Activities, Authenticators, Validators, Transformers, Processors, and Data Connections, they're all analogous to the services in the SOA diagram above). The requirements for this system are: (Note - I don't control these, they were given to me by management) Main workflow must interface with Excel spreadsheet, probably through VBA macros (to ease the transition to the new system) Alerts should integrate with MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, and SMS (text messages). We also want to interface it with the company Voice Mail system but that is not a "hard" requirement. Performance requirements: Must handle 250,000 Transactions Per Second Should be able to handle up to 20,000 employees (right now we have 3) 99.99% uptime ("four nines") expected Must be secure against outside hacking, but users cannot be required to enter a username/password. Platforms: Must support Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, iPhone, Blackberry, DOS 2.0, VAX, IRIX, PDP-11, Apple IIc. Time to complete: 6 to 8 weeks. My questions are: Is this a good design for the system so far? Am I using all of the recommended best practices for these technologies? How do I integrate the Visio diagram above with the Windows Workflow Foundation to call the ConfigurationService and persist workflow changes? Am I missing any important components? Will this be extensible enough to support any scenario via end-user configuration? Will the system scale to the above performance requirements? Will we need any expensive hardware to run it? Are there any "gotchas" I should know about with respect to cross-platform compatibility? For example would it be difficult to convert this to an iPhone app? How long would you expect this to take? (We've dedicated 1 week for testing so I'm thinking maybe 5 weeks?) Many thanks for your advices, Aaron

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• These are few objective type questions which i was not able to find the solution [closed]

  - by Tarun

  1. Which of the following advantages does System.Collections.IDictionaryEnumerator provide over System.Collections.IEnumerator? a. It adds properties for direct access to both the Key and the Value b. It is optimized to handle the structure of a Dictionary. c. It provides properties to determine if the Dictionary is enumerated in Key or Value order d. It provides reverse lookup methods to distinguish a Key from a specific Value 2. When Implementing System.EnterpriseServices.ServicedComponent derived classes, which of the following statements are true? a. Enabling object pooling requires an attribute on the class and the enabling of pooling in the COM+ catalog. b. Methods can be configured to automatically mark a transaction as complete by the use of attributes. c. You can configure authentication using the AuthenticationOption when the ActivationMode is set to Library. d. You can control the lifecycle policy of an individual instance using the SetLifetimeService method. 3. Which of the following are true regarding event declaration in the code below? class Sample { event MyEventHandlerType MyEvent; } a. MyEventHandlerType must be derived from System.EventHandler or System.EventHandler<TEventArgs> b. MyEventHandlerType must take two parameters, the first of the type Object, and the second of a class derived from System.EventArgs c. MyEventHandlerType may have a non-void return type d. If MyEventHandlerType is a generic type, event declaration must use a specialization of that type. e. MyEventHandlerType cannot be declared static 4. Which of the following statements apply to developing .NET code, using .NET utilities that are available with the SDK or Visual Studio? a. Developers can create assemblies directly from the MSIL Source Code. b. Developers can examine PE header information in an assembly. c. Developers can generate XML Schemas from class definitions contained within an assembly. d. Developers can strip all meta-data from managed assemblies. e. Developers can split an assembly into multiple assemblies. 5. Which of the following characteristics do classes in the System.Drawing namespace such as Brush,Font,Pen, and Icon share? a. They encapsulate native resource and must be properly Disposed to prevent potential exhausting of resources. b. They are all MarshalByRef derived classes, but functionality across AppDomains has specific limitations. c. You can inherit from these classes to provide enhanced or customized functionality 6. Which of the following are required to be true by objects which are going to be used as keys in a System.Collections.HashTable? a. They must handle case-sensitivity identically in both the GetHashCode() and Equals() methods. b. Key objects must be immutable for the duration they are used within a HashTable. c. Get HashCode() must be overridden to provide the same result, given the same parameters, regardless of reference equalityl unless the HashTable constructor is provided with an IEqualityComparer parameter. d. Each Element in a HashTable is stored as a Key/Value pair of the type System.Collections.DictionaryElement e. All of the above 7. Which of the following are true about Nullable types? a. A Nullable type is a reference type. b. A Nullable type is a structure. c. An implicit conversion exists from any non-nullable value type to a nullable form of that type. d. An implicit conversion exists from any nullable value type to a non-nullable form of that type. e. A predefined conversion from the nullable type S? to the nullable type T? exists if there is a predefined conversion from the non-nullable type S to the non-nullable type T 8. When using an automatic property, which of the following statements is true? a. The compiler generates a backing field that is completely inaccessible from the application code. b. The compiler generates a backing field that is a private instance member with a leading underscore that can be programmatically referenced. c. The compiler generates a backing field that is accessible via reflection d. The compiler generates a code that will store the information separately from the instance to ensure its security. 9. Which of the following does using Initializer Syntax with a collection as shown below require? CollectionClass numbers = new CollectionClass { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 }; a. The Collection Class must implement System.Collections.Generic.ICollection<T> b. The Collection Class must implement System.Collections.Generic.IList<T> c. Each of the Items in the Initializer List will be passed to the Add<T>(T item) method d. The items in the initializer will be treated as an IEnumerable<T> and passed to the collection constructor+K110 10. What impact will using implicitly typed local variables as in the following example have? var sample = "Hello World"; a. The actual type is determined at compilation time, and has no impact on the runtime b. The actual type is determined at runtime, and late binding takes effect c. The actual type is based on the native VARIANT concept, and no binding to a specific type takes place. d. "var" itself is a specific type defined by the framework, and no special binding takes place 11. Which of the following is not supported by remoting object types? a. well-known singleton b. well-known single call c. client activated d. context-agile 12. In which of the following ways do structs differ from classes? a. Structs can not implement interfaces b. Structs cannot inherit from a base struct c. Structs cannot have events interfaces d. Structs cannot have virtual methods 13. Which of the following is not an unboxing conversion? a. void Sample1(object o) { int i = (int)o; } b. void Sample1(ValueType vt) { int i = (int)vt; } c. enum E { Hello, World} void Sample1(System.Enum et) { E e = (E) et; } d. interface I { int Value { get; set; } } void Sample1(I vt) { int i = vt.Value; } e. class C { public int Value { get; set; } } void Sample1(C vt) { int i = vt.Value; } 14. Which of the following are characteristics of the System.Threading.Timer class? a. The method provided by the TimerCallback delegate will always be invoked on the thread which created the timer. b. The thread which creates the timer must have a message processing loop (i.e. be considered a UI thread) c. The class contains protection to prevent reentrancy to the method provided by the TimerCallback delegate d. You can receive notification of an instance being Disposed by calling an overload of the Dispose method. 15. What is the proper declaration of a method which will handle the following event? Class MyClass { public event EventHandler MyEvent; } a. public void A_MyEvent(object sender, MyArgs e) { } b. public void A_MyEvent(object sender, EventArgs e) { } c. public void A_MyEvent(MyArgs e) { } d. public void A_MyEvent(MyClass sender,EventArgs e) { } 16. Which of the following scenarios are applicable to Window Workflow Foundation? a. Document-centric workflows b. Human workflows c. User-interface page flows d. Builtin support for communications across multiple applications and/or platforms e. All of the above 17. When using an automatic property, which of the following statements is true? a. The compiler generates a backing field that is completely inaccessible from the application code. b. The compiler generates a backing field that is a private instance member with a leading underscore that can be programmatically referenced. c. The compiler generates a backing field that is accessible via reflection d. The compiler generates a code that will store the information separately from the instance to ensure its security. 18 While using the capabilities supplied by the System.Messaging classes, which of the following are true? a. Information must be explicitly converted to/from a byte stream before it uses the MessageQueue class b. Invoking the MessageQueue.Send member defaults to using the System.Messaging.XmlMessageFormatter to serialize the object. c. Objects must be XMLSerializable in order to be transferred over a MessageQueue instance. d. The first entry in a MessageQueue must be removed from the queue before the next entry can be accessed e. Entries removed from a MessageQueue within the scope of a transaction, will be pushed back into the front of the queue if the transaction fails. 19. Which of the following are true about declarative attributes? a. They must be inherited from the System.Attribute. b. Attributes are instantiated at the same time as instances of the class to which they are applied. c. Attribute classes may be restricted to be applied only to application element types. d. By default, a given attribute may be applied multiple times to the same application element. 20. When using version 3.5 of the framework in applications which emit a dynamic code, which of the following are true? a. A Partial trust code can not emit and execute a code b. A Partial trust application must have the SecurityCriticalAttribute attribute have called Assert ReflectionEmit permission c. The generated code no more permissions than the assembly which emitted it. d. It can be executed by calling System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod( string name, Type returnType, Type[] parameterTypes ) without any special permissions Within Windows Workflow Foundation, Compensating Actions are used for: a. provide a means to rollback a failed transaction b. provide a means to undo a successfully committed transaction later c. provide a means to terminate an in process transaction d. achieve load balancing by adapting to the current activity 21. What is the proper declaration of a method which will handle the following event? Class MyClass { public event EventHandler MyEvent; } a. public void A_MyEvent(object sender, MyArgs e) { } b. public void A_MyEvent(object sender, EventArgs e) { } c. public void A_MyEvent(MyArgs e) { } d. public void A_MyEvent(MyClass sender,EventArgs e) { } 22. Which of the following controls allows the use of XSL to transform XML content into formatted content? a. System.Web.UI.WebControls.Xml b. System.Web.UI.WebControls.Xslt c. System.Web.UI.WebControls.Substitution d. System.Web.UI.WebControls.Transform 23. To which of the following do automatic properties refer? a. You declare (explicitly or implicitly) the accessibility of the property and get and set accessors, but do not provide any implementation or backing field b. You attribute a member field so that the compiler will generate get and set accessors c. The compiler creates properties for your class based on class level attributes d. They are properties which are automatically invoked as part of the object construction process 24. Which of the following are true about Nullable types? a. A Nullable type is a reference type. b. An implicit conversion exists from any non-nullable value type to a nullable form of that type. c. A predefined conversion from the nullable type S? to the nullable type T? exists if there is a predefined conversion from the non-nullable type S to the non-nullable type T 25. When using an automatic property, which of the following statements is true? a. The compiler generates a backing field that is completely inaccessible from the application code. b. The compiler generates a backing field that is accessible via reflection. c. The compiler generates a code that will store the information separately from the instance to ensure its security. 26. When using an implicitly typed array, which of the following is most appropriate? a. All elements in the initializer list must be of the same type. b. All elements in the initializer list must be implicitly convertible to a known type which is the actual type of at least one member in the initializer list c. All elements in the initializer list must be implicitly convertible to common type which is a base type of the items actually in the list 27. Which of the following is false about anonymous types? a. They can be derived from any reference type. b. Two anonymous types with the same named parameters in the same order declared in different classes have the same type. c. All properties of an anonymous type are read/write. 28. Which of the following are true about Extension methods. a. They can be declared either static or instance members b. They must be declared in the same assembly (but may be in different source files) c. Extension methods can be used to override existing instance methods d. Extension methods with the same signature for the same class may be declared in multiple namespaces without causing compilation errors

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• XNA Notes 006

  - by George Clingerman

  If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA New: XNA Team - Peer Review now closes for XNA 3.1 games http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/08/peer-review-pipeline-closed-for-new-xna-gs-3-1-games-or-updates-on-app-hub.aspx http://twitter.com/XNACommunity/statuses/34649816529256448 The XNA Team posts about a meet up with Microsoft for Creator’s going to be at GDC, March 3rd at the Lobby Bar http://on.fb.me/fZungJ XNA Team: @mklucher is busying playing the the bubblegum on WP7 made by a member of the XNA team (although reportedly made in Silverlight? Crazy! ;) ) http://twitter.com/mklucher/statuses/34645662737895426 http://bubblegum.me Shawn Hargreaves posts multiple posts (is this a sign that something new is coming from the XNA team? Usually when Shawn has time to post, something has just wrapped up…) Random Shuffle http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/09/random-shuffle.aspx Doing the right thing: resume, rewind or skip ahead http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/10/doing-the-right-thing-resume-rewind-or-skip-ahead.aspx XNA Developers: Andrew Russel was on .NET Rocks recently talking with Carl and Richard about developing games for Xbox, iPhone and Android http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum=635 Eric W. releases the Fishing Girl source code into the wild http://ericw.ca/blog/posts/fishing-girl-now-open-source/ http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74642/454512.aspx#454512 BinaryTweedDeej reminds that XNA community that Indie City wants you involved http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/statuses/34596114028044288 http://www.indiecity.com Mike McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) releases his first two XNA articles on the TechNet wiki http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/xna-framework-overview.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/content-pipeline-overview.aspx John Watte plays around with the Content Pipeline and Music Visualization exploring just what can be done. http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-content-pipeline-fft-song-analysis http://www.enchantedage.com/fft-in-xna-content-pipeline-for-beat-detection-for-the-win Simon Stevens writes up his talk on Vector Collision Physics http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/VectorCollisionPhysics @domipheus puts together an XNA Task Manager http://www.flickr.com/photos/domipheus/5405603197/ MadNinjaSkillz releases his fork of Nick's Easy Storage component on CodePlex http://twitter.com/MadNinjaSkillz/statuses/34739039068229634 http://ezstorage.codeplex.com @ActiveNick was interviewed by Rob Cameron and discusses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and XNA http://twitter.com/ActiveNick/statuses/35348548526546944 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc537546 Radiangames (Luke Schneider) posts about converting his games from XNA to Unity http://radiangames.com/?p=592 UberMonkey (@ElementCy) posts about a new project in the works, CubeTest a Minecraft style terrain http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/personal-projects/new-project-in-the-works/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ubergamermonkey+%28UberGamerMonkey%29 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): VideoGamer Rob review Bonded Realities http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/xblig-review-bonded-realities/ XBLIG Round Up on Gamergeddon http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-6th/ Are gamers still rating Indie Games after the Xbox Dashboard update? http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/06/are-gamers-still-rating-indie-games-after-the-xbox-dashboard-update.aspx Joystiq - Xbox Live Indie Gems: Corrupted http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/04/xbox-live-indie-gems-corrupted/ Raymond Matthews of DarkStarMatryx reviews (Almost) Total Mayhem and Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=225 http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=229 8 Bit Horse reviews Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes http://8bithorse.blogspot.com/2011/01/aban-hawkins-1000-spikes-xbl-indie.html 2010 wrap-up for FunInfused Games http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=245 NeoGaf roundup of January's XBLIGs http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420528 Armless Ocotopus interviews Michael Ventnor creator of Bonded Realities http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/07/interview-michael-ventnor-of-red-crest-studios/ @recharge_media posts about the new city music for Woodvale in Sin Rising http://rechargemedia.com/2011/02/08/new-city-theme-woodvale/ @DrMisty posts some footage of YoYoYo in action http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/54-yoyoyoblogs/184-video-update.html Xona Games - Decimation X3 on Reviews on the Run http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782443063001.000000/reviews-on-the-run--february-8-2011/g4/ @benkane gives an early peek at his action RPG coming to XBLIG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDF_PrvtwU8 Rock, Paper Shotgun talks to Zeboyd games about bringing Cthulhu Saves the World to PC http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/11/summoning-cthulhu-natter-with-zeboyd/ Xbox LIVE Indieverse interviews the creator of Bonded Realities http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/xbl-indieverse-interview-red-crest.html XNA Game Development: Dream-In-Code posts about an upcoming XNA Challenge/Coding contest http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1385/entry-3192-xna-challengecontest/ Sgt.Conker covers Fishing Girl and IndieFreaks Game Framework release http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/fishing-girl-did-not-sell-a-single-copy/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/indiefreaks-game-framework-v0-2-0-0/ @slyprid releases Transmute v0.40a with lots of new features and fixes http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/34125423067533312 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/35326876243337216 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ Jeff Brown writes an XNA 4.0 tutorial on Saving/Loading on the Xbox 360 http://www.robotfootgames.com/xna-tutorials/92-xna-tutorial-savingloading-on-xbox-360-40 XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 3- Animation http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+xna-connection-twitter-specific-stream+%28XNA+Connection%27s+Twitter+specific+stream%29 The news from Nokia is definitely something XNA developers will want to keep their eye on http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1

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• How Expedia Made My New Bride Cry

  - by Lance Robinson

  Tweet this? Email Expedia and ask them to give me and my new wife our honeymoon? When Expedia followed up their failure with our honeymoon trip with a complete and total lack of acknowledgement of any responsibility for the problem and endless loops of explaining the issue over and over again - I swore that they would make it right. When they brought my new bride to tears, I got an immediate and endless supply of motivation. I hope you will help me make them make it right by posting our story on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, on Expedia itself, and when talking to your friends in person about their own travel plans.   If you are considering using them now for an important trip - reconsider. Short summary: We arrived early for a flight - but Expedia had made a mistake with the data they supplied to JetBlue and Emirates, which resulted in us not being able to check in (one leg of our trip was missing)!  At the time of this post, three people (myself, my wife, and an exceptionally patient JetBlue employee named Mary) each spent hours on the phone with Expedia.  I myself spent right at 3 hours (according to iPhone records), Lauren spent an hour and a half or so, and poor Mary was probably on the phone for a good 3.5 hours.  This is after 5 hours total at the airport.  If you add up our phone time, that is nearly 8 hours of phone time over a 5 hour period with little or no help, stall tactics (?), run-around, denial, shifting of blame, and holding. Details below (times are approximate): First, my wife and I were married yesterday - June 18th, the 3 year anniversary of our first date. She is awesome. She is the nicest person I have ever known, a ton of fun, absolutely beautiful in every way. Ok enough mushy - here are the dirty details. 2:30 AM - Early Check-in Attempt - we attempted to check-in for our flight online. Some sort of technology error on website, instructed to checkin at desk. 4:30 AM - Arrive at airport. Try to check-in at kiosk, get the same error. We got to the JetBlue desk at RDU International Airport, where Mary helped us. Mary discovered that the Expedia provided itinerary does not match the Expedia provided tickets. We are informed that when that happens American, JetBlue, and others that use the same software cannot check you in for the flight because. Why? Because the itinerary was missing a leg of our flight! Basically we were not shown in the system as definitely being able to make it home. Mary called Expedia and was put on hold by their automated system. 4:55 AM - Mary, myself, and my brand new bride all waited for about 25 minutes when finally I decided I would make a call myself on my iPhone while Mary was on the airport phone. In their automated system, I chose "make a new reservation", thinking they might answer a little more quickly than "customer service". Not surprisingly I was connected to an Expedia person within 1 minute. They informed me that they would have to forward me to a customer service specialist. I explained to them that we were already on hold for that and had been for nearly half an hour, that we were going on our honeymoon and that our flight would be leaving soon - could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". I hand the phone to JetBlue Mary who explains the situation 3 or 4 times. Obviously I couldn't hear both ends of the conversation at this point, but the Expedia person explained what the problem was by stating exactly what Mary had just spent 15 minutes explaining. Mary calmly confirms that this is the problem, and asks Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. Expedia tells Mary that they'll have to transfer her to customer service. Mary asks for someone specific so that we get an answer this time, and goes on hold. Mary get's connected, explains the situation, and then Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:10 AM - Mary calls back to the Expedia automated system again, and we wait for about 5 minutes on hold this time before I pick up my iPhone and call Expedia again myself. Again I go to sales, a person picks up the phone in less than a minute. I explain the situation and let them know that we are now very close to missing our flight for our honeymoon, could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". Again I give the phone to Mary who provides them with a call back number in case we get disconnected again and explains the situation again. More back and forth with Expedia doing nothing but repeating the same questions, Mary answering the questions with the same information she provided in the original explanation, and Expedia simply restating the problem. Mary again asks them to re-issue the itinerary, and explains that doing so will fix the problem. Expedia again repeats the problem instead of fixing it, and Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:20 AM - Mary again calls back to Expedia. My beautiful bride also calls on her own phone. At this point she is struggling to hold back her tears, stumbling through an explanation of all that has happened and that we are about to miss our flight. Please help us. "Yes, I will help". My beautiful bride's connection gets terminated. Ok, maybe this disconnection isn't an accident. We've now been disconnected 3 times on two different phones. 5:45 AM - I walk away and pleadingly beg a person to help me. They "escalate" the issue to "Rosy" (sp?) at Expedia. I go through the whole song and dance again with Rosy, who gives me the same treatment Mary was given. Rosy blames JetBlue for now having the correct data. Meanwhile Mary is on the phone with Emirates Air (the airline for the second leg of our trip), who agrees with JetBlue that Expedia's data isn't up to date. We are informed by two airport employees that issues like this with Expedia are not uncommon, and that the fix is simple. On the phone iwth Rosy, I ask her to re-issue the itinerary because we are about to miss our flight. She again explains the problem to me. At this point, I am standing at the window, pleading with Rosy to help us get to our honeymoon, watching our airplane. Then our airplane leaves without us. 6:03 AM - At this point we have missed our flight. Re-issuing the itinerary is no longer a solution. I ask Rosy to start from the beginning and work us up a new trip. She says that she cannot do that. She says that she needs to talk to JetBlue and Emirates and find out why we cannot check-in for our flight. I remind Rosy that our flight has already left - I just watched it taxi away - it no longer matters why (not to mention the fact that we already knew why, and have known why since 4:30 AM), and have known the solution since 4:30 AM. Rosy, can you please book a new trip? Yes, but it will cost $400. Excuse me? Now you can, but it will cost ME to fix your mistake? Rosy says that she can escalate the situation to her supervisor but that will take 1.5 hours. 6:15 AM - I told Rosy that if they had re-issued the itinerary as JetBlue asked (at 4:30 AM), my new wife and I might be on the airplane now instead of dealing with this on the phone and missing the beginning (and how much more?) of our honeymoon. Rosy said that it was not necessary to re-issue the itinerary. Out of curiosity, i asked Rosy if there was some financial burden on them to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I asked her if it was a large time burden on Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I directly asked Rosy: Why wouldn't Expedia have re-issued the itinerary when JetBlue asked? No answer. I asked Rosy: If you had re-issued the itinerary at 4:30, isn't it possible that I would be on that flight right now? She actually surprised me by answering "Yes" to that question. So I pointed out that it followed that Expedia was responsible for the fact that we missed out flight, and she immediately went into more about how the problem was with JetBlue - but now it was ALSO an Emirates Air problem as well. I tell Rosy to go ahead and escalate the issue again, and please call me back in that 1.5 hours (which how is about 1 hour and 10 minutes away). 6:30 AM - I start tweeting my frustration with iPhone. It's now pretty much impossible for us to make it to The Maldives by 3pm, which is the time at which we would need to arrive in order to be allowed service to the actual island where we are staying. Expedia has now given me the run-around for 2 hours, caused me to miss my flight, and worst of all caused my amazing new wife Lauren to miss our honeymoon. You think I was mad? No. Furious. Its ok to make mistakes - but to refuse to fix them and to ruin our honeymoon? No, not ok, Expedia. I swore right then that Expedia would make this right. 7:45 AM - JetBlue mary is still talking her tail off to other people in JetBlue and Emirates Air. Mary works it out so that if Expedia simply books a new trip, JetBlue and Emirates will both waive all the fees. Now we just have to convince Expedia to fix their mistake and get us on our way! Around this time Expedia Rosy calls me back! I inform her of the excellent work of JetBlue Mary - that JetBlue and Emirates both will waive the fees so Expedia can fix their mistake and get us going on our way. She says that she sees documentation of this in her system and that she needs to put me on hold "for 1 to 10 minutes" to talk to Emirates Air (why I'm not exactly sure). I say ok. 8:45 AM - After an hour on hold, Rosy comes on the line and asks me to hold more. I ask her to call me back. 9:35 AM - I put down the iPhone Twitter app and picks up the laptop. You think I made some noise with my iPhone? Heh 11:25 AM - Expedia follows me and sends a canned "We're sorry, DM us the details".  If you look at their Twitter feed, 16 out of the most recent 20 tweets are exactly the same canned response.  The other 4?  Ads.  Um - #MultiFAIL? To Expedia:  You now have had (as explained above) 8 hours of 3 different people explaining our situation, you know the email address of our Expedia account, you know my web blog, you know my Twitter address, you know my phone number.  You also know how upset you have made both me and my new bride by treating us with such a ... non caring, scripted, uncooperative, argumentative, and possibly even deceitful manner.  In the wise words of the great Kenan Thompson of SNL: "FIX IT!".  And no, I'm NOT going away until you make this right. Period. 11:45 AM - Expedia corporate office called.  The woman I spoke to was very nice and apologetic.  She listened to me tell the story again, she says she understands the problem and she is going to work to resolve it.  I don't have any details on what exactly that resolution might me, she said she will call me back in 20 minutes.  She found out about the problem via Twitter.  Thank you Twitter, and all of you who helped.  Hopefully social media will win my wife and I our honeymoon, and hopefully Expedia will encourage their customer service teams treat their customers properly. 12:22 PM - Spoke to Fran again from Expedia corporate office.  She has a flight for us tonight.  She is booking it now.  We will arrive at our honeymoon destination of beautiful Veligandu Island Resort only 1 day late.  She cannot confirm today, but she expects that Expedia will pay for the lost honeymoon night.  Thank you everyone for your help.  I will reflect more on this whole situation and confirm its resolution after our flight is 100% confirmed.  For now, I'm going to take a breather and go kiss my wonderful wife! 1:50 PM - Have not yet received the promised phone call.  We did receive an email with a new itinerary for a flight but the booking is not for specific seats, so there is no guarantee that my wife and I will be able to sit together.  With the original booking I carefully selected our seats for every segment of our trip.  I decided to call into the phone number that Fran from the Expedia corporate office gave me.  Its automated voice system identified itself as "Tier 3 Support".  I am currently still on hold with them, I have not gotten through to a human yet. 1:55 PM - Fran from Expedia called me back.  She confirmed us as booked.  She called the airlines to confirm.  Unfortunately, Expedia was unwilling or unable to allow us any type of seat selection.  It is possible that i won't get to sit next to the woman I married less than a day ago on our 40 total hours of flight time (there and back).  In addition, our seats could be the worst seats on the planes, with no reclining seat back or right next to the restroom.  Despite this fact (which in my opinion is huge), the horrible inconvenience, the hours at the airport, and the negative Internet publicity that Expedia is receiving, Expedia declined to offer us any kind of upgrade or to mark us as SFU (suitable for upgrade).  Since they didn't offer - I asked, and was rejected.  I am grateful to finally be heading in the right direction, but not only did Expedia horribly botch this job from the very beginning, they followed that botch job with near zero customer service, followed by a verbally apologetic but otherwise half-hearted resolution.  If this works out favorably for us, great.  If not - I'm not done making noise, Expedia.  You owe us, and I expect you to make it right.  You haven't quite done that yet. Thanks - Thank you to Twitter.  Thanks to all those who sympathize with us and helped us get the attention of Expedia, since three people (one of them an airline employee) using Expedia's normal channels of communication for many hours didn't help.  Thanks especially to my PowerShell and Sharepoint friends, my local friends, and those connectors who encouraged me and spread my story. 5:15 PM - Love Wins - After all this, Lauren and I are exhausted.  We both took a short nap, and when we woke up we talked about the last 24 hours.  It was a big, amazing, story-filled 24 hours.  I said that Expedia won, but Lauren said no.  She pointed out how lucky we are.  We are in love and married.  We have wonderful family and friends.  We are both hard-working successful people who love what they do.  We get to go to an amazing exotic destination for our honeymoon like Veligandu in The Maldives...  That's a lot of good.  Expedia didn't win.  This was (is) a big loss for Expedia.  It is a public blemish for all to see.  But Lauren and I did win, big time.  Expedia may not have made things right - but things are right for us.  Post in progress... I will relay any further comments (or lack of) from Expedia soon, as well as an update on confirmation of their repayment of our lost resort room rates.  I'll also post a picture of us on our honeymoon as soon as I can!

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• MySQL 5.5 brings in new ways to authenticate users

  - by Georgi Kodinov

  Ever wanted to use your server's OS for authenticating MySQL users ? Or the corporate LDAP repository ? Unfortunately options like the above are plentiful nowadays. And providing hard-coded support for protocol X or service Y is not the best possible idea. MySQL 5.5 has taken the step into the right direction by providing an infrastructure allowing one to make the server understand different authentication protocols by creating a set of simple plugins (one for the client and one for the server). So now you can easily extend MySQL to search for and authenticate users in your favorite user directory. In fact the API supplied is so versatile that we took the possibility to re-design the current "native" authentication mechanism into a built-in always-on plugin ! OK, let me give you an example: Imagine we have a bunch of users defined in your OS, e.g. we have a user joro with his respective password. And we have a MySQL instance running on the same computer. It would not be unexpected to need to let joro access and/or modify MySQL data. The first step is to define him as a MySQL user. And there's a problem right there : MySQL's CREATE USER joro@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'joros_password' statement needs a password. And this is a password in no way related to the password that joro have set up in the OS. What's worse : if joro changes his OS password this will in no way be reflected in MySQL. So he'll need to change his MySQL password in a separate step. Not very convenient, specially when you have a lot of users. This is a laborious setup for joro's DBA as well : he'll have to disable his access in both MySQL and the OS should he decides that joro's out of the "nice" list. Now mysql 5.5 to the rescue: Imagine that the smart DBA has created a MySQL server plugin that will check if the name of the user logging in is a valid and enabled OS name and if the password supplied to the mysql client matches the OS and has called this plugin 'auth_os'. Now all that's left to do is to define joro as a MySQL user that will be authenticated externally. This is done by the following command : CREATE USER 'joro'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH 'auth_os'; Now joro can login to MySQL using his current OS password. Note : joro is still a valid MySQL user, so you can grant privileges to him just like you would for all other users. What's better: you can have users that authenticate using different mechanisms in the same server. So you can e.g. safely experiment with external authentication for selected users while keeping your current user base operational. What happens under the hood when joro logs in ? The server will find out by the user definition that it needs to use a non-default authentication and will ask the client to "switch" to using the appropriate client-side plugin (if of course the client is not already using it). If the client can't do this (e.g. because it's an old client or doesn't have the necessary plugin available) the server will reject the login. Otherwise the server will let the server-side plugin decide (while possibly talking to the client side plugin and the OS user directory) if this is a valid login or not. If it is the login process will continue as usual, while if it's not the login will get rejected. There's a lot more that MySQL 5.5 can do for you than just the simple case above. Stay tuned for more advanced use cases like mapping groups of external users to a single MySQL user (so you won't have to have 1-to-1 mapping between your external user directory and your mysql user repository) or ways to control the process as a DBA. Or you can simply skip ahead and read the relevant topics from MySQL's excellent online documentation. Or take a look at the example plugins in plugin/auth. Or take a look at the test suite in mysql-test/t/plugin_auth.test. Changelog entry: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/news-5-5-7.html Primary new sections: Pluggable authentication Proxy users Client plugin C API functions Revised sections: New PROXY privilege New proxies_priv grant table Passwords might be external New external_user and proxy_user system variables New --default-auth and --plugin-dir mysql options New MYSQL_DEFAULT_AUTH and MYSQL_PLUGIN_DIR options for mysql_options() CREATE USER has IDENTIFIED WITH clause to specify auth plugin GRANT has PROXY privilege, IDENTIFIED WITH clause to specify auth plugin The data structure for writing client plugins

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• UCM 11g is 4 days old!

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  Ok...so I missed posting a blog entry when UCM 11g and the entire ECM suite released on Tuesday. Hopefully you've already seen the announcements on any number of the Oracle ECM blogs out there such as ECM Alerts, Fusion ECM, bex huff, or C4. So I won't bore you with the same talking points like 179 million check-ins per day or 124 web site page hits per second. Instead, I thought I'd show some screenshots of the new features in UCM and URM 11g. WebLogic Server and Enterprise Manager So probably the biggest change in 11g is UCM and URM now run on top of the WebLogic Server application server. This is a huge step as ECM is now on a standard platform with the rest of Oracle Fusion Middleware which makes installation, configuration, and integration consistent among all the products. From a feature perspective, it's also beneficial because it's now integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager provides a lot of provisioning control over servers as well as performance monitoring and access to logs and debugging information. Desktop Integration Suite Desktop Integration Suite got a complete overhaul for 11g. It exposes a lot more features within Windows Explorer such as saved searches, workflow queue, and checked-out items. It also now support metadata pop-up screens to let users fill in additional metadata when they drag-n-drop files in! And the integration within Office applications has changed significantly by introducing a dedicated UCM menu to do open, save, compare, etc. Site Studio for External Applications In UCM Site Studio 10gR4, a major architectural shift was introduced which brought several new objects such as elements, region definitions, region templates, and placeholder definitions. This truly separated the content from the display and from the definition. It also allowed separation of the content from needing to be rendered on a complete Site Studio page. Well, the new Site Studio for External Applications takes advantage of that architecture and introduces pre-built tags and plug-ins to JDeveloper to allow to go from simply adding a content area to your web application page to building an entire web site, just like you would have done in Site Studio Designer. In addition to these changes, enhancements to the core Site Studio have been added as well. One of the big ones is called Designer Mode which allows power-users to bypass the standard rules defined by the placeholder definition or template and perform any number of additional actions. This reduces the need to go back to Site Studio Designer or JDeveloper to make more advanced changes to the site. Dashboards As part of the updated records management functionality in both UCM and URM, users can now set a dashboard view on their home page to surface common functions in a single view. It has pre-built "portlets" users can choose from to display and organize they way they want. Behind the scenes, these dashboards are stored as Content Folios. So the dashboards themselves are content items that can be revisioned and shared between users. And new dashboard portlets can be easily added (like the User Profile one in the screenshots) by getting a copy of an existing one, modifying the display, and then checking it in as a new one to select from. URM Interface Enhancements URM includes several new UI and usability enhancements in 11g. There is a new view for physical records, a place to configure "favorite" items to quickly get to, and new placement of the records management menu. BI Publisher Reports Records management in UCM and URM now offer reports generated through embedded BI Publisher. Templates are controlled by rich text files checked directly into the repository, so they can be easily modified. Other Features A new Inbound Refinery conversion option is available that does native Microsoft Office HTML conversion. If your IBR is on Windows and you have the native applications loaded, the IBR can use them to produce HTML. A new GUI template editor for Dynamic Converter is available. It's written in Java so is available through all the supported browsers and platforms. The original ActiveX based editor is also still available. The Component Manager interface has changed to help provide an easier and more descriptive way to enable core components that are installed along with UCM. All of the supported components are immediately available to turn on and do not have to be installed separately as in previous versions. My Downloads is located in the My Content Server menu and provides for easy download of client installs including Desktop Integration Suite and Site Studio Designer. Well, hopefully that gives you a taste for some of the new things in 11g. We're all pretty excited here at Oracle about all the new changes and enhancements. Over the next few months I hope to highlight some of these features more in-depth, so keep your eye out for those posts.

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• 6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’

  - by Gopinath

  Humans quest for exploring the surrounding planets to see whether we can live there or not is taking new shape today. NASA’s Mars probing robot, Curiosity, blasted off today on its 9 months journey to reach Mars and explore it for the possibilities of life there. Scientist says that Curiosity is one most advanced rover ever launched to probe life on other planets. Here is the launch video and some analysis by a news reporter Lets look at the 6 interesting facts about the mission 1. It’s as big as a car Curiosity is the biggest ever rover ever launched by NASA to probe life on outer planets. It’s as big as a car and almost double the size of its predecessor rover Spirit. The length of Curiosity is around 9 feet 10 inches(3 meters), width is 9 feet 1 inch (2.8 meters) and height is 7 feet (2.1 meters). 2. Powered by Plutonium – Lasts 24×7 for 23 months The earlier missions of NASA to explore Mars are powered by Solar power and that hindered capabilities of the rovers to move around when the Sun is hiding. Due to dependency of Sun the earlier rovers were not able to traverse the places where there is no Sun light. Curiosity on the other hand is equipped with a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat emitted by plutonium’s radioactive decay. The plutonium weighs around 10 pounds and can generate power required for operating the rover close to 23 weeks. The best part of the new power system is, Curiosity can roam around in darkness, light and all year around. 3. Rocket powered backpack for a science fiction style landing The Curiosity is so heavy that NASA could not use parachute and balloons to air-drop the rover on the surface of Mars like it’s previous missions. They are trying out a new science fiction style air-dropping mechanism that is similar to sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. The landing of the rover begins first with entry into the Mars atmosphere protected by a heat shield. At about 6 miles to the surface, the heat shield is jettisoned and a parachute is deployed to glide the rover smoothly. When the rover touches 3 miles above the surface, the parachute is jettisoned and the eight motors rocket backpack is used for a smooth and impact free landing as shown in the image. Here is an animation created by NASA on the landing sequence. If you are interested in getting more detailed information about the landing process check this landing sequence picture available on NASA website 4. Equipped with Star Wars style laser gun Hollywood movie directors and novelist always imagined aliens coming to earth with spaceships full of laser guns and blasting the objects which comes on their way. With Curiosity the equations are going to change. It has a powerful laser gun equipped in one of it’s arms to beam laser on rocks to vaporize them. This is not part of any assault mission Curiosity is expected to carry out, the laser gun is will be used to carry out experiments to detect life and understand nature. 5. Most sophisticated laboratory powered by 10 instruments Around 10 state of art instruments are part of Curiosity rover and the these 10 instruments form a most advanced rover based lab ever built by NASA. There are instruments to cut through rocks to examine them and other instruments will search for organic compounds. Mounted cameras can study targets from a distance, arm mounted instruments can study the targets they touch. Microscopic lens attached to the arm can see and magnify tiny objects as tiny as 12.5 micro meters. 6. Rover Carrying 1.24 million names etched on silicon Early June 2009 NASA launched a campaign called “Send Your Name to Mars” and around 1.24 million people registered their names through NASA’s website. All those 1.24 million names are etched on Silicon chips mounted onto Curiosity’s deck. If you had registered your name in the campaign may be your name is going to reach Mars soon. Curiosity On Web If you wish to follow the mission here are few links to help you NASA’s Curiosity Web Page Follow Curiosity on Facebook Follow @MarsCuriosity on Twitter Artistic Gallery Image of Mars Rover Curiosity A printable sheet of Curiosity Mission [pdf] Images credit: NASA This article titled,6 Interesting Facts About NASA’s Mars Rover ‘Curiosity’, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Trace File Source Adapter

  The Trace File Source adapter is a useful addition to your SSIS toolbox.  It allows you to read 2005 and 2008 profiler traces stored as .trc files and read them into the Data Flow.  From there you can perform filtering and analysis using the power of SSIS. There is no need for a SQL Server connection this just uses the trace file. Example Usages Cache warming for SQL Server Analysis Services Reading the flight recorder Find out the longest running queries on a server Analyze statements for CPU, memory by user or some other criteria you choose Properties The Trace File Source adapter has two properties, both of which combine to control the source trace file that is read at runtime. SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 trace files are supported for both the Database Engine (SQL Server) and Analysis Services. The properties are managed by the Editor form or can be set directly from the Properties Grid in Visual Studio. Property Type Description AccessMode Enumeration This property determines how the Filename property is interpreted. The values available are: DirectInput Variable Filename String This property holds the path for trace file to load (*.trc). The value is either a full path, or the name of a variable which contains the full path to the trace file, depending on the AccessMode property. Trace Column Definition Hopefully the majority of you can skip this section entirely, but if you encounter some problems processing a trace file this may explain it and allow you to fix the problem. The component is built upon the trace management API provided by Microsoft. Unfortunately API methods that expose the schema of a trace file have known issues and are unreliable, put simply the data often differs from what was specified. To overcome these limitations the component uses  some simple XML files. These files enable the trace column data types and sizing attributes to be overridden. For example SQL Server Profiler or TMO generated structures define EventClass as an integer, but the real value is a string. TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml  - SQL Server Database Engine Trace Columns TraceDataColumnsAS.xml    - SQL Server Analysis Services Trace Columns The files can be found in the %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsSQL.xml" "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml" If at runtime the component encounters a type conversion or sizing error it is most likely due to a discrepancy between the column definition as reported by the API and the actual value encountered. Whilst most common issues have already been fixed through these files we have implemented specific exception traps to direct you to the files to enable you to fix any further issues due to different usage or data scenarios that we have not tested. An example error that you can fix through these files is shown below. Buffer exception writing value to column 'Column Name'. The string value is 999 characters in length, the column is only 111. Columns can be overridden by the TraceDataColumns XML files in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\DTS\PipelineComponents\TraceDataColumnsAS.xml". Installation The component is provided as an MSI file which you can download and run to install it. This simply places the files on disk in the correct locations and also installs the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache as per Microsoft’s recommendations. You may need to restart the SQL Server Integration Services service, as this caches information about what components are installed, as well as restarting any open instances of Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) / Visual Studio that you may be using to build your SSIS packages. Finally you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the Trace File Source transformation in the Choose Toolbox Items window. This process has been described in detail in the related FAQ entry for How do I install a task or transform component? We recommend you follow best practice and apply the current Microsoft SQL Server Service pack to your SQL Server servers and workstations. Please note that the Microsoft Trace classes used in the component are not supported on 64-bit platforms. To use the Trace File Source on a 64-bit host you need to ensure you have the 32-bit (x86) tools available, and the way you execute your package is setup to use them, please see the help topic 64-bit Considerations for Integration Services for more details. Downloads Trace Sources for SQL Server 2005 -- Trace Sources for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2008 Version 2.0.0.382 - SQL Sever 2008 public release. (9 Apr 2009) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.321 - SQL Server 2005 public release. (18 Nov 2008) -- Screenshots

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• Connection to Weblogic Server through ServiceMix fails

  - by bertolami

  I connect from a OSGi bundle deployed on Apache ServiceMix to a Weblogic Server to call some EJBs. The lookup happens with JNDI. In my unit test everything works fine. But when a deploy the bundle on ServiceMix a CommunicationException exception is raised on JNDI ContextFactory initialisation. The class that performs the lookup during initialisation: public DummyJndiLookup(JndiTemplate jndiTemplate) { try { String securityServiceURL = "ejb/xyz/Service"; reference = jndiTemplate.lookup(securityServiceURL); log.info("Successfully connected to JNDI Server: " + reference); } catch (Throwable t) { throw new RuntimeException(t); } } The beans in the spring context: <bean id="dummy" class="xyz.DummyJndiLookup"> <constructor-arg ref="jndiTemplate"></constructor-arg> </bean> <bean id="jndiTemplate" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiTemplate" lazy-init="true"> <property name="environment"> <props> <prop key="java.naming.factory.initial">weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory</prop> <prop key="java.naming.provider.url">t3://xyz:22225</prop> <prop key="java.naming.security.principal">weblogic</prop> <prop key="java.naming.security.credentials">weblogic</prop> </props> </property> </bean> The resulting exception stack trace: Caused by: javax.naming.CommunicationException [Root exception is java.net.ConnectException: t3://xyz7:22225: Bootstrap to: xyz/192.168.108.22:22225' over: 't3' got an error or timed out] at weblogic.jndi.internal.ExceptionTranslator.toNamingException(ExceptionTranslator.java:40) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.toNamingException(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:783) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:365) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:315) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:285) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactory.java:117) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getInitialContext(NamingManager.java:667) at javax.naming.InitialContext.getDefaultInitCtx(InitialContext.java:288) at javax.naming.InitialContext.init(InitialContext.java:223) at javax.naming.InitialContext.<init>(InitialContext.java:197) at org.springframework.jndi.JndiTemplate.createInitialContext(JndiTemplate.java:137) at org.springframework.jndi.JndiTemplate.getContext(JndiTemplate.java:104) at org.springframework.jndi.JndiTemplate.execute(JndiTemplate.java:86) at org.springframework.jndi.JndiTemplate.lookup(JndiTemplate.java:153) at xyz.DummyJndiLookup.<init>(DummyJndiLookup.java:36) ... 26 more Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: t3://xyz:22225: Bootstrap to: xyz/192.168.108.22:22225' over: 't3' got an error or timed out at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreateInternal(RJVMFinder.java:216) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreate(RJVMFinder.java:170) at weblogic.rjvm.ServerURL.findOrCreateRJVM(ServerURL.java:153) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate$1.run(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:344) at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:363) at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:147) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:339) ... 38 more Caused by: java.rmi.ConnectException: Bootstrap to: xyz/192.168.108.22:22225' over: 't3' got an error or timed out at weblogic.rjvm.ConnectionManager.bootstrap(ConnectionManager.java:359) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMManager.findOrCreateRemoteInternal(RJVMManager.java:251) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMManager.findOrCreate(RJVMManager.java:194) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreateRemoteServer(RJVMFinder.java:238) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreateInternal(RJVMFinder.java:200) Any ideas what could cause the exception? Escpecially why it does work in the unit test and not after having bundled and deployed on Apache ServiceMix? Additional Info: I dumped the threads stack trace of ServiceMix (after having removed all JNDI related spring stuff): 2010-03-22 16:18:23 Full thread dump Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (11.2-b01 mixed mode): "SpringOsgiExtenderThread-14" prio=6 tid=0x054d6400 nid=0x17c4 waiting for monitor entry [0x06f3e000..0x06f3fb14] java.lang.Thread.State: BLOCKED (on object monitor) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreate(RJVMFinder.java:168) - waiting to lock <0x595876f8> (a weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder) at weblogic.rjvm.ServerURL.findOrCreateRJVM(ServerURL.java:153) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:352) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:315) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:285) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactory.java:117) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getInitialContext(NamingManager.java:667) at javax.naming.InitialContext.getDefaultInitCtx(InitialContext.java:288) at javax.naming.InitialContext.init(InitialContext.java:223) at javax.naming.InitialContext.<init>(InitialContext.java:197) at xyz.DummyJndiLookup.getInitialContext(DummyJndiLookup.java:62) at xyz.DummyJndiLookup.<init>(DummyJndiLookup.java:32) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.instantiateClass(BeanUtils.java:100) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.SimpleInstantiationStrategy.instantiate(SimpleInstantiationStrategy.java:61) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.instantiateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:877) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBeanInstance(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:839) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:440) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory$1.run(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:409) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:380) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:264) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222) - locked <0x595959c0> (a java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:261) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:185) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:164) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:429) - locked <0x59598370> (a java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:728) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.access$1600(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:69) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext$4.run(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:355) - locked <0x595431a8> (a java.lang.Object) at org.springframework.osgi.util.internal.PrivilegedUtils.executeWithCustomTCCL(PrivilegedUtils.java:85) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.completeRefresh(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:320) at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.dependencies.startup.DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor$CompleteRefreshTask.run(DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor.java:136) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "SpringOsgiExtenderThread-12" prio=6 tid=0x05465400 nid=0x14cc in Object.wait() [0x06f8e000..0x06f8fc94] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x595b3800> (a java.lang.Object) at weblogic.rjvm.ConnectionManager.bootstrap(ConnectionManager.java:320) - locked <0x595b3800> (a java.lang.Object) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMManager.findOrCreateRemoteInternal(RJVMManager.java:251) - locked <0x595885b8> (a java.lang.Object) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMManager.findOrCreate(RJVMManager.java:194) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreateRemoteServer(RJVMFinder.java:238) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreateInternal(RJVMFinder.java:200) at weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder.findOrCreate(RJVMFinder.java:170) - locked <0x595876f8> (a weblogic.rjvm.RJVMFinder) at weblogic.rjvm.ServerURL.findOrCreateRJVM(ServerURL.java:153) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactoryDelegate.java:352) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:315) at weblogic.jndi.Environment.getContext(Environment.java:285) at weblogic.jndi.WLInitialContextFactory.getInitialContext(WLInitialContextFactory.java:117) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getInitialContext(NamingManager.java:667) at javax.naming.InitialContext.getDefaultInitCtx(InitialContext.java:288) at javax.naming.InitialContext.init(InitialContext.java:223) at javax.naming.InitialContext.<init>(InitialContext.java:197) at xyz.DummyJndiLookup.getInitialContext(DummyJndiLookup.java:62) at xyz.DummyJndiLookup.<init>(DummyJndiLookup.java:32) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at org.springframework.beans.BeanUtils.instantiateClass(BeanUtils.java:100) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.SimpleInstantiationStrategy.instantiate(SimpleInstantiationStrategy.java:61) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.instantiateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:877) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBeanInstance(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:839) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:440) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory$1.run(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:409) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:380) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:264) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222) - locked <0x595b3af0> (a java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:261) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:185) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:164) at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:429) - locked <0x595b3b18> (a java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:728) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.access$1600(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:69) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext$4.run(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:355) - locked <0x595b3be0> (a java.lang.Object) at org.springframework.osgi.util.internal.PrivilegedUtils.executeWithCustomTCCL(PrivilegedUtils.java:85) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.completeRefresh(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:320) at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.dependencies.startup.DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor$CompleteRefreshTask.run(DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor.java:136) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "RMI TCP Connection(idle)" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05329400 nid=0x1100 waiting on condition [0x069af000..0x069afa14] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <0x200a1380> (a java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue$TransferStack) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.parkNanos(LockSupport.java:198) at java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue$TransferStack.awaitFulfill(SynchronousQueue.java:424) at java.util.concurrent.SynchronousQueue$TransferStack.transfer(SynchronousQueue.java:323) at java.util.conCurrent.SynchronousQueue.poll(SynchronousQueue.java:874) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.getTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:945) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:907) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "Timer-4" daemon prio=6 tid=0x053aa400 nid=0xfa4 in Object.wait() [0x06eef000..0x06eefc94] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x59585388> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:483) - locked <0x59585388> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "weblogic.timers.TimerThread" daemon prio=10 tid=0x05151800 nid=0x11fc in Object.wait() [0x06e9f000..0x06e9fd14] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x5959c3c0> (a weblogic.timers.internal.TimerThread) at weblogic.timers.internal.TimerThread$Thread.run(TimerThread.java:267) - locked <0x5959c3c0> (a weblogic.timers.internal.TimerThread) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "ExecuteThread: '4' for queue: 'default'" daemon prio=6 tid=0x04880c00 nid=0x117c in Object.wait() [0x06e4f000..0x06e4fd94] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x595855a8> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.waitForRequest(ExecuteThread.java:91) - locked <0x595855a8> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:115) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "ExecuteThread: '3' for queue: 'default'" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05242400 nid=0xd34 in Object.wait() [0x06dff000..0x06dffa14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x59585998> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.waitForRequest(ExecuteThread.java:91) - locked <0x59585998> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:115) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "ExecuteThread: '2' for queue: 'default'" daemon prio=6 tid=0x04509800 nid=0x1600 in Object.wait() [0x06daf000..0x06dafa94] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x59585c78> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.waitForRequest(ExecuteThread.java:91) - locked <0x59585c78> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:115) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "ExecuteThread: '1' for queue: 'default'" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05170800 nid=0x894 in Object.wait() [0x06d5f000..0x06d5fb14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x59585f58> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.waitForRequest(ExecuteThread.java:91) - locked <0x59585f58> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:115) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "ExecuteThread: '0' for queue: 'default'" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05329800 nid=0x10a8 in Object.wait() [0x06c1f000..0x06c1fb94] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x59586238> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.waitForRequest(ExecuteThread.java:91) - locked <0x59586238> (a weblogic.kernel.ServerExecuteThread) at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:115) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "Timer-3" daemon prio=6 tid=0x0484bc00 nid=0xebc waiting for monitor entry [0x06cbf000..0x06cbfa94] java.lang.Thread.State: BLOCKED (on object monitor) at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.dependencies.startup.DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor.close(DependencyWaiterApplicationContextExecutor.java:355) - waiting to lock <0x595b3be0> (a java.lang.Object) - locked <0x595b3c48> (a java.lang.Object) at org.springframework.osgi.context.support.AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.doClose(AbstractDelegatedExecutionApplicationContext.java:236) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.close(AbstractApplicationContext.java:794) - locked <0x595b4128> (a java.lang.Object) at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.activator.ContextLoaderListener$3.run(ContextLoaderListener.java:807) at org.springframework.osgi.extender.internal.util.concurrent.RunnableTimedExecution$MonitoredRunnable.run(RunnableTimedExecution.java:60) at org.springframework.scheduling.timer.DelegatingTimerTask.run(DelegatingTimerTask.java:66) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:512) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "Timer-2" daemon prio=6 tid=0x04780400 nid=0x1388 in Object.wait() [0x06c6f000..0x06c6fb14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x20783b60> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:483) - locked <0x20783b60> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "AWT-Windows" daemon prio=6 tid=0x04028000 nid=0x83c runnable [0x06b8f000..0x06b8fb14] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at sun.awt.windows.WToolkit.eventLoop(Native Method) at sun.awt.windows.WToolkit.run(WToolkit.java:291) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "Java2D Disposer" daemon prio=10 tid=0x0469c400 nid=0x1164 in Object.wait() [0x0695f000..0x0695fc14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x206f4200> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:116) - locked <0x206f4200> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:132) at sun.java2d.Disposer.run(Disposer.java:125) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "NioSocketAcceptor-1" prio=6 tid=0x055acc00 nid=0xf80 runnable [0x068bf000..0x068bfd94] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at sun.nio.ch.WindowsSelectorImpl$SubSelector.poll0(Native Method) at sun.nio.ch.WindowsSelectorImpl$SubSelector.poll(WindowsSelectorImpl.java:274) at sun.nio.ch.WindowsSelectorImpl$SubSelector.access$400(WindowsSelectorImpl.java:256) at sun.nio.ch.WindowsSelectorImpl.doSelect(WindowsSelectorImpl.java:137) at sun.nio.ch.SelectorImpl.lockAndDoSelect(SelectorImpl.java:69) - locked <0x2069e820> (a sun.nio.ch.Util$1) - locked <0x2069e810> (a java.util.Collections$UnmodifiableSet) - locked <0x2069e3d8> (a sun.nio.ch.WindowsSelectorImpl) at sun.nio.ch.SelectorImpl.select(SelectorImpl.java:80) at sun.nio.ch.SelectorImpl.select(SelectorImpl.java:84) at org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio.NioSocketAcceptor.select(NioSocketAcceptor.java:288) at org.apache.mina.core.polling.AbstractPollingIoAcceptor$Acceptor.run(AbstractPollingIoAcceptor.java:402) at org.apache.mina.util.NamePreservingRunnable.run(NamePreservingRunnable.java:64) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - <0x2069e0f8> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock$NonfairSync) "RMI RenewClean-[192.168.114.60:1640]" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05312400 nid=0x1058 in Object.wait() [0x06b3f000..0x06b3fa94] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x20669858> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:116) - locked <0x20669858> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at sun.rmi.transport.DGCClient$EndpointEntry$RenewCleanThread.run(DGCClient.java:516) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "RMI Scheduler(0)" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05132800 nid=0x146c waiting on condition [0x06aef000..0x06aefb14] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <0x200a1508> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.parkNanos(LockSupport.java:198) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.awaitNanos(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1963) at java.util.concurrent.DelayQueue.take(DelayQueue.java:164) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$DelayedWorkQueue.take(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:583) at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$DelayedWorkQueue.take(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:576) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.getTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:947) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:907) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "GC Daemon" daemon prio=2 tid=0x05678400 nid=0x166c in Object.wait() [0x06a9f000..0x06a9fc14] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x2060d790> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) at sun.misc.GC$Daemon.run(GC.java:100) - locked <0x2060d790> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "RMI Reaper" prio=6 tid=0x04fee800 nid=0x828 in Object.wait() [0x06a4f000..0x06a4fd14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <0x200a79c8> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:116) - locked <0x200a79c8> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:132) at sun.rmi.transport.ObjectTable$Reaper.run(ObjectTable.java:333) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "RMI TCP Accept-0" daemon prio=6 tid=0x0488dc00 nid=0x129c runnable [0x069ff000..0x069ffc94] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method) at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(PlainSocketImpl.java:384) - locked <0x20606780> (a java.net.SocksSocketImpl) at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(ServerSocket.java:453) at java.net.ServerSocket.accept(ServerSocket.java:421) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$AcceptLoop.executeAcceptLoop(TCPTransport.java:369) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$AcceptLoop.run(TCPTransport.java:341) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "RMI TCP Accept-20220" daemon prio=6 tid=0x05319800 nid=0x1634 runnable [0x0690f000..0x0690fa94] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketAccept(Native Method) at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.accept(PlainSocketImpl.java:384) - locked <0x205fb908> (a java.net.SocksSocketImpl) at java.net.ServerSocket.implAccept(ServerSocket.java:453) at java.net.ServerSocket.accept(ServerSocket.java:421) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$AcceptLoop.executeAcceptLoop(TCPTransport.java:369) at sun.rmi.transport.tcp.TCPTransport$AcceptLoop.run(TCPTransport.java:341) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "gogo shell pipe thread" daemon prio=6 tid=0x0511f400 nid=0x920 runnable [0x0586f000..0x0586fb94] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at jline.WindowsTerminal.readByte(Native Method) at jline.WindowsTerminal.readCharacter(WindowsTerminal.java:237) at jline.AnsiWindowsTerminal.readDirectChar(AnsiWindowsTerminal.java:44) at org.apache.felix.karaf.shell.console.jline.Console$Pipe.run(Console.java:346) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "Karaf Shell Console Thread" prio=6 tid=0x05134400 nid=0xf54 waiting on condition [0x0581f000..0x0581fc14] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <0x20573970> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:158) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.await(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1925) at java.util.concurrent.ArrayBlockingQueue.take(ArrayBlockingQueue.java:317) at org.apache.felix.karaf.shell.console.jline.Console$ConsoleInputStream.read(Console.java:286) at org.apache.felix.karaf.shell.console.jline.Console$ConsoleInputStream.read(Console.java:303) at jline.AnsiWindowsTerminal.readCharacter(AnsiWindowsTerminal.java:40) at jline.WindowsTerminal.readVirtualKey(WindowsTerminal.java:359) at jline.ConsoleReader.readVirtualKey(ConsoleReader.java:1504) at jline.ConsoleReader.readBinding(ConsoleReader.java:674) at jline.ConsoleReader.readLine(ConsoleReader.java:514) at jline.ConsoleReader.readLine(ConsoleReader.java:468) at org.apache.felix.karaf.shell.console.jline.Console.run(Console.java:169) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Locked ownable synchronizers: - None "pool-2-thread-3" prio=6 tid=0x04522c00 nid=0xf7c waiting on condition [0x04f9f000..0x04f9fc94] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <0x202a6220> (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject) at ja

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• It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

  - by BuckWoody

  I’ve been a little “preachy” lately, telling you that you should let people finish their sentences, and always check a problem out before you tell a user that their issue is “impossible”. Well, I’ll round that out with one more tip today. Keep in mind that all of these things are actions I’ve been guilty of, hopefully in the past. I’m kind of a “work in progress”. And yes, I know these tips are coming from someone who picks on people in presentations, but that is of course done in fun, and (hopefully) with the audience’s knowledge.   (No, this isn’t aimed at any one person or event in particular – I just see it happen a lot)   I’ve seen, unfortunately over and over, someone in authority react badly to someone who is incorrect, or at least perceived to be incorrect. This might manifest itself in a comment, post, question or whatever, but the point is that I’ve seen really intelligent people literally attack someone they view as getting something wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; if someone posts that you should always drop a production database in the middle of the day I think you should certainly speak up and mention that this might be a bad idea!  No, I’m talking about generalizations or even incorrect statements done in good faith. Let me explain with an example.   Suppose someone makes the statement: “If you don’t have enough space on your system, you can just use a DBCC command to shrink the database”. Let’s take two responses to this statement.   Response One: “That’s insane. Everyone knows that shrinking a database is a stupid idea, you’re just going to fragment your indexes all over the place.” Response Two: “That’s an interesting take – in my experience and from what I’ve read here (someurl.com) I think this might not be a universal best practice.”   Of course, both responses let the person making the statement and those reading it know that you don’t agree, and that it’s probably wrong. But the person you responded to and the general audience hearing you (or reading your response) might form two different opinions of you.   The first response says to me “this person really needs to be right, and takes arguments personally. They aren’t thinking of the other person at all, or the folks reading or hearing the exchange. They turned an incorrect technical statement into a personal attack. They haven’t left the other party any room to ‘save face’, and they have potentially turned what could be a positive learning experience for everyone into a negative. Also, they sound more than just a little arrogant.”   The second response says to me “this person has left room for everyone to save face, has presented evidence to the contrary and is thinking about moving the ball forward and getting it right rather than attacking someone for getting it wrong.” It’s the idea of questioning a statement rather than attacking a person.   Perhaps you have a different take. Maybe you think the “direct” approach is best – and maybe that’s worked for you. Something to consider is what you’ve really accomplished while using that first method. Sure, the info you provide is correct, and perhaps someone out there won’t shrink a database because of your response – but perhaps you’ve turned a lot more people off, and now they won’t listen to your other valuable information. You’ll be an expert, but another one of the nameless, arrogant jerks in technology. And I don’t think anyone likes to be thought of that way.   OK, I’ll get down off of the high-horse now. And I’ll keep the title of this entry (said to me by my grandmother when I was a little kid) in mind when I dismount. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Handy ASP.NET MVC 2 Extension Methods &ndash; Where am I?

  - by Bobby Diaz

  Have you ever needed to detect what part of the application is currently being viewed?  This might be a bigger issue if you write a lot of shared/partial views or custom display or editor templates.  Another scenario, which is the one I encountered when I first started down this path, is when you have some type of menu and you’d like to be able to determine which item represents the current page so you can highlight it in some way.  A simple example is the menu that is created as part of the default ASP.NET MVC 2 Application template.   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home") %></li>         <li><%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home") %></li>     </ul>   </div>   The part that got me at first, however, was the following entry in the default style sheet (Site.css):   ul#menu li.selected a {     background-color: #fff;     color: #000; }   I assumed that the .selected class would automatically get applied to the active menu item.  After trying a few different things, including the MvcContrib MenuBuilder, I decided to write my own extension methods so I would have more control over the output.  First, I needed a way to determine what view the user has navigated to based on the requested URL and route configuration.  Now, I am sure there are many ways to do this, but this is what I came up with:   public static class RequestExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrentRoute(this RequestContext context, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         var routeData = context.RouteData;         var routeArea = routeData.DataTokens["area"] as String;         var current = false;           if ( ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(routeArea) && String.IsNullOrEmpty(areaName)) ||               (routeArea == areaName)) &&              ((String.IsNullOrEmpty(controllerName)) ||               (routeData.GetRequiredString("controller") == controllerName)) &&              ((actionNames == null) ||                actionNames.Contains(routeData.GetRequiredString("action"))) )         {             current = true;         }           return current;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   With that in place, I was able to write several UrlHelper methods that check if the supplied values map to the current view.   public static class UrlExtensions {     public static bool IsCurrent(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.RequestContext.IsCurrentRoute(areaName, controllerName, actionNames);     }       public static string Selected(this UrlHelper urlHelper, String areaName,         String controllerName, params String[] actionNames)     {         return urlHelper.IsCurrent(areaName, controllerName, actionNames)             ? "selected" : String.Empty;     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   Now I can re-work the original menu to utilize these new methods.  Note: be sure to import the proper namespace so the extension methods become available inside your views!   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "Index") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")%></li>           <li class="<%= Url.Selected(null, "Home", "About") %>">             <%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Home")%></li>     </ul>   </div>   If we take it one step further, we can clean up the markup even more.  Check out the Html.ActionMenuItem() extension method and the refined menu:   public static class HtmlExtensions {     public static MvcHtmlString ActionMenuItem(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, String linkText,         String actionName, String controllerName)     {         var html = new StringBuilder("<li");           if ( htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext                 .IsCurrentRoute(null, controllerName, actionName) )         {             html.Append(" class=\"selected\"");         }           html.Append(">")             .Append(htmlHelper.ActionLink(linkText, actionName, controllerName))             .Append("</li>");           return MvcHtmlString.Create(html.ToString());     }       // additional overloads omitted... }   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("Home", "Index", "Home") %>         <%= Html.ActionMenuItem("About", "About", "Home") %>     </ul>   </div>   Which generates the following HTML:   <div id="menucontainer">       <ul id="menu">         <li class="selected"><a href="/">Home</a></li>         <li><a href="/Home/About">About</a></li>     </ul>   </div>     I have created a codepaste of these extension methods if you are interested in using them in your own projects.  Enjoy!

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• The Winds of Change are a Blowin&rsquo;

  - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

  For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now.  Not the fan part, but the paying customer part.  I’m still a huge fan.  I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often).  I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books.  I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do.  But there’s the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me. As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team.  I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools.  Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more.  (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it.  Granted, I wasn’t clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don’t want to wait for them to build it into their system.) Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools.  They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum).  I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video).  I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime.  Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited.  I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up.  So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool.  This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with.  When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it. I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to.  The recommended tool from Axosoft’s point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn’t sure I wanted to go the “flavor of Subversion” route.  Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn’t afford:  Team Foundation Server.  And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now.  So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again. I really went deep on checking out the tools.  I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft’s campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny).  Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction.  As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching.  So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn’t find a job so he called himself a consultant.  It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that’s probably a whole separate blog entry).  As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company.  This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use. The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with.  We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now.  This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time.  We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time. I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear’s products and Axosoft’s OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.

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

  - by Matthew Guay

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

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• Using the new CSS Analyzer in JavaFX Scene Builder

  - by Jerome Cambon

  As you know, JavaFX provides from the API many properties that you can set to customize or make your components to behave as you want. For instance, for a Button, you can set its font, or its max size.Using Scene Builder, these properties can be explored and modified using the inspector. However, JavaFX also provides many other properties to have a fine grained customization of your components : the css properties. These properties are typically set from a css stylesheet. For instance, you can set a background image on a Button, change the Button corners, etc... Using Scene Builder, until now, you could set a css property using the inspector Style and Stylesheet editors. But you had to go to the JavaFX css documentation to know the css properties that can be applied to a given component. Hopefully, Scene Builder 1.1 added recently a very interesting new feature : the CSS Analyzer.It allows you to explore all the css properties available for a JavaFX component, and helps you to build your css rules. A very simple example : make a Button rounded Let’s take a very simple example:you would like to customize your Buttons to make them rounded. First, enable the CSS Analyzer, using the ‘View->Show CSS Analyzer’ menu. Grow the main window, and the CSS Analyzer to get more room: Then, drop a Button from the Library to the ContentView: the CSS Analyzer is now showing the Button css properties: As you can see, there is a ‘-fx-background-radius’ css property that allow to define the radius of the background (note that you can get the associated css documentation by clicking on the property name). You can then experiment this by setting the Button style property from the inspector: As you can see in the css doc, one can set the same radius for the 4 corners by a simple number. Once the style value is applied, the Button is now rounded, as expected.Look at the CSS Analyzer: the ‘-fx-background-radius’ property has now 2 entries: the default one, and the one we just entered from the Style property. The new value “win”: it overrides the default one, and become the actual value (to highlight this, the cell background becomes blue). Now, you will certainly prefer to apply this new style to all the Buttons of your FXML document, and have a css rule for this.To do this, save you document first, and create a css file in the same directory than the new document.Create an empty css file (e.g. test.css), and attach it the the root AnchorPane, by first selecting the AnchorPane, then using the Stylesheets editor from the inspector: Add the corresponding css rule to your new test.css file, from your preferred editor (Netbeans for me ;-) and save it. .button { -fx-background-radius: 10px;} Now, select your Button and have a look at the CSS Analyzer. As you can see, the Button is inheriting the css rule (since the Button is a child of the AnchorPane), and still have its inline Style. The Inline style “win”, since it has precedence on the stylesheet. The CSS Analyzer columns are displayed by precedence order.Note the small right-arrow icons, that allow to jump to the source of the value (either test.css, or the inspector in this case).Of course, unless you want to set a specific background radius for this particular Button, you can remove the inline Style from the inspector. Changing the color of a TitledPane arrow In some cases, it can be useful to be able to select the inner element you want to style directly from the Content View . Drop a TitledPane to the Content View. Then select from the CSS Analyzer the CSS cursor (the other cursor on the left allow you to come back to ‘standard’ selection), that will allow to select an inner element: height: 62px;" align="LEFT" border="0"> … and select the TitledPane arrow, that will get a yellow background: … and the Styleable Path is updated: To define a new css rule, you can first copy the Styleable path : .. then paste it in your test.css file. Then, add an entry to set the -fx-background-color to red. You should have something like: .titled-pane:expanded .title .arrow-button .arrow { -fx-background-color : red;} As soon as the test.css is saved, the change is taken into account in Scene Builder. You can also use the Styleable Path to discover all the inner elements of TitledPane, by clicking on the arrow icon: More details You can see the CSS Analyzer in action (and many other features) from the Java One BOF: BOF4279 - In-Depth Layout and Styling with the JavaFX Scene Builder presented by my colleague Jean-Francois Denise. On the right hand, click on the Media link to go to the video (streaming) of the presa. The Scene Builder support of CSS starts at 9:20 The CSS Analyzer presentation starts at 12:50

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 24, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 24, 2010New ProjectsAutoWorkLoad: Is an application intended to load hours to accounting system such as TimeTracker automatically.Chemistry Add-in for Word: The Chemistry Add-in for Word makes it easier for students, chemists, and researchers to insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, fo...Exceptional Visualizer: A Debugger Visualizer for VS 2008 that allows for effective visual tracing of an Exception stack. Useful for Unity Resolution Exceptions as seen i...FTE Owner Requirement: FIM 2010 Activity: Forefront Identity Manager 2010 (FIM) activity designed to ensure that group object has at least one assigned Full Time Employee owner. This policy...Globus CB: Group project 2009-2010Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010: A simple code syntax highlighter to change the colors of classes, structs, interfaces, macros and typedefs in the Visual C++ 2010 IDE. It is implem...HTML to word (.doc): easy to export your HTML code to Microsoft Word (.doc extension)IETT Hat Güzergah Importer: http://www.iett.gov.tr sitesinden otobüs hat ve güzergahlarını indirerek RegEx ile parse eder. Elde ettiği verileri SQL Server'a kaydeder.Industrial Dashboard: WCF service that allows executing SQL Server stored procedures straight from javascript code, enabling sending and receiving structured data withou...iSafePDF: iSafePDF is a PDF protection software. it allows you to encrypt PDF document, signe them using a certificate and timestamp the signature. all those...Kordinat Dönüştürücü: * UTM Koordinatlardan DDD koordinatlara iki yönlü dönüşüm. * Google Earth üzerinde koordinat, polygon ve ruhsat gösterimi. * Türkiye Paftalarının...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile brings your LinkedIn® account to your Window Mobile powered phone. See networkupdates / connections / profile etc. Macrosome: An F# project demonstrates recording and replaying user operations.Markov Text Generator: Markov Text Generator.MEFedMVVM: Library for building MEF MVVM applications for Silverlight and WPF. By using this library you can easily build MVVM application. *UNDER Constructi...Mercurial to Team Foundation Server Work Item Hook: This is a Mercurial hook that will mark Team Foundation Server work items as resolved with a specific format in the commit description.Metaball WPF HLSL: Metaballs in WPF 3 with pixel shaders.Project Audiophile: Project Audiophile is a suite of applications and libraries built for .Net and Mono for the purposes of listening and organising music.RSS Application Updater: A Libbrary that helps you to update your app from your web site's feed. works very good with drupal .Sherwood Content Management Suite: A project that aims to provide a powerful and flexible tool for aggregating data from different data sources. Add your own plugins to store wanted ...Sonic.Net: Sonic.Net is a .Net Library designed to facilitate development of rich client applications both in Silverlight and WPF. Sonic.Net makes use of all ...StoichiometriCS: Stoichiometric Chemical Equation Solver.Vate Game Engine: Vate is a new XNA Game Engine. For more information about this project, please visit http://blog.aphysoft.com.Yahoo OpenID YQL Demo: This is demo program how to use Yahoo OpenID and Yahoo Query Language (YQL)New ReleasesBasic Sprite Sheet Creator: Sprite Tool V1.11: I had a small error when using multiple animations without the one pixel border that I overlooked when rewriting the code. It should be completely ...Braintree Client Library: Braintree-2.0.0: Updated IsSuccess() on transaction results to return false on declined transactions Search results now implement IEnumerable and will automatical...BV Commerce 5 Import Export Tools: Version 5.7.0 (for BV Commerce 5.7): Updated version compatible with BV Commerce 5.7. Do not use on earlier versions.Chemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word Beta 2: This is the source code release of the Chemistry Add-in for Word Beta 2. System Requirements To run this software, you’ll need the following: Wind...Controlled Vocabulary: 1.0.0.5: System Requirements Outlook 2007 / 2010 .Net Framework 3.5 VSTO 2010 Runtime Installation 1. Close Outlook (Use Task Manager to ensure no running ...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.33 RC: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - Fixed a bug related to encryption cookie. New Features: - Adden token pair [IFLOGGED] [/IFLOGGED] us...EdiliOS: Beta 0.2.1: Aggiunto supporto a FidoCadJ, editor FidoCad multipiattaforma di Davide Bucci, con Libreria di Ingegneria Civile integrata.Event Scavenger: Admin tool Version 3.1.1: Fixed the Admin tool that fails on editing general settings. Only Admin tool is affected.Exceptional Visualizer: Exception Visualizer: A Debugger Visualizer to help with long chains of exceptions where digging through the inner exceptions is hard to do. Specifically, this release ...fracback: Binaries: Use at your own riskFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire for SL 4 and WPF Charts 3.5.1 Released: Hi, This release contains fix for the following bug: Chart threw exception with DateTime axis if IntervalType property was set as ‘Minutes’ in Ax...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire Silverlight and WPF Charts 3.0.8 Released: Hi, This release contains fix for the following bug: * Chart threw exception with DateTime axis if IntervalType property was set as ‘Minutes’...GeoUtility Library: GeoUtility Library 3.1.5.0: Please Note: This is an open source version. The commercial version offers much more functionality. Help files (english/german) are only available ...Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010: Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010 Test Release 1.0: To install the extension, download the and then double-click on the Highlighterr.vsix file. This should bring up a dialog saying something about wh...Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010: Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010 Test Release 1.01: The lack of support for /* */ comments was annoying me, so I added it. To install the extension, download the and then double-click on the Highlig...Home Access Plus+: v4.0.1.0: v4.0.1.0 Beta Change Log: Fixed an issue with laptops and the booking system (CSS and code fixes) Moved filters to top Added some Javascript to...HTML to word (.doc): FullSourceDownload: the full source contain: bin/AppWebdx7wusqu.dll Default.aspx htw.ascx htw.ascx.vb Web.configIndustrial Dashboard: 3.0 Beta: Added Example with Dojox.DataGrid Added Example with Ext.js ChartiSafePDF: iSafePDF v1.2: This is the first public release, this version support : PDF signature, timestamped signature, multi-signature, PDF encryption and meta-data modifi...linq.js - LINQ for JavaScript: ver 2.0.0.0: all code rewrite from scratch. enumerator support Dispose. namespace changed E, Linq.Enumerable -> Enumerable delete methods ToJSON ToTable Trace...LogikBug's IoC Container: Third Release: This project is dependent upon Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation and must be referenced when referencing LogikBug.Injection. 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• Browsing Your ADF Application Module Pooling Params with WLST

  - by Duncan Mills

  In ADF 11g you can of course use Enterprise Manager (EM) to browse and configure the settings used by ADF Business Components  Application Modules, as shown here for one of my sample deployed applications. This screen you can access from the EM homepage by pulling down the Application Deployment menu, and then ADF > Configure ADF Business Components. Then select the profile that you are actually using (Hint: look in the DataBindings.cpx file to work this out - probably the "Local" version unless you've explicitly changed it. )So, from this screen you can change the pooling parameters and the world is good. But what if you don't have EM installed? In that case you can use the WebLogic scripting capabilities to view (and Update) the MBean Properties. Explanation The pooling parameters and many others are handled through Message Driven Beans that are created for the deployed application in the server. In the case of the ADF BC pooling parameters, this MBean will combine the configuration deployed as part of the application, along with any overrides defined as -D environement commands on the JVM startup for the application server instance. Using WLST to Browse the Bean ValuesFor our purposes here I'm doing this interactively, although you can also write a script or write Java to achieve the same thing.Step 0: Before You Start You will need the followingAccess to the console on the machine that is running the serverThe WebLogic Admin username and password (I'll use weblogic/password as my example here - yours will be different)The name of the deployed application (in this example FMWdh_application1)The package path to the bc4j.xcfg file (in this example oracle.demo.fmwdh.model.service.common.bc4j.xcfg) This is based on the default path for your model project so it shoudl be fairly easy to work out.The BC configuration your AM is actually running with (look in the DataBindings.cpx for that. In this example DealHelpServiceDeployed is the profile being used..)Step 1: Start the WLST consoleTo start at the beginning, you need to run the WLST command but that needs a little setup:Change to the wlserver_10.3/server/bin directory e.g. under your Fusion Middleware Home[oracle@mymachine] cd /home/oracle/FMW_R1/wlserver_10.3/server/binSet your environment using the setWLSEnv script. e.g. on Oracle Enterprise Linux:[oracle@mymachine bin] source setWLSEnv.shStart the WLST interactive console[oracle@mymachine bin] java weblogic.WLSTInitializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting ShellType help() for help on available commandswls:/offline> Step 2:Enter the WLST commandsConnect to the server wls:> connect('weblogic','password')Change to the Custom root, this is where the AMPooling MBeans are registered wls:> custom()Change to the b4j MBean directorywls:> cd ('oracle.bc4j.mbean.config')Work out the correct directory for the AM configuration you need. This is the difficult bit, not because it's hard to do, but because the names are long. The structure here is such that every child MBean is displayed at the same level as the parent, so for each deployed application there will be many directories shown. In fact, do an ls() command here and you'll see what I mean. Each application will have one MBean for the app as a whole, and then for each deployed configuration in the .xcfg file you'll see: One for the config entry itself, and then one each for Security, DB Connection and AM Pooling. So if you deploy an app with just one configuration you'll see 5 directories, if it has two configurations in the .xcfg you'll see 9 and so on.The directory you are looking for will contain those bits of information you gathered in Step 0, specifically the Application Name, the configuration you are using and the xcfg name: First of all narrow your list to just those directories returned from the ls() command that begin oracle.bc4j.mbean.config:name=AMPool. These identify the AM pooling MBeans for all the deployed applications. Now look for the correct application name e.g. Application=FMWdh_application1The config setting in that sub-list should already be correct and match what you expect e.g. oracle.bc4j.mbean.config=oracle.demo.fmwdh.model.service.common.bc4j.xcfgFinally look for the correct value for the AppModuleConfigType e.g. oracle.bc4j.mbean.config.AppModuleConfigType=DealHelpServiceDeployedNow you have identified the correct directory name, change to that (keep the name on one line of course - I've had to split it across lines here for clarity:wls:> cd ('oracle.bc4j.mbean.config:name=AMPool,     type=oracle.bc4j.mbean.config.AppModuleConfigType.AMPoolType,    oracle.bc4j.mbean.config=oracle.demo.fmwdh.model.service.common.bc4j.xcfg,    Application=FMWdh_application1,    oracle.bc4j.mbean.config.AppModuleConfigType=DealHelpServiceDeployed') Now you can actually view the parameter values with a simple ls() commandwls:> ls()And here's the output in which you can view the realtime values of the various pool settings: -rw- AmpoolConnectionstrategyclass oracle.jbo.common.ampool.DefaultConnectionStrategy -rw- AmpoolDoampooling true -rw- AmpoolDynamicjdbccredentials false -rw- AmpoolInitpoolsize 2 -rw- AmpoolIsuseexclusive true -rw- AmpoolMaxavailablesize 40 -rw- AmpoolMaxinactiveage 600000 -rw- AmpoolMaxpoolsize 4096 -rw- AmpoolMinavailablesize 2 -rw- AmpoolMonitorsleepinterval 600000 -rw- AmpoolResetnontransactionalstate true -rw- AmpoolSessioncookiefactoryclass oracle.jbo.common.ampool.DefaultSessionCookieFactory -rw- AmpoolTimetolive 3600000 -rw- AmpoolWritecookietoclient false -r-- ConfigMBean true -rw- ConnectionPoolManager oracle.jbo.server.ConnectionPoolManagerImpl -rw- Doconnectionpooling false -rw- Dofailover false -rw- Initpoolsize 0 -rw- Maxpoolcookieage -1 -rw- Maxpoolsize 4096 -rw- Poolmaxavailablesize 25 -rw- Poolmaxinactiveage 600000 -rw- Poolminavailablesize 5 -rw- Poolmonitorsleepinterval 600000 -rw- Poolrequesttimeout 30000 -rw- Pooltimetolive -1 -r-- ReadOnly false -rw- Recyclethreshold 10 -r-- RestartNeeded false -r-- SystemMBean false -r-- eventProvider true -r-- eventTypes java.lang.String[jmx.attribute.change] -r-- objectName oracle.bc4j.mbean.config:name=AMPool,type=oracle.bc4j.mbean.config.AppModuleConfigType.AMPoolType,oracle.bc4j.mbean.config=oracle.demo.fmwdh.model.service.common.bc4j.xcfg,Application=FMWdh_application1,oracle.bc4j.mbean.config.AppModuleConfigType=DealHelpServiceDeployed -rw- poolClassName oracle.jbo.common.ampool.ApplicationPoolImpl Thanks to Brian Fry on the JDeveloper PM Team who did most of the work to put this sequence of steps together with me badgering him over his shoulder.

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• PASS Summit 2010 Recap

  - by AjarnMark

  Last week I attended my eighth PASS Summit in nine years, and every year it is a fantastic event!  I was fortunate my first year to have a contact (Bill Graziano (blog | Twitter) from SQLTeam) that I was expecting to meet, and who got me started on a good track of making new contacts.  Each year I have made a few more, and renewed friendships from years past.  Many of the attendees agree that the pure networking opportunities are one of the best benefits of attending the Summit.  And there’s a lot of great technical stuff, too, some of the things that stick out for me this year include… Pre-Con Monday: PowerShell with Allen White (blog | Twitter).  This was the first time that I attended a pre-con.  For those not familiar with the concept, the regular sessions for the conference are 75-90 minutes long.  For an extra fee, you can attend a full-day session on a single topic during a pre- or post-conference training day.  I had been meaning for several months to dive in and learn PowerShell, but just never seemed to find (or make) the time for it, so when I saw this was one of the all-day sessions, and I was planning to be there on Monday anyway, I decided to go for it.  And it was well worth it!  I definitely came out of there with a good foundation to build my own PowerShell scripts, plus several sample scripts that he showed which already cover the first four or five things I was planning to do with PowerShell anyway.  This looks like the right tool for me to build an automated version of our software deployment process, which right now contains many repeated steps.  Thanks Allen! Service Broker with Denny Cherry (blog | Twitter).  I remembered reading Denny’s blog post on Using Service Broker instead of Replication, and ever since then I have been thinking about using this to populate a new reporting-focused Data Repository that we will be building in the near future.  When I saw he was doing this session, I thought it would be great to get more information and be able to ask the author questions.  When I brought this idea back to my boss, he really liked it, as we had previously been discussing doing nightly data loads, with an option to manually trigger a mid-day load if up-to-the-minute data was needed for something.  If we go the Service Broker route, we can keep the Repository current in near real-time.  Hooray! DBA Mythbusters with Paul Randal (blog | Twitter).  Even though I read every one of the posts in Paul’s blog series of the same name, I had to go see the legend in person.  It was great, and I still learned something new! How to Conduct Effective Meetings with Joe Webb (blog | Twitter).  I always like to sit in on a session that Joe does.  I met Joe several years ago when both he and Bill Graziano were on the PASS Board of Directors together, and we have kept in touch.  Joe is very well-spoken and has great experience with both SQL Server and business.  And we could certainly use some pointers at my work (probably yours, too) on making our meetings more effective and to run on-time.  Of course, now that I’m the Chapter Leader for the Professional Development virtual chapter, I also had to sit in on this ProfDev session and recruit Joe to do a presentation or two for the chapter next year. Query Optimization with David DeWitt.  Anyone who has seen Dr. David DeWitt present the 3rd keynote at a PASS Summit over the last three years knows what a great time it is to sit and listen to him make some really complicated and advanced topic easy to understand (although it still makes your head hurt).  It still amazes me that the simple two-table join query from pubs that he used in his example can possibly have 22 million possible physical query plans.  Ouch! Exhibit Hall:  This year I spent more serious time in the exhibit hall than any year past.  I have talked my boss into making a significant (for us) investment in monitoring tools next year, and this was a great opportunity to talk with all the big-hitters.  Readers of mine may recall that I fell in love with the SQL Sentry Power Suite several months ago and wrote a blog entry about it just from the trial version.  Well as things turned out, short-term budget priorities shifted, and we weren’t able to make the purchase then.  I have it in the budget for next year, but since I was going to the Summit, my boss wanted me to look at the other options to see if this was really the one that we wanted.  I spent a couple of hours talking with representatives from Red-Gate, Idera, Confio, and Quest about their offerings, and giving them each the same 3 scenarios that I wanted to be able to accomplish based on the questions and issues that arise in our company.  It was interesting to discover the different approaches or “world view” that each vendor takes to the subject of performance monitoring and troubleshooting.  I may write a separate article that goes into this in more depth, but the product that best aligned with our point of view, and met the current needs we have is still the SQL Sentry Power Suite.  I’m not saying that the others are bad or wrong or anything like that, just that the way they tackled the issue did not align as well with our particular needs as does SQL Sentry’s product.  And that was something I learned too, when you go shopping for these products, you really need to know what you want to get from them.  It’s best if you have a few example scenarios from work that you can use to test out how well each tool fits your particular needs. Overall, another GREAT event.  I can’t wait to get the DVDs so I can sit in on a bunch of other sessions that I couldn’t get to because I was in one of the ones above.  And I can hardly wait until next year!

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• SnagIt Live Writer Plug-in Updated

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ah, I love SnagIt from TechSmith and I use the heck out of it almost every day. So no surprise that I've decided some time ago to integrate SnagIt into a few applications that require screen shots extensively. It's been a while since I've posted an update to my small SnagIt Windows Live Writer plug-in. There have been a few nagging issues that have crept up with recent changes in the way SnagIt handles captures in recent versions and they have been addressed in this update of SnagIt. Personally I love SnagIt and use it extensively mostly for blogging, but also for writing documentation and articles etc. While there are many other (and also free) tools out there to do basic screen captures, SnagIt continues to be the most convenient tool for me with its nice built in capture and effects editor that makes creating professional looking captures childishly simple. And maybe even more importantly: SnagIt has a COM interface that can be automated and  makes it super easy to embed into other applications. I've built plugins for SnagIt as well as for one of my company's own tools, Html Help Builder. If you use the Windows Live Writer offline WebLog Editor to write blog posts and have a copy of SnagIt it's probably worth your while to check this out if you haven't already. In case you haven't, this plugin integrates SnagIt with Live Writer so you can easily capture and edit content and embed it into a post. Captures are shown in the SnagIt Preview editor where you can edit the image and apply image markup or effects, before selecting Finish (or Cancel). The final image can then be pasted directly into your Live Writer post. When installed the SnagIt plug-in shows up on the PlugIn list or in the Plug-Ins toolbar shortcut: Once you select the Plug in you get the capture window that allows you to customize the capture process which includes most of the useful SnagIt capture options: Once you're done capturing the image shows up in the SnagIt Image Editor and you can crop, mark up and apply effects. When done you click the Finish button and the image is embedded right into your blog post. Easy - how do you think the images in this blog entry got in here? The beauty of SnagIt is that it's all easily integrated - Capturing, editing and embedding, it only takes a few seconds to do it all especially if you save image effect presets in SnagIt. What's updated The main issue addressed in this update has to do with the plug-in updates the Live Writer window. When a capture starts Live Writer gets minimized to get out of the way to let you pick your capture source. When the capture is complete and the image has been embedded Live Writer is activated once again. Recent versions of SnagIt however had changed the Window positioning of SnagIt so that Live Writer ended up popping up back behind the SnagIt window which was pretty annoying. This update pushes Live Writer back to the top of the window stack using some delaying tactics in the code. There have also been a few small changes to the way the code interacts with the COM object which is more reliable if a capture fails or SnagIt blows up or is locked because it's already in a capture outside of the automation interface. Source Code SnagIt Automation is something I actually use a lot. As mentioned I've integrated this automation into Live Writer as well as my documentation tool Html Help Builder, which I use just about daily. The SnagIt integration has a similar interface in that application and provides similar functionality. It's quite useful to integrate SnagIt into other applications. Because it's quite useful to embed SnagIt into other apps there's source code that you can download and embed into your own applications. The code includes both the dialog class that is automated from Live Writer, as well as the basic capture component that captures images to a disk file. Resources Download the SnagIt Capture Plug-in Installer An MSI installer that you can run that will install the plug-in into Live Writer's PlugIns directory. Source Code to the SnagIt Capture Plug-in Contains the plug-in assembly, as well as the source code to the plug-in and the setup project.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in Live Writer  WebLog   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Design for Vacation Tracking System

  - by Aaronaught

  I have been tasked with developing a system for tracking our company's paid time-off (vacation, sick days, etc.) At the moment we are using an Excel spreadsheet on a shared network drive, and it works pretty well, but we are concerned that we won't be able to "trust" employees forever and sometimes we run into locking issues when two people try to open the spreadsheet at once. So we are trying to build something a little more robust. I would like some input on this design in terms of maintainability, scalability, extensibility, etc. It's a pretty simple workflow we need to represent right now: I started with a basic MS Access schema like this: Employees (EmpID int, EmpName varchar(50), AllowedDays int) Vacations (VacationID int, EmpID int, BeginDate datetime, EndDate datetime) But we don't want to spend a lot of time building a schema and database like this and have to change it later, so I think I am going to go with something that will be easier to expand through configuration. Right now the vacation table has this schema: Vacations (VacationID int, PropName varchar(50), PropValue varchar(50)) And the table will be populated with data like this: VacationID | PropName | PropValue -----------+--------------+------------------ 1 | EmpID | 4 1 | EmpName | James Jones 1 | Reason | Vacation 1 | BeginDate | 2/24/2010 1 | EndDate | 2/30/2010 1 | Destination | Spectate Swamp 2 | ... | ... I think this is a pretty good, extensible design, we can easily add new properties to the vacation like the destination or maybe approval status, etc. I wasn't too sure how to go about managing the database of valid properties, I thought of putting them in a separate PropNames table but it gets complicated to manage all the different data types and people say that you shouldn't put CLR type names into a SQL database, so I decided to use XML instead, here is the schema: <VacationProperties> <PropertyNames>EmpID,EmpName,Reason,BeginDate,EndDate,Destination</PropertyNames> <PropertyTypes>System.Int32,System.String,System.String,System.DateTime,System.DateTime,System.String</PropertyTypes> <PropertiesRequired>true,true,false,true,true,false</PropertiesRequired> </VacationProperties> I might need more fields than that, I'm not completely sure. I'm parsing the XML like this (would like some feedback on the parsing code): string xml = File.ReadAllText("properties.xml"); Match m = Regex.Match(xml, "<(PropertyNames)>(.*?)</PropertyNames>"; string[] pn = m.Value.Split(','); // do the same for PropertyTypes, PropertiesRequired Then I use the following code to persist configuration changes to the database: string sql = "DROP TABLE VacationProperties"; sql = sql + " CREATE TABLE VacationProperties "; sql = sql + "(PropertyName varchar(100), PropertyType varchar(100) "; sql = sql + "IsRequired varchar(100))"; for (int i = 0; i < pn.Length; i++) { sql = sql + " INSERT VacationProperties VALUES (" + pn[i] + "," + pt[i] + "," + pv[i] + ")"; } // GlobalConnection is a singleton new SqlCommand(sql, GlobalConnection.Instance).ExecuteReader(); So far so good, but after a few days of this I then realized that a lot of this was just a more specific kind of a generic workflow which could be further abstracted, and instead of writing all of this boilerplate plumbing code I could just come up with a workflow and plug it into a workflow engine like Windows Workflow Foundation and have the users configure it: In order to support routing these configurations throw the workflow system, it seemed natural to implement generic XML Web Services for this instead of just using an XML file as above. I've used this code to implement the Web Services: public class VacationConfigurationService : WebService { [WebMethod] public void UpdateConfiguration(string xml) { // Above code goes here } } Which was pretty easy, although I'm still working on a way to validate that XML against some kind of schema as there's no error-checking yet. I also created a few different services for other operations like VacationSubmissionService, VacationReportService, VacationDataService, VacationAuthenticationService, etc. The whole Service Oriented Architecture looks like this: And because the workflow itself might change, I have been working on a way to integrate the WF workflow system with MS Visio, which everybody at the office already knows how to use so they could make changes pretty easily. We have a diagram that looks like the following (it's kind of hard to read but the main items are Activities, Authenticators, Validators, Transformers, Processors, and Data Connections, they're all analogous to the services in the SOA diagram above). The requirements for this system are: (Note - I don't control these, they were given to me by management) Main workflow must interface with Excel spreadsheet, probably through VBA macros (to ease the transition to the new system) Alerts should integrate with MS Outlook, Lotus Notes, and SMS (text messages). We also want to interface it with the company Voice Mail system but that is not a "hard" requirement. Performance requirements: Must handle 250,000 Transactions Per Second Should be able to handle up to 20,000 employees (right now we have 3) 99.99% uptime ("four nines") expected Must be secure against outside hacking, but users cannot be required to enter a username/password. Platforms: Must support Windows XP/Vista/7, Linux, iPhone, Blackberry, DOS 2.0, VAX, IRIX, PDP-11, Apple IIc. Time to complete: 6 to 8 weeks. My questions are: Is this a good design for the system so far? Am I using all of the recommended best practices for these technologies? How do I integrate the Visio diagram above with the Windows Workflow Foundation to call the ConfigurationService and persist workflow changes? Am I missing any important components? Will this be extensible enough to support any scenario via end-user configuration? Will the system scale to the above performance requirements? Will we need any expensive hardware to run it? Are there any "gotchas" I should know about with respect to cross-platform compatibility? For example would it be difficult to convert this to an iPhone app? How long would you expect this to take? (We've dedicated 1 week for testing so I'm thinking maybe 5 weeks?)

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• Oracle Database 12c: Oracle Multitenant Option

  - by hamsun

  1. Why ? 2. What is it ? 3. How ? 1. Why ? The main idea of the 'grid' is to share resources, to make better use of storage, CPU and memory. If a database administrator wishes to implement this idea, he or she must consolidate many databases to one database. One of the concerns of running many applications together in one database is: ‚what will happen, if one of the applications must be restored because of a human error?‘ Tablespace point in time recovery can be used for this purpose, but there are a few prerequisites. Most importantly the tablespaces are strictly separated for each application. Another reason for creating separated databases is security: each customer has his own database. Therefore, there is often a proliferation of smaller databases. Each of them must be maintained, upgraded, each allocates virtual memory and runs background processes thereby wasting resources. Oracle 12c offers another possibility for virtualization, providing isolation at the database level: the multitenant container database holding pluggable databases. 2. What ? Pluggable databases are logical units inside a multitenant container database, which consists of one multitenant container database and up to 252 pluggable databases. The SGA is shared as are the background processes. The multitenant container database holds metadata information common for pluggable databases inside the System and the Sysaux tablespace, and there is just one Undo tablespace. The pluggable databases have smaller System and Sysaux tablespaces, containing just their 'personal' metadata. New data dictionary views will make the information available either on pdb (dba_views) or container level (cdb_views). There are local users, which are known in specific pluggable databases and common users known in all containers. Pluggable databases can be easily plugged to another multitenant container database and converted from a non-CDB. They can undergo point in time recovery. 3. How ? Creating a multitenant container database can be done using the database configuration assistant: There you find the new option: Create as Container Database. If you prefer ‚hand made‘ databases you can execute the command from a instance in nomount state: CREATE DATABASE cdb1 ENABLE PLUGGABLE DATABASE …. And of course this can also be achieved through Enterprise Manager Cloud. A freshly created multitenant container database consists of two containers: the root container as the 'rack' and a seed container, a template for future pluggable databases. There are 4 ways to create other pluggable databases: 1. Create an empty pdb from seed 2. Plug in a non-CDB 3. Move a pdb from another pdb 4. Copy a pdb from another pdb We will discuss option2: how to plug in a non_CDB into a multitenant container database. Three different methods are available : 1. Create an empty pdb and use Datapump in traditional export/import mode or with Transportable Tablespace or Database mode. This method is suitable for pre 12c databases. 2. Create an empty pdb and use GoldenGate replication. When the pdb catches up with the non-CDB, you fail over to the pdb. 3. Databases of Version 12c or higher can be plugged in with the help of the new dbms_pdb Package. This is a demonstration for method 3: Step1: Connect to the non-CDB to be plugged in and create an xml File with description of the database. The xml file is written to $ORACLE_HOME/dbs per default and contains mainly information about the datafiles. Step 2: Check if the non-CDB is pluggable in the multitenant container database: Step 3: Create the pluggable database, connected to the Multitenant container database. With nocopy option the files will be reused, but the tempfile is created anew: A service is created and registered automatically with the listener: Step 4: Delete unnecessary metadata from PDB SYSTEM tablespace: To connect to newly created pdb, edit tnsnames.ora and add entry for new pdb. Connect to plugged-in non_CDB and clean up Data Dictionary to remove entries now maintained in multitenant container database. As all kept objects have to be recompiled it will take a few minutes. Step 5: The plugged-in database will be automatically synchronised by creating common users and roles when opened the first time in read write mode. Step 6: Verify tablespaces and users: There is only one local tablespace (users) and one local user (scott) in the plugged-in non_CDB pdb_orcl. This method of creating plugged_in non_CDB from is fast and easy for 12c databases. The method for deplugging a pluggable database from a CDB is to create a new non_CDB and use the the new full transportable feature of Datapump and drop the pluggable database. About the Author: Gerlinde has been working for Oracle University Germany as one of our Principal Instructors for over 14 years. She started with Oracle 7 and became an Oracle Certified Master for Oracle 10g and 11c. She is a specialist in Database Core Technologies, with profound knowledge in Backup & Recovery, Performance Tuning for DBAs and Application Developers, Datawarehouse Administration, Data Guard and Real Application Clusters.

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• The ugly evolution of running a background operation in the context of an ASP.NET app

  - by Jeff

  If you’re one of the two people who has followed my blog for many years, you know that I’ve been going at POP Forums now for over almost 15 years. Publishing it as an open source app has been a big help because it helps me understand how people want to use it, and having it translated to six languages is pretty sweet. Despite this warm and fuzzy group hug, there has been an ugly hack hiding in there for years. One of the things we find ourselves wanting to do is hide some kind of regular process inside of an ASP.NET application that runs periodically. The motivation for this has always been that a lot of people simply don’t have a choice, because they’re running the app on shared hosting, or don’t otherwise have access to a box that can run some kind of regular background service. In POP Forums, I “solved” this problem years ago by hiding some static timers in an HttpModule. Truthfully, this works well as long as you don’t run multiple instances of the app, which in the cloud world, is always a possibility. With the arrival of WebJobs in Azure, I’m going to solve this problem. This post isn’t about that. The other little hacky problem that I “solved” was spawning a background thread to queue emails to subscribed users of the forum. This evolved quite a bit over the years, starting with a long running page to mail users in real-time, when I had only a few hundred. By the time it got into the thousands, or tens of thousands, I needed a better way. What I did is launched a new thread that read all of the user data in, then wrote a queued email to the database (as in, the entire body of the email, every time), with the properly formatted opt-out link. It was super inefficient, but it worked. Then I moved my biggest site using it, CoasterBuzz, to an Azure Website, and it stopped working. So let’s start with the first stupid thing I was doing. The new thread was simply created with delegate code inline. As best I can tell, Azure Websites are more aggressive about garbage collection, because that thread didn’t queue even one message. When the calling server response went out of scope, so went the magic background thread. Duh, all I had to do was move the thread to a private static variable in the class. That’s the way I was able to keep stuff running from the HttpModule. (And yes, I know this is still prone to failure, particularly if the app recycles. For as infrequently as it’s used, I have not, however, experienced this.) It was still failing, but this time I wasn’t sure why. It would queue a few dozen messages, then die. Running in Azure, I had to turn on the application logging and FTP in to see what was going on. That led me to a helper method I was using as delegate to build the unsubscribe links. The idea here is that I didn’t want yet another config entry to describe the base URL, appended with the right path that would match the routing table. No, I wanted the app to figure it out for you, so I came up with this little thing: public static string FullUrlHelper(this Controller controller, string actionName, string controllerName, object routeValues = null) { var helper = new UrlHelper(controller.Request.RequestContext); var requestUrl = controller.Request.Url; if (requestUrl == null) return String.Empty; var url = requestUrl.Scheme + "://"; url += requestUrl.Host; url += (requestUrl.Port != 80 ? ":" + requestUrl.Port : ""); url += helper.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues); return url; } And yes, that should have been done with a string builder. This is useful for sending out the email verification messages, too. As clever as I thought I was with this, I was using a delegate in the admin controller to format these unsubscribe links for tens of thousands of users. I passed that delegate into a service class that did the email work: Func<User, string> unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = user.UserID, key = _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user) }); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); Cool, right? Actually, not so much. If you look back at the helper, this delegate then will depend on the controller context to learn the routing and format for the URL. As you might have guessed, those things were turning null after a few dozen formatted links, when the original request to the admin controller went away. That this wasn’t already happening on my dedicated server is surprising, but again, I understand why the Azure environment might be eager to reclaim a thread after servicing the request. It’s already inefficient that I’m building the entire email for every user, but going back to check the routing table for the right link every time isn’t a win either. I put together a little hack to look up one generic URL, and use that as the basis for a string format. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use the curly braces up front, it’s because they get URL formatted: var baseString = this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = "--id--", key = "--key--" }); baseString = baseString.Replace("--id--", "{0}").Replace("--key--", "{1}"); Func unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => String.Format(baseString, user.UserID, _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user)); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); And wouldn’t you know it, the new solution works just fine. It’s still kind of hacky and inefficient, but it will work until this somehow breaks too.

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