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• St. Louis ALT.NET

  - by Brian Schroer

  I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis .NET User Group and a regular attendee of their meetings, but always wished there was a local group that discussed more advanced .NET topics. (That’s not a criticism of the group - I appreciate that they want to server developers with a broad range of skill levels). That’s why I was thrilled when Nicholas Cloud started a St. Louis ALT.NET group in 2010. Here’s the “about us” statement from the group’s web site: The ALT.NET community is a loosely coupled, highly cohesive group of like-minded individuals who believe that the best developers do not align themselves with platforms and languages, but with principles and ideas. In 2007, David Laribee created the term "ALT.NET" to explain this "alternative" view of the Microsoft development universe--a view that challenged the "Microsoft-only" approach to software development. He distilled his thoughts into four key developer characteristics which form the basis of the ALT.NET philosophy: You're the type of developer who uses what works while keeping an eye out for a better way. You reach outside the mainstream to adopt the best of any community: Open Source, Agile, Java, Ruby, etc. You're not content with the status quo. Things can always be better expressed, more elegant and simple, more mutable, higher quality, etc. You know tools are great, but they only take you so far. It's the principles and knowledge that really matter. The best tools are those that embed the knowledge and encourage the principles (e.g. Resharper.) The St. Louis ALT.NET meetup group is a place where .NET developers can learn, share, and critique approaches to software development on the .NET stack. We cater to the highest common denominator, not the lowest, and want to help all St. Louis .NET developers achieve a superior level of software craftsmanship. I don’t see a lot of ALT.NET talk in blogs these days. The movement was harmed early on by the negative attitudes of some of its early leaders, including jerk moves like the Entity Framework “vote of no confidence”, but I do see occasional mentions of local groups like the St. Louis one. I think ALT.NET has been successful at bringing some of its ideas into the .NET world, including heavily influencing ASP.NET MVC and raising the general level of software craftsmanship for developers working on the Microsoft stack. The ideas and ideals live on, they’re just not branded as “this is ALT.NET!” In the past 18 months, St. Louis ALT.NET meetups have discussed topics like: NHibernate F# and other functional languages AOP CoffeeScript “How Ruby Is Making Me a Stronger C# Developer” Using rake for builds CQRS .NET dynamic programming micro web frameworks – Nancy & Jessica Git ALT.NET doesn’t mean (to me, anyway) “alternatives to .NET”, but “alternatives for .NET”. We look at how things are done in Ruby and other languages/platforms, but always with the idea “What can I learn from this to take back to my “day job” with .NET?”. Meetings are held at 7PM on the fourth Wednesday of each month at the offices of Professional Employment Group. PEG is located at 999 Executive Parkway (Suite 100 – lower level) in Creve Coeur (South of Olive off of Mason Road - Here's a map). Food is not supplied (sorry if you’re a big fan of the Papa John’s Crust-Lovers’ Pizza that’s a staple of user group meetings), but attendees are encouraged to come early and bring/share beer, so that’s cool. Thanks to Nick for organizing, and to Professional Employment Group for lending their offices. Please visit the meetup site for more information.

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• Oracle Products Reflect Key Trends Shaping Enterprise 2.0

  - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com

  Following up on his predictions for 2011, we asked Enterprise 2.0 veteran Andy MacMillan to map out the ways Oracle solutions are at the forefront of industry trends--and how Oracle customers can benefit in the coming year. 1. Increase organizational awareness | Oracle WebCenter Suite Oracle WebCenter Suite provides a unique set of capabilities to drive organizational awareness. In particular, the expansive activity graph connects users directly to key enterprise applications, activities, and interests. In this way, applicable and critical business information is automatically and immediately visible--in the context of key tasks--via real-time dashboards and comprehensive reporting. Oracle WebCenter Suite also integrates key E2.0 services, such as blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds, into critical business processes, including back-office systems of records such as ERP and CRM systems. 2. Drive online customer engagement | Oracle Real-Time Decisions With more and more business being conducted on the Web, driving increased online customer engagement becomes a critical key to success. This effort is usually spearheaded by an increasingly important executive role, the Head of Online, who usually reports directly to the CMO. To help manage the Web experience online, Oracle solutions are driving a new kind of intelligent social commerce by combining Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle WebCenter Services, and Oracle Real-Time Decisions with leading e-commerce and product recommendations. Oracle Real-Time Decisions provides multichannel recommendations for content, products, and services--including seamless integration across Web, mobile, and social channels. The result: happier customers, increased customer acquisition and retention, and improved critical success metrics such as shopping cart abandonment. 3. Easily build composite applications | Oracle Application Development Framework Thanks to the shared user experience strategy across Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Fusion Applications and many other Oracle Applications, customers can easily create real, customer-specific composite applications using Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle Application Development Framework. Oracle Application Development Framework components provide modular user interface components that can build rich, social composite applications. In addition, a broad set of components spanning BPM, SOA, ECM, and beyond can be quickly and easily incorporated into composite applications. 4. Integrate records management into a global content platform | Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g provides leading records management capabilities as part of a unified ECM platform for managing records, documents, Web content, digital assets, enterprise imaging, and application imaging. This unique strategy provides comprehensive records management in a consistent, cost-effective way, and enables organizations to consolidate ECM repositories and connect ECM to critical business applications. 5. Achieve ECM at extreme scale | Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Exadata To support the high-performance demands of a unified and rationalized content platform, Oracle has pioneered highly scalable and high-performing ECM infrastructures. Two innovations in particular helped make this happen. The core ECM platform itself moved to an Enterprise Java architecture, so organizations can now use Oracle WebLogic Server for enhanced scalability and manageability. Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g can leverage Oracle Exadata for extreme performance and scale. Likewise, Oracle Exalogic--Oracle's foundation for cloud computing--enables extreme performance for processor-intensive capabilities such as content conversion or dynamic Web page delivery. Learn more about Oracle's Enterprise 2.0 solutions.

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• Implementing features in an Entity System

  - by Bane

  After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 12, 2012Popular ReleasesAX 2012 Custom Operating Units: AXPOM (beta): This is beta version of the tool. There are some known issues that will be fixed in the next upcoming release.????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。EXCEL??、??、????????：DataPie（??MSSQL 2008、ORACLE、ACCESS 2007）: DatePie3.4.2: DatePie3.4.2Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...Home Access Plus+: v8.3: Changes: Fixed: A odd scroll bar showing up for no reason Changed: Added some code to hopefully sort out the details view when there is a small number of files Fixed: Where the details toolbar shows in the wrong place until you scroll Fixed: Where the Help Desk live tile shows all open tiles, instead of user specific tiles (admins still see all) Added: Powerpoint Files Filter Added: Print style for Booking System Added: Silent check for the logon tracker Updated: Logon Tracker I...Silverlight 4 & 5 Persian DatePicker: Silverlight 4 and 5 Persian DatePicker 1.5: - Improved DateTime Parser.???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releaseVidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework: Partitioned Table Framework Release 1.0: SQL Server 2012 ReleaseSharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeNew Projects.NET C# Wrapper for IQFeed API by Sentinel: An API for DTN IQFeed writtein in C#. Supports: - Historical Data Requests, - Lookup Tables - Level 1 - Level 2 - NewsBaiduMap: ????????API?????Bananagrams: An experimental Java project to find the most efficient strategy of playing Bannagrams, the popular game that I take absolutely no credit for inventing.Cloud Wallet: Don't try to remember every credit card, email, forum and account password of yours. Store them with Cloud Wallet in the skydrive and get them needed.Customer Contact System: System for Local Authorities/Government Bodies to manage enquiries from members of the public in their administrative area.daniel's little electronical bear: Hey, this is Daniel's idea that write her girlfriend a vivid little e-pet. So Daniel is just about to carry on this plan and hopefully fulfill it sooner or later. If you wanna give any advice, please don't hesitate to call me at any time,even ideas is OK!danielzhang0212@gmail.comfacebook page vote and like sample: facebook page vote and like sampleFriendly URL: This application is designed to help large organizations assign simple and memorable URL's to otherwise complicated or non-memorable URL's. GameSDK - Simple Game SDK with events: This game SDK use events for letting know each player through a game board when an events occurs. This is a simple SDK, easily adaptable to your project.GIF o Magic Prototype: GIF o Magic PrototypeHFS+ Driver Installer for Windows: Simple utility to install Read-Only HFS+ Driver to read Mac partitions from Windows.invrt: Simplest-that-could-possibly work inversion of control framework. Written in C#Kwd.Summary: Orchard module to provide alternate summary text for content itemsLogJam: LogJam will provide a modern, efficient, and productive framework for trace logging and metrics logging for all projects. LogJam is currently pre-alpha.Mi-DevEnv: Mi-DevEnv is an integrated set of PowerShell scripts to create virtual machines and populate them with software & tools e.g.: SharePoint,CRM,SQL,Office,K2 & VS.Mltools: mini tools for browser game.More Space Invaders: more then another space invadersMP3 Art Embedder: Embed cover art into MP3 filesMultiple GeoCoder: Serverside geocoding wrapper for various geocoding services. Supports a failover in the event you get throttled.My list: mvc3 project to test some frameworksMyFinalProject_WeamBinjumah: It is a website based on web 2.0 which about sea cruises' experiences with people who love amazing sea cruises. The website will offer most of web 2.0 features.netcached - memcached client for .NET: netcached is a lightweight, high performance .NET client for memcached protocol.paipai: paipaiProjeto Zeus: PROJETO REALIZADO COMO TRABALHO ACADÊMICO.Roy's Tools: Roy's ToolsSuperCotka: SuperCotkaSzoftvertechnológia beadandó: Árva Balázs beadandójának projektvezeto oldalat az ELTE szoftvertechnológia tantárgyára.Twi.Fly: Twi.Fly is designed to change the way that you write most of your code.Coding likes flying, more than twice speed.Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: "Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office" makes Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 capable to load, save and edit documents contains Unicode IVS.Uyghur Named Date: Generate Uyghur named date string. ???????? ??? ?????? ????? ????? ?????Windows 8 Camp BH: Projeto contendo conteudo de ajuda para o Windows 8 Camp oferecido pelo Microsoft Inovation Center de Belo Horizonte.???????: ??wpf??????? ?? ??

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• Fastest pathfinding for static node matrix

  - by Sean Martin

  I'm programming a route finding routine in VB.NET for an online game I play, and I'm searching for the fastest route finding algorithm for my map type. The game takes place in space, with thousands of solar systems connected by jump gates. The game devs have provided a DB dump containing a list of every system and the systems it can jump to. The map isn't quite a node tree, since some branches can jump to other branches - more of a matrix. What I need is a fast pathfinding algorithm. I have already implemented an A* routine and a Dijkstra's, both find the best path but are too slow for my purposes - a search that considers about 5000 nodes takes over 20 seconds to compute. A similar program on a website can do the same search in less than a second. This website claims to use D*, which I have looked into. That algorithm seems more appropriate for dynamic maps rather than one that does not change - unless I misunderstand it's premise. So is there something faster I can use for a map that is not your typical tile/polygon base? GBFS? Perhaps a DFS? Or have I likely got some problem with my A* - maybe poorly chosen heuristics or movement cost? Currently my movement cost is the length of the jump (the DB dump has solar system coordinates as well), and the heuristic is a quick euclidean calculation from the node to the goal. In case anyone has some optimizations for my A*, here is the routine that consumes about 60% of my processing time, according to my profiler. The coordinateData table contains a list of every system's coordinates, and neighborNode.distance is the distance of the jump. Private Function findDistance(ByVal startSystem As Integer, ByVal endSystem As Integer) As Integer 'hCount += 1 'If hCount Mod 0 = 0 Then 'Return hCache 'End If 'Initialize variables to be filled Dim x1, x2, y1, y2, z1, z2 As Integer 'LINQ queries for solar system data Dim systemFromData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = startSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z Dim systemToData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = endSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z 'LINQ execute 'Fill variables with solar system data for from and to system For Each solarSystem In systemFromData x1 = (solarSystem.x) y1 = (solarSystem.y) z1 = (solarSystem.z) Next For Each solarSystem In systemToData x2 = (solarSystem.x) y2 = (solarSystem.y) z2 = (solarSystem.z) Next Dim x3 = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) Dim y3 = Math.Abs(y1 - y2) Dim z3 = Math.Abs(z1 - z2) 'Calculate distance and round 'Dim distance = Math.Round(Math.Sqrt(Math.Abs((x1 - x2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((y1 - y2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((z1 - z2) ^ 2))) Dim distance = firstConstant * Math.Min(secondConstant * (x3 + y3 + z3), Math.Max(x3, Math.Max(y3, z3))) 'Dim distance = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) + Math.Abs(z1 - z2) + Math.Abs(y1 - y2) 'hCache = distance Return distance End Function And the main loop, the other 30% 'Begin search While openList.Count() != 0 'Set current system and move node to closed currentNode = lowestF() move(currentNode.id) For Each neighborNode In neighborNodes If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 0) Then If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 1) Then Dim newNode As New nodeData() newNode.id = neighborNode.toSystem newNode.parent = currentNode.id newNode.g = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance newNode.h = findDistance(newNode.id, endSystem) newNode.f = newNode.g + newNode.h newNode.security = neighborNode.security openList.Add(newNode) shortOpenList(OLindex) = newNode.id OLindex += 1 Else Dim proposedG As Integer = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance If proposedG < gValue(neighborNode.toSystem) Then changeParent(neighborNode.toSystem, currentNode.id, proposedG) End If End If End If Next 'Check to see if done If currentNode.id = endSystem Then Exit While End If End While If clarification is needed on my spaghetti code, I'll try to explain.

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• Employee Info Starter Kit: Project Mission

  - by Mohammad Ashraful Alam

  Employee Info Starter Kit is an open source ASP.NET project template that is intended to address different types of real world challenges faced by web application developers when performing common CRUD operations. Using a single database table ‘Employee’, it illustrates how to utilize Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 effectively in that context. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule. where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. User Stories The user end functionalities of this starter kit are pretty simple and straight forward that are focused in to perform CRUD operation on employee records as described below. Creating a new employee record Read existing employee record Update an existing employee record Delete existing employee records Key Technology Areas ASP.NET 4.0 Entity Framework 4.0 T-4 Template Visual Studio 2010 Architectural Objective There is no universal architecture which can be considered as the best for all sorts of applications around the world. Based on requirements, constraints, environment, application architecture can differ from one to another. Trade-off factors are one of the important considerations while deciding a particular architectural solution. Employee Info Starter Kit is highly influenced by the concept ‘Pareto Principle’ or 80-20 rule, where it is targeted to enable a web developer to gain 80% productivity with 20% of effort with respect to learning curve and production. “Productivity” as the architectural objective typically also includes other trade-off factors as well as, such as testability, flexibility, performance etc. Fortunately Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 includes lots of great features that have been implemented cleverly in this project to reduce these trade-off factors in the minimum level. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Not a Framework? Application frameworks are really great for productivity, some of which are really unavoidable in this modern age. However relying too many frameworks may overkill a project, as frameworks are typically designed to serve wide range of different usage and are less customizable or editable. On the other hand having implementation patterns can be useful for developers, as it enables them to adjust application on demand. Employee Info Starter Kit provides hundreds of “connected” snippets and implementation patterns to demonstrate problem solutions in actual production environment. It also includes Visual Studio T-4 templates that generate thousands lines of data access and business logic layer repetitive codes in literally few seconds on the fly, which are fully mock testable due to language support for partial methods and latest support for mock testing in Entity Framework. Why Employee Info Starter Kit is Different than Other Open-source Web Applications? Software development is one of the rapid growing industries around the globe, where the technology is being updated very frequently to adapt greater challenges over time. There are literally thousands of community web sites, blogs and forums that are dedicated to provide support to adapt new technologies. While some are really great to enable learning new technologies quickly, in most cases they are either too “simple and brief” to be used in real world scenarios or too “complex and detailed” which are typically focused to achieve a product goal (such as CMS, e-Commerce etc) from "end user" perspective and have a long duration learning curve with respect to the corresponding technology. Employee Info Starter Kit, as a web project, is basically "developer" oriented which actually considers a hybrid approach as “simple and detailed”, where a simple domain has been considered to intentionally illustrate most of the architectural and implementation challenges faced by web application developers so that anyone can dive into deep into the corresponding new technology or concept quickly. Roadmap Since its first release by 2008 in MSDN Code Gallery, Employee Info Starter Kit gained a huge popularity in ASP.NET community and had 1, 50,000+ downloads afterwards. Being encouraged with this great response, we have a strong commitment for the community to provide support for it with respect to latest technologies continuously. Currently hosted in Codeplex, this community driven project is planned to have a wide range of individual editions, each of which will be focused on a selected application architecture, framework or platform, such as ASP.NET Webform, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery Ajax (RIA), Silverlight (RIA), Azure Service Platform (Cloud), Visual Studio Automated Test etc. See here for full list of current and future editions.

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• MacGyver Moments

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Denny Cherry tagged me to write about my best MacGyver Moment.  Usually I ignore blogosphere fluff and just use this space to write what I think is important.  However, #MVP10 just ended and I have a stronger sense of community.  Besides, where else would I mention my second best Macgyver moment was making a BIOS jumper out of a soda can.  Aluminum is conductive and I didn't have any real jumpers lying around. My best moment is probably my entire home computer network.  Every system but one is hand-built, usually cobbled together out of spare parts and 'adapted' from its original purpose. My Primary Domain Controller is a Dell 2300.   The Service Tag indicates it was shipped to the original owner in 1999.  Box has a PERC/1 RAID controller.  I acquired this from a previous employer for $50.  It runs Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.  Does DNS, DHCP, and RADIUS services as a bonus.  RADIUS authentication is used for VPN and Wireless access.  It is nice to sign in once and be done with it. The Secondary Domain Controller is an old desktop.  Dual P-III 933 with some extra drives. My VPN box is a P-II 250 with 384MB of RAM and a 21 GB hard drive.  I did a P-to-V to my Hyper-V box a year or so ago and retired the hardware again.  Dynamic DNS lets me connect no matter how often Comcast shuffles my IP. The Hyper-V box is a desktop system with 8GB RAM and an AMD Athlon 5000+ processor.  Cost me less than $500 to put together nearly two years ago.  I reasoned that if Vista and Windows 2008 were the same code then Vista 64-bit certified meant the drivers for Vista would load into Windows 2008.  Turns out I was right. Later I added three 1TB drives but wasn't too happy with how that turned out.  I recovered two of the drives yesterday and am building an iSCSI storage unit. (Much thanks to Starwind.  Great product).  I am using an old AMD 1.1GhZ box with 1.5 GB RAM (cobbled together from three old PCs) as my storave server.  The Hyper-V box is slated for an OS rebuild to 2008 R2 once I get the storage system worked out.  maybe in a week or two. A couple of DLink Gigabit switches ties everything together. Add in the Vonage box, the three PCs, the Wireless-N Access Point, the two notebooks and the XBox and you have gone from MacGyver to darn near Rube Goldberg. The only thing I really spend money on is power supplies and fans.  I buy top-of-the-line for both. I even pull and crimp my own cables. Oh, and if my kids hose up a PC, I have all of their data on a server elsewhere.  Every PC and laptop is pretty much interchangable for email and basic workstation tasks.  That helps a lot too. Of course I will tag SQLVariant.

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• IPsec tunnel to Android device not created even though there is an IKE SA

  - by Quentin Swain

  I'm trying to configure a VPN tunnel between an Android device running 4.1 and a Fedora 17 Linux box running strongSwan 5.0. The device reports that it is connected and strongSwan statusall returns that there is an IKE SA, but doesn't display a tunnel. I used the instructions for iOS in the wiki to generate certificates and configure strongSwan. Since Android uses a modified version of racoon this should work and since the connection is partly established I think I am on the right track. I don't see any errors about not being able to create the tunnel. This is the configuration for the strongSwan connection conn android2 keyexchange=ikev1 authby=xauthrsasig xauth=server left=96.244.142.28 leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 leftfirewall=yes leftcert=serverCert.pem right=%any rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 rightcert=clientCert.pem ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 auto=add This is the output of strongswan statusall Status of IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64): uptime: 20 minutes, since Oct 31 10:27:31 2012 malloc: sbrk 270336, mmap 0, used 198144, free 72192 worker threads: 8 of 16 idle, 7/1/0/0 working, job queue: 0/0/0/0, scheduled: 7 loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic Virtual IP pools (size/online/offline): android-hybrid: 1/0/0 android2: 1/1/0 Listening IP addresses: 96.244.142.28 Connections: android-hybrid: %any...%any IKEv1 android-hybrid: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android-hybrid: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android-hybrid: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android-hybrid: child: dynamic === dynamic TUNNEL android2: 96.244.142.28...%any IKEv1 android2: local: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" android2: remote: [C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] uses public key authentication android2: cert: "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" android2: remote: [%any] uses XAuth authentication: any android2: child: 0.0.0.0/0 === 10.0.0.0/24 TUNNEL Security Associations (1 up, 0 connecting): android2[3]: ESTABLISHED 10 seconds ago, 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] android2[3]: Remote XAuth identity: android android2[3]: IKEv1 SPIs: 4151e371ad46b20d_i 59a56390d74792d2_r*, public key reauthentication in 56 minutes android2[3]: IKE proposal: AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 The output of ip -s xfrm policy src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3851 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3844 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3835 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src ::/0 dst ::/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3828 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use - src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3819 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:39 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3812 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:22 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket in action allow index 3803 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 socket out action allow index 3796 priority 0 ptype main share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft 0(bytes), hard 0(bytes) limit: soft 0(packets), hard 0(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:29:08 use 2012-10-31 13:29:20 So a xfrm policy isn't being created for the connection, even though there is an SA between device and strongswan. Executing ip -s xfrm policy on the android device results in the following output: src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 10.0.0.2/32 uid 0 dir in action allow index 40 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 96.244.142.28 dst 25.239.33.30 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 10.0.0.2/32 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir out action allow index 33 priority 2147483648 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:08 use - tmpl src 25.239.33.30 dst 96.244.142.28 proto esp spi 0x00000000(0) reqid 0(0x00000000) mode tunnel level required share any enc-mask 00000000 auth-mask 00000000 comp-mask 00000000 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 28 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 19 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:08 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 4 action allow index 12 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:06 src 0.0.0.0/0 dst 0.0.0.0/0 uid 0 dir 3 action allow index 3 priority 0 share any flag (0x00000000) lifetime config: limit: soft (INF)(bytes), hard (INF)(bytes) limit: soft (INF)(packets), hard (INF)(packets) expire add: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) expire use: soft 0(sec), hard 0(sec) lifetime current: 0(bytes), 0(packets) add 2012-10-31 13:42:04 use 2012-10-31 13:42:07 Logs from charon: 00[DMN] Starting IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.0.0, Linux 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64, x86_64) 00[KNL] listening on interfaces: 00[KNL] em1 00[KNL] 96.244.142.28 00[KNL] fe80::224:e8ff:fed2:18b2 00[CFG] loading ca certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts' 00[CFG] loaded ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/cacerts/caCert.pem' 00[CFG] loading aa certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/aacerts' 00[CFG] loading ocsp signer certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/ocspcerts' 00[CFG] loading attribute certificates from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/acerts' 00[CFG] loading crls from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/crls' 00[CFG] loading secrets from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.secrets' 00[CFG] loaded RSA private key from '/etc/strongswan/ipsec.d/private/clientKey.pem' 00[CFG] loaded IKE secret for %any 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[CFG] loaded EAP secret for android 00[DMN] loaded plugins: charon aes des sha1 sha2 md5 random nonce x509 revocation constraints pubkey pkcs1 pkcs8 pgp dnskey pem openssl fips-prf gmp xcbc cmac hmac attr kernel-netlink resolve socket-default stroke updown xauth-generic 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[LIB] created thread 16 [15338] 16[JOB] started worker thread 16 11[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] conn android-hybrid 11[CFG] left=%any 11[CFG] leftsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 11[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 11[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 11[CFG] leftid=(null) 11[CFG] leftid2=(null) 11[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 11[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 11[CFG] leftca=(null) 11[CFG] leftca2=(null) 11[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 11[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 11[CFG] right=%any 11[CFG] rightsubnet=(null) 11[CFG] rightsourceip=96.244.142.3 11[CFG] rightauth=xauth 11[CFG] rightauth2=(null) 11[CFG] rightid=%any 11[CFG] rightid2=(null) 11[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert=(null) 11[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 11[CFG] rightca=(null) 11[CFG] rightca2=(null) 11[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 11[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 11[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 11[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 11[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 11[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 11[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 11[CFG] dpddelay=30 11[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 11[CFG] dpdaction=0 11[CFG] closeaction=0 11[CFG] mediation=no 11[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 11[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 11[CFG] keyexchange=ikev1 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[KNL] getting interface name for %any 11[KNL] %any is not a local address 11[CFG] left nor right host is our side, assuming left=local 11[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 11[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 11[CFG] added configuration 'android-hybrid' 11[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android-hybrid': 96.244.142.3/32 13[CFG] received stroke: add connection 'android2' 13[CFG] conn android2 13[CFG] left=96.244.142.28 13[CFG] leftsubnet=0.0.0.0/0 13[CFG] leftsourceip=(null) 13[CFG] leftauth=pubkey 13[CFG] leftauth2=(null) 13[CFG] leftid=(null) 13[CFG] leftid2=(null) 13[CFG] leftrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] leftcert=serverCert.pem 13[CFG] leftcert2=(null) 13[CFG] leftca=(null) 13[CFG] leftca2=(null) 13[CFG] leftgroups=(null) 13[CFG] leftupdown=ipsec _updown iptables 13[CFG] right=%any 13[CFG] rightsubnet=10.0.0.0/24 13[CFG] rightsourceip=10.0.0.2 13[CFG] rightauth=pubkey 13[CFG] rightauth2=xauth 13[CFG] rightid=(null) 13[CFG] rightid2=(null) 13[CFG] rightrsakey=(null) 13[CFG] rightcert=clientCert.pem 13[CFG] rightcert2=(null) 13[CFG] rightca=(null) 13[CFG] rightca2=(null) 13[CFG] rightgroups=(null) 13[CFG] rightupdown=(null) 13[CFG] eap_identity=(null) 13[CFG] aaa_identity=(null) 13[CFG] xauth_identity=(null) 13[CFG] ike=aes256-sha1-modp1024 13[CFG] esp=aes128-sha1-modp2048,3des-sha1-modp1536 13[CFG] dpddelay=30 13[CFG] dpdtimeout=150 13[CFG] dpdaction=0 13[CFG] closeaction=0 13[CFG] mediation=no 13[CFG] mediated_by=(null) 13[CFG] me_peerid=(null) 13[CFG] keyexchange=ikev0 13[KNL] getting interface name for %any 13[KNL] %any is not a local address 13[KNL] getting interface name for 96.244.142.28 13[KNL] 96.244.142.28 is on interface em1 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" from 'serverCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '96.244.142.28' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' 13[CFG] loaded certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" from 'clientCert.pem' 13[CFG] id '%any' not confirmed by certificate, defaulting to 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' 13[CFG] added configuration 'android2' 13[CFG] adding virtual IP address pool 'android2': 10.0.0.2/32 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 15[CFG] looking for an ike config for 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241 15[CFG] candidate: %any...%any, prio 2 15[CFG] candidate: 96.244.142.28...%any, prio 5 15[CFG] found matching ike config: 96.244.142.28...%any with prio 5 01[JOB] next event in 29s 999ms, waiting 15[IKE] received NAT-T (RFC 3947) vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02 vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02\n vendor ID 15[IKE] received draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-00 vendor ID 15[IKE] received XAuth vendor ID 15[IKE] received Cisco Unity vendor ID 15[IKE] received DPD vendor ID 15[IKE] 208.54.35.241 is initiating a Main Mode IKE_SA 15[IKE] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] state change: CREATED => CONNECTING 15[CFG] selecting proposal: 15[CFG] proposal matches 15[CFG] received proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:3DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:DES_CBC/HMAC_MD5_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/MODP_1024 15[CFG] configured proposals: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024, IKE:AES_CBC_128/AES_CBC_192/AES_CBC_256/3DES_CBC/CAMELLIA_CBC_128/CAMELLIA_CBC_192/CAMELLIA_CBC_256/HMAC_MD5_96/HMAC_SHA1_96/HMAC_SHA2_256_128/HMAC_SHA2_384_192/HMAC_SHA2_512_256/AES_XCBC_96/AES_CMAC_96/PRF_HMAC_MD5/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_256/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_384/PRF_HMAC_SHA2_512/PRF_AES128_XCBC/PRF_AES128_CMAC/MODP_2048/MODP_2048_224/MODP_2048_256/MODP_1536/MODP_4096/MODP_8192/MODP_1024/MODP_1024_160 15[CFG] selected proposal: IKE:AES_CBC_256/HMAC_SHA1_96/PRF_HMAC_SHA1/MODP_1024 15[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 07[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 07[MGR] IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] successfully checked out 07[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[32235] to 96.244.142.28[500] 07[LIB] size of DH secret exponent: 1023 bits 07[IKE] remote host is behind NAT 07[IKE] sending cert request for "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 07[ENC] generating NAT_D_V1 payload finished 07[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 07[MGR] checkin IKE_SA (unnamed)[1] 07[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[500] to 208.54.35.241[32235] 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 10[IKE] ignoring certificate request without data 10[IKE] received end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] looking for XAuthInitRSA peer configs matching 96.244.142.28...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 10[CFG] candidate "android-hybrid", match: 1/1/2/2 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] candidate "android2", match: 1/20/5/1 (me/other/ike/version) 10[CFG] selected peer config "android2" 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] using trusted ca certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" 10[CFG] checking certificate status of "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[CFG] ocsp check skipped, no ocsp found 10[CFG] certificate status is not available 10[CFG] certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=strongSwan CA" key: 2048 bit RSA 10[CFG] reached self-signed root ca with a path length of 0 10[CFG] using trusted certificate "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client" 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client' with RSA successful 10[ENC] added payload of type ID_V1 to message 10[ENC] added payload of type SIGNATURE_V1 to message 10[IKE] authentication of 'C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org' (myself) successful 10[IKE] queueing XAUTH task 10[IKE] sending end entity cert "C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org" 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 10[IKE] activating new tasks 10[IKE] activating XAUTH task 10[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 999ms, waiting 10[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 10[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 12[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 12[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 12[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 12[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 12[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 16[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 16[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 16[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 16[IKE] XAuth authentication of 'android' successful 16[IKE] reinitiating already active tasks 16[IKE] XAUTH task 16[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 16[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 01[JOB] next event in 3s 907ms, waiting 16[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] .8rS 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] established between 96.244.142.28[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=vpn.strongswan.org]...208.54.35.241[C=CH, O=strongSwan, CN=client] 09[IKE] IKE_SA android2[1] state change: CONNECTING => ESTABLISHED 09[IKE] scheduling reauthentication in 3409s 09[IKE] maximum IKE_SA lifetime 3589s 09[IKE] activating new tasks 09[IKE] nothing to initiate 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 09[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 09[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 09[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 09[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] next event in 3s 854ms, waiting 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 08[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[MGR] checkout IKE_SA by message 14[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 14[NET] received packet: from 208.54.35.241[35595] to 96.244.142.28[4500] 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_ADDRESS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NETMASK attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_DNS attribute 14[IKE] processing INTERNAL_IP4_NBNS attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_BANNER attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_DEF_DOMAIN attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLITDNS_NAME attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_SPLIT_INCLUDE attribute 14[IKE] processing UNITY_LOCAL_LAN attribute 14[IKE] processing APPLICATION_VERSION attribute 14[IKE] peer requested virtual IP %any 14[CFG] assigning new lease to 'android' 14[IKE] assigning virtual IP 10.0.0.2 to peer 'android' 14[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 14[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 14[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 04[NET] sending packet: from 96.244.142.28[4500] to 208.54.35.241[35595] 08[NET] waiting for data on sockets 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 91ms, waiting 13[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 13[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 13[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 13[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful. 01[JOB] got event, queuing job for execution 01[JOB] next event in 24s 136ms, waiting 15[MGR] checkout IKE_SA 15[MGR] IKE_SA android2[1] successfully checked out 15[MGR] checkin IKE_SA android2[1] 15[MGR] check-in of IKE_SA successful.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part IV

  - by Tara Kizer

  This is the final blog for my PASS Summit 2011 series.  Well okay, a mini-series, I guess. On the last day of the conference, I attended Keith Elmore’ and Boris Baryshnikov’s (both from Microsoft) “Introducing the Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Performance Dashboard Reports, Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog|twitter) “Rewrite your T-SQL for Great Good!”, and Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs”. Keith and Boris talked about the lifecycle of a session, figuring out the running time and the waiting time.  They pointed out the transient nature of the reports.  You could be drilling into it to uncover a problem, but the session may have ended by the time you’ve drilled all of the way down.  Also, the reports are for troubleshooting live problems and not historical ones.  You can use Management Data Warehouse for historical troubleshooting.  The reports provide similar benefits to the Activity Monitor, however Activity Monitor doesn’t provide context sensitive drill through. One thing I learned in Keith’s and Boris’ session was that the buffer cache hit ratio should really never be below 87% due to the read-ahead mechanism in SQL Server.  When a page is read, it will read the entire extent.  So for every page read, you get 7 more read.  If you need any of those 7 extra pages, well they are already in cache.  I had a lot of fun in Jeremiah’s session about refactoring code plus I learned a lot.  His slides were visually presented in a fun way, which just made for a more upbeat presentation.  Jeremiah says that before you start refactoring, you should look at your system.  Investigate missing or too many indexes, out-of-date statistics, and other areas that could be leading to your code running slow.  He talked about code standards.  He suggested using common abbreviations for aliases instead of one-letter aliases.  I’m a big offender of one-letter aliases, but he makes a good point.  He said that join order does not matter to the optimizer, but it does matter to those who have to read your code.  Now let’s get into refactoring! Eliminate useless things – useless/unneeded joins and columns.  If you don’t need it, get rid of it! Instead of using DISTINCT/JOIN, replace with EXISTS Simplify your conditions; use UNION or better yet UNION ALL instead of OR to avoid a scan and use indexes for each union query Branching logic – instead of IF this, IF that, and on and on…use dynamic SQL (sp_executesql, please!) or use a parameterized query in the application Correlated subqueries – YUCK! Replace with a join Eliminate repeated patterns Last, but certainly not least, was Kimberly’s session.  Kimberly is my favorite speaker.  I attended her two-day pre-conference seminar at PASS Summit 2005 as well as a SQL Immersion Event last December.  Did I mention she’s my favorite speaker?  Okay, enough of that. Kimberly’s session was packed with demos.  I had seen some of it in the SQL Immersion Event, but it was very nice to get a refresher on these, especially since I’ve got a VLDB with some growing pains.  One key takeaway from her session is the idea to use a log shipping solution with a load delay, such as 6, 8, or 24 hours behind the primary.  In the case of say an accidentally dropped table in a VLDB, we could retrieve it from the secondary database rather than waiting an eternity for a restore to complete.  Kimberly let us know that in SQL Server 2012 (it finally has a name!), online rebuilds are supported even if there are LOB columns in your table.  This will simplify custom code that intelligently figures out if an online rebuild is possible. There was actually one last time slot for sessions that day, but I had an airplane to catch and my kids to see!

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• Creating shapes on the fly

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Most Orchard shapes get created from part drivers, but they are a lot more versatile than that. They can actually be created from pretty much anywhere, including from templates. One example can be found in the Layout.cshtml file of the ThemeMachine theme: WorkContext.Layout.Footer .Add(New.BadgeOfHonor(), "5"); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What this is really doing is create a new shape called BadgeOfHonor and injecting it into the Footer global zone (that has not yet been defined, which in itself is quite awesome) with an ordering rank of "5". We can actually come up with something simpler, if we want to render the shape inline instead of sending it into a zone: @Display(New.BadgeOfHonor()) Now let's try something a little more elaborate and create a new shape for displaying a date and time: @Display(New.DateTime(date: DateTime.Now, format: "d/M/yyyy")) For the moment, this throws a "Shape type DateTime not found" exception because the system has no clue how to render a shape called "DateTime" yet. The BadgeOfHonor shape above was rendering something because there is a template for it in the theme: Themes/ThethemeMachine/Views/BadgeOfHonor.cshtml. We need to provide a template for our new shape to get rendered. Let's add a DateTime.cshtml file into our theme's Views folder in order to make the exception go away: Hi, I'm a date time shape. Now we're just missing one thing. Instead of displaying some static text, which is not very interesting, we can display the actual time that got passed into the shape's dynamic constructor. Those parameters will get added to the template's Model, so they are easy to retrieve: @(((DateTime)Model.date).ToString(Model.format)) Now that may remind you a little of WebForm's user controls. That's a fair comparison, except that these shapes are much more flexible (you can add properties on the fly as necessary), and that the actual rendering is decoupled from the "control". For example, any theme can override the template for a shape, you can use alternates, wrappers, etc. Most importantly, there is no lifecycle and protocol abstraction like there was in WebForms. I think this is a real improvement over previous attempts at similar things.

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• Python Coding standards vs. productivity

  - by Shroatmeister

  I work for a large humanitarian organisation, on a project building software that could help save lives in emergencies by speeding up the distribution of food. Many NGOs desperately need our software and we are weeks behind schedule. One thing that worries me in this project is what I think is an excessive focus on coding standards. We write in python/django and use a version of PEP0008, with various modifications e.g. line lengths can go up to 160 chars and all lines should go that long if possible, no blank lines between imports, line wrapping rules that apply only to certain kinds of classes, lots of templates that we must use, even if they aren't the best way to solve a problem etc. etc. One core dev spent a week rewriting a major part of the system to meet the then new coding standards, throwing away several suites of tests in the process, as the rewrite meant they were 'invalid'. We spent two weeks rewriting all the functionality that was lost, and fixing bugs. He is the lead dev and his word carries weight, so he has convinced the project manager that these standards are necessary. The junior devs do as they are told. I sense that the project manager has a strong feeling of cognitive dissonance about all this but nevertheless agrees with it vehemently as he feels unsure what else to do. Today I got in serious trouble because I had forgotten to put some spaces after commas in a keyword argument. I was literally shouted at by two other devs and the project manager during a Skype call. Personally I think coding standards are important but also think that we are wasting a lot of time obsessing with them, and when I verbalized this it provoked rage. I'm seen as a troublemaker in the team, a team that is looking for scapegoats for its failings. Since the introduction of the coding standards, the team's productivity has measurably plummeted, however this only reinforces the obsession, i.e. the lead dev simply blames our non-adherence to standards for the lack of progress. He believes that we can't read each other's code if we don't adhere to the conventions. This is starting to turn sticky. Now I am trying to modify various scripts, autopep8, pep8ify and PythonTidy to try to match the conventions. We also run pep8 against source code but there are so many implicit amendments to our standard that it's hard to track them all. The lead dev simple picks faults that the pep8 script doesn't pick up and shouts at us in the next stand-up meeting. Every week there are new additions to the coding standards that force us to rewrite existing, working, tested code. Thank heavens we still have tests, (I reverted some commits and fixed a bunch of the ones he removed). All the while there is increasing pressure to meet the deadline. I believe a fundamental issue is that the lead dev and another core dev refuse to trust other developers to do their job. But how to deal with that? We can't do our job because we are too busy rewriting everything. I've never encountered this dynamic in a software engineering team. Am I wrong to question their adherence to coding standards? Has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how have they dealt with it successfully? (I'm not looking for a discussion just actual solutions people have found)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0.1: Moved model loading into SceneNode.Load static method Updated AscendViewer to use latest Ascend buildUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger 1.0.0.0: First release of Ultimate Music TaggerBlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.2: 2013.06.28 Ver5.9.2 (1) ??????????(????SMTP?????)?????????? (2) HTTPS???????????SQL Server Data Compare: DB Compare 0.1 Beta 1: Some bugs fixed. Do not forget to add reviews. :)Hogeschool Rotterdam Windows Phone Maps project: HRO Maps Sourcecode VS2010: Initiele versieUniversal Visualnovel Engine Tools: ns2uve: NS2UVE ONS???????? ????：.Net Framework 4.0 ????：UVE for WP8 1.2?? ??：update 2????????！ ????1.?ONS???????????，???????nscript.dat?Icon.png??，???arc.nsa?default.ttf??。 2.??????，????bin??????exe?????dll???????????????。 3.??ns2uve.exe，??????，?????，????????? 4.?????????????.png??? ??：??????????nscript.dat??Icon.png?，??????。?????????????。 ????????????src???? CopyRight W-Otaku DEVAdjusting SharePoint Site Quota PowerShell: Adjusting.SharePoint.Site.Quota: Version 1.0 Features Display Database Size Display Quota Warning Threshold Display Quota Maximum Threshold Display Site Space Usage Change Quota Warning Threshold Change Quota Maximum ThresholdOutlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...New ProjectsA sample web app for AppHarbor: Just a little project to test the amazing apphorbor offering!Android_Traffic_Tracker: Android traffic trackingEASTester: EASTester This application shows how encoding, decoding and submission of Exchange Server ActiveSync (EAS) calls might be done. Everynet_TFS_SVN: this is a everynet projectFluentRoute: Make the task of configure ASP.NET MVC Routes much more easier! This lib gives you the possibility of using Fluent Configurafion,style.Google Music for Jamcast: This project adds Google Music browse and playback capabilities to Jamcast, a DLNA media server for Windows.GussanoExtension: My summaryHL7 SDK - Open Source CDA R2 Implemenation for .NET and COM: A set of open source libraries for creating, parsing, storing and converting HL7 Clinical Documents in .NET and COM environment.Hogeschool Rotterdam Windows Phone Maps project: Dit is een project gemaakt voor het vak INFPRJ07DT voor de Hogeschool Rotterdam. Hue For Both (Build 2013): A simple MVVM project for controlling Philips Hue lights on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.Key2Screen: This little helper will show all keystrokes on screen. This will be needed during a Kata to show the audience the uses keyboard shortcuts or to record them.MercerGOLD: A tool for managing information on worldwide employee benefits, compensation and human resource programs.Microsoft CRM 2011 True Unique Autonumber Creator: The Microsoft CRM 2011 True Unique Autonumber Creator provides functionality for generating unique numbers for any entity. Work for On-Premises and Online/CloudNewsAlerts: this is news ALERT PROJECTNTmdb: A wrapper for the TMDb API written in C# .Net 4.5.PowerShellCron: Windows Service to Schedule and Run PowerShell Scripts with Full Logging to Database of script output (all streams, including Write-Host).QlikView Extension - WebPageViewer2: QlikView Extension to display a web page in QlikView.Restafari - The REST Client Base: A REST Client base for your .Net projects. It is compatible with: - .Net 4.5 - .Net 4.0 - Windows Phone 8 - Windows Store applicationsRevolution Of SnowWhite: PC??????SharePoint Silverlight CSV Importer: Convert .csv data into SharePoint list items. A slick Silverlight control to map and import a .csv files to a sharepoint list. Includes transforms and keys.Silverlight AWS S3 Uploader: Silverlight 5 app to upload files to AWS S3SIM Card Manager: A Windows tool to read SIM card information and contentSoCafeShop: SoCafeShopTeam Foundation Server 2012 Sample Work Items for MSF Agile, CMMI, & SCRUM: This project provides sample work items that can be used in your MSF Agile, MSF CMMI, or SCRUM 2.0 Process Templaces in Team Foundation Server 2012.TidyVaca - an SF inspired restyle of the Tidy responsive Skin by Adammer: A San Francisco inspired restyling of Adammer's Tidy responsive skin.Tiny Forms Controls: The goal of this project is to create a library of Windows Forms and Web Forms controls and components.TMYS: Deneme projesi önemli bir sey degil

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better

  - by kellsey.ruppel

  For almost 30 years, Oracle OpenWorld has been the world's premier learning event for Oracle customers, developers, and partners. With more than 2,000 sessions providing best practices; demos; tips and tricks; and product insight from Oracle, customers, partners, and industry experts, Oracle OpenWorld provides more educational and networking opportunities than any other event in the world. 2011 Facts Attendees from 117 Countries Used Filtered Tap Water to Eliminate 22 Tons of Plastic Bottles Diverted Enough Trash to Fill 37 Dump Trucks 45,000+ Total Registered Attendees Oracle OpenWorld 2012: The Best Just Gets Better What's New? What's Different?  This year Oracle OpenWorld will include the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle), the Customer Experience Summit @ OpenWorld, JavaOne, MySQL Connect, and the expanded Oracle PartnerNetwork Exchange @ OpenWorld. More than 50,000 customers and partners will attend OpenWorld to see Oracle's newest hardware and software products at work, and learn more about our server and storage, database, middleware, industry, and applications solutions.  New This Year: The Executive Edge @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 1 - 2) New at Oracle OpenWorld this year, the Executive Edge @ OpenWorld (replacing Leaders Circle) will bring together customer, partner and Oracle executives for two days of keynote presentations, summits targeted to customer industries and organizational roles, roundtable discussions, and great new networking opportunities. The Customer Experience Revolution Is Here!Customer Experience Summit @ Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 3 - 5) This dynamic new program offers more than 60 keynotes, roundtables and networking sessions exploring trends, innovations and best practices to help companies succeed with a customer experience-driven business strategy.  All Things Java -- JavaOne (Sep 30 - Oct 4) JavaOne is the world's most important event for the Java developer community. Technical sessions cover topics that span the breadth of the Java universe, with keynotes from the foremost Java visionaries and expert-led hands-on learning opportunities.  Are you innovating with Oracle Fusion Middleware?  If you are, then you need to know that the Call for Nominations for the 2012 Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards is open now through July 17, 2012. Jointly sponsored by Oracle, AUSOUG, IOUG, OAUG, ODTUG, QUEST, and UKOUG, the Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor organizations creatively using Oracle Fusion Middleware to deliver unique value to their enterprise.  Winning customers and partners will be hosted at Oracle OpenWorld 2012, where they can connect with Oracle executives, network with peers, and be featured in an upcoming edition of Oracle Magazine. Be sure to submit your WebCenter use case today! Oracle Music Festival his year, the first-ever Oracle Music Festival will debut, running from September 30 to October 4. In the tradition of great live music events like Coachella and SXSW, the streets of San Francisco—from 7:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. for five nights-into-days—will vibrate with the music of some of today’s hottest name acts, emerging and local bands, and scratching DJs. Outdoor venues and clubs near Moscone Center and the Zone (including 111 Minna, DNA, Mezzanine, Roe, Ruby Skye, Slim’s, the Taylor Street Café, Temple, Union Square, and Yerba Buena Gardens) will showcase acts that range from reggae to rock, punk to ska, R&B to country, indie to honky-tonk. After a full day of sessions and networking, you'll be primed for some late-night relaxation and rocking out at one or more of these sets.  Please note that with awesome acts, thousands of music devotees, and a limited number of venues each night, access to Festival events is on a first-come, first-served basis. Join us at the Oracle Music Festival--it's going to be epic! Save $500 on Registration with Early Bird Pricing Early Bird pricing ends July 13! Save up to $500 on registration fees by registering by Friday. Will you be attending Oracle OpenWorld 2012? We hope to see you there! Be sure to follow @oraclewebcenter on Twitter for more information and use hashtags #webcenter and #oow!

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• Archbeat Link-O-Rama Top 10 Facebook Faves for October 20-26, 2013

  - by OTN ArchBeat

  Here's this week's list of the Top 10 items shared on the OTN ArchBeat Facebook Page from October 27 - November 2, 2013. Visualizing and Process (Twitter) Events in Real Time with Oracle Coherence | Noah Arliss This OTN Virtual Developer Day session explores in detail how to create a dynamic HTML5 Web application that interacts with Oracle Coherence as it’s processing events in real time, using the Avatar project and Oracle Coherence’s Live Events feature. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! HTML5 Application Development with Oracle WebLogic Server | Doug Clarke This free OTN Virtual Developer Day session covers the support for WebSockets, RESTful data services, and JSON infrastructure available in Oracle WebLogic Server. Part of OTN Virtual Developer Day: Harnessing the Power of Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Coherence, November 5, 2013. 9am to 1pm PT / 12pm to 4pm ET / 1pm to 5pm BRT. Register now! Video: ADF BC and REST services | Frederic Desbiens Spend a few minutes with Oracle ADF principal product manager Frederic Desbiens and learn how to publish ADF Business Components as RESTful web services. One Client Two Clusters | David Felcey "Sometimes its desirable to have a client connect to multiple clusters, either because the data is dispersed or for instance the clusters are in different locations for high availability," says David Felcey. David shows you how in this post, which includes a simple example. Exceptions Handling and Notifications in ODI | Christophe Dupupet Oracle Fusion Middleware A-Team director Christophe Dupupet reviews the techniques that are available in Oracle Data Integrator to guarantee that the appropriate individuals are notified in the event that ODI processes are impacted by network outages or other mishaps. Securing WebSocket applications on Glassfish | Pavel Bucek WebSocket is a key capability standardized into Java EE 7. Many developers wonder how WebSockets can be secured. One very nice characteristic for WebSocket is that it in fact completely piggybacks on HTTP. In this post Pavel Bucek demonstrates how to secure WebSocket endpoints in GlassFish using TLS/SSL. Oracle Coherence, Split-Brain and Recovery Protocols In Detail | Ricardo Ferreira Ricardo Ferreira's article "provides a high level conceptual overview of Split-Brain scenarios in distributed systems," focusing on a "specific example of cluster communication failure and recovery in Oracle Coherence." Non-programmatic Authentication Using Login Form in JSF (For WebCenter & ADF) | JayJay Zheng Oracle ACE JayJay Zheng shares an approach that "avoids the programmatic authentication and works great for having a custom login page developed in WebCenter Portal integrated with OAM authentication." The latest article in the Industrial SOA series looks at mobile computing and how companies are developing SOA to go. http://pub.vitrue.com/PUxT Tech Article: SOA in Real Life: Mobile Solutions The ACE Director Thing | Dr. Frank Munz Frank Munz finally gets around to blogging about achieving Oracle ACE Director status and shares some interesting insight into what will change—and what won't—thanks to that new status. A good, short read for those interested in learning more about the Oracle ACE program. Thought for the Day "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." — Will Rogers, American humorist (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) Source: brainyquote.com

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• Inspiring a co-worker to adopt better coding practices?

  - by Aaronaught

  In the Handling my antiquated coworker question, various people discussed strategies for dealing with coworkers who are unwilling to integrate their workflow with the team's. I'd like, if possible, to learn some strategies for "teaching" a coworker who is merely ignorant of modern techniques and tools, and possibly a little apathetic. I've started working with a programmer who until recently has been working in relative isolation, in a different part of the company. He has extensive domain knowledge and most importantly he has demonstrated good problem-solving skills, something which many candidates seem to lack. However, the actual (C#) code I've seen is a throwback to the VB6 days. Procedural structure, Hungarian notation, global variables (abuse of static), no interfaces, no tests, non-use of Generics, throwing System.Exception... you get the idea. This programmer is a fair bit older than I am and, by first impressions at least, doesn't actively seek positive change. I'm not going to say resistant to change, because I think that is largely an issue of how the topic gets broached, and I want to be prepared. Programmers tend to be stubborn people, and going in with guns blazing and instituting rip-it-to-shreds code reviews and strictly-enforced policies is very likely not going to produce the end result that I want. If this were a new hire, a junior programmer, I wouldn't think twice about taking a "mentor" stance, but I'm extremely wary of treating an experienced employee as a clueless newbie (which he's not - he just hasn't kept pace with certain advancements in the field). How might I go about raising this developer's code quality standard the Dale Carnegie way, through gentle persuasion and non-material incentives? What would be the best strategy for effecting subtle, gradual changes, without creating an adversarial situation? Have other people - especially lead developers - been in this type of situation before? Which strategies were successful at stimulating interest and creating a positive group dynamic? Which strategies weren't successful and would be better to avoid? Clarifications: I really feel that several people are answering based on personal feelings without actually reading all of the details of the question. Please note the following, which should have been implied but I am now making explicit: This coworker is only my "senior" by virtue of age. I never said that his title, sphere of influence, or years at the organization exceed mine, and in fact, none of those things are true. He's a LOB programmer who's been absorbed into the main development shop. That's it. I am not a new hire, junior programmer, or other naïve idiot with grand plans to transform the company overnight. I am basically in charge of the software process, but as many who've worked as "leads" will know, responsibilities don't always correlate precisely with the org chart. I'm not asking people how to get my way, come hell or high water. I could do that if I wanted to, with the net result being that this person would become resentful and/or quit. Please try to understand that I am looking for a social, cooperative method of driving change. The mention of "...global variables... no tests... throwing System.Exception" was intended to demonstrate that the problems are not just superficial or aesthetic. Practices that may work for relatively small CRUD apps do not necessarily work for large enterprise apps, and in fact, none of the code so far has actually passed the integration tests. Please, try to take the question at face value, accept that I actually know what I'm talking about, and either answer the question that I actually asked or move on. P.S. My sincerest gratitude to those who -did- offer constructive advice rather than arguing with the premise. I'm going to leave this open for a while longer as I'm hoping to hear more in the way of real-world experiences.

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• Seizing the Moment with Mobility

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Hernan Capdevila, Vice President, Oracle Fusion Apps Mobile devices are forcing a paradigm shift in the workplace – they’re changing the way businesses can do business and the type of cultures they can nurture. As our customers talk about their mobile needs, we hear them saying they want instant-on access to enterprise data so workers can be more effective at their jobs anywhere, anytime. They also are interested in being more cost effective from an IT point of view. The mobile revolution – with the idea of BYOD (bring your own device) – has added an interesting dynamic because previously IT was driving the employee device strategy and ecosystem. That's been turned on its head with the consumerization of IT. Now employees are figuring out how to use their personal devices for work purposes and IT has to figure out how to adapt. Blurring the Lines between Work and Personal Life My vision of where businesses will be five years from now is that our work lives and personal lives will be more interwoven together. In turn, enterprises will have to determine how to make employees’ work lives fit more into the fabric of their personal lives. And personal devices like smartphones are going to drive significant business value because they let us accomplish things very incrementally. I can be sitting on a train or in a taxi and be productive. At the end of any meeting, I can capture ideas and tasks or follow up with people in real time. Mobile devices enable this notion of seizing the moment – capitalizing on opportunities that might otherwise have slipped away because we're not connected. For the industry shapers out there, this is game changing. The lean and agile workforce is definitely the future. This notion of the board sitting down with the executive team to lay out strategic objectives for a three- to five-year plan, bringing in HR to determine how they're going to staff the strategic activities, kicking off the execution, and then revisiting the plan in three to five years to create another three- to five-year plan is yesterday's model. Businesses that continue to approach innovating in that way are in the dinosaur age. Today it's about incremental planning and incremental execution, which requires a lot of cohesion and synthesis within the workforce. There needs to be this interweaving notion within the workforce about how ideas cascade down, how people engage, how they stay connected, and how insights are shared. How to Survive and Thrive in Today’s Marketplace The notion of Facebook isn’t new. We lived it pre-Internet days with America Online and Prodigy – Facebook is just the renaissance of these services in a more viral and pervasive way. And given the trajectory of the consumerization of IT with people bringing their personal tooling to work, the enterprise has no option but to adapt. The sooner that businesses realize this from a top-down point of view the sooner that they will be able to really drive significant innovation and adapt to the marketplace. There are a small number of companies right now (I think it's closer to 20% rather than 80%, but the number is expanding) that are able to really innovate in this incremental marketplace. So from a competitive point of view, there's no choice but to be social and stay connected. By far the majority of users on Facebook and LinkedIn are mobile users – people on iPhones, smartphones, Android phones, and tablets. It's not the couch people, right? It's the on-the-go people – those people at the coffee shops. Usually when you're sitting at your desk on a big desktop computer, typically you have better things to do than to be on Facebook. This is a topic I'm extremely passionate about because I think mobile devices are game changing. Mobility delivers significant value to businesses – it also brings dramatic simplification from a functional point of view and transforms our work life experience. Hernan CapdevilaVice President, Oracle Applications Development

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• Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) Now Available!

  - by Javier Puerta

  Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is now available on OTN on ALL platforms. This is the first major release since the launch of Enterprise Manager 12c in October of 2011 and the first ever Enterprise Manager release available on all platforms simultaneously. This is primarily a stability release which incorporates many of issues and feedback reported by early adopters. In addition, this release contains many new features and enhancements in areas across the board.   New Capabilities and Features   Enhanced management capabilities for enterprise private clouds: Introduces new capabilities to allow customers to build and manage a Java Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud based on Oracle Weblogic Server. The new capabilities include guided set up of PaaS Cloud, self-service provisioning, automatic scale out and metering and chargeback. Enhanced lifecycle management capabilities for Oracle WebLogic Server environments: Combining in-context multiple domain, patching and configuration file synchronizations. Integrated Hardware-Software management for Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud through features such as rack schematics visualization and integrated monitoring of all hardware and software components. The latest management capabilities for business-critical applications include: Business Application Management: A new Business Application (BA) target type and dashboard with flexible definitions provides a logical view of an application’s business transactions, end-user experiences and the cloud infrastructure the monitored application is running on. Enhanced User Experience Reporting: Oracle Real User Experience Insight has been enhanced to provide reporting capabilities on client-side issues for applications running in the cloud and has been more tightly coupled with Oracle Business Transaction Management to help ensure that real-time user experience and transaction tracing data is provided to users in context. Several key improvements address ease of administration, reporting and extensibility for massively scalable cloud environments including dynamic groups, self-updateable monitoring templates, bulk operations against many events, etc. New and Revised Plug-Ins:   Several plug-Ins have been updated as a part of this release resulting in either new versions or revisions. Revised plug-ins contain only bug-fixes and while new plug-ins incorporate both bug fixes as well as new functionality.   Plug-In Name Version Enterprise Manager for Oracle Database 12.1.0.2 (revision) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Middleware 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Chargeback and Capacity Planning 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Fusion Applications 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Virtualization 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Exadata 12.1.0.3 (new) Enterprise Manager for Oracle Cloud 12.1.0.4 (new) Installation and Upgrade:   All major platforms have been released simultaneously (Linux 32 / 64 bit, Solaris (SPARC), Solaris x86-64, IBM AIX 64-bit, and Windows x86-64 (64-bit) ) Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.2 is a complete release that includes both the EM OMS and Agent versions of 12.1.0.2. Installation options available with EM 12.1.0.2: User can do fresh Install or an upgrade from versions EM 10.2.0.5, 11.1, or 12.1.0.2 ( Bundle Patch 1 not mandatory). Upgrading to EM 12.1.0.2 from EM 12.1.0.1 is not a patch application (similar to Bundle Patch 1) but is achieved through a 1-system upgrade. Documentation:   Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Introduction Document provides a broad overview of capabilities and highlights"What's New" in EM 12.1.0.2.   All updated Oracle Enterprise Manager documentation can be found on OTN   Customer Webcast - EM 12c Installation and Upgrade: This webcast is for customers who are interested in learning how to successfully deploy or upgrade to EM 12.1.0.2.   Customer Webcast - Installation and Upgrade - September 21(registration and info on OTN starting September 12)   Enterprise Manager 12c R2 Resources:   OTN Download Page Upgrade Guide

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• Unit Testing Framework for XQuery

  - by Knut Vatsendvik

  This posting provides a unit testing framework for XQuery using Oracle Service Bus. It allows you to write a test case to run your XQuery transformations in an automated fashion. When the test case is run, the framework returns any differences found in the response. The complete code sample with install instructions can be downloaded from here. Writing a Unit Test You start a new Test Case by creating a Proxy Service from Workshop that comes with Oracle Service Bus. In the General Configuration page select Service Type to be Messaging Service           In the Message Type Configuration page link both the Request & Response Message Type to the TestCase element of the UnitTest.xsd schema                 The TestCase element consists of the following child elements The ID and optional Name element is simply used for reference. The Transformation element is the XQuery resource to be executed. The Input elements represents the input to run the XQuery with. The Output element represents the expected output. These XML documents are “also” represented as an XQuery resource where the XQuery function takes no arguments and returns the XML document. Why not pass the test data with the TestCase? Passing an XML structure in another XML structure is not very easy or at least not very human readable. Therefore it was chosen to represent the test data as an loadable resource in the OSB. However you are free to go ahead with another approach on this if wanted. The XMLDiff elements represents any differences found. A sample on input is shown here. Modeling the Message Flow Then the next step is to model the message flow of the Proxy Service. In the Request Pipeline create a stage node that loads the test case input data.      For this, specify a dynamic XQuery expression that evaluates at runtime to the name of a pre-registered XQuery resource. The expression is of course set by the input data from the test case.           Add a Run stage node. Assign the result of the XQuery, that is to be run, to a context variable. Define a mapping for each of the input variables added in previous stage.     Add a Compare stage. Like with the input data, load the expected output data. Do a compare using XMLDiff XQuery provided where the first argument is the loaded output test data, and the second argument the result from the Run stage. Any differences found is replaced back into the test case XMLDiff element. In case of any unexpected failure while processing, add an Error Handler to the Pipeline to capture the fault. To pass back the result add the following Insert action In the Response Pipeline. A sample on output is shown here.

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 9 - Direct IO

  - by Stefan Hinker

  In the last article of this series, we discussed the most general of all physical IO options available for LDoms, root domains.  Now, let's have a short look at the next level of granularity: Virtualizing individual PCIe slots.  In the LDoms terminology, this feature is called "Direct IO" or DIO.  It is very similar to root domains, but instead of reassigning ownership of a complete root complex, it only moves a single PCIe slot or endpoint device to a different domain.  Let's look again at hardware available to mars in the original configuration: root@sun:~# ldm ls-io NAME TYPE BUS DOMAIN STATUS ---- ---- --- ------ ------ pci_0 BUS pci_0 primary pci_1 BUS pci_1 primary pci_2 BUS pci_2 primary pci_3 BUS pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/PCIE1 PCIE pci_0 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0 PCIE pci_0 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE5 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE6 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE7 PCIE pci_1 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE2 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE3 PCIE pci_2 primary OCC /SYS/MB/PCIE4 PCIE pci_2 primary EMP /SYS/MB/PCIE8 PCIE pci_3 primary EMP /SYS/MB/SASHBA1 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET2 PCIE pci_3 primary OCC /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET0/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_0 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF0 PF pci_3 primary /SYS/MB/NET2/IOVNET.PF1 PF pci_3 primary All of the "PCIE" type devices are available for SDIO, with a few limitations.  If the device is a slot, the card in that slot must support the DIO feature.  The documentation lists all such cards.  Moving a slot to a different domain works just like moving a PCI root complex.  Again, this is not a dynamic process and includes reboots of the affected domains.  The resulting configuration is nicely shown in a diagram in the Admin Guide: There are several important things to note and consider here: The domain receiving the slot/endpoint device turns into an IO domain in LDoms terminology, because it now owns some physical IO hardware. Solaris will create nodes for this hardware under /devices.  This includes entries for the virtual PCI root complex (pci_0 in the diagram) and anything between it and the actual endpoint device.  It is very important to understand that all of this PCIe infrastructure is virtual only!  Only the actual endpoint devices are true physical hardware. There is an implicit dependency between the guest owning the endpoint device and the root domain owning the real PCIe infrastructure: Only if the root domain is up and running, will the guest domain have access to the endpoint device. The root domain is still responsible for resetting and configuring the PCIe infrastructure (root complex, PCIe level configurations, error handling etc.) because it owns this part of the physical infrastructure. This also means that if the root domain needs to reset the PCIe root complex for any reason (typically a reboot of the root domain) it will reset and thus disrupt the operation of the endpoint device owned by the guest domain.  The result in the guest is not predictable.  I recommend to configure the resulting behaviour of the guest using domain dependencies as described in the Admin Guide in Chapter "Configuring Domain Dependencies". Please consult the Admin Guide in Section "Creating an I/O Domain by Assigning PCIe Endpoint Devices" for all the details! As you can see, there are several restrictions for this feature.  It was introduced in LDoms 2.0, mainly to allow the configuration of guest domains that need access to tape devices.  Today, with the higher number of PCIe root complexes and the availability of SR-IOV, the need to use this feature is declining.  I personally do not recommend to use it, mainly because of the drawbacks of the depencies on the root domain and because it can be replaced with SR-IOV (although then with similar limitations). This was a rather short entry, more for completeness.  I believe that DIO can usually be replaced by SR-IOV, which is much more flexible.  I will cover SR-IOV in the next section of this blog series.

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• Logging connection strings

  If you some of the dynamic features of SSIS such as package configurations or property expressions then sometimes trying to work out were your connections are pointing can be a bit confusing. You will work out in the end but it can be useful to explicitly log this information so that when things go wrong you can just review the logs. You may wish to develop this idea further and encapsulate such logging into a custom task, but for now lets keep it simple and use the Script Task. The Script Task code below will raise an Information event showing the name and connection string for a connection. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Get the connection string, we need to know the name of the connection Dim connectionName As String = "My OLE-DB Connection" Dim connectionString As String = Dts.Connections(connectionName).ConnectionString ' Format the message and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connectionName, connectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class Building on that example it is probably more flexible to log all connections in a package as shown in the next example. Imports System Imports Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime Public Class ScriptMain Public Sub Main() Dim fireAgain As Boolean ' Loop through all connections in the package For Each connection As ConnectionManager In Dts.Connections ' Get the connection string and log it via an information event Dim message As String = String.Format("Connection ""{0}"" has a connection string of ""{1}"".", _ connection.Name, connection.ConnectionString) Dts.Events.FireInformation(0, "Information", message, Nothing, 0, fireAgain) Next Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success End Sub End Class By using the Information event it makes it readily available in the designer, for example the Visual Studio Output window (Ctrl+Alt+O) or the package designer Execution Results tab, and also allows you to readily control the logging by choosing which events to log in the normal way. Now before somebody starts commenting that this is a security risk, I would like to highlight good practice for building connection managers. Firstly the Password property, or any other similar sensitive property is always defined as write-only, and secondly the connection string property only uses the public properties to assemble the connection string value when requested. In other words the connection string will never contain the password. I have seen a couple of cases where this is not true, but that was just bad development by third-parties, you won’t find anything like that in the box from Microsoft.   Whilst writing this code it made me wish that there was a custom log entry that you could just turn on that did this for you, but alas connection managers do not even seem to support custom events. It did however remind me of a very useful event that is often overlooked and fits rather well alongside connection string logging, the Execute SQL Task’s custom ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery event. To quote the help reference Custom Messages for Logging - Provides information about the execution phases of the SQL statement. Log entries are written when the task acquires connection to the database, when the task starts to prepare the SQL statement, and after the execution of the SQL statement is completed. The log entry for the prepare phase includes the SQL statement that the task uses. It is the last part that is so useful, how often have you used an expression to derive a SQL statement and you want to log that to make sure the correct SQL is being returned? You need to turn it one, by default no custom log events are captured, but I’ll refer you to a walkthrough on setting up the logging for ExecuteSQLExecutingQuery by Jamie.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2012: Oracle Developer Cloud, ADF-Essentials, ADF Mobile and ME!

  - by Dana Singleterry

  This year at OOW, like those from the past, will certainly be unforgettable. Lots of new announcements which I can't mention here and may not event know about are sure to surprise. I'll keep this short and sweet. For every session ADF, ADF Mobile, Oracle Developer Cloud, Integration with SOA Suite, etc... take a look at the ADF Focus Document listing all the sessions ordered by day providing time and location. For Mobile specifically check out the Mobile Focus Document. OOW 2012 actually kicks off on Sunday with Moscone North demogrounds hosting Cloud. There's also the ADF EMG User Day where you can pick up many technical tips & tricks from ADF Developers / ACE Directors from around the world. A session you shouldn't miss and a great starting point for the week if you miss Sunday's ADF EMG User Day for all of you TechoFiles is Chris Tonas's keynote for developers - Monday 10:45 am at Salon 8 in the Marriott - The Future of Development for Oracle Fusion - From Desktop to Mobile to Cloud. Then peruse the ADF Focus Document to fill out your day with the many sessions and labs on ADF. Don't forge that Wednesday afternoon (4:30 - 5:30) offers an ADF Meetup which is an excellent opportunity to catch up with the Shakers and Makers of ADF from Product Managent, to customers, to top developers leveraging the ADF technology, to ACE Directors themselves. Not to mention free beer is provided to help you wind down from a day of Techno Overload. Now for my schedule and I do hope to see some of you at one of these. OOW 2012 Schedule 10/1 Monday 9:30am – 12:00pm: JDev DemoGrounds 3:15pm – 4:15pm: Intro to Oracle ADF HOL; Marriott Marquis – Salon ¾ 4:00pm – 6:00pm: Cloud DemoGrounds 10/2 Tuesday 9:45am – 12:00pm: JDev DemoGrounds 2:00pm -4:00pm: Cloud DemoGrounds 7:30 – 9:30: Team Dinner @ Donato Enoteca; Redwood City 10/3 Wednesday 10:15pm – 11:15pm: Intro to Oracle ADF HOL; Marriott Marquis – Salon 3/4 1:15pm – 2:15pm: Oracle ADF – Lessons Learned in Real-World Implementations; Moscone South – Room 309This session takes the form of a panel that consists of three customer: Herbalife, Etiya, & Hawaii State Department of Education. During the first part of this session each customer will provide a high-level overview of their application. Following this overview I'll ask questions of the customers specific to their implementations and lessons learned through their development life-cycle. Here's the session abstract: CON3535 - Oracle ADF: Lessons Learned in Real-World Implementations This session profiles and interviews customers that have been successful in delivering compelling applications based on Oracle’s Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF). The session provides an overview of Oracle ADF, and then three customers explain the business drivers for their respective applications and solutions and if possible, provide a demonstration of the applications. Interactive questions posed to the customers after their overview will make for an exciting and dynamic format in which the customers will provide insight into real-world lessons learned in developing with Oracle ADF. 3:30pm – 4:30 pm: Developing Applications for Mobile iOS and Android Devices with Oracle ADF Mobile; Marriott Marquis – Salon 10A 4:30pm – 6:00pm: Meet and Greet ADF Developers/Customers; OTN Lounge 10/4 Thursday   11:15pm – 12:15pm: Intro to Oracle ADF HOL; Marriott Marquis – Salon 3/4 I'm sure our paths will cross at some point during the week and I look forward to seeing you at one of the many events. Enjoy OOW 2012!

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• Implementing Search for BlogReader Windows 8 Sample

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  The BlogReader sample is an excellent place to start speeding up your Windows 8 development skills.  The tutorial is available here and the complete source code is available here Create a project called WindowsBlogReader and create pages for ItemsPage.xaml, SplitPage.xaml and DetailPage.xaml and copy the corresponding code blocks from the sample listed above. Created a class file FeedData.cs and copy the code.  Finally, create a class DateConverter.cs and copy the code associated with it. With that you should be able to build and run the project.  There seems to be one issue in the sample feeds listed that the first week (feed1) doesn’t seem to expose it.  So you can skip that and use the second feed as first feed.  You will end up with one feed less but it works. I had demonstrated this in the recent TechDays at Chennai.  How we can use the Search Contract and implement Search for within the Blog Titles. First off, we need to declare that the App will be using Search Contract, in the Package.appmanifest file Next, we would need a handle of the Search Contract when user types on the search window in Charms Menu. If you had completed the code sample from the link above, you would have ItemsPage.xaml and ItemsPage.xaml.cs.  Open the ItemsPage.xaml.cs. Import the namespaces using System.Collections.ObjectModel and System.Linq. in the ItemsPage() constructor, right after this.InitializeComponent(); add the following code Windows.ApplicationModel.Search.SearchPane.GetForCurrentView().QuerySubmitted += ItemsPage_QuerySubmitted; This event is fired when users open up the Search Panel from Charms Menu, type something and hit enter. We need to handle this event declared in the delegate.  For that we need to pull the FeedDataSource instantiation to the root of the class to make it global. So, add the following as the first line within the partial class FeedDataSource feedDataSource; Also, modify the LoadState method, as follows:- protected override void LoadState(Object navigationParameter, Dictionary<String, Object> pageState)        {            feedDataSource = (FeedDataSource)App.Current.Resources["feedDataSource"];            if (feedDataSource != null)            {                this.DefaultViewModel["Items"] = feedDataSource.Feeds;            }        } Next is to implement the ItemsPage_QuerySubmitted method void ItemsPage_QuerySubmitted(Windows.ApplicationModel.Search.SearchPane sender, Windows.ApplicationModel.Search.SearchPaneQuerySubmittedEventArgs args)         {             this.DefaultViewModel["Items"] = from dynamic item in feedDataSource.Feeds                                              where                                              item.Title.Contains(args.QueryText)                                              select item;         } As you can see we are almost using the same defaultviewmodel with the change that we are using a linq query to do a search on feeds which has the Title that matches QueryText. With this we are ready to run the app. Run the App.  Hit the Charms Menu with Windows + C key combination and type a text to search within the blog. You can see that it filters the Blogs which has the matching text. We can modify the above Linq query to do a search for the Text in other attributes like description, actual blog content etc., I have uploaded the complete code since the original WindowsBlogReader Code is not available for download.  You can download it from here note:  this code is provided as-is without any warranties.  Cheers!!!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013Popular ReleasesVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.43: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgTiger.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImageDax.net" links NEW: Added Support for "HosterBin.com" links FIXED: "ImgServe.net" linksWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SSTA.WinForms 1.0.0: Latest stable releaseAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0: Release notes: Implemented bone/armature animation Refactored class hierarchy and naming Addressed high CPU usage issue during animation Updated the Blender exporter and Ascend model format (now XML) Created AscendViewer, a tool for viewing Ascend modelsIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro inversion of control container (IoC); source code...SQL Compact Query Analyzer: 1.0.1.1511: Beta build of SQL Compact Query Analyzer Bug fixes: - Resolved issue where the application crashes when loading a database that contains tables without a primary key Features: - Displays database information (database version, filename, size, creation date) - Displays schema summary (number of tables, columns, primary keys, identity fields, nullable fields) - Displays the information schema views - Displays column information (database type, clr type, max length, allows null, etc) - Support...CODE Framework: 4.0.30618.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.18): XrmToolbox improvement Use new connection controls (use of Microsoft.Xrm.Client.dll) New display capabilities for tools (size, image and colors) Added prerequisites check Added Most Used Tools feature Tools improvementNew toolSolution Transfer Tool (v1.0.0.0) developed by DamSim Updated toolView Layout Replicator (v1.2013.6.17) Double click on source view to display its layoutXml All tools list Access Checker (v1.2013.6.17) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.6.18) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.6.1...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.570b: New* Movie - using XBMC TMDB - now renames movies if option selected. * Movie - using Xbmc Tmdb - Actor images saved from TMDb if option selected. Fixed* Movie - Checks for poster.jpg against missing poster filter * Movie - Fixed continual scraping of vob movie file (not DVD structure) * Both - Correctly display audio channels * Both - Correctly populate audio info in nfo's if multiple audio tracks. * Both - added icons and checked for DTS ES and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks. * Both - Stream d...Document.Editor: 2013.24: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.24: Improved Video Editing support Improved Link Editing support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v3.3.0: ??FineUI ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ???。 FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ???????。 ?????? IE 7.0、Firefox 3.6、Chrome 3.0、Opera 10.5、Safari 3.0+ ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license)。 ???? ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI???? ExtJS ?????????，???? ExtJS ?。 ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ?：http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthrea...BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.0: Check Version History for more information about this release.ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler v1.5: [+] added Start time, End time event columns [+] added SP:StmtStarting, SP:StmtCompleted events [*] fixed bug with Audit:Logout eventpatterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop4 2013.06.17: Drop 4New ProjectsActivity Injector: Activity Injector is mainly used in unit testing workflow activities.Application Starter Tremens: Application for starting ApplicationaAudiwikiREF: This project is created to finish my referral assignment because i faced many problems with the previous one where i couldn't connect the project and commit. AVTS GLUCK ANTIVIRUS SYSTEM: AVTS Gluck AntiVirus System - the best antivirus made by young developers from Ukraine. It was writed in C#, C++, VB.NET, Excutable files, PHP DS, .and more....Base64 File Converter: File converting tool that converts any file into Base64 TXT file and vice versa just by drag-and-drop gesture.Basket Builders Umbraco bootstrap packages: Our umbraco packages to speed up project Bugzy Bug Tracking and Work Management: Creating Bug Tracking and Work Managment system while helping the JSON-RPC standard become as strong as the Bloated XML-RPC(SOAP)Dalmatian Build Script: Dalmatian allows you to automate your build using C# of VB.NETDécouverte Majeure MISN Chrono-courses: Chronocourses projectDocToolTip Library: DocToolTip library allows creating screenshots of winform forms with the name and type of component controls.DotaPick: SummaryHiUpdateTools - easy publish and update your app: HiUpdateTools is a easy tools to use publish new version of your application Kinect Skeleton Recorder: Records and shows XBox 360 Kinect skeleton data using windows forms. Saves the data as XML that can be read by other applications for use in animation.MARIT (BETA): MARIT is a simple drawing app for Android. More features are on the todo-list so stay tuned! Feedback and requests are appreciated. MvcToolbox: MVC Toolbox is a library which contains lots of usefull methods which will help developer to write less code and to be more productive.PrototypeRef: list of testing toolsSmartPlay: SmartPlaySolid Geometry Simulation: Implements a simple fur/hair dynamic engine using physBAM. This package includes a semi-implicit solver for hair simulation and plugins for maya/houdini.Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SearchableListBox control built on the Window,Form.ListBox renders a list box items with multiple search terms highlighted.YiLeSystem: This is a dining system.

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• Is there a good [and modern] reason to not have static HTML pages with AJAX content , rather than generate pages?

  - by user1725

  Assumptions: We don't care about IE6, and Noscript users. Lets pretend we have the following design concept: All your pages are HTML/CSS that create the ascetics, layout, colours, general design related things. Lets pretend this basic code below is that: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <link href="/example.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <script src="example.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <head> <body> <div class="left"> </div> <div class="mid"> </div> <div class="right"> </div> </body> </html> Which in theory should produce, with the right CSS, three vertical columns on the web page. Now, here's the root of the question, what are the serious advantages and/or disadvantages of loading the content of these columns (lets assume they are all indeed dynamic content, not static) via AJAX requests, or have the content pre-set with a scripting language? So for instance, we would have, in the AJAX example, lets asume jquery is used on-load: //Multiple http requests $("body > div.left").load("./script.php?content=news"); $("body > div.right").load("./script.php?content=blogs"); $("body > div.mid").load("./script.php?content=links"); OR--- //Single http request $.ajax({ url: './script.php?content=news|blogs|links', method: 'json', type: 'text', success: function (data) { $("body > div.left").html(data.news); $("body > div.right").html(data.blogs); $("body > div.mid").html(data.links); } }) Verses doing this: <body> <div class="left"> <?php echo function_returning_news(); ?> </div> <div class="mid"> <?php echo function_returning_blogs(); ?> </div> <div class="right"> <?php echo function_returning_links(); ?> </div> </body> I'm personally thinking right now that doing static HTML pages is a better method, my reasoning is: I've separated my data, logic, and presentation (ie, "MVC") code. I can make changes to one without others. Browser caches mean I'm just getting server load mostly for the content, not the presentation wrapped around it. I could turn my "script.php" into a more robust API for the website. But I'm not certain or clear that these are legitimately good reasons, and I'm not confidently aware of other issues that could happen, so I would like to know the pros-and-cons, so to speak.

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• Skanska Builds Global Workforce Insight with Cloud-Based HCM System

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By David Baum - Originally posted on Profit Peter Bjork grew up building things. He started his work life learning all sorts of trades at his father’s construction company in the northern part of Sweden. So in college, it was natural for him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in construction engineering—but he broke new ground when he added a master’s degree in finance to his curriculum vitae. Written on a traditional résumé, Bjork’s current title (vice president of information systems strategies) doesn’t reveal the diversity of his experience—that he’s adept with hammer and nails as well as rows and columns. But a big part of his current job is to work with his counterparts in human resources (HR) designing, building, and deploying the systems needed to get a complete view of the skills and potential of Skanska’s 22,000-strong white-collar workforce. And Bjork believes that complete view is essential to Skanska’s success. “Our business is really all about people,” says Bjork, who has worked with Skanska for 16 years. “You can have equipment and financial resources, but to truly succeed in a business like ours you need to have the right people in the right places. That’s what this system is helping us accomplish.” In a global HR environment that suffers from a paradox of high unemployment and a scarcity of skilled labor, managers need to have a complete understanding of workforce capabilities to develop management skills, recruit for open positions, ensure that staff is getting the training they need, and reduce attrition. Skanska’s human capital management (HCM) systems, based on Oracle Talent Management Cloud, play a critical role delivering that understanding. “Skanska’s philosophy of having great people, encouraging their development, and giving them the chance to move across business units has nurtured a culture of collaboration, but managing a diverse workforce spread across the globe is a monumental challenge,” says Annika Lindholm, global human resources system owner in the HR department at Skanska’s headquarters just outside of Stockholm, Sweden. “We depend heavily on Oracle’s cloud technology to support our HCM function.” Construction, Workers For Skanska’s more than 60,000 employees and contractors, managing huge construction projects is an everyday job. Beyond erecting signature buildings, management’s goal is to build a corporate culture where valuable talent can be sought out and developed, bringing in the right mix of people to support and grow the business. “Of all the companies in our space, Skanska is probably one of the strongest ones, with a laser focus on people and people development,” notes Tom Crane, chief HR and communications officer for Skanska in the United States. “Our business looks like equipment and material, but all we really have at the end of the day are people and their intellectual capital. Without them, second only to clients, of course, you really can’t achieve great things in the high-profile environment in which we work.” During the 1990s, Skanska entered an expansive growth phase. A string of successful acquisitions paved the way for the company’s transformation into a global enterprise. “Today the company’s focus is on profitable growth,” continues Crane. “But you can’t really achieve growth unless you are doing a very good job of developing your people and having the right people in the right places and driving a culture of growth.” In the United States alone, Skanska has more than 8,000 employees in four distinct business units: Skanska USA Building, also known as the Construction Manager, builds everything at ground level and above—hospitals, educational facilities, stadiums, airport terminals, and other massive projects. Skanska USA Civil does everything at ground level and below, such as light rail, water treatment facilities, power plants or power industry facilities, highways, and bridges. Skanska Infrastructure Development develops public-private partnerships—projects in which Skanska adds equity and also arranges for outside financing. Skanska Commercial Development acts like a commercial real estate developer, acquiring land and building offices on spec or build-to-suit for its clients. Skanska's international portfolio includes construction of the new Meadowlands Stadium. Getting the various units to operate collaboratatively helps Skanska deliver high value to clients and shareholders. “When we have this collaboration among units, it allows us to enrich each of the business units and, at the same time, develop our future leaders to be more facile in operating across business units—more accepting of a ‘one Skanska’ approach,” explains Crane. Workforce Worldwide But HR needs processes and tools to support managers who face such business dynamics. Oracle Talent Management Cloud is helping Skanska implement world-class recruiting strategies and generate the insights needed to drive quality hiring practices, internal mobility, and a proactive approach to building talent pipelines. With their new cloud system in place, Skanska HR leaders can manage everything from recruiting, compensation, and goal and performance management to employee learning and talent review—all as part of a single, cohesive software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment. Skanska has successfully implemented two modules from Oracle Talent Management Cloud—the recruiting and performance management modules—and is in the process of implementing the learn module. Internally, they call the systems Skanska Recruit, Skanska Talent, and Skanska Learn. The timing is apropos. With high rates of unemployment in recent years, there have been many job candidates on the market. However, talent scarcity continues to frustrate recruiters. Oracle Taleo Recruiting Cloud Service, one of the applications in the Oracle Talent Management cloud portfolio, enables Skanska managers to create more-intelligent recruiting strategies, pulling high-performer profile statistics to create new candidate profiles and using multitiered screening and assessments to ensure that only the best-suited candidate applications make it to the recruiter’s desk. Tools such as applicant tracking, interview management, and requisition management help recruiters and hiring managers streamline the hiring process. Oracle’s cloud-based software system automates and streamlines many other HR processes for Skanska’s multinational organization and delivers insight into the success of recruiting and talent-management efforts. “The Oracle system is definitely helping us to construct global HR processes,” adds Bjork. “It is really important that we have a business model that is decentralized, so we can effectively serve our local markets, and interact with our global ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems as well. We would not be able to do this without a really good, well-integrated HCM system that could support these efforts.” A key piece of this effort is something Skanska has developed internally called the Skanska Leadership Profile. Core competencies, on which all employees are measured, are used in performance reviews to determine weak areas but also to discover talent, such as those who will be promoted or need succession plans. This global profiling system brings consistency to the way HR professionals evaluate and review talent across the company, with a consistent set of ratings and a consistent definition of competencies. All salaried employees in Skanska are tied to a talent management process that gives opportunity for midyear and year-end reviews. Using the performance management module, managers can align individual goals with corporate goals; provide clear visibility into how each employee contributes to the success of the organization; and drive a strategic, end-to-end talent management strategy with a single, integrated system for all talent-related activities. This is critical to a company that is highly focused on ensuring that every employee has a development plan linked to his or her succession potential. “Our approach all along has been to deploy software applications that are seamless to end users,” says Crane. “The beauty of a cloud-based system is that much of the functionality takes place behind the scenes so we can focus on making sure users can access the data when they need it. This model greatly improves their efficiency.” The employee profile not only sets a competency baseline for new employees but is also integrated with Skanska’s other back-office Oracle systems to ensure consistency in the way information is used to support other business functions. “Since we have about a dozen different HR systems that are providing us with information, we built a master database that collects all the information,” explains Lindholm. “That data is sent not only to Oracle Talent Management Cloud, but also to other systems that are dependent on this information.” Collaboration to Scale Skanska is poised to launch a new Oracle module to link employee learning plans to the review process and recruitment assessments. According to Crane, connecting these processes allows Skanska managers to see employees’ progress and produce an updated learning program. For example, as employees take classes, supervisors can consult the Oracle Talent Management Cloud portal to monitor progress and align it to each individual’s training and development plan. “That’s a pretty compelling solution for an organization that wants to manage its talent on a real-time basis and see how the training is working,” Crane says. Rolling out Oracle Talent Management Cloud was a joint effort among HR, IT, and a global group that oversaw the worldwide implementation. Skanska deployed the solution quickly across all markets at once. In the United States, for example, more than 35 offices quickly got up to speed on the new system via webinars for employees and face-to-face training for the HR group. “With any migration, there are moments when you hold your breath, but in this case, we had very few problems getting the system up and running,” says Crane. Lindholm adds, “There has been very little resistance to the system as users recognize its potential. Customizations are easy, and a lasting partnership has developed between Skanska and Oracle when help is needed. They listen to us.” Bjork elaborates on the implementation process from an IT perspective. “Deploying a SaaS system removes a lot of the complexity,” he says. “You can downsize the IT part and focus on the business part, which increases the probability of a successful implementation. If you want to scale the system, you make a quick phone call. That’s all it took recently when we added 4,000 users. We didn’t have to think about resizing the servers or hiring more IT people. Oracle does that for us, and they have provided very good support.” As a result, Skanska has been able to implement a single, cost-effective talent management solution across the organization to support its strategy to recruit and develop a world-class staff. Stakeholders are confident that they are providing the most efficient recruitment system possible for competent personnel at all levels within the company—from skilled workers at construction sites to top management at headquarters. And Skanska can retain skilled employees and ensure that they receive the development opportunities they need to grow and advance.

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