Search Results

Search found 62513 results on 2501 pages for 'time series'.

Page 535/2501 | < Previous Page | 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542  | Next Page >

• qemu-kvm virtual machine virtio network freeze under load

  - by Rick Koshi

  I'm having a problem with my virtual machines, where the network will freeze under heavy load. I'm using CentOS 6.2 as both host and guest, not using libvirt, just running qemu-kvm directly as follows: /usr/libexec/qemu-kvm \ -drive file=/data2/vm/rb-dev2-www1-vm.img,index=0,media=disk,cache=none,if=virtio \ -boot order=c \ -m 2G \ -smp cores=1,threads=2 \ -vga std \ -name rb-dev2-www1-vm \ -vnc :84,password \ -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=52:54:20:00:00:54,model=virtio \ -net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap84,script=/etc/qemu-ifup \ -monitor unix:/var/run/vm/rb-dev2-www1-vm.mon,server,nowait \ -rtc base=utc \ -device piix3-usb-uhci \ -device usb-tablet /etc/qemu-ifup (used by the above command) is a very simple script, containing the following: #!/bin/sh sudo /sbin/ifconfig $1 0.0.0.0 promisc up sudo /usr/sbin/brctl addif br0 $1 sleep 2 And here's the info on br0 and other interfaces: avl-host3 14# brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br0 8000.180373f5521a no bond0 tap84 virbr0 8000.525400858961 yes virbr0-nic avl-host3 15# ip addr show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: em1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:1a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 3: em2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,SLAVE,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq master bond0 state UP qlen 1000 link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:1a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 4: em3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000 link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:1e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 5: em4: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000 link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:20 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 6: bond0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,MASTER,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:1a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet6 fe80::1a03:73ff:fef5:521a/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 7: br0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/ether 18:03:73:f5:52:1a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 172.16.1.46/24 brd 172.16.1.255 scope global br0 inet6 fe80::1a03:73ff:fef5:521a/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 8: virbr0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/ether 52:54:00:85:89:61 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 192.168.122.1/24 brd 192.168.122.255 scope global virbr0 9: virbr0-nic: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 500 link/ether 52:54:00:85:89:61 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff 12: tap84: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,PROMISC,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN qlen 500 link/ether ba:e8:9b:2a:ff:48 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet6 fe80::b8e8:9bff:fe2a:ff48/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever bond0 is a bond of em1 and em2. virbr0 and virbr0-nic are vestigial interfaces left over from CentOS's default installation. They are unused (as far as I know). The guest runs perfectly until I run a large 'rsync', when the network will freeze after some seemingly-random time (usually under a minute). When it freezes, there is no network activity in or out of the guest. I can still connect to the guest's console via vnc, but it is unable to speak out its network interface. Any attempt to 'ping' from the guest gives a "Destination Host Unreachable" error for 3/4 packets and no reply for every fourth packet. Sometimes (perhaps two thirds of the time), I can bring the interface back to life by doing a "service network restart" from the guest's console. If this works (and if I do it before the rsync times out), the rsync will resume. Usually it will freeze again within a minute or two. If I repeat, the rsync will eventually finish, and I presume the machine goes back to waiting for another period of heavy load. Throughout the whole process, there are no console errors or relevant (that I can see) syslog messages on either guest or host machine. If the "service network restart" doesn't work the first time, trying again (and again and again) never seems to work. The command completes normally, with normal output, but the interface stays frozen. However, a soft reboot of the guest machine (without restarting qemu-kvm) always seems to bring it back. I am aware of the "lowest mac address" assignment problem, where the bridge takes on the mac address of the slave interface with the lowest mac address. This causes temporary network freezes, but is definitely not what's happening for me. My freezes are permanent until manual intervention, and you can see from the 'ip addr show' output above that the mac address being used by br0 is that of the physical ethernet. There are no other virtual machines running on the host. I've verified that each virtual machine on the subnet has its own unique mac address. I have rebuilt the guest machine several times, and I have tried this on three different host machines (identical hardware, built identically). Oddly, I do have one virtual host (the second of this series) which never seemed to have a problem. It never had its network freeze when it was running the same rsync during its build. It's particularly odd because it was the second build. The first, on a different host, did have the freezing problem, but the second did not. I assumed at the time that I had done something wrong with the first build, and that the problem was resolved. Unfortunately, the problem reappeared when I built the third VM. Also unfortunately, I can't do many tests with the working VM, as it's now in production use, and I'm hoping I can find the cause of this issue before that machine starts having problems. It's possible that I just got really lucky while running the rsync on the working machine, and that one time it didn't freeze. Of course it's possible that I somehow changed the build scripts without realizing it and re-broke something, but I can't find any such thing. In any case, I'm hoping someone has some idea what could cause this. Addendum: Preliminary tests suggest that I don't have the problem if I substitute e1000 for virtio in the first -net flag to qemu-kvm. I don't consider this a solution, but it is suitable for a stopgap. Has anyone else had (or better yet, solved) this problem with the virtio network driver?

  Read the article

• My computer freezes irregularly

  - by Manhim

  My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now. Please note that this question change with each things that i try. (For additional details) What happens My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops) Sound keeps playing up to some time (Usually 10-30 seconds) then stops playing. Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see caracters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes. I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down. I still hear my hard drives and fans working. Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day. Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes. No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors). My G-15 LCD screen also freezes. Sometimes my G-15 LCD screen flickers and caracters gets caried around temporary under heavy load. Now, most of the times, the BIOS hard disks boot order gets reversed for some reason and I have to put it to the right one and save each times I boot. (Might be unrelated, not sure, but it first started yesterday) Sometimes the BIOS doesn't detect my 750GB hard drive plugged in SATA1. What I did so far I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive. My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heatsink and it's now between 45-55. I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't freeze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores) Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors. Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't freeze during the tests. (No artefacts either) I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update. I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think). I have ran on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (Appart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to backup my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happenned on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port] I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer. Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu Ran 6 short different CPU stress test on Fedora 15 (Haven't found any complete stress testers for Linux) and it didn't crash. Changed the thermal paste to some Artic Silver 5 for my CPU and stress tested the CPU, temperature was at 50 idle, then 64 highest and slowly went down to 62 during the test. Ran some stress testing with a temporary graphic card and it went ok. Ran furmark stress test with my original graphic card and it freezed again. GPU had a temp of 74C, a CPU temp of 58C and a mobo temp of 40C or 45C (Dunno which one it is from SpeedFan). Ran a furmark stress test and a CPU stress test at the same time, results: http://pastebin.com/2t6PLpdJ I have been using my computer without stressing it for about 2 hours now and no crashes yet. I also have disabled the AMD Cool'n'quiet function on the BIOS for a more regular power to the CPU. When I ran Furmark without C'n'q my computer didn't freeze but I had a "Driver Kernel Error" that have recovered (And Furmark crashed) all that while running a CPU stress test. The computer eventually frozed without me being at it, but this time my screen just went on sleep and I couldn't wake it. Using the stability tester in nTune my computer freezed again (In the same manner as before). I notived that Speedfan gives me a -12V of -16.97V and a -5V of -8.78V. I wonder if these numbers are reliable and if they are good or bad. I have swapped my G-15 with another basic USB keyboard (HP) and I have ran furmark for about 10 minutes with a CPU stability test running each 60 seconds for 30 seconds and my computer haven't crashed yet. Ran some more extended tests without my G-15 and it freezed like it usually do. Removed the nForce Hard disk controler. Disabled command queuing in the NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller for both port 0 and port 1 (Errors from the logs) Used CPUID HwMonitor, here are the voltages: http://pastebin.com/dfM7p4jV Changed some configurations in the motherboard BIOS: Disabled PEG Link Mode, Changed AI Tuning to Standard, Disabled the 1394 Controller, Disabled HD Audio, Disabled JMicron RAID controller and Disabled SATA Raid. When it happens When I play video games (Mostly) When I play flash games (Second most) When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes) When my Graphic card and my CPU are stressed. Sometimes when my Graphic card is stressed. Never happenned while stressing only the CPU. Sometimes when my CPU is stressed. Specs Windows Seven x64 Home Premium Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks) Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations] 750W Power supply No overcloking. Ever. There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down) Event logs (Warnings, errors and critical errors) for the last 24 hours: http://pastebin.com/Bvvk31T7 My current to-try list Reinstall the drivers and software 1 by 1 and do extensive stress testing between each. Update the BIOS firmware to the most recent stable one. Change my motherboard. Status updates Keeping only the last 3 (28/06 04pm) More stress testing and still pass the tests. (28/06 03pm) Been stress testing for 10 minute straight now and 5 minutes with both CPU and GPU being stressed at the same time. (28/06 03pm) Stress-testing right now, so far no problems. A little hope Tests with Furmark and Prime95. Testing Windows bare-bone: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing an Anti-virus and some software, restarting computer. Testing with Anti-virus and some software (No drivers installed): 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing audio drivers, restarting computer. Testing with the audio drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing the latest graphic drivers from EVGA's website (without 3d vision since I don't use it), restarting computer. Testing with the graphic drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Configuring Windows to my liking and installing more softwares. In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem) Because I don't really have the budget to just forget and replace everything. I also don't really have hardware to test-replace current hardware.

  Read the article

• Where should I start with debugging my exchange server?

  - by joadha

  I'm (foolishly?) attempting to install Exchange on top of Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) over Virtual Box running on Mac OSX Lion. Everything went smoothly until I got to the "Readiness Checks" tab. Readiness failed spectacularly on Hub Transport Role and Mailbox Role prereqs. Before I go too far down the rabbit hole in attempting to remedy this, I was hoping I could get some input on where to start in all of this. I already set up the following Active Directory roles, but it didn't seem to help: Active Directory Domain Services Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services I also enabled an Application Server role. Those three are the only roles I've set up-- I cannot locate within Server Manager the Organization Manager role or any of the other roles referenced in the list of borkedness below. Is this a typical experience in Exchange installation? Is there a tutorial created by somebody outside of Microsoft? Here's the output from Readiness Checks: Summary: 5 item(s). 2 succeeded, 3 failed. Elapsed time: 00:00:53 Configuring Prerequisites Completed Elapsed Time: 00:00:00 Languages Prerequisites Completed Elapsed Time: 00:00:09 Hub Transport Role Prerequisites Failed Error: Active Directory does not exist or cannot be contacted. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/? linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=51e5500d-8b18-4eee-bb8e-925d063b60a1 Error: You must be a member of the 'Organization Management' role group or 'Enterprise Admins' group to continue. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=1d750594-9222-44d7-8f80-45e522e889e6 Error: Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Could not find information about the local domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: You must be logged on as an Exchange organization administrator to install or upgrade the first Hub Transport server role in the topology. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=e58f51fd-2c66-4a4b-914a-628dccf9a09f Error: The 'IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility' component is not installed. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=0a71c4f6-68de-40f7-94cf-74b73cbda37b Error: The 'IIS 7 Basic Authentication' component required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Windows Authentication' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 .NET Extensibility' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=5f29a861-f472-4f11-a23a-04155373f5ed Error: This computer is not part of a Windows domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: The user is not logged on to a Windows domain Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Warning: This computer requires the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs. Please install the software from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=191548 Warning: The 'IIS 6 Management Console' component is recommended as it allows for the administration of all server roles. Install the component via Server Manager. Warning: Setup cannot verify that the 'Host' (A) record for this computer exists within the DNS database on server 10.1.10.1. Elapsed Time: 00:00:15 Client Access Role Prerequisites Failed Error: Active Directory does not exist or cannot be contacted. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=51e5500d-8b18-4eee-bb8e-925d063b60a1 Error: Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=a4a4d339-4009-4fb7-b842-ca2ba79f13f0 Error: The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=9eeaa77f-4d46-4d9a-9c36-f262a075392b Error: You must be a member of the 'Organization Management' role group or 'Enterprise Admins' group to continue. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=1d750594-9222-44d7-8f80-45e522e889e6 Error: Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Could not find information about the local domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: You must be logged on as an Exchange organization administrator to install or upgrade the first Client Access server role in the topology. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=e58f51fd-2c66-4a4b-914a-628dccf9a09f Error: The 'IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility' component is not installed. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=0a71c4f6-68de-40f7-94cf-74b73cbda37b Error: The 'IIS 6 Management Console' component is not installed. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=0a71c4f6-68de-40f7-94cf-74b73cbda37b Error: The 'IIS 7 Dynamic Content Compression' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/? linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Static Content Compression' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Basic Authentication' component required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Windows Authentication' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Digest Authentication' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 .NET Extensibility' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=5f29a861-f472-4f11-a23a-04155373f5ed Error: This computer is not part of a Windows domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: The user is not logged on to a Windows domain Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Warning: Setup cannot verify that the 'Host' (A) record for this computer exists within the DNS database on server 10.1.10.1. Elapsed Time: 00:00:14 Mailbox Role Prerequisites Failed Error: Active Directory does not exist or cannot be contacted. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=51e5500d-8b18-4eee-bb8e-925d063b60a1 Error: Unable to read data from the Metabase. Ensure that Microsoft Internet Information Services is installed. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=a4a4d339-4009-4fb7-b842-ca2ba79f13f0 Error: The World Wide Web (W3SVC) service is either disabled or not installed on this computer. You must exit Setup, install the required component, then restart the Setup process. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=9eeaa77f-4d46-4d9a-9c36-f262a075392b Error: You must be a member of the 'Organization Management' role group or 'Enterprise Admins' group to continue. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=1d750594-9222-44d7-8f80-45e522e889e6 Error: Setup encountered a problem while validating the state of Active Directory: Could not find information about the local domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: You must be logged on as an Exchange organization administrator to install or upgrade the first Mailbox server role in the topology. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=e58f51fd-2c66-4a4b-914a-628dccf9a09f Error: The 'IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility' component is not installed. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=0a71c4f6-68de-40f7-94cf-74b73cbda37b Error: The 'IIS 6 Management Console' component is not installed. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=0a71c4f6-68de-40f7-94cf-74b73cbda37b Error: The 'IIS 7 Basic Authentication' component required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 Windows Authentication' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=41a25c5e-0d39-4e55-a1f0-7be885982236 Error: The 'IIS 7 .NET Extensibility' component is required. Install the component via Server Manager. Click here for help... http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=30939&l=en&v=ExBPA.14&id=5f29a861-f472-4f11-a23a-04155373f5ed Error: This computer is not part of a Windows domain. Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Error: The user is not logged on to a Windows domain Click here for help... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ms.exch.err.default(EXCHG.141).aspx?v=14.1.218.11&e=ms.exch.err.Ex28883C&l=0&cl=cp Warning: This computer requires the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs. Please install the software from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=191548 Warning: Setup cannot verify that the 'Host' (A) record for this computer exists within the DNS database on server 10.1.10.1. Elapsed Time: 00:00:14

  Read the article

• cannot access a site from Mac OSX Lion but can from other machines on network?

  - by house9

  SOLVED: The issue is with the hamachi client, hamachi is hi-jacking all of the 5.0.0.0/8 address block http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi_(software)#Criticism http://b.logme.in/2012/11/07/changes-to-hamachi-on-november-19th/ The fix on Mac LogMeIn Hamachi Preferences Settings Advanced Peer Connections IP protocol mode IPv6 only (default is both) If you can only connect to some of your network over IPv4 this 'fix' will NOT work for you ----- A few weeks ago I started using a service - https://semaphoreapp.com I think they made DNS changes a week ago and ever since I cannot access the site from my Mac OSX Lion (10.7.4) machine (my main development machine) but I can access the site from other machines on my network ipad windows machine MacMini (10.6.8) After some google searching I tried both of these dscacheutil -flushcache sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder but no go, I've contacted semaphoreapp as well, but nothing so far - also of interest, one of my colleagues has the exact same problem, cannot access via Mac OSX Lion but can via windows machine, we work remotely and are not on the same ISP some additional info Lion (10.7.4) cannot access site host semaphoreapp.com semaphoreapp.com has address 5.9.53.16 ping semaphoreapp.com PING semaphoreapp.com (5.9.53.16): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 Request timeout for icmp_seq 3 ping: sendto: No route to host Request timeout for icmp_seq 4 ping: sendto: Host is down Request timeout for icmp_seq 5 ping: sendto: Host is down Request timeout for icmp_seq 6 ping: sendto: Host is down Request timeout for icmp_seq 7 .... traceroute semaphoreapp.com traceroute to semaphoreapp.com (5.9.53.16), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 * * * 2 * * * traceroute: sendto: No route to host 3 traceroute: wrote semaphoreapp.com 52 chars, ret=-1 *traceroute: sendto: Host is down traceroute: wrote semaphoreapp.com 52 chars, ret=-1 .... and MacMini (10.6.8) can access it host semaphoreapp.com semaphoreapp.com has address 5.9.53.16 ping semaphoreapp.com PING semaphoreapp.com (5.9.53.16): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 5.9.53.16: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=191.458 ms 64 bytes from 5.9.53.16: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=202.923 ms 64 bytes from 5.9.53.16: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=180.746 ms 64 bytes from 5.9.53.16: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=200.616 ms 64 bytes from 5.9.53.16: icmp_seq=4 ttl=44 time=178.818 ms .... traceroute semaphoreapp.com traceroute to semaphoreapp.com (5.9.53.16), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 1.677 ms 1.446 ms 1.445 ms 2 * LOCAL ISP 11.957 ms * 3 etc... 10.704 ms 14.183 ms 9.341 ms 4 etc... 32.641 ms 12.147 ms 10.850 ms 5 etc.... 44.205 ms 54.563 ms 36.243 ms 6 vlan139.car1.seattle1.level3.net (4.53.145.165) 50.136 ms 45.873 ms 30.396 ms 7 ae-32-52.ebr2.seattle1.level3.net (4.69.147.182) 31.926 ms 40.507 ms 49.993 ms 8 ae-2-2.ebr2.denver1.level3.net (4.69.132.54) 78.129 ms 59.674 ms 49.905 ms 9 ae-3-3.ebr1.chicago2.level3.net (4.69.132.62) 99.019 ms 82.008 ms 76.074 ms 10 ae-1-100.ebr2.chicago2.level3.net (4.69.132.114) 96.185 ms 75.658 ms 75.662 ms 11 ae-6-6.ebr2.washington12.level3.net (4.69.148.145) 104.322 ms 105.563 ms 118.480 ms 12 ae-5-5.ebr2.washington1.level3.net (4.69.143.221) 93.646 ms 99.423 ms 96.067 ms 13 ae-41-41.ebr2.paris1.level3.net (4.69.137.49) 177.744 ms ae-44-44.ebr2.paris1.level3.net (4.69.137.61) 199.363 ms 198.405 ms 14 ae-47-47.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.143.141) 176.876 ms ae-45-45.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.143.133) 170.994 ms ae-46-46.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.143.137) 177.308 ms 15 ae-61-61.csw1.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.140.2) 176.769 ms ae-91-91.csw4.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.140.14) 178.676 ms 173.644 ms 16 ae-2-70.edge7.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.154.75) 180.407 ms ae-3-80.edge7.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.154.139) 174.861 ms 176.578 ms 17 as33891-net.edge7.frankfurt1.level3.net (195.16.162.94) 175.448 ms 185.658 ms 177.081 ms 18 hos-bb1.juniper4.rz16.hetzner.de (213.239.240.202) 188.700 ms 190.332 ms 188.196 ms 19 hos-tr4.ex3k14.rz16.hetzner.de (213.239.233.98) 199.632 ms hos-tr3.ex3k14.rz16.hetzner.de (213.239.233.66) 185.938 ms hos-tr2.ex3k14.rz16.hetzner.de (213.239.230.34) 182.378 ms 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * any ideas? EDIT: adding tcpdump MacMini (which can connect) while running - ping semaphoreapp.com sudo tcpdump -v -i en0 dst semaphoreapp.com Password: tcpdump: listening on en0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes 17:33:03.337165 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 20153, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->3129)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 0, length 64 17:33:04.337279 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 26049, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->1a21)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 1, length 64 17:33:05.337425 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 47854, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->c4f3)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 2, length 64 17:33:06.337548 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 24772, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->1f1e)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 3, length 64 17:33:07.337670 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 8171, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->5ff7)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 4, length 64 17:33:08.337816 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 35810, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->f3ff)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 5, length 64 17:33:09.337948 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 31120, offset 0, flags [none], proto ICMP (1), length 84, bad cksum 0 (->652)!) 192.168.0.6 > static.16.53.9.5.clients.your-server.de: ICMP echo request, id 61918, seq 6, length 64 ^C 7 packets captured 1047 packets received by filter 0 packets dropped by kernel OSX Lion (cannot connect) while running - ping semaphoreapp.com # wireless ~ $ sudo tcpdump -v -i en1 dst semaphoreapp.com Password: tcpdump: listening on en1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes ^C 0 packets captured 262 packets received by filter 0 packets dropped by kernel and # wired ~ $ sudo tcpdump -v -i en0 dst semaphoreapp.com tcpdump: listening on en0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 65535 bytes ^C 0 packets captured 219 packets received by filter 0 packets dropped by kernel above output after Request timeout for icmp_seq 25 or 30 times from ping. I don't know much about tcpdump, but to me it doesn't seem like the ping requests are leaving my machine?

  Read the article

• What’s New from the Oracle Marketing Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2014?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Marketing—CX Central is your hub for all things Marketing related at OpenWorld in San Francisco, September 28-October 2, 2014. Learn how to personalize the modern marketing journey to improve customer loyalty. We’re hosting more than 60 breakout sessions, half of which will highlight customer success stories from marquee brands including Bizo, Comcast, Dell, Epson, John Deere, Lane Bryant, ReadyTalk and Shutterfly. Moscone West, Levels 2 and 3 To learn more about how modern marketing works, visit Moscone West, levels 2 and 3, for exciting demos of each of the Oracle Marketing Cloud solutions (BlueKai, Compendium, Eloqua, Push I/O, and Responsys). You also can check out our stations for Vertical Marketing Best Practices, the Markie Awards, and more! CX Spotlight Sessions “Accelerating Big Profits in Big Data,” Jeff Tanner, Baylor University “Using Content Marketing to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey,” Jennifer Agustin, Bizo “Expanding Your Marketing with Proven Testing and Optimization,” Brian Border, Shutterfly and Matthew Balthazor, Epson “Modern Marketing: The New Digital Dialogue,” Cory Treffiletti, Oracle A Special Marquee Session Dell’s Hayden Mugford will speak on “The Digital Ecosystem: Driving Experience Through Contact Engagement.” She will highlight how the organization built a digital ecosystem that supports a behaviorally driven, multivehicle nurturing campaign. The Dell 1:1 Global Marketing team worked with multiple partners to innovate integrations with Oracle Eloqua, Oracle Real-Time Decisions for real-time decision logic, and a content management system (CMS) that enables 100 percent customized e-mails. The program doubled average order values for nurtured contacts versus non-nurtured and tripled open and click-through rates versus push e-mail. Other Oracle Marketing Cloud Session Highlights Thought leadership by role Exploring the benefits of moving to the Cloud Product line roadmaps and innovations in Marketing Technical deep dives for product lines within Marketing Best practices and impactful business measurements Solutions that are Integrated across CX Target Audience Session content is geared toward professionals in Marketing, Marketing Operations, Marketing Demand Generation, Social: Chief Marketing Officers, Vice Presidents, Directors and Managers. Outcomes Customers attending Marketing—CX Central @ OpenWorld will be able to: Gain insight into delivering consistent cross-channel marketing Discover how to provide the right information to the right customer at the right time and with the right channel Get answers to burning questions and advice on business challenges Hear from other Oracle customers about recommended best practices to help their organization move forward Network and share ideas to help create a strategy for connecting with customers in better ways It Wouldn’t Be an Oracle Marketing Cloud Event Without a Party! We’re hosting CX Central Fest:  a unique customer experience specifically designed for attendees of CX Central. It will include a chance to rock out at a private concert featuring Los Angeles indie electronic pop group, Capital Cities! Join us Tuesday, September 30 from 7-9 p.m. OpenWorld is a fabulous way for your customers to see all that Oracle Marketing Cloud has to offer. Pass on an invitation today. By Laura Vogel (Oracle) /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

  Read the article

• Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer

  - by mbcrump

  Tweet this list! Add a link to my site to your bookmarks to quickly find this page again! Add me to twitter! This is a list of the tools/utilities that I use to do my job/hobby. I wanted this page to load fast and contain information that only you care about. If I have missed a tool that you like, feel free to contact me and I will add it to the list. Also, this list took a lot of time to complete. Please do not steal my work, if you like the page then please link back to my site. I will keep the links/information updated as new tools/utilities are created.  Windows/.NET Development – This is a list of tools that any Windows/.NET developer should have in his bag. I have used at some point in my career everything listed on this page and below is the tools worth keeping. Name Description License AnkhSVN Subversion support for Visual Studio. It also works with VS2010. Free Aurora XAML Designer One of the best XAML creation tools available. Has a ton of built in templates that you can copy/paste into VS2010. COST/Trial BeyondCompare Beyond Compare 3 is the ideal tool for comparing files and folders on your Windows or Linux system. Visualize changes in your code and carefully reconcile them. COST/Trial BuildIT Automated Task Tool Its main purpose is to automate tasks, whether it is the final packaging of a product, an automated daily build, maybe sending out a mailing list, even backing-up files. Free C Sharper for VB Convert VB to C#. COST CLRProfiler Analyze and improve the behavior of your .NET app. Free CodeRush Direct competitor to ReSharper, contains similar feature. This is one of those decide for yourself. COST/Trial Disk2VHD Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). Free Eazfuscator.NET Is a free obfuscator for .NET. The main purpose is to protect intellectual property of software. Free EQATEC Profiler Make your .NET app run faster. No source code changes are needed. Just point the profiler to your app, run the modified code, and get a visual report. COST Expression Studio 3/4 Comes with Web, Blend, Sketch Flow and more. You can create websites, produce beautiful XAML and more. COST/Trial Expresso The award-winning Expresso editor is equally suitable as a teaching tool for the beginning user of regular expressions or as a full-featured development environment for the experienced programmer or web designer with an extensive knowledge of regular expressions. Free Fiddler Fiddler is a web debugging proxy which logs all HTTP(s) traffic between your computer and the internet. Free Firebug Powerful Web development tool. If you build websites, you will need this. Free FxCop FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Free GAC Browser and Remover Easy way to remove multiple assemblies from the GAC. Assemblies registered by programs like Install Shield can also be removed. Free GAC Util The Global Assembly Cache tool allows you to view and manipulate the contents of the global assembly cache and download cache. Free HelpScribble Help Scribble is a full-featured, easy-to-use help authoring tool for creating help files from start to finish. You can create Win Help (.hlp) files, HTML Help (.chm) files, a printed manual and online documentation (on a web site) all from the same Help Scribble project. COST/Trial IETester IETester is a free Web Browser that allows you to have the rendering and JavaScript engines of IE9 preview, IE8, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Windows 7, Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Free iTextSharp iText# (iTextSharp) is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF generation written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. Use the iText mailing list to get support. Free Kaxaml Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content. Free LINQPad LinqPad lets you interactively query databases in a LINQ. Free Linquer Many programmers are familiar with SQL and will need a help in the transition to LINQ. Sometimes there are complicated queries to be written and Linqer can help by converting SQL scripts to LINQ. COST/Trial LiquidXML Liquid XML Studio 2010 is an advanced XML developers toolkit and IDE, containing all the tools needed for designing and developing XML schema and applications. COST/Trial Log4Net log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. We have kept the framework similar in spirit to the original log4j while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime. For more information on log4net see the features document. Free Microsoft Web Platform Installer The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is a free tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. Free Mono Development Don't have Visual Studio - no problem! This is an open Source C# and .NET development environment for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Free Net Mass Downloader While it’s great that Microsoft has released the .NET Reference Source Code, you can only get it one file at a time while you’re debugging. If you’d like to batch download it for reading or to populate the cache, you’d have to write a program that instantiated and called each method in the Framework Class Library. Fortunately, .NET Mass Downloader comes to the rescue! Free nMap Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Free NoScript (Firefox add-in) The NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plug-ins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser. Free NotePad 2 Notepad2, a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry. Free PageSpy PageSpy is a small add-on for Internet Explorer that allows you to select any element within a webpage, select an option in the context menu, and view detailed information about both the coding behind the page and the element you selected. Free Phrase Express PhraseExpress manages your frequently used text snippets in customizable categories for quick access. Free PowerGui PowerGui is a free community for PowerGUI, a graphical user interface and script editor for Microsoft Windows PowerShell! Free Powershell Comes with Win7, but you can automate tasks by using the .NET Framework. Great for network admins. Free Process Explorer Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded. Also, included in the SysInterals Suite. Free Process Monitor Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. Free Reflector Explore and analyze compiled .NET assemblies, viewing them in C#, Visual Basic, and IL. This is an Essential for any .NET developer. Free Regular Expression Library Stuck on a Regular Expression but you think someone has already figured it out? Chances are they have. Free Regulator Regulator makes Regular Expressions easy. This is a must have for a .NET Developer. Free RenameMaestro RenameMaestro is probably the easiest batch file renamer you'll find to instantly rename multiple files COST ReSharper The one program that I cannot live without. Supports VS2010 and offers simple refactoring, code analysis/assistance/cleanup/templates. One of the few applications that is worth the $$$. COST/Trial ScrewTurn Wiki ScrewTurn Wiki allows you to create, manage and share wikis. A wiki is a collaboratively-edited, information-centered website: the most famous is Wikipedia. Free SharpDevelop What is #develop? SharpDevelop is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform. Free Show Me The Template Show Me The Template is a tool for exploring the templates, be their data, control or items panel, that comes with the controls built into WPF for all 6 themes. Free SnippetCompiler Compiles code snippets without opening Visual Studio. It does not support .NET 4. Free SQL Prompt SQL Prompt is a plug-in that increases how fast you can work with SQL. It provides code-completion for SQL server, reformatting, db schema information and snippets. Awesome! COST/Trial SQLinForm SQLinForm is an automatic SQL code formatter for all major databases  including ORACLE, SQL Server, DB2, UDB, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Teradata, MySQL, MS Access etc. with over 70 formatting options. COST/OnlineFree SSMS Tools SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) including SSMS Express. Free Storm STORM is a free and open source tool for testing web services. Free Telerik Code Convertor Convert code from VB to C Sharp and Vice Versa. Free TurtoiseSVN TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. Free UltraEdit UltraEdit is the ideal text, HTML and hex editor, and an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. UltraEdit is also an XML editor including a tree-style XML parser. An industry-award winner, UltraEdit supports disk-based 64-bit file handling (standard) on 32-bit Windows platforms (Windows 2000 and later). COST/Trial Virtual Windows XP Comes with some W7 version and allows you to run WinXP along side W7. Free VirtualBox Virtualization by Sun Microsystems. You can virtualize Windows, Linux and more. Free Visual Log Parser SQL queries against a variety of log files and other system data sources. Free WinMerge WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle. Free Wireshark Wireshark is one of the best network protocol analyzer's for Unix and windows. This has been used several times to get me out of a bind. Free XML Notepad 07 Old, but still one of my favorite XML viewers. Free Productivity Tools – This is the list of tools that I use to save time or quickly navigate around Windows. Name Description License AutoHotKey Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder. Free CLCL CLCL is clipboard caching utility. Free Ditto Ditto is an extension to the standard windows clipboard. It saves each item placed on the clipboard allowing you access to any of those items at a later time. Ditto allows you to save any type of information that can be put on the clipboard, text, images, html, custom formats, ..... Free Evernote Remember everything from notes to photos. It will synch between computers/devices. Free InfoRapid Inforapid is a search tool that will display all you search results in a html like browser. If you click on a word in that browser, it will start another search to the word you clicked on. Handy if you want to trackback something to it's true origin. The word you looked for will be highlighted in red. Clicking on the red word will open the containing file in a text based viewer. Clicking on any word in the opened document will start another search on that word. Free KatMouse The prime purpose of the KatMouse utility is to enhance the functionality of mice with a scroll wheel, offering 'universal' scrolling: moving the mouse wheel will scroll the window directly beneath the mouse cursor (not the one with the keyboard focus, which is default on Windows OSes). This is a major increase in the usefulness of the mouse wheel. Free ScreenR Instant Screencast with nothing to download. Works with Mac or PC and free. Free Start++ Start++ is an enhancement for the Start Menu in Windows Vista. It also extends the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands.  For example, typing "w Windows Vista" will take you to the Windows Vista page on Wikipedia! Free Synergy Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s). Free Texter Texter lets you define text substitution hot strings that, when triggered, will replace hotstring with a larger piece of text. By entering your most commonly-typed snippets of text into Texter, you can save countless keystrokes in the course of the day. Free Total Commander File handling, FTP, Archive handling and much more. Even works with Win3.11. COST/Trial Available Wizmouse WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel. Free Xmarks Bookmark sync and search between computers. Free General Utilities – This is a list for power user users or anyone that wants more out of Windows. I usually install a majority of these whenever I get a new system. Name Description License µTorrent µTorrent is a lightweight and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows or Mac with many features. I use this for downloading LEGAL media. Free Audacity Audacity® is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information. Free AVast Free FREE Antivirus. Free CD Burner XP Pro CDBurnerXP is a free application to burn CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. It also includes the feature to burn and create ISOs, as well as a multilanguage interface. Free CDEX You can extract digital audio CDs into mp3/wav. Free Combofix Combofix is a freeware (a legitimate spyware remover created by sUBs), Combofix was designed to scan a computer for known malware, spyware (SurfSideKick, QooLogic, and Look2Me as well as any other combination of the mentioned spyware applications) and remove them. Free Cpu-Z Provides information about some of the main devices of your system. Free Cropper Cropper is a screen capture utility written in C#. It makes it fast and easy to grab parts of your screen. Use it to easily crop out sections of vector graphic files such as Fireworks without having to flatten the files or open in a new editor. Use it to easily capture parts of a web site, including text and images. It's also great for writing documentation that needs images of your application or web site. Free DropBox Drag and Drop files to sync between computers. Free DVD-Fab Converts/Copies DVDs/Blu-Ray to different formats. (like mp4, mkv, avi) COST/Trial Available FastStone Capture FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/web pages. Free ffdshow FFDShow is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, H.264, FLV1, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, MPEG-4 movies. Free Filezilla FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface. You can also download a server version. Free FireFox Web Browser, do you really need an explanation? Free FireGestures A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures. Free FoxIt Reader Light weight PDF viewer. You should install this with the advanced setting or it will install a toolbar and setup some shortcuts. Free gSynchIt Synch Gmail and Outlook. Even supports Outlook 2010 32/64 bit COST/Trial Available Hulu Desktop At home or in a hotel, this has replaced my cable/satellite subscription. Free ImgBurn ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! Free Infrarecorder InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration. Free KeePass KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. Free LastPass Another password management, synchronize between browsers, automatic form filling and more. Free Live Essentials One download and lots of programs including Mail, Live Writer, Movie Maker and more! Free Monitores MonitorES is a small windows utility that helps you to turnoff monitor display when you lock down your machine.Also when you lock your machine, it will pause all your running media programs & set your IM status message to "Away" / Custom message(via options) and restore it back to normal when you back. Free mRemote mRemote is a full-featured, multi-tab remote connections manager. Free Open Office OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. Free Paint.NET Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface for editing photos. Free Picasa Picasa is free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Free Pidgin Pidgin is an easy to use and free chat client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and more chat networks all at once. Free PING PING is a live Linux ISO, based on the excellent Linux From Scratch (LFS) documentation. It can be burnt on a CD and booted, or integrated into a PXE / RIS environment. Free Putty PuTTY is an SSH and telnet client, developed originally by Simon Tatham for the Windows platform. Free Revo Uninstaller Revo Uninstaller Pro helps you to uninstall software and remove unwanted programs installed on your computer easily! Even if you have problems uninstalling and cannot uninstall them from "Windows Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet.Revo Uninstaller is a much faster and more powerful alternative to "Windows Add or Remove Programs" applet! It has very powerful features to uninstall and remove programs. Free Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials is a new, free consumer anti-malware solution for your computer. Free SetupVirtualCloneDrive Virtual CloneDrive works and behaves just like a physical CD/DVD drive, however it exists only virtually. Point to the .ISO file and it appears in Windows Explorer as a Drive. Free Shark 007 Codec Pack Play just about any file format with this download. Also includes my W7 Media Playlist Generator. Free Snagit 9 Screen Capture on steroids. Add arrows, captions, etc to any screenshot. COST/Trial Available SysinternalsSuite Go ahead and download the entire sys internals suite. I have mentioned multiple programs in this suite already. Free TeraCopy TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user with a lot of features. Free for Home TrueCrypt Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux Free TweetDeck Fully featured Twitter client. Free UltraVNC UltraVNC is a powerful, easy to use and free software that can display the screen of another computer (via internet or network) on your own screen. The program allows you to use your mouse and keyboard to control the other PC remotely. It means that you can work on a remote computer, as if you were sitting in front of it, right from your current location. Free Unlocker Unlocks locked files. Pretty simple right? Free VLC Media Player VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats Free Windows 7 Media Playlist This program is special to my heart because I wrote it. It has been mentioned on podcast and various websites. It allows you to quickly create wvx video playlist for Windows Media Center. Free WinRAR WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. COST/Trial Available Blogging – I use the following for my blog. Name Description License Insert Code for Windows Live Writer Insert Code for Windows Live Writer will format a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML, MSH, JavaScript, Visual Basic and TSQL. Free LiveWriter Included in Live Essentials, but the ultimate in Windows Blogging Free PasteAsVSCode Plug-in for Windows Live Writer that pastes clipboard content as Visual Studio code. Preserves syntax highlighting, indentation and background color. Converts RTF, outputted by Visual Studio, into HTML. Free Desktop Management – The list below represent the best in Windows Desktop Management. Name Description License 7 Stacks Allows users to have "stacks" of icons in their taskbar. Free Executor Executor is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. Free Fences Fences is a program that helps you organize your desktop and can hide your icons when they are not in use. Free RocketDock Rocket Dock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Free WindowsTab Tabbing is an essential feature of modern web browsers. Window Tabs brings the productivity of tabbed window management to all of your desktop applications. Free

  Read the article

• JavaOne Latin America 2012 is a wrap!

  - by arungupta

  Third JavaOne in Latin America (2010, 2011) is now a wrap! Like last year, the event started with a Geek Bike Ride. I could not attend the bike ride because of pre-planned activities but heard lots of good comments about it afterwards. This is a great way to engage with JavaOne attendees in an informal setting. I highly recommend you joining next time! JavaOne Blog provides a a great coverage for the opening keynotes. I talked about all the great set of functionality that is coming in the Java EE 7 Platform. Also shared the details on how Java EE 7 JSRs are willing to take help from the Adopt-a-JSR program. glassfish.org/adoptajsr bridges the gap between JUGs willing to participate and looking for areas on where to help. The different specification leads have identified areas on where they are looking for feedback. So if you are JUG is interested in picking a JSR, I recommend to take a look at glassfish.org/adoptajsr and jump on the bandwagon. The main attraction for the Tuesday evening was the GlassFish Party. The party was packed with Latin American JUG leaders, execs from Oracle, and local community members. Free flowing food and beer/caipirinhas acted as great lubricant for great conversations. Some of them were considering the migration from Spring -> Java EE 6 and replacing their primary app server with GlassFish. Locaweb, a local hosting provider sponsored a round of beer at the party as well. They are planning to come with Java EE hosting next year and GlassFish would be a logical choice for them ;) I heard lots of positive feedback about the party afterwards. Many thanks to Bruno Borges for organizing a great party! Check out some more fun pictures of the party! Next day, I gave a presentation on "The Java EE 7 Platform: Productivity and HTML 5" and the slides are now available: With so much new content coming in the plaform: Java Caching API (JSR 107) Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236) Batch Applications for the Java Platform (JSR 352) Java API for JSON (JSR 353) Java API for WebSocket (JSR 356) And JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR 339) and JMS 2.0 (JSR 343) getting major updates, there is definitely lot of excitement that was evident amongst the attendees. The talk was delivered in the biggest hall and had about 200 attendees. Also spent a lot of time talking to folks at the OTN Lounge. The JUG leaders appreciation dinner in the evening had its usual share of fun. Day 3 started with a session on "Building HTML5 WebSocket Apps in Java". The slides are now available: The room was packed with about 150 attendees and there was good interaction in the room as well. A collaborative whiteboard built using WebSocket was very well received. The following tweets made it more worthwhile: A WebSocket speek, by @ArunGupta, was worth every hour lost in transit. #JavaOneBrasil2012, #JavaOneBr @arungupta awesome presentation about WebSockets :) The session was immediately followed by the hands-on lab "Developing JAX-RS Web Applications Utilizing Server-Sent Events and WebSocket". The lab covers JAX-RS 2.0, Jersey-specific features such as Server-Sent Events, and a WebSocket endpoint using JSR 356. The complete self-paced lab guide can be downloaded from here. The lab was planned for 2 hours but several folks finished the entire exercise in about 75 mins. The wonderfully written lab material and an added incentive of Java EE 6 Pocket Guide did the trick ;-) I also spoke at "The Java Community Process: How You Can Make a Positive Difference". It was really great to see several JUG leaders talking about Adopt-a-JSR program and other activities that attendees can do to participate in the JCP. I shared details about Adopt a Java EE 7 JSR as well. The community keynote in the evening was looking fun but I had to leave in between to go through the peak Sao Paulo traffic time :) Enjoy the complete set of pictures in the album:

  Read the article

• Creating a dynamic proxy generator – Part 1 – Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and cach

  - by SeanMcAlinden

  I’ve recently started a project with a few mates to learn the ins and outs of Dependency Injection, AOP and a number of other pretty crucial patterns of development as we’ve all been using these patterns for a while but have relied totally on third part solutions to do the magic. We thought it would be interesting to really get into the details by rolling our own IoC container and hopefully learn a lot on the way, and you never know, we might even create an excellent framework. The open source project is called Rapid IoC and is hosted at http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ One of the most interesting tasks for me is creating the dynamic proxy generator for enabling Aspect Orientated Programming (AOP). In this series of articles, I’m going to track each step I take for creating the dynamic proxy generator and I’ll try my best to explain what everything means - mainly as I’ll be using Reflection.Emit to emit a fair amount of intermediate language code (IL) to create the proxy types at runtime which can be a little taxing to read. It’s worth noting that building the proxy is without a doubt going to be slightly painful so I imagine there will be plenty of areas I’ll need to change along the way. Anyway lets get started…   Part 1 - Creating the Assembly builder, Module builder and caching mechanism Part 1 is going to be a really nice simple start, I’m just going to start by creating the assembly, module and type caches. The reason we need to create caches for the assembly, module and types is simply to save the overhead of recreating proxy types that have already been generated, this will be one of the important steps to ensure that the framework is fast… kind of important as we’re calling the IoC container ‘Rapid’ – will be a little bit embarrassing if we manage to create the slowest framework. The Assembly builder The assembly builder is what is used to create an assembly at runtime, we’re going to have two overloads, one will be for the actual use of the proxy generator, the other will be mainly for testing purposes as it will also save the assembly so we can use Reflector to examine the code that has been created. Here’s the code: DynamicAssemblyBuilder using System; using System.Reflection; using System.Reflection.Emit; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly {     /// <summary>     /// Class for creating an assembly builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicAssemblyBuilder     {         #region Create           /// <summary>         /// Creates an assembly builder.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param>         public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName)         {             AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName);               AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(                     name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.Run);               DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly);               return assembly;         }           /// <summary>         /// Creates an assembly builder and saves the assembly to the passed in location.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyName">Name of the assembly.</param>         /// <param name="filePath">The file path.</param>         public static AssemblyBuilder Create(string assemblyName, string filePath)         {             AssemblyName name = new AssemblyName(assemblyName);               AssemblyBuilder assembly = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(                     name, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave, filePath);               DynamicAssemblyCache.Add(assembly);               return assembly;         }           #endregion     } }   So hopefully the above class is fairly explanatory, an AssemblyName is created using the passed in string for the actual name of the assembly. An AssemblyBuilder is then constructed with the current AppDomain and depending on the overload used, it is either just run in the current context or it is set up ready for saving. It is then added to the cache.   DynamicAssemblyCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions;   namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly {     /// <summary>     /// Cache for storing the dynamic assembly builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicAssemblyCache     {         #region Declarations           private static object syncRoot = new object();         internal static AssemblyBuilder Cache = null;           #endregion           #region Adds a dynamic assembly to the cache.           /// <summary>         /// Adds a dynamic assembly builder to the cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="assemblyBuilder">The assembly builder.</param>         public static void Add(AssemblyBuilder assemblyBuilder)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache = assemblyBuilder;             }         }           #endregion           #region Gets the cached assembly                  /// <summary>         /// Gets the cached assembly builder.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public static AssemblyBuilder Get         {             get             {                 lock (syncRoot)                 {                     if (Cache != null)                     {                         return Cache;                     }                 }                   throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoAssemblyInCache);             }         }           #endregion     } } The cache is simply a static property that will store the AssemblyBuilder (I know it’s a little weird that I’ve made it public, this is for testing purposes, I know that’s a bad excuse but hey…) There are two methods for using the cache – Add and Get, these just provide thread safe access to the cache.   The Module Builder The module builder is required as the create proxy classes will need to live inside a module within the assembly. Here’s the code: DynamicModuleBuilder using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Assembly; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module {     /// <summary>     /// Class for creating a module builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicModuleBuilder     {         /// <summary>         /// Creates a module builder using the cached assembly.         /// </summary>         public static ModuleBuilder Create()         {             string assemblyName = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.GetName().Name;               ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder = DynamicAssemblyCache.Get.DefineDynamicModule                 (assemblyName, string.Format("{0}.dll", assemblyName));               DynamicModuleCache.Add(moduleBuilder);               return moduleBuilder;         }     } } As you can see, the module builder is created on the assembly that lives in the DynamicAssemblyCache, the module is given the assembly name and also a string representing the filename if the assembly is to be saved. It is then added to the DynamicModuleCache. DynamicModuleCache using System.Reflection.Emit; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Exceptions; using Rapid.DynamicProxy.Resources.Exceptions; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Module {     /// <summary>     /// Class for storing the module builder.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicModuleCache     {         #region Declarations           private static object syncRoot = new object();         internal static ModuleBuilder Cache = null;           #endregion           #region Add           /// <summary>         /// Adds a dynamic module builder to the cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="moduleBuilder">The module builder.</param>         public static void Add(ModuleBuilder moduleBuilder)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache = moduleBuilder;             }         }           #endregion           #region Get           /// <summary>         /// Gets the cached module builder.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public static ModuleBuilder Get         {             get             {                 lock (syncRoot)                 {                     if (Cache != null)                     {                         return Cache;                     }                 }                   throw new RapidDynamicProxyAssertionException(AssertionResources.NoModuleInCache);             }         }           #endregion     } }   The DynamicModuleCache is very similar to the assembly cache, it is simply a statically stored module with thread safe Add and Get methods.   The DynamicTypeCache To end off this post, I’m going to create the cache for storing the generated proxy classes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the type of collection I should use to store the types and have finally decided that for the time being I’m going to use a generic dictionary. This may change when I can actually performance test the proxy generator but the time being I think it makes good sense in theory, mainly as it pretty much maintains it’s performance with varying numbers of items – almost constant (0)1. Plus I won’t ever need to loop through the items which is not the dictionaries strong point. Here’s the code as it currently stands: DynamicTypeCache using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Security.Cryptography; using System.Text; namespace Rapid.DynamicProxy.Types {     /// <summary>     /// Cache for storing proxy types.     /// </summary>     internal static class DynamicTypeCache     {         #region Declarations           static object syncRoot = new object();         public static Dictionary<string, Type> Cache = new Dictionary<string, Type>();           #endregion           /// <summary>         /// Adds a proxy to the type cache.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="type">The type.</param>         /// <param name="proxy">The proxy.</param>         public static void AddProxyForType(Type type, Type proxy)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Cache.Add(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), proxy);             }         }           /// <summary>         /// Tries the type of the get proxy for.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="type">The type.</param>         /// <returns></returns>         public static Type TryGetProxyForType(Type type)         {             lock (syncRoot)             {                 Type proxyType;                 Cache.TryGetValue(GetHashCode(type.AssemblyQualifiedName), out proxyType);                 return proxyType;             }         }           #region Private Methods           private static string GetHashCode(string fullName)         {             SHA1CryptoServiceProvider provider = new SHA1CryptoServiceProvider();             Byte[] buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(fullName);             Byte[] hash = provider.ComputeHash(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);             return Convert.ToBase64String(hash);         }           #endregion     } } As you can see, there are two public methods, one for adding to the cache and one for getting from the cache. Hopefully they should be clear enough, the Get is a TryGet as I do not want the dictionary to throw an exception if a proxy doesn’t exist within the cache. Other than that I’ve decided to create a key using the SHA1CryptoServiceProvider, this may change but my initial though is the SHA1 algorithm is pretty fast to put together using the provider and it is also very unlikely to have any hashing collisions. (there are some maths behind how unlikely this is – here’s the wiki if you’re interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA_hash_functions)   Anyway, that’s the end of part 1 – although I haven’t started any of the fun stuff (by fun I mean hairpulling, teeth grating Relfection.Emit style fun), I’ve got the basis of the DynamicProxy in place so all we have to worry about now is creating the types, interceptor classes, method invocation information classes and finally a really nice fluent interface that will abstract all of the hard-core craziness away and leave us with a lightning fast, easy to use AOP framework. Hope you find the series interesting. All of the source code can be viewed and/or downloaded at our codeplex site - http://rapidioc.codeplex.com/ Kind Regards, Sean.

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – What is Spatial Database? – Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spati

  - by pinaldave

  What is Spatial Database? A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. (Source: Wikipedia) Today I will be talking about the same subject at Microsoft TechEd India. If you want to learn about how to spatial aspect of data and how to integrate them with SQL Server this is the perfect session for you. Spatial is very special concept of SQL Server and I really like how it is implemented in SQL Server. In general Performance Tuning and Query Optimization is something I always have enjoyed in my professional life. Index are my best friends and many time, by implementing and many time by removing I have improved the performance of the system. In this session, I will be talking about Index along with Spatial Data. As Spatial Database is very interesting concept, I will cover super short but very interesting 10 quick slides about this subject. I will make sure in very first 20 mins, you will understand following topics Introduction to Spatial Database One line definition Understanding Spatial Indexing Index Internals Query/Performance Tuning Query Hinting/Cost Analysis Spatial Index Catalog Views Performance Troubleshooting Finding Optimal Index using Spatial Index SP Common Errors Index Maintenance This slides decks will be followed by around 30 mins demo which will have story of geometry, geography, index internals and performance tuning. If you are interested in learning how GIS works and how SQL Server out of the box supports this wonderful tools, you will really like how the story is told. I am sure all people who attend the event will know how the Bangalore is positioned on the map of India. I will take example of Bangalore and Hyderabad and demonstrate how index can improve the performance. Well there are lots of story to tell in the session, and I will be opening this session with the beautiful script of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus created by Michael J. Swart. I will also demonstrate few real life scenario where I will be talking about Spatial Database and its usage. Do not miss this session. At the end of session there will be book awarded to best participant. My session details: Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Date: April 14, 2010 Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database

  Read the article

• JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes .jblist{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0;padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c17_6{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c5_6{vertical-align:top;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c6_6{vertical-align:top;width:156pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c15_6{background-color:#ffffff} .c10_6{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c1_6{text-align:center;direction:ltr} .c0_6{line-height:1.0;direction:ltr} .c16_6{color:#666666;font-size:12pt} .c18_6{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c8_6{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c2_6{direction:ltr} .c14_6{font-size:8pt} .c11_6{font-size:10pt} .c7_6{font-weight:bold} .c12_6{height:0pt} .c3_6{height:11pt} .c13_6{border-collapse:collapse} .c4_6{font-family:"Courier New"} .c9_6{font-style:italic} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue This example leads you through the creation of an Oracle database Advanced Queue and the related WebLogic server objects in order to use AQ JMS in connection with a SOA composite. If you have not already done so, I recommend you look at the previous posts in this series, as they include steps which this example builds upon. The following examples will demonstrate how to write and read from the queue from a SOA process. 1. Recap and Prerequisites In the previous examples, we created a JMS Queue, a Connection Factory and a Connection Pool in the WebLogic Server Console. Then we wrote and deployed BPEL composites, which enqueued and dequeued a simple XML payload. AQ JMS allows you to interoperate with database Advanced Queueing via JMS in WebLogic server and therefore take advantage of database features, while maintaining compliance with the JMS architecture. AQ JMS uses the WebLogic JMS Foreign Server framework. A full description of this functionality can be found in the following Oracle documentation Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1 (10.3.6) Part Number E13738-06 7. Interoperating with Oracle AQ JMS http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13738/aq_jms.htm#CJACBCEJ For easier reference, this sample will use the same names for the objects as in the above document, except for the name of the database user, as it is possible that this user already exists in your database. We will create the following objects Database Objects Name Type AQJMSUSER Database User MyQueueTable Advanced Queue (AQ) Table UserQueue Advanced Queue WebLogic Server Objects Object Name Type JNDI Name aqjmsuserDataSource Data Source jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource AqJmsModule JMS System Module AqJmsForeignServer JMS Foreign Server AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory AqJmsForeignDestination AQ JMS Foreign Destination queue/USERQUEUE eis/aqjms/UserQueue Connection Pool eis/aqjms/UserQueue 2. Create a Database User and Advanced Queue The following steps can be executed in the database client of your choice, e.g. JDeveloper or SQL Developer. The examples below use SQL*Plus. Log in to the database as a DBA user, for example SYSTEM or SYS. Create the AQJMSUSER user and grant privileges to enable the user to create AQ objects. Create Database User and Grant AQ Privileges sqlplus system/password as SYSDBA GRANT connect, resource TO aqjmsuser IDENTIFIED BY aqjmsuser; GRANT aq_user_role TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqadm TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aq TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqin TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqjms TO aqjmsuser; Create the Queue Table and Advanced Queue and Start the AQ The following commands are executed as the aqjmsuser database user. Create the Queue Table connect aqjmsuser/aqjmsuser; BEGIN dbms_aqadm.create_queue_table ( queue_table = 'myQueueTable', queue_payload_type = 'sys.aq$_jms_text_message', multiple_consumers = false ); END; / Create the AQ BEGIN dbms_aqadm.create_queue ( queue_name = 'userQueue', queue_table = 'myQueueTable' ); END; / Start the AQ BEGIN dbms_aqadm.start_queue ( queue_name = 'userQueue'); END; / The above commands can be executed in a single PL/SQL block, but are shown as separate blocks in this example for ease of reference. You can verify the queue by executing the SQL command SELECT object_name, object_type FROM user_objects; which should display the following objects: OBJECT_NAME OBJECT_TYPE ------------------------------ ------------------- SYS_C0056513 INDEX SYS_LOB0000170822C00041$$ LOB SYS_LOB0000170822C00040$$ LOB SYS_LOB0000170822C00037$$ LOB AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_T INDEX AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_I INDEX AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_E QUEUE AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_F VIEW AQ$MYQUEUETABLE VIEW MYQUEUETABLE TABLE USERQUEUE QUEUE Similarly, you can view the objects in JDeveloper via a Database Connection to the AQJMSUSER. 3. Configure WebLogic Server and Add JMS Objects All these steps are executed from the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Log in as the webLogic user. Configure a WebLogic Data Source The data source is required for the database connection to the AQ created above. Navigate to domain > Services > Data Sources and press New then Generic Data Source. Use the values:Name: aqjmsuserDataSource JNDI Name: jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource Database type: Oracle Database Driver: *Oracle’ Driver (Thin XA) for Instance connections; Versions:9.0.1 and later Connection Properties: Enter the connection information to the database containing the AQ created above and enter aqjmsuser for the User Name and Password. Press Test Configuration to verify the connection details and press Next. Target the data source to the soa server. The data source will be displayed in the list. It is a good idea to test the data source at this stage. Click on aqjmsuserDataSource, select Monitoring > Testing > soa_server1 and press Test Data Source. The result is displayed at the top of the page. Configure a JMS System Module The JMS system module is required to host the JMS foreign server for AQ resources. Navigate to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules and select New. Use the values: Name: AqJmsModule (Leave Descriptor File Name and Location in Domain empty.) Target: soa_server1 Click Finish. The other resources will be created in separate steps. The module will be displayed in the list.   Configure a JMS Foreign Server A foreign server is required in order to reference a 3rd-party JMS provider, in this case the database AQ, within a local WebLogic server JNDI tree. Navigate to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules and select (click on) AqJmsModule to configure it. Under Summary of Resources, select New then Foreign Server. Name: AqJmsForeignServer Targets: The foreign server is targeted automatically to soa_server1, based on the JMS module’s target. Press Finish to create the foreign server. The foreign server resource will be listed in the Summary of Resources for the AqJmsModule, but needs additional configuration steps. Click on AqJmsForeignServer and select Configuration > General to complete the configuration: JNDI Initial Context Factory: oracle.jms.AQjmsInitialContextFactory JNDI Connection URL: <empty> JNDI Properties Credential:<empty> Confirm JNDI Properties Credential: <empty> JNDI Properties: datasource=jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource This is an important property. It is the JNDI name of the data source created above, which points to the AQ schema in the database and must be entered as a name=value pair, as in this example, e.g. datasource=jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource, including the “datasource=” property name. Default Targeting Enabled: Leave this value checked. Press Save to save the configuration. At this point it is a good idea to verify that the data source was written correctly to the config file. In a terminal window, navigate to $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/soa_domain/config/jms  and open the file aqjmsmodule-jms.xml . The foreign server configuration should contain the datasource name-value pair, as follows:   <foreign-server name="AqJmsForeignServer">         <default-targeting-enabled>true</default-targeting-enabled>         <initial-context-factory>oracle.jms.AQjmsInitialContextFactory</initial-context-factory>         <jndi-property>           <key> datasource </key>           <value> jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource </value>         </jndi-property>   </foreign-server> </weblogic-jms> Configure a JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory When creating the foreign server connection factory, you enter local and remote JNDI names. The name of the connection factory itself and the local JNDI name are arbitrary, but the remote JNDI name must match a specific format, depending on the type of queue or topic to be accessed in the database. This is very important and if the incorrect value is used, the connection to the queue will not be established and the error messages you get will not immediately reflect the cause of the error. The formats required (Remote JNDI names for AQ JMS Connection Factories) are described in the section Configure AQ Destinations  of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server document mentioned earlier. In this example, the remote JNDI name used is   XAQueueConnectionFactory  because it matches the AQ and data source created earlier, i.e. thin with AQ. Navigate to JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Connection Factories then New.Name: AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory Local JNDI Name: AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory Note: this local JNDI name is the JNDI name which your client application, e.g. a later BPEL process, will use to access this connection factory. Remote JNDI Name: XAQueueConnectionFactory Press OK to save the configuration. Configure an AQ JMS Foreign Server Destination A foreign server destination maps the JNDI name on the foreign JNDI provider to the respective local JNDI name, allowing the foreign JNDI name to be accessed via the local server. As with the foreign server connection factory, the local JNDI name is arbitrary (but must be unique), but the remote JNDI name must conform to a specific format defined in the section Configure AQ Destinations  of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server document mentioned earlier. In our example, the remote JNDI name is Queues/USERQUEUE , because it references a queue (as opposed to a topic) with the name USERQUEUE. We will name the local JNDI name queue/USERQUEUE, which is a little confusing (note the missing “s” in “queue), but conforms better to the JNDI nomenclature in our SOA server and also allows us to differentiate between the local and remote names for demonstration purposes. Navigate to JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Destinations and select New.Name: AqJmsForeignDestination Local JNDI Name: queue/USERQUEUE Remote JNDI Name:Queues/USERQUEUE After saving the foreign destination configuration, this completes the JMS part of the configuration. We still need to configure the JMS adapter in order to be able to access the queue from a BPEL processt. 4. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in Weblogic Server Create the Connection Pool Access to the AQ JMS queue from a BPEL or other SOA process in our example is done via a JMS adapter. To enable this, the JmsAdapter in WebLogic server needs to be configured to have a connection pool which points to the local connection factory JNDI name which was created earlier. Navigate to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter. Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and New. Check the radio button for oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory and press Next. JNDI Name: eis/aqjms/UserQueue Press Finish Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory and click on eis/aqjms/UserQueue to configure it. The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the foreign server’s local connection factory name created earlier. In our example, this is AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory . As a reminder, this connection factory is located under JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Connection Factories and the value needed here is under Local JNDI Name. Enter AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory  into the Property Value field for ConnectionFactoryLocation. You must then press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console.Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes. Redeploy the JmsAdapter Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button. On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the AQ JMS queue. You can verify that the JNDI name was created correctly, by navigating to Environment > Servers > soa_server1 and View JNDI Tree. Then scroll down in the JNDI Tree Structure to eis and select aqjms. This concludes the sample. In the following post, I will show you how to create a BPEL process which sends a message to this advanced queue via JMS. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

  Read the article

• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Batman

  - by Pinal Dave

  Batman is one of the darkest superheroes in the fantasy canon.  He does not come to his powers through any sort of magical coincidence or radioactive insect, but through a lot of psychological scarring caused by witnessing the death of his parents.  Despite his dark back story, he possesses a lot of admirable abilities that I feel bear comparison to developers. Batman has the distinct advantage that his alter ego, Bruce Wayne is a millionaire (or billionaire in today’s reboots).  This means that he can spend his time working on his athletic abilities, building a secret lair, and investing his money in cool tools.  This might not be true for developers (well, most developers), but I still think there are many parallels. So how are developers like Batman? Well, read on my list of reasons. Develop Skills Batman works on his skills.  He didn’t get the strength to scale Gotham’s skyscrapers by inheriting his powers or suffering an industrial accident.  Developers also hone their skills daily.  They might not be doing pull-ups and scaling buldings, but I think their skills are just as impressive. Clear Goals Batman is driven to build a better Gotham.  He knows that the criminal who killed his parents was a small-time thief, not a super villain – so he has larger goals in mind than simply chasing one villain.  He wants his city as a whole to be better.  Developers are also driven to make things better.  It can be easy to get hung up on one problem, but in the end it is best to focus on the well-being of the system as a whole. Ultimate Teamplayers Batman is the hero Gotham needs – even when that means appearing to be the bad guys.  Developers probably know that feeling well.  Batman takes the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and developers often have to deliver bad news about the limitations of their networks and servers.  It’s not always a job filled with glory and thanks, but someone has to do it. Always Ready Batman and the Boy Scouts have this in common – they are always prepared.  Let’s add developers to this list.  Batman has an amazing tool belt with gadgets and gizmos, and let’s not even get into all the functions of the Batmobile!  Developers’ skills might be the knowledge and skills they have developed, not tools they can carry in a utility belt, but that doesn’t make them any less impressive. 100% Dedication Bruce Wayne cultivates the personality of a playboy, never keeping the same girlfriend for long and spending his time partying.  Even though he hides it, his driving force is his deep concern and love for his friends and the city as a whole.  Developers also care a lot about their company and employees – even when it is driving them crazy.  You do your best work when you care about your job on a personal level. Quality Output Batman believes the city deserves to be saved.  The citizens might have a love-hate relationship with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and employees might not always appreciate developers.  Batman and developers, though, keep working for the best of everyone. I hope you are all enjoying reading about developers-as-superheroes as much as I am enjoying writing about them.  Please tell me how else developers are like Superheroes in the comments – especially if you know any developers who are faster than a speeding bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

  Read the article

• Visual Studio App.config XML Transformation

  - by João Angelo

  Visual Studio 2010 introduced a much-anticipated feature, Web configuration transformations. This feature allows to configure a web application project to transform the web.config file during deployment based on the current build configuration (Debug, Release, etc). If you haven’t already tried it there is a nice step-by-step introduction post to XML transformations on the Visual Web Developer Team Blog and for a quick reference on the supported syntax you have this MSDN entry. Unfortunately there are some bad news, this new feature is specific to web application projects since it resides in the Web Publishing Pipeline (WPP) and therefore is not officially supported in other project types like such as a Windows applications. The keyword here is officially because Vishal Joshi has a nice blog post on how to extend it’s support to app.config transformations. However, the proposed workaround requires that the build action for the app.config file be changed to Content instead of the default None. Also from the comments to the said post it also seems that the workaround will not work for a ClickOnce deployment. Working around this I tried to remove the build action change requirement and at the same time add ClickOnce support. This effort resulted in a single MSBuild project file (AppConfig.Transformation.targets) available for download from GitHub. It integrates itself in the build process so in order to add app.config transformation support to an existing Windows Application Project you just need to import this targets file after all the other import directives that already exist in the *.csproj file. Before – Without App.config transformation support ... <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> </Target> <Target Name="AfterBuild"> </Target> </Project> After – With App.config transformation support ... <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> <Import Project="C:\MyExtensions\AppConfig.Transformation.targets" /> <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> </Target> <Target Name="AfterBuild"> </Target> </Project> As a final disclaimer, the testing time was limited so any problem that you find let me know. The MSBuild project invokes the mage tool so the Framework SDK must be installed. Update: I finally had some spare time and was able to check the problem reported by Geoff Smith and believe the problem is solved. The Publish command inside Visual Studio triggers a build workflow different than through MSBuild command line and this was causing problems. I posted a new version in GitHub that should now support ClickOnce deployment with app.config tranformation from within Visual Studio and MSBuild command line. Also here is a link for the sample application used to test the new version using the Publish command with the install location set to be from a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and selected that the application will not check for updates. Thanks to Geoff for spotting the problem.

  Read the article

• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

  Read the article

• JMS Step 7 - How to Write to an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) Queue from a BPEL Process

  - by John-Brown.Evans

  JMS Step 7 - How to Write to an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) Queue from a BPEL Process ol{margin:0;padding:0} .jblist{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0;padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} .c4_7{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c3_7{vertical-align:top;width:234pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c6_7{vertical-align:top;width:156pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c16_7{background-color:#ffffff;padding:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt} .c0_7{height:11pt;direction:ltr} .c9_7{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c17_7{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c5_7{direction:ltr} .c18_7{background-color:#ffff00} .c2_7{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c14_7{height:0pt} .c8_7{text-indent:36pt} .c11_7{text-align:center} .c7_7{font-style:italic} .c1_7{font-family:"Courier New"} .c13_7{line-height:1.0} .c15_7{border-collapse:collapse} .c12_7{font-weight:bold} .c10_7{font-size:8pt} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes This example demonstrates how to write a simple message to an Oracle AQ via the the WebLogic AQ JMS functionality from a BPEL process and a JMS adapter. If you have not yet reviewed the previous posts, please do so first, especially the JMS Step 6 post, as this one references objects created there. 1. Recap and Prerequisites In the previous example, we created an Oracle Advanced Queue (AQ) and some related JMS objects in WebLogic Server to be able to access it via JMS. Here are the objects which were created and their names and JNDI names: Database Objects Name Type AQJMSUSER Database User MyQueueTable Advanced Queue (AQ) Table UserQueue Advanced Queue WebLogic Server Objects Object Name Type JNDI Name aqjmsuserDataSource Data Source jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource AqJmsModule JMS System Module AqJmsForeignServer JMS Foreign Server AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory AqJmsForeignDestination AQ JMS Foreign Destination queue/USERQUEUE eis/aqjms/UserQueue Connection Pool eis/aqjms/UserQueue 2 . Create a BPEL Composite with a JMS Adapter Partner Link This step requires that you have a valid Application Server Connection defined in JDeveloper, pointing to the application server on which you created the JMS Queue and Connection Factory. You can create this connection in JDeveloper under the Application Server Navigator. Give it any name and be sure to test the connection before completing it. This sample will write a simple XML message to the AQ JMS queue via the JMS adapter, based on the following XSD file, which consists of a single string element: stringPayload.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"                xmlns="http://www.example.org"                targetNamespace="http://www.example.org"                elementFormDefault="qualified">  <xsd:element name="exampleElement" type="xsd:string">  </xsd:element> </xsd:schema> The following steps are all executed in JDeveloper. The SOA project will be created inside a JDeveloper Application. If you do not already have an application to contain the project, you can create a new one via File > New > General > Generic Application. Give the application any name, for example JMSTests and, when prompted for a project name and type, call the project   JmsAdapterWriteAqJms  and select SOA as the project technology type. If you already have an application, continue below. Create a SOA Project Create a new project and select SOA Tier > SOA Project as its type. Name it JmsAdapterWriteAqJms . When prompted for the composite type, choose Composite With BPEL Process. When prompted for the BPEL Process, name it JmsAdapterWriteAqJms too and choose Synchronous BPEL Process as the template. This will create a composite with a BPEL process and an exposed SOAP service. Double-click the BPEL process to open and begin editing it. You should see a simple BPEL process with a Receive and Reply activity. As we created a default process without an XML schema, the input and output variables are simple strings. Create an XSD File An XSD file is required later to define the message format to be passed to the JMS adapter. In this step, we create a simple XSD file, containing a string variable and add it to the project. First select the xsd item in the left-hand navigation tree to ensure that the XSD file is created under that item. Select File > New > General > XML and choose XML Schema. Call it stringPayload.xsd  and when the editor opens, select the Source view. then replace the contents with the contents of the stringPayload.xsd example above and save the file. You should see it under the XSD item in the navigation tree. Create a JMS Adapter Partner Link We will create the JMS adapter as a service at the composite level. If it is not already open, double-click the composite.xml file in the navigator to open it. From the Component Palette, drag a JMS adapter over onto the right-hand swim lane, under External References. This will start the JMS Adapter Configuration Wizard. Use the following entries: Service Name: JmsAdapterWrite Oracle Enterprise Messaging Service (OEMS): Oracle Advanced Queueing AppServer Connection: Use an existing application server connection pointing to the WebLogic server on which the connection factory created earlier is located. You can use the “+” button to create a connection directly from the wizard, if you do not already have one. Adapter Interface > Interface: Define from operation and schema (specified later) Operation Type: Produce Message Operation Name: Produce_message Produce Operation Parameters Destination Name: Wait for the list to populate. (Only foreign servers are listed here, because Oracle Advanced Queuing was selected earlier, in step 3) .         Select the foreign server destination created earlier, AqJmsForeignDestination (queue) . This will automatically populate the Destination Name field with the name of the foreign destination, queue/USERQUEUE . JNDI Name: The JNDI name to use for the JMS connection. This is the JNDI name of the connection pool created in the WebLogic Server.JDeveloper does not verify the value entered here. If you enter a wrong value, the JMS adapter won’t find the queue and you will get an error message at runtime. In our example, this is the value eis/aqjms/UserQueue Messages URL: We will use the XSD file we created earlier, stringPayload.xsd to define the message format for the JMS adapter. Press the magnifying glass icon to search for schema files. Expand Project Schema Files > stringPayload.xsd and select exampleElement : string . Press Next and Finish, which will complete the JMS Adapter configuration. Wire the BPEL Component to the JMS Adapter In this step, we link the BPEL process/component to the JMS adapter. From the composite.xml editor, drag the right-arrow icon from the BPEL process to the JMS adapter’s in-arrow.   This completes the steps at the composite level. 3. Complete the BPEL Process Design Invoke the JMS Adapter Open the BPEL component by double-clicking it in the design view of the composite.xml. This will display the BPEL process in the design view. You should see the JmsAdapterWrite partner link under one of the two swim lanes. We want it in the right-hand swim lane. If JDeveloper displays it in the left-hand lane, right-click it and choose Display > Move To Opposite Swim Lane. An Invoke activity is required in order to invoke the JMS adapter. Drag an Invoke activity between the Receive and Reply activities. Drag the right-hand arrow from the Invoke activity to the JMS adapter partner link. This will open the Invoke editor. The correct default values are entered automatically and are fine for our purposes. We only need to define the input variable to use for the JMS adapter. By pressing the green “+” symbol, a variable of the correct type can be auto-generated, for example with the name Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable. Press OK after creating the variable. Assign Variables Drag an Assign activity between the Receive and Invoke activities. We will simply copy the input variable to the JMS adapter and, for completion, so the process has an output to print, again to the process’s output variable. Double-click the Assign activity and create two Copy rules: for the first, drag Variables > inputVariable > payload > client:process > client:input_string to Invoke1_Produce_Message_InputVariable > body > ns2:exampleElement for the second, drag the same input variable to outputVariable > payload > client:processResponse > client:result This will create two copy rules, similar to the following: Press OK. This completes the BPEL and Composite design. 4. Compile and Deploy the Composite Compile the process by pressing the Make or Rebuild icons or by right-clicking the project name in the navigator and selecting Make... or Rebuild... If the compilation is successful, deploy it to the SOA server connection defined earlier. (Right-click the project name in the navigator, select Deploy to Application Server, choose the application server connection, choose the partition on the server (usually default) and press Finish. You should see the message ----  Deployment finished.  ---- in the Deployment frame, if the deployment was successful. 5. Test the Composite Execute a Test Instance In a browser, log in to the Enterprise Manager 11g Fusion Middleware Control (EM) for your SOA installation. Navigate to SOA > soa-infra (soa_server1) > default (or wherever you deployed your composite) and click on  JmsAdapterWriteAqJms [1.0] , then press the Test button. Enter any string into the text input field, for example “Test message from JmsAdapterWriteAqJms” then press Test Web Service. If the instance is successful, you should see the same text you entered in the Response payload frame. Monitor the Advanced Queue The test message will be written to the advanced queue created at the top of this sample. To confirm it, log in to the database as AQJMSUSER and query the MYQUEUETABLE database table. For example, from a shell window with SQL*Plus sqlplus aqjmsuser/aqjmsuser SQL> SELECT user_data FROM myqueuetable; which will display the message contents, for example Similarly, you can use the JDeveloper Database Navigator to view the contents. Use a database connection to the AQJMSUSER and in the navigator, expand Queues Tables and select MYQUEUETABLE. Select the Data tab and scroll to the USER_DATA column to view its contents. This concludes this example. The following post will be the last one in this series. In it, we will learn how to read the message we just wrote using a BPEL process and AQ JMS. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

  Read the article

• Airtel 3G in Chennai – User experience, Price & What’s the catch?

  - by Boonei

  Finally ! Here we are with Airtel 3G in India. Now Airtel customers can have a go at real 3G speed. Sources suggest that the delay in rolling out 3G was due to hardware problems. It was provided by Ericsson. Now first things first. Let me get to the point. I had subscribed to Airtel’s 3G pack Rs.100 for 100 MB. This is to check out how good it is, did not want to pay a hefty sum at the first instance. It was pretty smooth upgrading.. After the upgrade I did see the much awaited 3G signal bar on my phone. Ok! now its testing time. User experience First I did a bit of browsing, boy ! it was pretty quick, web pages loaded in a jiffy. I really did not time it because it loaded really quick. I loaded a YouTube Video, no buffering, watched the 4 min Video with no problems, it took around 6 MB of data usage Made a Skype call for about 6 min, voice clarity was really good and data usage was around 4-5 MB Tried Google Maps everything was so fast could not see the difference between computer and my phone, used it for about couple of minutes. Did listen to an Online Radio for about 5 min took about 8 MB of data usage Guess there is no need to say about Facebook or Twitter. It was good obviously. Video Call – Not yet tested Price – Do you get what you pay for ? 3G speed is fantastic, you have to really feel it to enjoy it. But currently in Airtel, 3G is available only in 3 places wiz. Bengaluru, Chennai, Coimbatore. ok ! Its not even there in all the metros? hmmm. 3G signal was not available in all parts of Chennai, often in many places it changed to 2G. Let alone all the places, even in my house when walking from one room to another sometimes its shows 2G. When it chaged from 3G to 2G there was lag in the application when it was loading data which often made me wonder if the application hanged. Currently prices not low. 2G plans in Airtel is Rs.98 for 2GB and for Rs.100 its only 100MB in 3G. Now you decide please, it’s quite a debate. The Catch – There is always a catch right ? If you have bought 3G connection and in places where 3G is not available (2G) and use any application that requires data connections (youtube, browse, chat etc) its changed with 3G!. Meaning if you have bought 100MB of 3G by paying Rs.100 like I did, suppose you used the connection for about 10MB using 2G, then it would reduce from the 100MB to 90 MB….That’s bad ! You cannot have 2G and 3G plans activated at the same point of time in your phone. You will pay 3G price for using 2G. This article titled,Airtel 3G in Chennai – User experience, Price & What’s the catch?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

  Read the article

• Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks

  - by fip

  Tuning performance of Oracle SOA 11G applications could be challenging. Because SOA is a platform for you to build composite applications that connect many applications and "services", when the overall performance is slow, the bottlenecks could be anywhere in the system: the applications/services that SOA connects to, the infrastructure database, or the SOA server itself.How to quickly identify the bottleneck becomes crucial in tuning the overall performance. Fortunately, the BPEL engine in Oracle SOA 11G (and 10G, for that matter) collects BPEL Engine Performance Statistics, which show the latencies of low level BPEL engine activities. The BPEL engine performance statistics can make it a bit easier for you to identify the performance bottleneck. Although the BPEL engine performance statistics are always available, the access to and interpretation of them are somewhat obscure in the early and current (PS5) 11G versions. This blog attempts to offer instructions that help you to enable, retrieve and interpret the performance statistics, before the future versions provides a more pleasant user experience. Overview of BPEL Engine Performance Statistics  SOA BPEL has a feature of collecting some performance statistics and store them in memory. One MBean attribute, StatLastN, configures the size of the memory buffer to store the statistics. This memory buffer is a "moving window", in a way that old statistics will be flushed out by the new if the amount of data exceeds the buffer size. Since the buffer size is limited by StatLastN, impacts of statistics collection on performance is minimal. By default StatLastN=-1, which means no collection of performance data. Once the statistics are collected in the memory buffer, they can be retrieved via another MBean oracle.as.soainfra.bpel:Location=[Server Name],name=BPELEngine,type=BPELEngine.> My friend in Oracle SOA development wrote this simple 'bpelstat' web app that looks up and retrieves the performance data from the MBean and displays it in a human readable form. It does not have beautiful UI but it is fairly useful. Although in Oracle SOA 11.1.1.5 onwards the same statistics can be viewed via a more elegant UI under "request break down" at EM -> SOA Infrastructure -> Service Engines -> BPEL -> Statistics, some unsophisticated minds like mine may still prefer the simplicity of the 'bpelstat' JSP. One thing that simple JSP does do well is that you can save the page and send it to someone to further analyze Follows are the instructions of how to install and invoke the BPEL statistic JSP. My friend in SOA Development will soon blog about interpreting the statistics. Stay tuned. Step1: Enable BPEL Engine Statistics for Each SOA Servers via Enterprise Manager First st you need to set the StatLastN to some number as a way to enable the collection of BPEL Engine Performance Statistics EM Console -> soa-infra(Server Name) -> SOA Infrastructure -> SOA Administration -> BPEL Properties Click on "More BPEL Configuration Properties" Click on attribute "StatLastN", set its value to some integer number. Typically you want to set it 1000 or more. Step 2: Download and Deploy bpelstat.war File to Admin Server, Note: the WAR file contains a JSP that does NOT have any security restriction. You do NOT want to keep in your production server for a long time as it is a security hazard. Deactivate the war once you are done. Download the bpelstat.war to your local PC At WebLogic Console, Go to Deployments -> Install Click on the "upload your file(s)" Click the "Browse" button to upload the deployment to Admin Server Accept the uploaded file as the path, click next Check the default option "Install this deployment as an application" Check "AdminServer" as the target server Finish the rest of the deployment with default settings Console -> Deployments Check the box next to "bpelstat" application Click on the "Start" button. It will change the state of the app from "prepared" to "active" Step 3: Invoke the BPEL Statistic Tool The BPELStat tool merely call the MBean of BPEL server and collects and display the in-memory performance statics. You usually want to do that after some peak loads. Go to http://<admin-server-host>:<admin-server-port>/bpelstat Enter the correct admin hostname, port, username and password Enter the SOA Server Name from which you want to collect the performance statistics. For example, SOA_MS1, etc. Click Submit Keep doing the same for all SOA servers. Step 3: Interpret the BPEL Engine Statistics You will see a few categories of BPEL Statistics from the JSP Page. First it starts with the overall latency of BPEL processes, grouped by synchronous and asynchronous processes. Then it provides the further break down of the measurements through the life time of a BPEL request, which is called the "request break down". 1. Overall latency of BPEL processes The top of the page shows that the elapse time of executing the synchronous process TestSyncBPELProcess from the composite TestComposite averages at about 1543.21ms, while the elapse time of executing the asynchronous process TestAsyncBPELProcess from the composite TestComposite2 averages at about 1765.43ms. The maximum and minimum latency were also shown. Synchronous process statistics <statistics>     <stats key="default/TestComposite!2.0.2-ScopedJMSOSB*soa_bfba2527-a9ba-41a7-95c5-87e49c32f4ff/TestSyncBPELProcess" min="1234" max="4567" average="1543.21" count="1000">     </stats> </statistics> Asynchronous process statistics <statistics>     <stats key="default/TestComposite2!2.0.2-ScopedJMSOSB*soa_bfba2527-a9ba-41a7-95c5-87e49c32f4ff/TestAsyncBPELProcess" min="2234" max="3234" average="1765.43" count="1000">     </stats> </statistics> 2. Request break down Under the overall latency categorized by synchronous and asynchronous processes is the "Request breakdown". Organized by statistic keys, the Request breakdown gives finer grain performance statistics through the life time of the BPEL requests.It uses indention to show the hierarchy of the statistics. Request breakdown <statistics>     <stats key="eng-composite-request" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="0">         <stats key="eng-single-request" min="22" max="606" average="258.43" count="277">             <stats key="populate-context" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="248"> Please note that in SOA 11.1.1.6, the statistics under Request breakdown is aggregated together cross all the BPEL processes based on statistic keys. It does not differentiate between BPEL processes. If two BPEL processes happen to have the statistic that share same statistic key, the statistics from two BPEL processes will be aggregated together. Keep this in mind when we go through more details below. 2.1 BPEL process activity latencies A very useful measurement in the Request Breakdown is the performance statistics of the BPEL activities you put in your BPEL processes: Assign, Invoke, Receive, etc. The names of the measurement in the JSP page directly come from the names to assign to each BPEL activity. These measurements are under the statistic key "actual-perform" Example 1:  Follows is the measurement for BPEL activity "AssignInvokeCreditProvider_Input", which looks like the Assign activity in a BPEL process that assign an input variable before passing it to the invocation:                                <stats key="AssignInvokeCreditProvider_Input" min="1" max="8" average="1.9" count="153">                                     <stats key="sensor-send-activity-data" min="0" max="1" average="0.0" count="306">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="sensor-send-variable-data" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="153">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="monitor-send-activity-data" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="306">                                     </stats>                                 </stats> Note: because as previously mentioned that the statistics cross all BPEL processes are aggregated together based on statistic keys, if two BPEL processes happen to name their Invoke activity the same name, they will show up at one measurement (i.e. statistic key). Example 2: Follows is the measurement of BPEL activity called "InvokeCreditProvider". You can not only see that by average it takes 3.31ms to finish this call (pretty fast) but also you can see from the further break down that most of this 3.31 ms was spent on the "invoke-service".                                  <stats key="InvokeCreditProvider" min="1" max="13" average="3.31" count="153">                                     <stats key="initiate-correlation-set-again" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="153">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="invoke-service" min="1" max="13" average="3.08" count="153">                                         <stats key="prep-call" min="0" max="1" average="0.04" count="153">                                         </stats>                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="initiate-correlation-set" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="153">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="sensor-send-activity-data" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="306">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="sensor-send-variable-data" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="153">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="monitor-send-activity-data" min="0" max="0" average="0.0" count="306">                                     </stats>                                     <stats key="update-audit-trail" min="0" max="2" average="0.03" count="153">                                     </stats>                                 </stats> 2.2 BPEL engine activity latency Another type of measurements under Request breakdown are the latencies of underlying system level engine activities. These activities are not directly tied to a particular BPEL process or process activity, but they are critical factors in the overall engine performance. These activities include the latency of saving asynchronous requests to database, and latency of process dehydration. My friend Malkit Bhasin is working on providing more information on interpreting the statistics on engine activities on his blog (https://blogs.oracle.com/malkit/). I will update this blog once the information becomes available. Update on 2012-10-02: My friend Malkit Bhasin has published the detail interpretation of the BPEL service engine statistics at his blog http://malkit.blogspot.com/2012/09/oracle-bpel-engine-soa-suite.html.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 18, 2010Popular ReleasesSitefinity Migration Tool: Sitefinity Migration Tool 0.2 Alpha: - Improvements for the Sitefinity RC releaseMiniTwitter: 1.57: MiniTwitter 1.57 ???? ?? ?????????????????? ?? User Streams ????????????????????? ???????????????·??????·???????VFPX: VFP2C32 2.0.0.7: fixed a bug in AAverage - NULL values in the array corrupted the result removed limitation in ASum, AMin, AMax, AAverage - the functions were limited to 65000 elements, now they're limited to 65000 rows ASplitStr now returns a 1 element array with an empty string when an empty string is passed (behaves more like ALINES) internal code cleanup and optimization: optimized FoxArray class - results in a speedup of 10-20% in many functions which return the result in an array - like AProcesses...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Razor Templating Engine: Razor Template Engine v1.1: Release 1.1 Changes: ADDED: Signed assemblies with strong name to allow assemblies to be referenced by other strongly-named assemblies. FIX: Filter out dynamic assemblies which causes failures in template compilation. FIX: Changed ASCII to UTF8 encoding to support UTF-8 encoded string templates. FIX: Corrected implementation of TemplateBase adding ITemplate interface.Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit - 1.1: This is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and fixes the bugs reported in the version 1.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2007/2010 Microsoft Silverlight 4 Microsoft S...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.2: Added support for more clients (French and Russian) Settings are now stored sepperatly for each user on a computer Auto Login is much faster now Auto Login detects and handles caps lock state properly nowTailspinSpyworks - WebForms Sample Application: TailspinSpyworks-v0.9: Contains a number of bug fixes and additional tutorial steps as well as complete database implementation details.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (rich jQuery AJAX helpers): 1.3 and demos: a library with mvc helpers and a demo project that demonstrates an awesome way of doing asp.net mvc. tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6 new stuff in 1.3 Autocomplete helper Autocomplete and AjaxDropdown can have parentId and be filled with data depending on the value of the parent PopupForm besides Content("ok") on success can also return Json(data) and use 'data' in a client side function Awesome demo improved (cruder, builder, added service layer)Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v4.1: Version 4.1 of the ASP.NET MVC forum engine, with great improvements: TinyMCE added as visual editor for messages (removed CKEditor). Integrated AntiSamy for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections. Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc. View Roadmap for more details.UltimateJB: UltimateJB 2.01 PL3 KakaRoto + PSNYes by EvilSperm: Voici une version attendu avec impatience pour beaucoup : - La Version PSNYes pour pouvoir jouer sur le PSN avec une PS3 Jailbreaker. - Pour l'instant le PSNYes n'est disponible qu'avec les PS3 en firmwares 3.41 !!! - La version PL3 KAKAROTO intégre ses dernières modification et prépare a l'intégration du Firmware 3.30 !!! Conclusion : - UltimateJB PSNYes => Valide l'utilisation du PSN : Uniquement compatible avec les 3.41 - ultimateJB DEFAULT => Pas de PSN mais disponible pour les PS3 sui...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.0(supports .NET 4.0 RTM and .NET 3.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (only for .NET 4.0) 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 NEW! *Walkthrough (documenta...patterns & practices: Prism: Prism 4 Documentation: This release contains the Prism 4 documentation in Help 1.0 (CHM) format and PDF format. The documentation is also included with the full download of the guidance. Note: If you cannot view the content of the CHM, using Windows Explorer, select the properties for the file and then click Unblock on the General tab. Note: The PDF version of the guidance is provided for printing and reading in book format. The online version of the Prism 4 documentation can be read here.Farseer Physics Engine: Farseer Physics Engine 3.1: DonationsIf you like this release and would like to keep Farseer Physics Engine running, please consider a small donation. What's new?We bring a lot of new features in Farseer Physics Engine 3.1. Just to name a few: New Box2D core Rope joint added More stable CCD algorithm YuPeng clipper Explosives logic New Constrained Delaunay Triangulation algorithm from the Poly2Tri project. New Flipcode triangulation algorithm. Silverlight 4 samples Silverlight 4 debug view XNA 4.0 relea...New Projectsbizicosoft crm: crmBlog Migrator: The Blog Migrator tool is an all purpose utility designed to help transition a blog from one platform to another. It leverages XML-RPC, BlogML, and WordPress WXR formats. It also provides the ability to "rewrite" your posts on your old blog to point to the new location.bzr-tfs integration tests: Used to test bzr-tfs integrationC++ Open Source Advanced Operating System: C++ Open Source Advanced Operating System is a project which allows starter developers create their own OS. For now it is at a really initial stage.Chavah - internet radio for Yeshua's disciples: Chavah (pronounced "ha-vah") is internet radio for Yeshua's disciples. Inspired by Pandora, Chavah is a Silverlight application that brings community-driven Messianic Jewish tunes for the Lord over the web to your eager ears.CodePoster: An add-in for Visual Studio which allows you to post code directly from Visual Studio to your blog. CRM 2011 Plugin Testing Tools: This solution is meant to make unit testing of plugins in CRM 2011 a simpler and more efficient process. This solution serializes the objects that the CRM server passes to a plugin on execution and then offers a library that allows you to deserialize them in a unit test.Edinamarry Free Tarot Software for Windows: A freeware yet an advanced Tarot reading divinity Software for Psychics and for all those who practice Divinity and Spirituality. This software includes Tarot Spread Designer, Tarot Deck Designer, Tarot Cards Gallery, Client & Customer Profile, Word Editor, Tarot Reader, etc.EPiSocial: Social addons for EPiServer.first team foundation project: this is my first project for the student to teach them about the ms visual studio 201o and team foundation serverFKTdev: Proyecto donde subiremos las pruebas, códigos de ejemplo y demás recursos en nuestro aprendizaje en XNA, hasta que comencemos un desarrollo estable.Gardens Point Component Pascal: Gardens Point Component Pascal is an implementation for .NET of the Component Pascal Language (CP). CP is an object oriented version of Pascal, and shares many design features with Oberon-2. Geoinformatics: geoinformaticsGREENHOUSEMANAGER: GREENHOUSE es un proyecto universitario para manejar los distintos aspectos de un invernadero. El sistema esta desarrollado en c# con interfaz grafica en WPFHousing: This project is only for the asp.net learning. HR-XML.NET: A .NET HR-XML Serialization Library. Also supports the Dutch SETU standard and some proprietary extensions used in the Netherlands. The project is currently targeting HR-XML version 2.5 and Setu standard 2008-01.InternetShop2: ShopLesson4: Lesson4 for M.Logical Synchronous Circuit Simulator: As part of a student project, we are trying to make a logic synchronous circuit simulator, with the ultimate goal of simulating a processor and a digital clock running on it.MediaOwl: MediaOwl is a music (albums, artists, tracks, tags) and movie (movies, series, actors, directors, genres) search engine, but above all, it is a Microsoft Silverlight 4 application (C#), that shows how to use Caliburn Micro.N2F Yverdon Solar Flare Reflector: The solar flare reflector provides minimal base-range protection for your N2F Yverdon installation against solar flare interference.Netduino Plus Home Automation Toolkit: The Netduino Plus Home Automation project is designed to proivde a communication platform from various consumer based home automation products that offer a common web service endpoint. This will hopefully create a low cost DIY alternative to the expensive ethernet interfaces.NRapid: NRapidOfficeHelper: Wrapper around the open xml office package. You can easily create xlsx documents based on a template xlsx document and reuse parts from that document, if you mark them as named ranges (i.e. "names").OffProjects: This is a private project which for my dev investigationParis Velib Stations for Windows Mobile: Allow to find the closest Velib bike station in Paris on a Windows Mobile Phone (6.5)/ Permet de trouver la station de Vélib la plus proche dans Paris ainsi que ses informations sur un smartphone Windows MobilePolarConverter: Adjust the measured distance of HRM files created by Polar Heart Rate monitorsSexy Select: a jQuery plugin that allows for easy manipulation of select options. Allows for adding, removing, sorting, validation and custom skinningSilverlight Progress Feedback: Demonstrates how to get progress feedback from slow running WPF processes in Silverlight.Silverlight Tabbed Panel: Tabbed Panel based on Silverlight targeted for both developers and designers audience. Tabbed Control is used in this project. This is a basic application. More features will be added in further releases. XAML has been used to design this panel. slabhid: SLABHIDDevice.dll is used for the SLAB MCU example code on PC, the original source code is written by C++. This wrapper class brings SLABHIDDevice.dll to the .Net world, so it will be possible to make some quick solution for firmware testing purpose.SuperWebSocket: A .NET server side implementation of WebSocket protocol.test1-jjoiner: just a test projectTotem Alpha Developer Framework For .Net: ????tadf??VS.NET???????????，????jtadf???????????????。 ?????????tadf??????????????J2EE???????VS.NET?????????，??tadf?????.NET??，???????????，????????????，??????C#??????????Java???????，??????。 tadf?????????????，????HTML???????????，???????，?????????，?????。tadf???????????，????????RICH UI?????WEB??。??????，??。 tadf?????????????????????，????WEB??????????。???????，???????????，?Ajax???????，????????????????，????????，????????????????。???????????，???????????????????????????????，?xml??????，?????????????xml...Ukázkové projekty: Obsahuje ukázkové projekty uživatele TenCoKaciStromy.WPFDemo: This Peoject is only for the WPF learning.Xinx TimeIt!: TinyAlarm is a small utility that allows you to configure an Alarm so that you can opt for 1. Shutdown computer 2. Play a sound 3. Show a note with sound 4. Disconnect a dial-up connection 5. Connect via dial-up connection

  Read the article

• Implementing Release Notes in TFS Team Build 2010

  - by Jakob Ehn

  In TFS Team Build (all versions), each build is associated with changesets and work items. To determine which changesets that should be associated with the current build, Team Build finds the label of the “Last Good Build” an then aggregates all changesets up unitl the label for the current build. Basically this means that if your build is failing, every changeset that is checked in will be accumulated in this list until the build is successful. All well, but there uis a dimension missing here, regarding to releases. Often you can run several release builds until you actually deploy the result of the build to a test or production system. When you do this, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send the customer a nice release note that contain all work items and changeset since the previously deployed version? At our company, we have developed a Release Repository, which basically is a siple web site with a SQL database as storage. Every time we run a Release Build, the resulting installers, zip-files, sql scripts etc, gets pushed into the release repositor together with the relevant build information. This information contains things such as start time, who triggered the build etc. Also, it contains the associated changesets and work items. When deploying the MSI’s for a new version, we mark the build as Deployed in the release repository. The depoyed status is stored in the release repository database, but it could also have been implemented by setting the Build Quality for that build to Deployed. When generating the release notes, the web site simple runs through each release build back to the previous build that was marked as Deplyed, and aggregates the work items and changesets: Here is a sample screenshot on how this looks for a sample build/application The web site is available both for us and also for the customers and testers, which means that they can easily get the latest version of a particular application and at the same time see what changes are included in this version. There is a lot going on in the Release Build Process that drives this in our TFS 2010 server, but in this post I will show how you can access and read the changeset and work item information in a custom activity. Since Team Build associates changesets and work items for each build, this information is (partially) available inside the build process template. The Associate Changesets and Work Items for non-Shelveset Builds activity (located inside the Try  Compile, Test, and Associate Changesets and Work Items activity) defines and populates a variable called associatedWorkItems   You can see that this variable is an IList containing instances of the Changeset class (from the Microsoft.TeamFoundation.VersionControl.Client namespace). Now, if you want to access this variable later on in the build process template, you need to declare a new variable in the corresponding scope and the assign the value to this variable. In this sample, I declared a variable called assocChangesets in the RunAgent sequence, which basically covers the whol compile, test and drop part of the build process:   Now, you need to assign the value from the AssociatedChangesets to this variable. This is done using the Assign workflow activity:   Now you can add a custom activity any where inside the RunAgent sequence and use this variable. NB: Of course your activity must place somewhere after the variable has been poplated. To finish off, here is code snippet that shows how you can read the changeset and work item information from the variable.   First you add an InArgumet on your activity where you can pass i the variable that we defined. [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<IList<Changeset>> AssociatedChangesets { get; set; } Then you can traverse all the changesets in the list, and for each changeset use the WorkItems property to get the work items that were associated in that changeset: foreach (Changeset ch in associatedChangesets) { // Add change theChangesets.Add( new AssociatedChangeset(ch.ChangesetId, ch.ArtifactUri, ch.Committer, ch.Comment, ch.ChangesetId)); foreach (var wi in ch.WorkItems) { theWorkItems.Add( new AssociatedWorkItem(wi["System.AssignedTo"].ToString(), wi.Id, wi["System.State"].ToString(), wi.Title, wi.Type.Name, wi.Id, wi.Uri)); } } NB: AssociatedChangeset and AssociatedWorkItem are custom classes that we use internally for storing this information that is eventually pushed to the release repository.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 18, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 18, 2010New ProjectsBordecal tools for FxCop: Bordecal tools for FxCop provides an extended framework for FxCop rule development. It allows rule developers to avoid using embedded XML resource...DotNetNuke® Skin City: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by allsnnskins. We integrate orange color and black colour in this ...DotNetNuke® Skin Dawn: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by allsnnskins. This design reflects the theme of daylight. U...DotNetNuke® Skin Dream: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by WhNuke. Uses the DNNJDMenu skin object.DotNetNuke® Skin Expression: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Salar Golestanian of SalarO. This is a pure CSS skin with ...DotNetNuke® Skin ModernBiz: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by allsnnskins. This simple and unaffected company skin uses...DotNetNuke® Skin Profound: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by WhNuke Technology. This skin is simple and clean and the ...DotNetNuke® Skin Technology: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Standards" category by allsnnskins. It's compatible with common browsers such ...DotNetNuke® Skin Unravel: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Salar Golestanian of SalarO. This is a pure CSS skin wit...E! - ECMAScript Runtime Environment: E! (pronounced E-Bang) is a lightweight runtime environment for editing basic ECMAScript scripts with access to .NET Framework class libraries.Easy ArcGIS Library: Easy ArcGIS Library is a set of C# .net classes that wrap the common functionality of ArcObjects, that help ArcGIS developers do a lot of common fu...File Categorizer: The File Categorizer will help people tag the files on their system for easy searching. Instead of keyword searches, you can find files based on v...GMFS Cosmos: This is a file system for Cosmos a OS that was built with C# and we will be implementing this for windows and linuxIFilter Core Implementation (interface and structures): IFilter C# implementation for you to embed when writing Windows Search capabilities into your application.Image Wall Control for Silverlight: A control for Silverlight that emulates the wall of images in the Zune. imenik_za _dev4fun: imenik is a very simple program and easy to use where you can save and organise your contacts.LegoPhysX: LegoPhysX is an atomic based physics enginePersonal Accounting: Personal system for managing financial accounts, which supports multiple accounts in different currencies. It has movement imputation and basic que...Pipes & Filters Engine: The Pipes & Filters Engine allows you to process a sequence of separate operations (filters) asynchronously in a multi-threaded manner. Filters wil...Prerequisites Checker: Check preqrequisites for software. Example: Software S1 is delivered. S1 has prerequisites PR1, PR2... PRN You may load the config file for S...Puzzle Lib: A library for creating grid-and-tile puzzles. Includes two separate UIs for the Tetriminoes puzzle as examples.QuotesPlugin for Windows Live Writer: The QuotesPlugin for Windows Live Writer lists quotes from web sites such as quotes4all.net. It's very easy for you to select your favourite ones a...RobiJ2se: Robi j2se Learning!SkinEngine: This is a Skin Framework for C# Winform, It use easy.and Create Skin GreatSQL Azure .NET Connection: This is a demo application that shows how to connect with SQL AzureSupermarket Soft: WPF Application that helps you manage your supermarket shoppings.Tally Marks for Windows Phone 7 Series: Tally Marks is a counting application. It can count almost anything you'd like to count, and it does it with tally marks! Count the number of peo...TwitCast: TwitCast is a simple notifier for Twitter using the [url:http://linqtotwitter.codeplex.com/] LINQ 2 Twitter library.WodnySwiat: Projekt grupowy wodny światWSS Task Manager Activity: A custom task creation activity that can be used in a sequential or state machine workflow. The activity was specifically developed to handle task ...New ReleasesAddress Book: Address Book: Address BookAutoAudit: AutoAudit 1.10c: Veresion 1.10 includes most of the bug fix requests. adds createdby and modifiedby columns to the audited base tables. If the user name is set by...blog for umbraco 4: Blog 4 Umbraco 2.0.26: Fixes: -Regex bug in base -Directory urls and rss link bug -Open reader bug -Rss bugDotNetNuke® Skin City: City Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by allsnnskins. We integrate orange color and black colour in this ...DotNetNuke® Skin Dawn: Dawn Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by allsnnskins. This design reflects the theme of daylight. U...DotNetNuke® Skin Dream: Dream Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by WhNuke. Uses the DNNJDMenu skin object.DotNetNuke® Skin Expression: Expression Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Salar Golestanian of SalarO. This is a pure CSS skin with ...DotNetNuke® Skin ModernBiz: ModernBiz Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by allsnnskins. This simple and unaffected company skin uses...DotNetNuke® Skin Profound: Profound Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by WhNuke Technology. This skin is simple and clean and the ...DotNetNuke® Skin Technology: Technology Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Standards" category by allsnnskins. It's compatible with common browsers such a...DotNetNuke® Skin Unravel: Unravel Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Salar Golestanian of SalarO. This is a pure CSS skin with...E! - ECMAScript Runtime Environment: E! beta 1: This is really meant as a learning project for playing with dynamically compiled code, so you'd be better off getting the source code.Easy ArcGIS Library: EAGL Binaries: Easy ArcGIS Library Last Build (Version 1.1.2.4139)Easy ArcGIS Library: EAGL Binaries And Documentation: EAGL Latest Build With DocumentationEasy ArcGIS Library: EAGL Documentation: EAGL 1.1.2.4139 DocumentationEnterprise Library Extensions: Release 1.1: This is a service release for version 1.0 The installation process now works as intended. The assemblies are now visible in the Visual Studio As...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.2.1.0: Version 1.2.1.0 Fixed GB radio button not working renamed UK Added fixes for UK regions/shires/counties where country is missing Add country reco...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.3.0.0: Version 1.3.0.0 Added IGI Search results viewer Tweaked filenames of IGI search so that results window has more informative displayFile Archive: File Archive: If your computer is only word processing machine or document merge machine, this program is really fit for you. It's so...o useful! This program ar...GameStore League Manager: League Manager 1.0.4: Fixes bug 7434. Changed version number to the standard format of Major.Minor.ReleaseIFilter Core Implementation (interface and structures): Stable release: First release of interface implementation.IFilter Core Implementation (interface and structures): System.Search.Core: Ifilter interface for implementation in your own Search Providers.imenik_za _dev4fun: imenik_aplikacija: imenik aplikacija is an application easy to use where you can save and organise your contacts.KDRE - kernel debugger regular expression extension: KDRE 0.0.2: KDRE - Windbg regexp extension Changes: - amd64 build addedMapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 17): This release introduces some minor tweaks to the source code exposing more buffering functionality. This also fixes a problem with selecting point...MockingBird: MockingBird_2.0_RC: This is the V2.0 RC release. The documentation includes notes about the WCF components. Check this blog post for more details about the release. ...MPF for Projects - Visual Studio 2010: Visual Studio 2010 - Final Release: This contains the source code for the release of MPF for Projects corresponding to Visual Studio 2010. For Beta 2, you will need the Beta 2 release...Physics Helper for Silverlight, WPF, Blend, and Farseer: PhysicsHelper 3.0.0.4 ALPHA: This is an initial release that supports Windows Phone 7 Series Development, along with the Silverlight 3 and WPF support. It requires Visual Studi...Pocket GPW: Pocket GPW 1.2: Modyfikacje wg. change set-a 56678. Poprzednia baza danych (z wersji 1.1) jest zgodna z aktualną. Przed instalacją skopiuj poprzednią bazę danych ...Prerequisites Checker: Prerequisites Checker: Check your software prerequisitesPuzzle Lib: Puzzle Lib examples: Tetriminoes examples using a common Puzzle LIB and common Puzzle Implementation library, demonstrating a basic MVC architecture for game developmentRoTwee: RoTwee (8.0.7.0): Now you can rotate tweets by your hand !SharePoint Icon Integration: SharePoint Icon Integration PDF: This is the first stable release of the SPIconIntegration. To install the PDF Icon integration just start the setup.exe file that you will find in ...SkinEngine: SkinEngine-Src-2010-03-17: this is a release on 2010-03-17Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.2 Binary: Fixed a bug in the word indexing in the database.Spell Corrector: Spell Corrector 0.2 Code: Fixed a bug in the indexing of the words in the database. Now insertion of new words in the database is faster.SQL Azure .NET Connection: LittleBlackBook.NET Release 1.0: This was a demo project for a SQL Azure Presentation at ConfooSQL Server Extended Properties Quick Editor: New release 1.5.5: Whats new: Move preferences to application settings and add a form to edit preferences. Support to add, modify and delete operations could be made ...SuperModel - A Dynamic View-Model Generator: 1.0.0.1 - Tyra+: Resolving a couple of bugs; models generated using INotifyPropertyChanged were not being created correctly. Property resolution on proxied types w...Survey - web survey & form engine: Survey 1.2.0: The Survey 1.2.0 release is based on the original sources of the Nsurvey 1.9 application. Compared to the Survey 1.1.0 version many new features ...T.S.T. the T-SQL Test Tool: Version 1.5: Version 1.5 changes: Bug fix. In V1.4 and earlier table comparison failed if the tables compared had columns with spaces in them.TwitCast: TwitCast 1.0.0.0: First release of TwitCast. Be warned that this is just a development release and there are a lot of things that remain to be done.unbinder: Unbound.dll: from change set ef6f2303dd32VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30317.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWatchersNET.TagCloud: WatchersNET.TagCloud 01.02.00: Whats New Show only Tags from Pages the Current User has View Acess (As Option) A Url can be specified for a Custom tag Added Module Package fo...WSS Task Manager Activity: 1.0: Download either the source for Moss Task Manager Activity, Workflow sample if you are interested to see how to use the activity in the workflow or ...XML pretty print for python (xmlpp): version 0.92b: Fixes issues when element name contains :Xpress - ASP.NET MVC 个人博客程序: xpress2.1.1.0317.beta: 最新beta版 更改内容： 模板与系统所需配置文件移动到App_Data中 Service对象注入到Controller中 Controller对象放入IOC容器中 邮件发送BUG修正Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPDirectQOpen Data App Framework (ODAF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesMapWindow6NB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

  Read the article

• What are developer's problems with helpful error messages?

  - by Moo-Juice

  It continue to astounds me that, in this day and age, products that have years of use under their belt, built by teams of professionals, still to this day - fail to provide helpful error messages to the user. In some cases, the addition of just a little piece of extra information could save a user hours of trouble. A program that generates an error, generated it for a reason. It has everything at its disposal to inform the user as much as it can, why something failed. And yet it seems that providing information to aid the user is a low-priority. I think this is a huge failing. One example is from SQL Server. When you try and restore a database that is in use, it quite rightly won't let you. SQL Server knows what processes and applications are accessing it. Why can't it include information about the process(es) that are using the database? I know not everyone passes an Applicatio_Name attribute on their connection string, but even a hint about the machine in question could be helpful. Another candidate, also SQL Server (and mySQL) is the lovely string or binary data would be truncated error message and equivalents. A lot of the time, a simple perusal of the SQL statement that was generated and the table shows which column is the culprit. This isn't always the case, and if the database engine picked up on the error, why can't it save us that time and just tells us which damned column it was? On this example, you could argue that there may be a performance hit to checking it and that this would impede the writer. Fine, I'll buy that. How about, once the database engine knows there is an error, it does a quick comparison after-the-fact, between values that were going to be stored, versus the column lengths. Then display that to the user. ASP.NET's horrid Table Adapters are also guilty. Queries can be executed and one can be given an error message saying that a constraint somewhere is being violated. Thanks for that. Time to compare my data model against the database, because the developers are too lazy to provide even a row number, or example data. (For the record, I'd never use this data-access method by choice, it's just a project I have inherited!). Whenever I throw an exception from my C# or C++ code, I provide everything I have at hand to the user. The decision has been made to throw it, so the more information I can give, the better. Why did my function throw an exception? What was passed in, and what was expected? It takes me just a little longer to put something meaningful in the body of an exception message. Hell, it does nothing but help me whilst I develop, because I know my code throws things that are meaningful. One could argue that complicated exception messages should not be displayed to the user. Whilst I disagree with that, it is an argument that can easily be appeased by having a different level of verbosity depending on your build. Even then, the users of ASP.NET and SQL Server are not your typical users, and would prefer something full of verbosity and yummy information because they can track down their problems faster. Why to developers think it is okay, in this day and age, to provide the bare minimum amount of information when an error occurs? It's 2011 guys, come on.

  Read the article

• The broken Promise of the Mobile Web

  - by Rick Strahl

  High end mobile devices have been with us now for almost 7 years and they have utterly transformed the way we access information. Mobile phones and smartphones that have access to the Internet and host smart applications are in the hands of a large percentage of the population of the world. In many places even very remote, cell phones and even smart phones are a common sight. I’ll never forget when I was in India in 2011 I was up in the Southern Indian mountains riding an elephant out of a tiny local village, with an elephant herder in front riding atop of the elephant in front of us. He was dressed in traditional garb with the loin wrap and head cloth/turban as did quite a few of the locals in this small out of the way and not so touristy village. So we’re slowly trundling along in the forest and he’s lazily using his stick to guide the elephant and… 10 minutes in he pulls out his cell phone from his sash and starts texting. In the middle of texting a huge pig jumps out from the side of the trail and he takes a picture running across our path in the jungle! So yeah, mobile technology is very pervasive and it’s reached into even very buried and unexpected parts of this world. Apps are still King Apps currently rule the roost when it comes to mobile devices and the applications that run on them. If there’s something that you need on your mobile device your first step usually is to look for an app, not use your browser. But native app development remains a pain in the butt, with the requirement to have to support 2 or 3 completely separate platforms. There are solutions that try to bridge that gap. Xamarin is on a tear at the moment, providing their cross-device toolkit to build applications using C#. While Xamarin tools are impressive – and also *very* expensive – they only address part of the development madness that is app development. There are still specific device integration isssues, dealing with the different developer programs, security and certificate setups and all that other noise that surrounds app development. There’s also PhoneGap/Cordova which provides a hybrid solution that involves creating local HTML/CSS/JavaScript based applications, and then packaging them to run in a specialized App container that can run on most mobile device platforms using a WebView interface. This allows for using of HTML technology, but it also still requires all the set up, configuration of APIs, security keys and certification and submission and deployment process just like native applications – you actually lose many of the benefits that  Web based apps bring. The big selling point of Cordova is that you get to use HTML have the ability to build your UI once for all platforms and run across all of them – but the rest of the app process remains in place. Apps can be a big pain to create and manage especially when we are talking about specialized or vertical business applications that aren’t geared at the mainstream market and that don’t fit the ‘store’ model. If you’re building a small intra department application you don’t want to deal with multiple device platforms and certification etc. for various public or corporate app stores. That model is simply not a good fit both from the development and deployment perspective. Even for commercial, big ticket apps, HTML as a UI platform offers many advantages over native, from write-once run-anywhere, to remote maintenance, single point of management and failure to having full control over the application as opposed to have the app store overloads censor you. In a lot of ways Web based HTML/CSS/JavaScript applications have so much potential for building better solutions based on existing Web technologies for the very same reasons a lot of content years ago moved off the desktop to the Web. To me the Web as a mobile platform makes perfect sense, but the reality of today’s Mobile Web unfortunately looks a little different… Where’s the Love for the Mobile Web? Yet here we are in the middle of 2014, nearly 7 years after the first iPhone was released and brought the promise of rich interactive information at your fingertips, and yet we still don’t really have a solid mobile Web platform. I know what you’re thinking: “But we have lots of HTML/JavaScript/CSS features that allows us to build nice mobile interfaces”. I agree to a point – it’s actually quite possible to build nice looking, rich and capable Web UI today. We have media queries to deal with varied display sizes, CSS transforms for smooth animations and transitions, tons of CSS improvements in CSS 3 that facilitate rich layout, a host of APIs geared towards mobile device features and lately even a number of JavaScript framework choices that facilitate development of multi-screen apps in a consistent manner. Personally I’ve been working a lot with AngularJs and heavily modified Bootstrap themes to build mobile first UIs and that’s been working very well to provide highly usable and attractive UI for typical mobile business applications. From the pure UI perspective things actually look very good. Not just about the UI But it’s not just about the UI - it’s also about integration with the mobile device. When it comes to putting all those pieces together into what amounts to a consolidated platform to build mobile Web applications, I think we still have a ways to go… there are a lot of missing pieces to make it all work together and integrate with the device more smoothly, and more importantly to make it work uniformly across the majority of devices. I think there are a number of reasons for this. Slow Standards Adoption HTML standards implementations and ratification has been dreadfully slow, and browser vendors all seem to pick and choose different pieces of the technology they implement. The end result is that we have a capable UI platform that’s missing some of the infrastructure pieces to make it whole on mobile devices. There’s lots of potential but what is lacking that final 10% to build truly compelling mobile applications that can compete favorably with native applications. Some of it is the fragmentation of browsers and the slow evolution of the mobile specific HTML APIs. A host of mobile standards exist but many of the standards are in the early review stage and they have been there stuck for long periods of time and seem to move at a glacial pace. Browser vendors seem even slower to implement them, and for good reason – non-ratified standards mean that implementations may change and vendor implementations tend to be experimental and  likely have to be changed later. Neither Vendors or developers are not keen on changing standards. This is the typical chicken and egg scenario, but without some forward momentum from some party we end up stuck in the mud. It seems that either the standards bodies or the vendors need to carry the torch forward and that doesn’t seem to be happening quickly enough. Mobile Device Integration just isn’t good enough Current standards are not far reaching enough to address a number of the use case scenarios necessary for many mobile applications. While not every application needs to have access to all mobile device features, almost every mobile application could benefit from some integration with other parts of the mobile device platform. Integration with GPS, phone, media, messaging, notifications, linking and contacts system are benefits that are unique to mobile applications and could be widely used, but are mostly (with the exception of GPS) inaccessible for Web based applications today. Unfortunately trying to do most of this today only with a mobile Web browser is a losing battle. Aside from PhoneGap/Cordova’s app centric model with its own custom API accessing mobile device features and the token exception of the GeoLocation API, most device integration features are not widely supported by the current crop of mobile browsers. For example there’s no usable messaging API that allows access to SMS or contacts from HTML. Even obvious components like the Media Capture API are only implemented partially by mobile devices. There are alternatives and workarounds for some of these interfaces by using browser specific code, but that’s might ugly and something that I thought we were trying to leave behind with newer browser standards. But it’s not quite working out that way. It’s utterly perplexing to me that mobile standards like Media Capture and Streams, Media Gallery Access, Responsive Images, Messaging API, Contacts Manager API have only minimal or no traction at all today. Keep in mind we’ve had mobile browsers for nearly 7 years now, and yet we still have to think about how to get access to an image from the image gallery or the camera on some devices? Heck Windows Phone IE Mobile just gained the ability to upload images recently in the Windows 8.1 Update – that’s feature that HTML has had for 20 years! These are simple concepts and common problems that should have been solved a long time ago. It’s extremely frustrating to see build 90% of a mobile Web app with relative ease and then hit a brick wall for the remaining 10%, which often can be show stoppers. The remaining 10% have to do with platform integration, browser differences and working around the limitations that browsers and ‘pinned’ applications impose on HTML applications. The maddening part is that these limitations seem arbitrary as they could easily work on all mobile platforms. For example, SMS has a URL Moniker interface that sort of works on Android, works badly with iOS (only works if the address is already in the contact list) and not at all on Windows Phone. There’s no reason this shouldn’t work universally using the same interface – after all all phones have supported SMS since before the year 2000! But, it doesn’t have to be this way Change can happen very quickly. Take the GeoLocation API for example. Geolocation has taken off at the very beginning of the mobile device era and today it works well, provides the necessary security (a big concern for many mobile APIs), and is supported by just about all major mobile and even desktop browsers today. It handles security concerns via prompts to avoid unwanted access which is a model that would work for most other device APIs in a similar fashion. One time approval and occasional re-approval if code changes or caches expire. Simple and only slightly intrusive. It all works well, even though GeoLocation actually has some physical limitations, such as representing the current location when no GPS device is present. Yet this is a solved problem, where other APIs that are conceptually much simpler to implement have failed to gain any traction at all. Technically none of these APIs should be a problem to implement, but it appears that the momentum is just not there. Inadequate Web Application Linking and Activation Another important piece of the puzzle missing is the integration of HTML based Web applications. Today HTML based applications are not first class citizens on mobile operating systems. When talking about HTML based content there’s a big difference between content and applications. Content is great for search engine discovery and plain browser usage. Content is usually accessed intermittently and permanent linking is not so critical for this type of content.  But applications have different needs. Applications need to be started up quickly and must be easily switchable to support a multi-tasking user workflow. Therefore, it’s pretty crucial that mobile Web apps are integrated into the underlying mobile OS and work with the standard task management features. Unfortunately this integration is not as smooth as it should be. It starts with actually trying to find mobile Web applications, to ‘installing’ them onto a phone in an easily accessible manner in a prominent position. The experience of discovering a Mobile Web ‘App’ and making it sticky is by no means as easy or satisfying. Today the way you’d go about this is: Open the browser Search for a Web Site in the browser with your search engine of choice Hope that you find the right site Hope that you actually find a site that works for your mobile device Click on the link and run the app in a fully chrome’d browser instance (read tiny surface area) Pin the app to the home screen (with all the limitations outline above) Hope you pointed at the right URL when you pinned Even for you and me as developers, there are a few steps in there that are painful and annoying, but think about the average user. First figuring out how to search for a specific site or URL? And then pinning the app and hopefully from the right location? You’ve probably lost more than half of your audience at that point. This experience sucks. For developers too this process is painful since app developers can’t control the shortcut creation directly. This problem often gets solved by crazy coding schemes, with annoying pop-ups that try to get people to create shortcuts via fancy animations that are both annoying and add overhead to each and every application that implements this sort of thing differently. And that’s not the end of it - getting the link onto the home screen with an application icon varies quite a bit between browsers. Apple’s non-standard meta tags are prominent and they work with iOS and Android (only more recent versions), but not on Windows Phone. Windows Phone instead requires you to create an actual screen or rather a partial screen be captured for a shortcut in the tile manager. Who had that brilliant idea I wonder? Surprisingly Chrome on recent Android versions seems to actually get it right – icons use pngs, pinning is easy and pinned applications properly behave like standalone apps and retain the browser’s active page state and content. Each of the platforms has a different way to specify icons (WP doesn’t allow you to use an icon image at all), and the most widely used interface in use today is a bunch of Apple specific meta tags that other browsers choose to support. The question is: Why is there no standard implementation for installing shortcuts across mobile platforms using an official format rather than a proprietary one? Then there’s iOS and the crazy way it treats home screen linked URLs using a crazy hybrid format that is neither as capable as a Web app running in Safari nor a WebView hosted application. Moving off the Web ‘app’ link when switching to another app actually causes the browser and preview it to ‘blank out’ the Web application in the Task View (see screenshot on the right). Then, when the ‘app’ is reactivated it ends up completely restarting the browser with the original link. This is crazy behavior that you can’t easily work around. In some situations you might be able to store the application state and restore it using LocalStorage, but for many scenarios that involve complex data sources (like say Google Maps) that’s not a possibility. The only reason for this screwed up behavior I can think of is that it is deliberate to make Web apps a pain in the butt to use and forcing users trough the App Store/PhoneGap/Cordova route. App linking and management is a very basic problem – something that we essentially have solved in every desktop browser – yet on mobile devices where it arguably matters a lot more to have easy access to web content we have to jump through hoops to have even a remotely decent linking/activation experience across browsers. Where’s the Money? It’s not surprising that device home screen integration and Mobile Web support in general is in such dismal shape – the mobile OS vendors benefit financially from App store sales and have little to gain from Web based applications that bypass the App store and the cash cow that it presents. On top of that, platform specific vendor lock-in of both end users and developers who have invested in hardware, apps and consumables is something that mobile platform vendors actually aspire to. Web based interfaces that are cross-platform are the anti-thesis of that and so again it’s no surprise that the mobile Web is on a struggling path. But – that may be changing. More and more we’re seeing operations shifting to services that are subscription based or otherwise collect money for usage, and that may drive more progress into the Web direction in the end . Nothing like the almighty dollar to drive innovation forward. Do we need a Mobile Web App Store? As much as I dislike moderated experiences in today’s massive App Stores, they do at least provide one single place to look for apps for your device. I think we could really use some sort of registry, that could provide something akin to an app store for mobile Web apps, to make it easier to actually find mobile applications. This could take the form of a specialized search engine, or maybe a more formal store/registry like structure. Something like apt-get/chocolatey for Web apps. It could be curated and provide at least some feedback and reviews that might help with the integrity of applications. Coupled to that could be a native application on each platform that would allow searching and browsing of the registry and then also handle installation in the form of providing the home screen linking, plus maybe an initial security configuration that determines what features are allowed access to for the app. I’m not holding my breath. In order for this sort of thing to take off and gain widespread appeal, a lot of coordination would be required. And in order to get enough traction it would have to come from a well known entity – a mobile Web app store from a no name source is unlikely to gain high enough usage numbers to make a difference. In a way this would eliminate some of the freedom of the Web, but of course this would also be an optional search path in addition to the standard open Web search mechanisms to find and access content today. Security Security is a big deal, and one of the perceived reasons why so many IT professionals appear to be willing to go back to the walled garden of deployed apps is that Apps are perceived as safe due to the official review and curation of the App stores. Curated stores are supposed to protect you from malware, illegal and misleading content. It doesn’t always work out that way and all the major vendors have had issues with security and the review process at some time or another. Security is critical, but I also think that Web applications in general pose less of a security threat than native applications, by nature of the sandboxed browser and JavaScript environments. Web applications run externally completely and in the HTML and JavaScript sandboxes, with only a very few controlled APIs allowing access to device specific features. And as discussed earlier – security for any device interaction can be granted the same for mobile applications through a Web browser, as they can for native applications either via explicit policies loaded from the Web, or via prompting as GeoLocation does today. Security is important, but it’s certainly solvable problem for Web applications even those that need to access device hardware. Security shouldn’t be a reason for Web apps to be an equal player in mobile applications. Apps are winning, but haven’t we been here before? So now we’re finding ourselves back in an era of installed app, rather than Web based and managed apps. Only it’s even worse today than with Desktop applications, in that the apps are going through a gatekeeper that charges a toll and censors what you can and can’t do in your apps. Frankly it’s a mystery to me why anybody would buy into this model and why it’s lasted this long when we’ve already been through this process. It’s crazy… It’s really a shame that this regression is happening. We have the technology to make mobile Web apps much more prominent, but yet we’re basically held back by what seems little more than bureaucracy, partisan bickering and self interest of the major parties involved. Back in the day of the desktop it was Internet Explorer’s 98+%  market shareholding back the Web from improvements for many years – now it’s the combined mobile OS market in control of the mobile browsers. If mobile Web apps were allowed to be treated the same as native apps with simple ways to install and run them consistently and persistently, that would go a long way to making mobile applications much more usable and seriously viable alternatives to native apps. But as it is mobile apps have a severe disadvantage in placement and operation. There are a few bright spots in all of this. Mozilla’s FireFoxOs is embracing the Web for it’s mobile OS by essentially building every app out of HTML and JavaScript based content. It supports both packaged and certified package modes (that can be put into the app store), and Open Web apps that are loaded and run completely off the Web and can also cache locally for offline operation using a manifest. Open Web apps are treated as full class citizens in FireFoxOS and run using the same mechanism as installed apps. Unfortunately FireFoxOs is getting a slow start with minimal device support and specifically targeting the low end market. We can hope that this approach will change and catch on with other vendors, but that’s also an uphill battle given the conflict of interest with platform lock in that it represents. Recent versions of Android also seem to be working reasonably well with mobile application integration onto the desktop and activation out of the box. Although it still uses the Apple meta tags to find icons and behavior settings, everything at least works as you would expect – icons to the desktop on pinning, WebView based full screen activation, and reliable application persistence as the browser/app is treated like a real application. Hopefully iOS will at some point provide this same level of rudimentary Web app support. What’s also interesting to me is that Microsoft hasn’t picked up on the obvious need for a solid Web App platform. Being a distant third in the mobile OS war, Microsoft certainly has nothing to lose and everything to gain by using fresh ideas and expanding into areas that the other major vendors are neglecting. But instead Microsoft is trying to beat the market leaders at their own game, fighting on their adversary’s terms instead of taking a new tack. Providing a kick ass mobile Web platform that takes the lead on some of the proposed mobile APIs would be something positive that Microsoft could do to improve its miserable position in the mobile device market. Where are we at with Mobile Web? It sure sounds like I’m really down on the Mobile Web, right? I’ve built a number of mobile apps in the last year and while overall result and response has been very positive to what we were able to accomplish in terms of UI, getting that final 10% that required device integration dialed was an absolute nightmare on every single one of them. Big compromises had to be made and some features were left out or had to be modified for some devices. In two cases we opted to go the Cordova route in order to get the integration we needed, along with the extra pain involved in that process. Unless you’re not integrating with device features and you don’t care deeply about a smooth integration with the mobile desktop, mobile Web development is fraught with frustration. So, yes I’m frustrated! But it’s not for lack of wanting the mobile Web to succeed. I am still a firm believer that we will eventually arrive a much more functional mobile Web platform that allows access to the most common device features in a sensible way. It wouldn't be difficult for device platform vendors to make Web based applications first class citizens on mobile devices. But unfortunately it looks like it will still be some time before this happens. So, what’s your experience building mobile Web apps? Are you finding similar issues? Just giving up on raw Web applications and building PhoneGap apps instead? Completely skipping the Web and going native? Leave a comment for discussion. Resources Rick Strahl on DotNet Rocks talking about Mobile Web© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in HTML5  Mobile   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Attach mdf file without ldf file in Database

  - by pinaldave

  Background Story: One of my friends recently called up and asked me if I had spare time to look at his database and give him a performance tuning advice. Because I had some free time to help him out, I said yes. I asked him to send me the details of his database structure and sample data. He said that since his database is in a very early stage and is small as of the moment, so he told me that he would like me to have a complete database. My response to him was “Sure! In that case, take a backup of the database and send it to me. I will restore it into my computer and play with it.” He did send me his database; however, his method made me write this quick note here. Instead of taking a full backup of the database and sending it to me, he sent me only the .mdf (primary database file). In fact, I asked for a complete backup (I wanted to review file groups, files, as well as few other details).  Upon calling my friend,  I found that he was not available. Now,  he left me with only a .mdf file. As I had some extra time, I decided to checkout his database structure and get back to him regarding the full backup, whenever I can get in touch with him again. Technical Talk: If the database is shutdown gracefully and there was no abrupt shutdown (power outrages, pulling plugs to machines, machine crashes or any other reasons), it is possible (there’s no guarantee) to attach .mdf file only to the server. Please note that there can be many more reasons for a database that is not getting attached or restored. In my case, the database had a clean shutdown and there were no complex issues. I was able to recreate a transaction log file and attached the received .mdf file. There are multiple ways of doing this. I am listing all of them here. Before using any of them, please consult the Domain Expert in your company or industry. Also, never attempt this on live/production server without the presence of a Disaster Recovery expert. USE [master] GO -- Method 1: I use this method EXEC sp_attach_single_file_db @dbname='TestDb', @physname=N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\TestDb.mdf' GO -- Method 2: CREATE DATABASE TestDb ON (FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\TestDb.mdf') FOR ATTACH_REBUILD_LOG GO Method 2: If one or more log files are missing, they are recreated again. There is one more method which I am demonstrating here but I have not used myself before. According to Book Online, it will work only if there is one log file that is missing. If there are more than one log files involved, all of them are required to undergo the same procedure. -- Method 3: CREATE DATABASE TestDb ON ( FILENAME = N'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\TestDb.mdf') FOR ATTACH GO Please read the Book Online in depth and consult DR experts before working on the production server. In my case, the above syntax just worked fine as the database was clean when it was detached. Feel free to write your opinions and experiences for it will help the IT community to learn more from your suggestions and skills. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Travelling MVP #1: Visit to SharePoint User Group Finland

  - by DigiMortal

  My first self organized trip this autumn was visit to SharePoint User Group Finland community evening. As active community leaders who make things like these possible they are worth mentioning and on spug.fi side there was Jussi Roine the one who invited me. Here is my short review about my trip to Helsinki. User group meeting As Helsinki is near Tallinn I went there using ship. It was easy to get from sea port to venue and I had also some minutes of time to visit academic book store. Community evening was held on the ground floor of one city center hotel and room was conveniently located near hotel bar and restaurant. Here is the meeting schedule: Welcome (Jussi Roine) OpenText application archiving and governance for SharePoint (Bernd Hennicke, OpenText) Using advanced C# features in SharePoint development (Alexey Sadomov, NED Consulting) Optimizing public-facing internet sites for SharePoint (Gunnar Peipman) After meeting, of course, local dudes doesn’t walk away but continue with some beers and discussion. Sessions After welcome words by Jussi there was session by Bernd Hennicke who spoke about OpenText. His session covered OpenText history and current moment. After this introduction he spoke about OpenText products for SharePoint and gave the audience good overview about where their SharePoint extensions fit in big picture. I usually don’t like those vendors sessions but this one was good. I mean vendor dudes were not aggressively selling something. They were way different – kind people who introduced their stuff and later answered questions. They acted like good guests. Second speaker was Alexey Sadomov who is working on SharePoint development projects. He introduced some ways how to get over some limitations of SharePoint. I don’t go here deeply with his session but it’s worth to mention that this session was strong one. It is not rear case when developers have to make nasty hacks to SharePoint. I mean really nasty hacks. Often these hacks are long blocks of code that uses terrible techniques to achieve the result. Alexey introduced some very much civilized ways about how to apply hacks. Alex Sadomov, SharePoint MVP, speaking about SharePoint coding tips and tricks on C# I spoke about how I optimized caching of Estonian Microsoft community portal that runs on SharePoint Server and that uses publishing infrastructure. I made no actual demos on SharePoint because I wanted to focus on optimizing process and share some experiences about how to get caches optimized and how to measure caches. Networking After official part there was time to talk and discuss with people. Finns are cool – they have beers and they are glad. It was not big community event but people were like one good family. Developers there work often for big companies and it was very interesting to me to hear about their experiences with SharePoint. One thing was a little bit surprising for me – SharePoint guys in Finland are talking actively also about Office 365 and online SharePoint. It doesn’t happen often here in Estonia. I had to leave a little bit 21:00 to get to my ship back to Tallinn. I am sure spug.fi dudes continued nice evening and they had at least same good time as I did. Do I want to go back to Finland and meet these guys again? Yes, sure, let’s do it again! :)

  Read the article

• How to configure Visual Studio 2010 code coverage for ASP.NET MVC unit tests

  - by DigiMortal

  I just got Visual Studio 2010 code coverage work with ASP.NET MVC application unit tests. Everything is simple after you have spent some time with forums, blogs and Google. To save your valuable time I wrote this posting to guide you through the process of making code coverage work with ASP.NET MVC application unit tests. After some fighting with Visual Studio I got everything to work as expected. I am still not very sure why users must deal with this mess, but okay – I survived it. Before you start configuring Visual Studio I expect your solution meets the following needs: there are at least one library that will be tested, there is at least on library that contains tests to be run, there are some classes and some tests for them, and, of course, you are using version of Visual Studio 2010 that supports tests (I have Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate). Now open the following screenshot to separate windows and follow the steps given below. Visual Studio 2010 Test Settings window. Click on image to see it at original size.  Double click on Local.testsettings under Solution Items. Test settings window will be opened. Select “Data and Diagnostics” from left pane. Mark checkboxes “ASP.NET Profiler” and “Code Coverage”. Move cursor to “Code Coverage” line and press Configure button or make double click on line. Assemblies selection window will be opened. Mark checkboxes that are located before assemblies about what you want code coverage reports and apply settings. Save your project and close Visual Studio. Run Visual Studio as Administrator and run tests. NB! Select Test => Run => Tests in Current Context from menu. When tests are run you can open code coverage results by selecting Test => Windows => Code Coverage Results from menu. Here you can see my example test results. Visual Studio 2010 Test Results window. All my tests passed this time. :) Click on image to see it at original size.  And here are the code coverage results. Visual Studio 2101 Code Coverage Results. I need a lot more tests for sure. Click on image to see it at original size.  As you can see everything was pretty simple. But it took me sometime to figure out how to get everything work as expected. Problems? You may face some problems when making code coverage work. Here is my short list of possible problems. Make sure you have all assemblies available for code coverage. In some cases it needs more libraries to be referenced as you currently have. By example, I had to add some more Enterprise Library assemblies to my project. You can use EventViewer to discover errors that where given during testing. Make sure you selected all testable assemblies from Code Coverage settings like shown above. Otherwise you may get empty results. Tests with code coverage are slower because we need ASP.NET profiler. If your machine slows down then try to free more resources.

  Read the article

• SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles–building WCM sites

  - by svdoever

  One of the use cases where we use the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling is in building SharePoint Publishing (WCM) solutions for SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 and Office365. Publishing solutions are often solutions that have one instance, the publishing site (possibly with subsites), that in most cases need to go through DTAP. If you dissect a publishing site, in most case you have the following findings: The publishing site spans a site collection The branding of the site is specified in the root site, because: Master pages live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) Page layouts live in the root site (/_catalogs/masterpage) The style library lives in the root site ( /Style Library) and contains images, css, javascript, xslt transformations for your CQWP’s, … Preconfigured web parts live in the root site (/_catalogs/wp) The root site and subsites contains a document library called Pages (or your language-specific version of it) containing publishing pages using the page layouts and master pages The site collection contains content types, fields and lists When using the SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling it is very easy to create, test, package and deploy the artifacts that can be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. This can be done in a fast and simple way without the need to create and deploy WSP packages. If we look at the above list of artifacts we can use SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles for master pages, page layouts, the style library, web part configurations, and initial publishing pages (these are normally made through the SharePoint web UI). Some artifacts like content types, fields and lists in the above list can NOT be handled by SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because they can’t be uploaded to the SharePoint content database. The good thing is that these artifacts are the artifacts that don’t change that much in the development of a SharePoint Publishing solution. There are however multiple ways to create these artifacts: Use paper script: create them manually in each of the environments based on documentation Automate the creation of the artifacts using (PowerShell) script Develop a WSP package to create these artifacts I’m not a big fan of the third option (see my blog post Thoughts on building deployable and updatable SharePoint solutions). It is a lot of work to create content types, fields and list definitions using all kind of XML files, and it is not allowed to modify these artifacts when in use. I know… SharePoint 2010 has some content type upgrade possibilities, but I think it is just too cumbersome. The first option has the problem that content types and fields get ID’s, and that these ID’s must be used by the metadata on for example page layouts. No problem for SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles, because it supports deploy-time resolving of these ID’s using PowerShell. For example consider the following metadata definition for the page layout contactpage-wcm.aspx.properties.ps1: Metadata page layout # This script must return a hashtable @{ name=value; ... } of field name-value pairs # for the content file that this script applies to. # On deployment to SharePoint, these values are written as fields in the corresponding list item (if any) # Note that fields must exist; they can be updated but not created or deleted. # This script is called right after the file is deployed to SharePoint.   # You can use the script parameters and arbitrary PowerShell code to interact with SharePoint. # e.g. to calculate properties and values at deployment time.   param([string]$SourcePath, [string]$RelativeUrl, $Context) @{     "ContentTypeId" = $Context.GetContentTypeID('GeneralPage');     "MasterPageDescription" = "Cloud Aviator Contact pagelayout (wcm - don't use)";     "PublishingHidden" = "1";     "PublishingAssociatedContentType" = $Context.GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo('GeneralPage') } The PowerShell functions GetContentTypeID and GetAssociatedContentTypeInfo can at deploy-time resolve the required information from the server we are deploying to. I personally prefer the second option: automate creation through PowerShell, because there are PowerShell scripts available to export content types and fields. An example project structure for a typical SharePoint WCM site looks like: Note that this project uses DualLayout. So if you build Publishing sites using SharePoint, checkout out the completely free SharePoint.DesignFactory.ContentFiles tooling and start flying!

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 531 532 533 534 535 536 537 538 539 540 541 542  | Next Page >