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• Started wrong with a project. Should I start over?

  - by solidsnake

  I'm a beginner web developer (one year of experience). A couple of weeks after graduating, I got offered a job to build a web application for a company whose owner is not much of a tech guy. He recruited me to avoid theft of his idea, the high cost of development charged by a service company, and to have someone young he can trust onboard to maintain the project for the long run (I came to these conclusions by myself long after being hired). Cocky as I was back then, with a diploma in computer science, I accepted the offer thinking I can build anything. I was calling the shots. After some research I settled on PHP, and started with plain PHP, no objects, just ugly procedural code. Two months later, everything was getting messy, and it was hard to make any progress. The web application is huge. So I decided to check out an MVC framework that would make my life easier. That's where I stumbled upon the cool kid in the PHP community: Laravel. I loved it, it was easy to learn, and I started coding right away. My code looked cleaner, more organized. It looked very good. But again the web application was huge. The company was pressuring me to deliver the first version, which they wanted to deploy, obviously, and start seeking customers. Because Laravel was fun to work with, it made me remember why I chose this industry in the first place - something I forgot while stuck in the shitty education system. So I started working on small projects at night, reading about methodologies and best practice. I revisited OOP, moved on to object-oriented design and analysis, and read Uncle Bob's book Clean Code. This helped me realize that I really knew nothing. I did not know how to build software THE RIGHT WAY. But at this point it was too late, and now I'm almost done. My code is not clean at all, just spaghetti code, a real pain to fix a bug, all the logic is in the controllers, and there is little object oriented design. I'm having this persistent thought that I have to rewrite the whole project. However, I can't do it... They keep asking when is it going to be all done. I can not imagine this code deployed on a server. Plus I still know nothing about code efficiency and the web application's performance. On one hand, the company is waiting for the product and can not wait anymore. On the other hand I can't see myself going any further with the actual code. I could finish up, wrap it up and deploy, but god only knows what might happen when people start using it. What do you think I should do?

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• Using Resources the Right Way

  - by BuckWoody

  It’s an interesting time in computing technology. At one point there was a dearth of information available for solving a given problem, or educating ourselves on broader topics so that we can solve problems in the future. With dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of web sites and content available (for free, in many cases) from vendors, peers, even colleges and universities, it seems like there is actually too much information. Who has the time to absorb all this information and training? Even if you had the inclination, where to start? In fact, it seems so overwhelming that I often hear people saying that they can’t find the training they need, or that vendor X or Y “doesn’t help their users”. On questioning these folks, however, I often find that they – and sometimes I - haven’t put in the effort to learn what resources we have. That’s where blogs, like this one, can help. If you follow a blog, either by checking it often or perhaps subscribing to the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, you’ll be able to spread out the search or create a mental filter for the information you need. But it’s not enough just read a blog or a web page. The creators need real feedback – what doesn’t work, and what does. Yes, you’re allowed to tell a vendor or writer “This helped me because…” so that you reinforce the positives. To be sure, bring up what doesn’t work as well –  that’s fine. But be specific, and be constructive. You’d be surprised at how much it matters. I know for a fact at Microsoft we listen – there is a real live person that reads your comments. I’m sure this is true of other vendors, and I also know that most blog authors – yours truly most especially – wants to know what you think.   In this blog entry I’d to call your attention to three resources you have at your disposal, and how you can use them to help. I’ll try to bring up things like this from time to time that I find useful, and cover in them in more depth like this. Think of this as a synopsis of a longer set of resources that you can use to filter whether you want to research further, bookmark, or forward on to a circle of friends where you think it might help them.   Data Driven Design Concepts http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156154 I’ll start with a great site that walks you through the process of designing a solution from a data-first perspective. As you know, I believe all computing is merely re-arranging data. If you follow that logic as well, you’ll realize that whenever you create a solution, you should start at the data-end of the application. This resource helps you do that. Even if you don’t use the specific technologies the instructions use, the concepts hold for almost any other technology that deals with data. This should be a definite bookmark for a developer, DBA, or Data Architect. When I mentioned my admiration for this resource here at Microsoft, the team that created it contacted me and asked if I’d share an e-mail address to my readers so that you can comment on it. You’re guaranteed to be heard – you can suggest changes, talk about how useful – or not – it is, and so on. Here’s that address:  [email protected]   End-to-End Example of a complete Hybrid Application – with Live Demo https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx I learn by example. I also like having ready-made, live, functional demos that show the completed solution at work. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how a complex, complete, hybrid application that bridges on-premises systems with cloud-based databases, code, functions and more, this is it. It’s a stock-trading simulator, and you can get everything from the design to the code itself, or you can just play with the application. It’s running on Windows Azure, the actual production servers we use for everything else. Using a Cloud-Based Service https://azureconfigweb.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx Along with that stock-trading application, you have a full demonstration and usable code sample of a web-based service available. If you’re a developer, this is a style of code you need to understand for everything from iPhone development to a full Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment. So check out these resources. I’ll post more from time to time as I run across them. Hopefully they’ll be as useful to you as they are to me. Oh, and if you have a comment on any of the resources, let them know. And if you have any comments about these or any of my entries, feel free to post away. To quote a famous TV Show: “Hello Seattle – I’m listening…”

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• What is the use of Association, Aggregation and Composition (Encapsulation) in Classes

  - by SahilMahajanMj

  I have gone through lots of theories about what is encapsulation and the three techniques of implementing it, which are Association, Aggregation and Composition. What i found is, Encapsulation Encapsulation is the technique of making the fields in a class private and providing access to the fields via public methods. If a field is declared private, it cannot be accessed by anyone outside the class, thereby hiding the fields within the class. For this reason, encapsulation is also referred to as data hiding. Encapsulation can be described as a protective barrier that prevents the code and data being randomly accessed by other code defined outside the class. Access to the data and code is tightly controlled by an interface. The main benefit of encapsulation is the ability to modify our implemented code without breaking the code of others who use our code. With this feature Encapsulation gives maintainability, flexibility and extensibility to our code. Association Association is a relationship where all object have their own lifecycle and there is no owner. Let’s take an example of Teacher and Student. Multiple students can associate with single teacher and single student can associate with multiple teachers but there is no ownership between the objects and both have their own lifecycle. Both can create and delete independently. Aggregation Aggregation is a specialize form of Association where all object have their own lifecycle but there is ownership and child object can not belongs to another parent object. Let’s take an example of Department and teacher. A single teacher can not belongs to multiple departments, but if we delete the department teacher object will not destroy. We can think about “has-a” relationship. Composition Composition is again specialize form of Aggregation and we can call this as a “death” relationship. It is a strong type of Aggregation. Child object dose not have their lifecycle and if parent object deletes all child object will also be deleted. Let’s take again an example of relationship between House and rooms. House can contain multiple rooms there is no independent life of room and any room can not belongs to two different house if we delete the house room will automatically delete. The question is: Now these all are real world examples. I am looking for some description about how to use these techniques in actual class code. I mean what is the point for using three different techniques for encapsulation, How these techniques could be implemented and How to choose which technique is applicable at time.

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• Best Practices Generating WebService Proxies for Oracle Sales Cloud (Fusion CRM)

  - by asantaga

  I've recently been building a REST Service wrapper for Oracle Sales Cloud and initially all was going well, however as soon as I added all of my Web Service proxies I started to get weird errors..  My project structure looks like this What I found out was if I only had the InteractionsService & OpportunityService WebService Proxies then all worked ok, but as soon as I added the LocationsService Proxy, I would start to see strange JAXB errors. Example of the error message Exception in thread "main" javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: Unable to create JAXBContextat com.sun.xml.ws.model.AbstractSEIModelImpl.createJAXBContext(AbstractSEIModelImpl.java:164)at com.sun.xml.ws.model.AbstractSEIModelImpl.postProcess(AbstractSEIModelImpl.java:94)at com.sun.xml.ws.model.RuntimeModeler.buildRuntimeModel(RuntimeModeler.java:281)at com.sun.xml.ws.client.WSServiceDelegate.buildRuntimeModel(WSServiceDelegate.java:762)at weblogic.wsee.jaxws.spi.WLSProvider$ServiceDelegate.buildRuntimeModel(WLSProvider.java:982)at com.sun.xml.ws.client.WSServiceDelegate.createSEIPortInfo(WSServiceDelegate.java:746)at com.sun.xml.ws.client.WSServiceDelegate.addSEI(WSServiceDelegate.java:737)at com.sun.xml.ws.client.WSServiceDelegate.getPort(WSServiceDelegate.java:361)at weblogic.wsee.jaxws.spi.WLSProvider$ServiceDelegate.internalGetPort(WLSProvider.java:934)at weblogic.wsee.jaxws.spi.WLSProvider$ServiceDelegate$PortClientInstanceFactory.createClientInstance(WLSProvider.java:1039)...... Looking further down I see the error message is related to JAXB not being able to find an objectFactory for one of its types Caused by: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException: 6 counts of IllegalAnnotationExceptionsThere's no ObjectFactory with an @XmlElementDecl for the element {http://xmlns.oracle.com/apps/crmCommon/activities/activitiesService/}AssigneeRsrcOrgIdthis problem is related to the following location:at protected javax.xml.bind.JAXBElement com.oracle.xmlns.apps.crmcommon.activities.activitiesservice.ActivityAssignee.assigneeRsrcOrgId at com.oracle.xmlns.apps.crmcommon.activities.activitiesservice.ActivityAssignee This is very strange... My first thoughts are that when I generated the WebService Proxy I entered the package name as "oracle.demo.pts.fusionproxy.servicename" and left the generated types as blank. This way all the generated types get put into the same package hierarchy and when deployed they get merged... Sounds resaonable and appears to work but not in this case..  To resolve this I regenerate the proxy but this time setting : Package name : To the name of my package eg. oracle.demo.pts.fusionproxy.interactionsRoot Package for Generated Types :  Package where the types will be generated to, e.g. oracle.demo.pts.fusionproxy.SalesParty.types When I ran the application now, it all works , awesome eh???? Alas no, there is a serious side effect. The problem now is that to help coding I've created a collection of helper classes , these helper classes take parameters which use some of the "generic" datatypes, like FindCriteria. e.g. This wont work any more public static FindCriteria createCustomFindCriteria(FindCriteria pFc,String pAttributes) Here lies a gremlin of a problem.. I cant use this method anymore, this is because the FindCriteria datatype is now being defined two, or more times, in the generated code for my project. If you leave the Root Package for types blank it will get generated to com.oracle.xmlns, and if you populate it then it gets generated to your custom package.. The two datatypes look the same, sound the same (and if this were a duck would sound the same), but THEY ARE NOT THE SAME... Speaking to development, they recommend you should not be entering anything in the Root Packages section, so the mystery thickens why does it work.. Well after spending sometime with some colleagues of mine in development we've identified the issue.. Alas different parts of Oracle Fusion Development have multiple schemas with the same namespace, when the WebService generator generates its classes its not seeing the other schemas properly and not generating the Object Factories correctly...  Thankfully I've found a workaround Solution Overview When generating the proxies leave the Root Package for Generated Types BLANK When you have finished generating your proxies, use the JAXB tool XJC and generate Java classes for all datatypes  Create a project within your JDeveloper11g workspace and import the java classes into this project Final bit.. within the project dependencies ensure that the JAXB/XJC generated classes are "FIRST" in the classpath Solution Details Generate the WebServices SOAP proxies When generating the proxies your generation dialog should look like this Ensure the "unwrap" parameters is selected, if it isn't then that's ok, it simply means when issuing a "get" you need to extract out the Element Generate the JAXB Classes using XJC XJC provides a command line switch called -wsdl, this (although is experimental/beta) , accepts a HTTP WSDL and will generate the relevant classes. You can put these into a single batch/shell script xjc -wsdl https://fusionservername:443/appCmmnCompInteractions/InteractionService?wsdlxjc -wsdl https://fusionservername443/opptyMgmtOpportunities/OpportunityService?wsdl Create Project in JDeveloper to store the XJC "generated" JAXB classes Within the project folder create a filesystem folder called "src" and copy the generated files into this folder. JDeveloper11g should then see the classes and display them, if it doesnt try clicking the "refresh" button In your main project ensure that the JDeveloper XJC project is selected as a dependancy and IMPORTANT make sure it is at the top of the list. This ensures that the classes are at the front of the classpath And voilà.. Hopefully you wont see any JAXB generation errors and you can use common datatypes interchangeably in your project, (e.g. FindCriteria etc)

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• Training a 'replacement', how to enforce standards?

  - by Mohgeroth

  Not sure that this is the right stack exchange site to ask this of, but here goes... Scope I work for a small company that employs a few hundred people. The development team for the company is small and works out of visual foxpro. A specific department in the company hired me in as a 'lone gunman' to fix and enhance a pre-existing invoicing system. I've successfully taken an Access application that suffered from a lot of risks and limitations and converted it into a C# application driven off of a SQL server backend. I have recently obtained my undergraduate and am no expert by any means. To help make up for that I've felt that earning microsoft certifications will force me to understand more about .net and how it functions. So, after giving my notice with 9 months in advance, 3 months ago a replacement finally showed up. Their role is to learn what I have been designing to an attempt to support the applications designed in C#. The Replacement Fresh out of college with no real-world work experience, the first instinct for anything involving data was and still is listboxes... any time data is mentioned the list box is the control of choice for the replacement. This has gotten to the point, no matter how many times I discuss other controls, where I've seen 5 listboxes on a single form. Classroom experience was almost all C++ console development. So, an example of where I have concern is in a winforms application: Users need to key Reasons into a table to select from later. Given that I know that a strongly typed data set exists, I can just drag the data source from the toolbox and it would create all of this for me. I realize this is a simple example but using databinding is the key. For the past few months now we have been talking about the strongly typed dataset, how to use it and where it interacts with other controls. Data sets, how they work in relation to binding sources, adapters and data grid views. After handing this project off I expected questions about how to implement these since for me this is the way to do it. What happened next simply floors me: An instance of an adapter from the strongly typed dataset was created in the activate event of the form, a table was created and filled with data. Then, a loop was made to manually add rows to a listbox from this table. Finally, a variable was kept to do lookups to figure out what ID the record was for updates if required. How do they modify records you ask? That was my first question too. You won't believe how simple it is, all you do it double click and they type into a pop-up prompt the new value to change it to. As a data entry operator, all the modal popups would drive me absolutely insane. The final solution exceeds 100 lines of code that must be maintained. So my concern is that none of this is sinking in... the department is only allowed 20 hours a week of their time. Up until last week, we've only been given 4-5 hours a week if I'm lucky. The past week or so, I've been lucky to get 10. Question WHAT DO I DO?! I have 4 weeks left until I leave and they fully 'support' this application. I love this job and the opportunity it has given me but it's time for me to spread my wings and find something new. I am in no way, shape or form convinced that they are ready to take over. I do feel that the replacement has the technical ability to 'figure it out' but instead of learning they just write code to do all of this stuff manually. If the replacement wants to code differently in the end, as long as it works I'm fine with that as horrifiying at it looks. However to support what I have designed they MUST to understand how it works and how I have used controls and the framework to make 'magic' happen. This project has about 40 forms, a database with over 30 some odd tables, triggers and stored procedures. It relates labor to invoices to contracts to projections... it's not as simple as it was three years ago when I began this project and the department is now in a position where they cannot survive without it. How in the world can I accomplish any of the following?: Enforce standards or understanding in constent design when the department manager keeps telling them they can do it however they want to Find a way to engage the replacement in active learning of the framework and system design that support must be given for Gracefully inform sr. management that 5-9 hours a week is simply not enough time to learn about the department, pre-existing processes, applications that need to be supported AND determine where potential enhancements to the system go... Yes I know this is a wall of text, thanks for reading through me but I simply don't know what I should be doing. For me, this job is a monster of a reference and things would look extremely bad if I left and things fell apart. How do I handle this?

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• Stop trying to be perfect

  - by Kyle Burns

  Yes, Bob is my uncle too.  I also think the points in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship (manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org) are all great.  What amazes me is that tend to confuse the term “well crafted” with “perfect”.  I'm about to say something that will make Quality Assurance managers and many development types as well until you think about it as a craftsman – “Stop trying to be perfect”. Now let me explain what I mean.  Building software, as with building almost anything, often involves a series of trade-offs where either one undesired characteristic is accepted as necessary to achieve another desired one (or maybe stave off one that is even less desirable) or a desirable characteristic is sacrificed for the same reasons.  This implies that perfection itself is unattainable.  What is attainable is “sufficient” and I think that this really goes to the heart both of what people are trying to do with Agile and with the craftsmanship movement.  Simply put, sufficient software drives the greatest business value.   I've been in many meetings where “how can we keep anything from ever going wrong” has become the thing that holds us in analysis paralysis.  I've also been the guy trying way too hard to perfect some function to make sure that every edge case is accounted for.  Somewhere in there, something a drill instructor said while I was in boot camp occurred to me.  In response to being asked a question by another recruit having to do with some edge case (I can barely remember the context), he said “What if grasshoppers had machine guns?  Would the birds still **** with them?”  It sounds funny, but there's a lot of wisdom in those words.   “Sufficient” is different for every situation and it’s important to understand what sufficient means in the context of the work you’re doing.  If I’m writing a timesheet application (and please shoot me if I am), I’m going to have a much higher tolerance for imperfection than if you’re writing software to control life support systems on spacecraft.  I’m also likely to have less need for high volume performance than if you’re writing software to control stock trading transactions.   I’d encourage anyone who has read this far to instead of trying to be perfect, try to create software that is sufficient in every way.  If you’re working to make a component that is sufficient “better”, ask yourself if there is any component left that is not yet sufficient.  If the answer is “yes” you’re working on the wrong thing and need to adjust.  If the answer is “no”, why aren’t you shipping and delivering business value?

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• The Case for Complimentary Software Copies

  - by GGBlogger

  As the Geriatric Geek you can understand that I’ve been writing and studying for over 60 years. That means that I’ve seen insane changes in the computer software industry. I’ve made the joke that I get a new college education every 6 months or so. Of course that’s an exaggeration but it doesn’t make the feeling go away. I have a long standing and strong relationship with Microsoft so I’m armed with virtually every tool they make. It also means that I have access to tons of training material. But here’s the rub… Last year I started a definitive read of Professional Visual Basic 2008. The purpose was to fill in holes in my understanding of various things. I’m currently on page 1119 of some 1400 pages. During this sojourn I’ve decided that the future is web related which is to say that the future of “thick client” applications running as Windows applications is likely to slowly disappear. To that end I’ve taken a side trip or two into the world of ASP (including XML), Silverlight and cloud development. After carefully avoiding (that’s tongue in cheek) XML for years I finally had to bite the bullet, so to speak, and start learning XML in earnest. The most recent result of that was trail downloads of Altova’s MissionKit 2010 for Software Architects and Liquid Technologies Liquid XML Studio Developer Edition. These are both beautiful products and I want to learn them and write about them. Now comes the rub… While 30 day evaluations are generous in allowing casual users to assess these technologies for purchase they are NOT long enough to allow an author to evaluate, learn and ultimately write about them. Even if I devoted the full 30 days to learning, using and writing about say Altova’s suite I wouldn’t have enough time. Liquid XML may be a little easier to learn (one product as opposed to 8).  Add to that the fact that I frequently get sidetracked to add to my kit and it really blows out. It can be extremely frustrating when I’ve devoted hours to a project and suddenly discover that to complete it I will either need to purchase a license or abandon the project. Since my life blood does not depend on the product I end up abandoning the project and moving on. So to the folks from whom I request complimentary copies… I guarantee that if I convert your product to doing paid development work I will purchase a license to do that but as long as I am using your product to study for the purpose of writing samples, teaching use or otherwise promoting your product to other paying customers I will ask that you give me a license so that I can do that without facing the dread expiration of a 30 day trial.

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• Why is my dual-boot Ubuntu partition showing up as a peripheral "root.disk"?

  - by Don

  I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04, which I had been booting from a usb key, as a dual-boot on my machine running Windows 7. From what I had read online while researching, I was prepared to have to shrink the Windows partition and all that. But I never had to - it really was just a few clicks here and there and it was installed. I'm still pretty confused about it, but whatever, it worked, and the two peacefully coexist on my machine, and I have broken things to fix before I worry about fixing unbroken things. So yesterday I got it in my head to look at my partitions (I was considering making an all new partition to install the Windows 8 Release Preview). What I saw confused me. Here's a screenshot of the disk utility. At this moment, there is nothing connected to my computer, and nothing in any of the optical drives/ports/card readers/etc. Can you help me figure out what's going on here? Don's Machine is, I believe, my Windows partition - that's the name I assigned my machine from Windows Explorer. PQSERVICE is from what I can find online also Windows, but having to do with backup. And SYSTEM REQUIRED, if I browse it in Ubuntu, is definitely something to do with booting, and I believe it is also Windows'. According to the sizes shown, those three together should use up my 500 GB HD. Then further down, as a "peripheral device", it lists that 31 GB disk. This is obviously my Ubuntu (Model:Linux Loop:root.disk), but why is it showing up as a peripheral? So, to sum up those questions and to add some more random ones I had: Why is Ubuntu showing up as a peripheral device? If the Windows sections take up all 500 GB, where does Ubuntu live? If I renamed the disk partitions, would my life become a nightmare (seriously - can I safely rename them)? Why didn't I have to resize the Windows partition in the first place? Would giving Ubuntu more space improve its performance (it hangs alot)? Is it possible to have a partition for each OS (Windows 7 & 8, Ubuntu), a partition for files, and a separate partition for backups? Is this towards the good or bad idea end of the spectrum? @Elfy, would that explain why it keeps hanging? I guess I'll backup my files, rip it out, and reinstall it correctly later on today.

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• Cloud Computing: Start with the problem

  - by BuckWoody

  At one point in my life I would build my own computing system for home use. I wanted a particular video card, a certain set of drives, and a lot of memory. Not only could I not find those things in a vendor’s pre-built computer, but those were more expensive – by a lot. As time moved on and the computing industry matured, I actually find that I can buy a vendor’s system as cheaply – and in some cases far more cheaply – than I can build it myself.   This paradigm holds true for almost any product, even clothing and furniture. And it’s also held true for software… Mostly. If you need an office productivity package, you simply buy one or use open-sourced software for that. There’s really no need to write your own Word Processor – it’s kind of been done a thousand times over. Even if you need a full system for customer relationship management or other needs, you simply buy one. But there is no “cloud solution in a box”.  Sure, if you’re after “Software as a Service” – type solutions, like being able to process video (Windows Azure Media Services) or running a Pig or Hive job in Hadoop (Hadoop on Windows Azure) you can simply use one of those, or if you just want to deploy a Virtual Machine (Windows Azure Virtual Machines) you can get that, but if you’re looking for a solution to a problem your organization has, you may need to mix Software, Infrastructure, and perhaps even Platforms (such as Windows Azure Computing) to solve the issue. It’s all about starting from the problem-end first. We’ve become so accustomed to looking for a box of software that will solve the problem, that we often start with the solution and try to fit it to the problem, rather than the other way around.  When I talk with my fellow architects at other companies, one of the hardest things to get them to do is to ignore the technology for a moment and describe what the issues are. It’s interesting to monitor the conversation and watch how many times we deviate from the problem into the solution. So, in your work today, try a little experiment: watch how many times you go after a problem by starting with the solution. Tomorrow, make a conscious effort to reverse that. You might be surprised at the results.

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• WSS 3.0 to SharePoint 2010: Tips for delaying the Visual Upgrade

  - by Kelly Jones

  My most recent project has been to migrate a bunch of sites from WSS 3.0 (SharePoint 2007) to SharePoint Server 2010.  The users are currently working with WSS 3.0 and Office 2003, so the new ribbon based UI in 2010 will be completely new.  My client wants to avoid the new SharePoint 2010 look and feel until they’ve had time to train their users, so we’ve been testing the upgrades by keeping them with the 2007 user interface. Permission to perform the Visual Upgrade One of the first things we noticed was the default permissions for who was allowed to switch the UI from 2007 to 2010.  By default, site collection administrators and site owners can do this.  Since we wanted to more tightly control the timing of the new UI, I added a few lines to the PowerShell script that we are using to perform the migration.  This script creates the web application, sets the User Policy, and then does a Mount-SPDatabase to attach the old 2007 content database to the 2010 farm.  I added the following steps after the Mount-SPDatabase step: #Remove the visual upgrade option for site owners # it remains for Site Collection administrators foreach ($sc in $WebApp.Sites){ foreach ($web in $sc.AllWebs){ #Visual Upgrade permissions for the site/subsite (web) $web.UIversionConfigurationEnabled = $false; $web.Update(); } } These script steps loop through each Site Collection in a particular web application ($WebApp) and then it loops through each subsite ($web) in the Site Collection ($sc) and disables the Site Owner’s permission to perform the Visual Upgrade. This is equivalent to going to the Site Collection administrator settings page –> Visual Upgrade and selecting “Hide Visual Upgrade”. Since only IT people have Site Collection administrator privileges, this will allow IT to control the timing of the new 2010 UI rollout. Newly created subsites Our next issue was brought to our attention by SharePoint Joel’s blog post last week (http://www.sharepointjoel.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=524 ).  In it, he lists some updates about the 2010 upgrade, and his fourth point was one that I hadn’t seen yet: 4. If a 2007 upgraded site has not been visually upgraded, the sites created underneath it will look like 2010 sites – While this is something I’ve been aware of, I think many don’t realize how this impacts common look and feel for master pages, and how it impacts good navigation and UI. As well depending on your patch level you may see hanging behavior in the list picker. The site and list creation Silverlight control in Internet Explorer is looking for resources that don’t exist in the galleries in the 2007 site, and hence it continues to spin and spin and eventually time out. The work around is to upgrade to SP1, or use Chrome or Firefox which won’t attempt to render the Silverlight control. When the root site collection is a 2007 site and has it’s set of galleries and the children are 2010 sites there is some strange behavior linked to the way that the galleries work and pull from the parent. Our production SharePoint 2010 Farm has SP1 installed, as well as the December 2011 Cumulative Update, so I think the “hanging behavior” he mentions won’t affect us. However, since we want to control the roll out of the UI, we are concerned that new subsites will have the 2010 look and feel, no matter what the parent site has. Ok, time to dust off my developer skills. I first looked into using feature stapling, but I couldn’t get that to work (although I’m pretty sure I had everything wired up correctly).  Then I stumbled upon SharePoint 2010’s web events – a great way to handle this. Using Visual Studio 2010, I created a new SharePoint project and added a Web Event Receiver: In the Event Receiver class, I used the WebProvisioned method to check if the parent site is a 2007 site (UIVersion = 3), and if so, then set the newly created site to 2007:   /// <summary> /// A site was provisioned. /// </summary> public override void WebProvisioned(SPWebEventProperties properties) { base.WebProvisioned(properties);   try { SPWeb curweb = properties.Web;   if (curweb.ParentWeb != null) {   //check if the parent website has the 2007 look and feel if (curweb.ParentWeb.UIVersion == 3) { //since parent site has 2007 look and feel // we'll apply that look and feel to the current web curweb.UIVersion = 3; curweb.Update(); } } } catch (Exception) { //TODO: Add logging for errors } }   This event is part of a Feature that is scoped to the Site Level (Site Collection).  I added a couple of lines to my migration PowerShell script to activate the Feature for any site collections that we migrate. Plan Going Forward The plan going forward is to perform the visual upgrade after the users for a particular site collection have gone through 2010 training. If we need to do several site collections at once, we’ll use a PowerShell script to loop through each site collection to update the sites to 2010.  If it’s just one or two, we’ll be using the “Update All Sites” button on the Visual Upgrade page for Site Collection Administrators. The custom code for newly created sites won’t need to be changed, since it relies on the UI version of the parent site.  If the parent is 2010, then the new site will look 2010.

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• Own a KINECT for MS-XBOX before anyone does

  Following is the announced by Richik Nandi from Microsoft team. Dear Customer, We believe that our privileged customers shouldn't have to wait for good things. So, here's a special offer exclusively for you. Be one of the first in India to own and experience Kinect for XBOX 360, few days before it is even launched in stores. Introducing the new Kinect for XBOX 360®. Kinect needs no controllers. You are the controller. Kinect brings games and entertainment to life in extraordinary new ways without using a controller. The sensor recognizes your face, eyes and body movements to deliver a superb gaming experience. Easy to use and great fun, Kinect gets everyone off the couch. See a ball? Kick it. Want to join a friend in the fun? Simply jump in. Imagine controlling movies and music with the wave of a hand or the sound of your voice! Kinect is all about fun for you and your family. And the best part is Kinect works with every Xbox 360®. There are two options you can choose from: •  Kinect sensor + 4GB Xbox 360 bundle + Kinect Adventures game at Rs 22,990/-and get Dance Central game worth Rs 1999 from Redington, 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : XbTXXZl2Sb •  Kinect Sensor at Rs 9,500/-and get 20% discount voucher from Starwood on food and beverages, T-shirt from PUMA and a Kinect adventure live card absolutely free using your unique promo code : lDg6o8SuYh We want you to own your Kinect before the official launch. The promotion closes by 10th November. To know more about Kinect click here. To book your Kinect PRE-ORDER now! Enter your details along with the above mentioned promo code to avail of the free gifts offer. We will have your Kinect delivered by 19th November 2010. Enjoy being the controller. Enjoy the Kinect. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• The Solution

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  So I recently attended a class about time management as well as read the book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.  Both have been instrumental in helping me get my priorities aligned as well as keep me focused. The reason I bring this up is that it gave me a great idea for a small application with which to create a great technical stack solution that would be easy to demo and explain.  Therefore, the project from this point forward with be the Liekhus.TimeTracker application which will bring some the time management skills that I have acquired into a technical implementation.  The idea is rather simple, but leverages some of the basic principles of Covey along with some of the worksheets that I garnered from class.  The basics are as such: 1) a plan is a must have and 2) write it down!  A plan not written down is just an idea.  How many times have you had an idea that didn’t materialize?  Exactly.  Hence why I am writing it all down now! The worksheet consists of a few simple columns that I will outline below as well as some modifications that I made according to the Covey habits.  The worksheet looks like the following: Status Issue Area CQ Notes P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   P  F  L     1234   The idea is really simple and straightforward; you write down all your tasks and keep track of them along the way.  The status stands for (P)ending, (F)inished or (L)ater.  You write a quick title for the issue and select the CQ (Covey Quadrant) with which the issue occurs.  The notes section is for things that happen while you are working through the issue.  And last, but not least, is the Area column that I added as a way to identify the Role or Area of your life that this task falls within based upon Covey’s teachings. The second part of this application is a simple phone log that allows you to track your phone conversations throughout the day.  All of this is currently done on a sheet of paper, but being involved in technology, I want it to have bells and whistles.  Therefore, this is my simple idea for a project that will allow me to test my theories about coding and implementations.  Stay tuned as the next session will be flushing out the concept and coming up with user stories to begin the SCRUM process. Thanks

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• Iterative and Incremental Principle Series 2: Finding Focus

  - by llowitz

  Welcome back to the second blog in a five part series where I recount my personal experience with applying the Iterative and Incremental principle to my daily life.  As you recall from part one of the series, a conversation with my son prompted me to think about practical applications of the Iterative and Incremental approach and I realized I had incorporated this principle in my exercise regime.    I have been a runner since college but about a year ago, I sustained an injury that prevented me from exercising.  When I was sufficiently healed, I decided to pick it up again.  Knowing it was unrealistic to pick up where I left off, I set a goal of running 3 miles or approximately for 30 minutes.    I was excited to get back into running and determined to meet my goal.  Unfortunately, after what felt like a lifetime, I looked at my watch and realized that I had 27 agonizing minutes to go!  My determination waned and my positive “I can do it” attitude was overridden by thoughts of “This is impossible”.   My initial focus and excitement was not sustained so I never met my goal.   Understanding that the 30 minute run was simply too much for me mentally, I changed my approach.   I decided to try interval training.  For each interval, I planned to walk for 3 minutes, then jog for 2 minutes, and finally sprint for 1 minute, and I planned to repeat this pattern 5 times.  I found that each interval set was challenging, yet achievable, leaving me excited and invigorated for my next interval.  I easily completed five intervals – or 30 minutes!!  My sense of accomplishment soared. What does this have to do with OUM?  Have you heard the saying -- “How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time!”?  This adage certainly applies in my example and in an OUM systems implementation.  It is easier to manage, track progress and maintain team focus for weeks at a time, rather than for months at a time.   With shorter milestones, the project team focuses on the iteration goal.  Once the iteration goal is met, a sense of accomplishment is experience and the team can be re-focused on a fresh, yet achievable new challenge.  Join me tomorrow as I expand the concept of Iterative and incremental by taking a step back to explore the recommended approach for planning your iterations.

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• How is programming affected by spatial aptitude?

  - by natli

  The longer I work on a project, the less clear it becomes. It's like I cannot seperate various classes/objects anymore in my head. Everything starts mixing up, and it's extremely hard to take it all apart again. I start putting functions in classes where they really don't belong, and make silly mistakes such as writing code that I later find was 100% obsolete; things are no longer clearly mappable in my head. It isn't until I take a step back for several hours (or days somtimes!) that I can actually see what's going on again, and be productive. I usually try to fight through this, I am so passionate about coding that I wouldn't for the life of me know what else I could be doing. This is when stuff can get really weird, I get so up in my head that I sort of lose touch with reality (to some extent) in that various actions, such as pouring a glass of water, no longer happen on a concious level. It happens on auto pilot, during which pretty much all of my concious concentration (is that even a thing?) is devoted to borderline pointless problem solving (trying to seperate elements of code). It feels like a losing battle. So I took an IQ test a while ago (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale I believe it was) and it turned out my Spatial Aptitude was quite low. I still got a decent score, just above average, so I won't have to poke things with a stick for a living, but I am a little worried that this is such a handicap when writing/engineering computer programs that I won't ever be able to do it seriously or professionally. I am very much interested in what other people think of this.. could a low spatial aptitude be the cause of the above described problems? Maybe I should be looking more along the lines of ADD or something similar, because I did get diagnosed with ADD at the age of 17 (5 years ago) but the medicine I received didn't seem to affect me that much so I never took it all that serious. Sorry if I got a little off topic there, I know this is not a mental help board, the question should be clear; How is programming affected by spatial aptitude? As far as I know people are born with low/med/high spatial aptitude, so I think it's interesting to find out if the more fortunate are better programmers by birth right.

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• What location to put bootloader, when running multiple drives and partition

  - by Matt G

  I have Win8 on my desktop, where a 120G SSD is used to run windows and some select applications, while I have a 2TB HDD to provide basic file storage and where possible, install applications instead of on the SSD. I want to install Ubuntu on a new partition of the HDD (I allocated 300GB, with 5GB swap file). I've used a USB to install the OS, which seemed to have done the job. However, after prompting for a restart, I can no longer boot to ubuntu. During instillation I was confused about where to install the "boot loader instillation". I ended up selecting "/dev/stb" because I figured I would be able to boot with BIOS by selecting the HDD drive as a priority over the SSD. The bootloader is a large part of where I think I went wrong. My partition system looked something like this: /dev/sta ... //SSD ~120 GB /dev/sta1 NTFS (350 MB) //Win8System /dev/sta2 NTFS (118 GB) //Win8C-Drive /dev/stb ... //HDD ~2TB /dev/stb1 NTFS (1563 GB) //FileStorage /dev/stb5 Free Space (300 GB) //Space I want to use for Linux (NOTE: Created two partitions from the 300GB, ~5GB and 295GB. stb5,stb6.) It'd be great if I could get an explanation of what drive you'd select for the boot loader and why, and what selections won't work with regards to the Boot Loader Instillation. I think I understand what Grub is, but I have no idea on how to use it, or play around with it. I seem to be able to get back into OS from my usb, however I believe it's just showing me a preview/trial of Ubuntu (ie, can't access any of the system NTFS drives). Note, if I try to install from the USB again, it will recognize that a version of Ubuntu 13.10 exists on the system. Apologies in advance, have used windows all my life, don't really know to much about Linux at all. Did have a brief skim over some similar questions, didn't find anything too useful. - Where to install bootloader when installing Ubuntu as secondary OS? - ubuntu 12.10 dual boot with windows 8 on two hdds - Dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu on two SSDs with UEFI

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• What's My Problem? What's Your Problem?

  - by Jacek Ziabicki

  Software installers are not made for building demo environments. I can say this much after 12 years (on and off) of supporting my fellow sales consultants with environments for software demonstrations. When we release software, we include installation programs and procedures that are designed for use by our clients – to build a production environment and a limited number of testing, training and development environments. Different Objectives Your priorities when building an environment for client use vs. building a demo environment are very different. In a production environment, security, stability, and performance concerns are paramount. These environments are built on a specific server and rarely, if ever, moved to a different server or different network address. There is typically just one application running on a particular server (physical or virtual). Once built, the environment will be used for months or years at a time. Because of security considerations, the installation program wants to make these environments very specific to the organization using the software and the use case, encoding a fully qualified name of the server, or even the IP address on the network, in the configuration. So you either go through the installation procedure for each environment, or learn how to clone and reconfigure the software as a separate instance to build all your non-production environments. This may not matter much if the installation is as simple as clicking on the Setup program. But for enterprise applications, you have a number of configuration settings that you need to get just right – so whether you are installing from scratch or reconfiguring an existing installation, this requires both time and expertise in the particular piece of software. If you need a setup of several applications that are integrated to talk to one another, it is a whole new level of complexity. Now you need the expertise in all of the applications involved (plus the supporting technology products), and in addition to making each application work, you also have to configure the integration endpoints. Each application needs the URLs and credentials to call the integration layer, and the integration must be able to call each application. Then you have to make sure that each app has the right data so a business process initiated in one application can continue in the next. And, you will need to check that each application has the correct version and patch level for the integration to work. When building demo environments, your #1 concern is agility. If you can get away with a small number of long-running environments, you are lucky. More likely, you may get a request for a dedicated environment for a demonstration that is two weeks away: how quickly can you make this available so we still have the time to build the client-specific data? We are running a hands-on workshop next month, and we’ll need 15 instances of application X environment so each student can have a separate server for the exercises. We cannot connect to our data center from the client site, the client’s security policy won’t allow our VPN to go through – so we need a portable environment that we can bring with us. Our consultants need to be able to work at the hotel, airport, and the airplane, so we really want an environment that can run on a laptop. The client will need two playpen environments running in the cloud, accessible from their network, for a series of workshops that start two weeks from now. We have seen all of these scenarios and more. Here you would be much better served by a generic installation that would be easy to clone. Welcome to the Wonder Machine The reason I started this blog is to share a particular design of a demo environment, a special way to install software, that can address the above requirements, even for integrated setups. This design was created by a team at Oracle Utilities Global Business Unit, and we are using this setup for most of our demo environments. In a bout of modesty we called it the Wonder Machine. Over the next few posts – think of it as a novel in parts – I will tell you about the big idea, how it was implemented and what you can do with it. After we have laid down the groundwork, I would like to share some tips and tricks for users of our Wonder Machine implementation, as well as things I am learning about building portable, cloneable environments. The Wonder Machine is by no means a closed specification, it is under active development! I am hoping this blog will be of interest to two groups of readers – the users of the Wonder Machine we have built at Oracle Utilities, who want to get the most out of their demo environments and be able to reconfigure it to their needs – and to people who need to build environments for demonstration, testing, training, development and would like to make them cloneable and portable to maximize the reuse of their effort. Surely we are not the only ones facing this problem? If you can think of a better way to solve it, or if you can help us improve on our concept, I will appreciate your comments!

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• Null Values And The T-SQL IN Operator

  - by Jesse

  I came across some unexpected behavior while troubleshooting a failing test the other day that took me long enough to figure out that I thought it was worth sharing here. I finally traced the failing test back to a SELECT statement in a stored procedure that was using the IN t-sql operator to exclude a certain set of values. Here’s a very simple example table to illustrate the issue: Customers CustomerId INT, NOT NULL, Primary Key CustomerName nvarchar(100) NOT NULL SalesRegionId INT NULL   The ‘SalesRegionId’ column contains a number representing the sales region that the customer belongs to. This column is nullable because new customers get created all the time but assigning them to sales regions is a process that is handled by a regional manager on a periodic basis. For the purposes of this example, the Customers table currently has the following rows: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 2 Customer B NULL 3 Customer C 4 4 Customer D 2 5 Customer E 3   How could we write a query against this table for all customers that are NOT in sales regions 2 or 4? You might try something like this: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4)   Will this work? In short, no; at least not in the way that you might expect. Here’s what this query will return given the example data we’re working with: CustomerId CustomerName SalesRegionId 1 Customer A 1 5 Customer E 5   I was expecting that this query would also return ‘Customer B’, since that customer has a NULL SalesRegionId. In my mind, having a customer with no sales region should be included in a set of customers that are not in sales regions 2 or 4.When I first started troubleshooting my issue I made note of the fact that this query should probably be re-written without the NOT IN clause, but I didn’t suspect that the NOT IN clause was actually the source of the issue. This particular query was only one minor piece in a much larger process that was being exercised via an automated integration test and I simply made a poor assumption that the NOT IN would work the way that I thought it should. So why doesn’t this work the way that I thought it should? From the MSDN documentation on the t-sql IN operator: If the value of test_expression is equal to any value returned by subquery or is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list, the result value is TRUE; otherwise, the result value is FALSE. Using NOT IN negates the subquery value or expression. The key phrase out of that quote is, “… is equal to any expression from the comma-separated list…”. The NULL SalesRegionId isn’t included in the NOT IN because of how NULL values are handled in equality comparisons. From the MSDN documentation on ANSI_NULLS: The SQL-92 standard requires that an equals (=) or not equal to (<>) comparison against a null value evaluates to FALSE. When SET ANSI_NULLS is ON, a SELECT statement using WHERE column_name = NULL returns zero rows even if there are null values in column_name. A SELECT statement using WHERE column_name <> NULL returns zero rows even if there are nonnull values in column_name. In fact, the MSDN documentation on the IN operator includes the following blurb about using NULL values in IN sub-queries or expressions that are used with the IN operator: Any null values returned by subquery or expression that are compared to test_expression using IN or NOT IN return UNKNOWN. Using null values in together with IN or NOT IN can produce unexpected results. If I were to include a ‘SET ANSI_NULLS OFF’ command right above my SELECT statement I would get ‘Customer B’ returned in the results, but that’s definitely not the right way to deal with this. We could re-write the query to explicitly include the NULL value in the WHERE clause: 1: SELECT 2: CustomerId, 3: CustomerName, 4: SalesRegionId 5: FROM Customers 6: WHERE (SalesRegionId NOT IN (2,4) OR SalesRegionId IS NULL)   This query works and properly includes ‘Customer B’ in the results, but I ultimately opted to re-write the query using a LEFT OUTER JOIN against a table variable containing all of the values that I wanted to exclude because, in my case, there could potentially be several hundred values to be excluded. If we were to apply the same refactoring to our simple sales region example we’d end up with: 1: DECLARE @regionsToIgnore TABLE (IgnoredRegionId INT) 2: INSERT @regionsToIgnore values (2),(4) 3:  4: SELECT 5: c.CustomerId, 6: c.CustomerName, 7: c.SalesRegionId 8: FROM Customers c 9: LEFT OUTER JOIN @regionsToIgnore r ON r.IgnoredRegionId = c.SalesRegionId 10: WHERE r.IgnoredRegionId IS NULL By performing a LEFT OUTER JOIN from Customers to the @regionsToIgnore table variable we can simply exclude any rows where the IgnoredRegionId is null, as those represent customers that DO NOT appear in the ignored regions list. This approach will likely perform better if the number of sales regions to ignore gets very large and it also will correctly include any customers that do not yet have a sales region.

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• Creating a frozen bubble clone

  - by Vaughan Hilts

  This photo illustrates the environment: http://i.imgur.com/V4wbp.png I'll shoot the cannon, it'll bounce off the wall and it's SUPPOSED to stick to the bubble. It does at pretty much every other angle. The problem is always reproduced here, when hit off the wall into those bubbles. It also exists in other cases, but I'm not sure what triggers it. What actually happens: The ball will sometimes set to the wrong cell, and my "dropping" code will detect it as a loner and drop it off the stage. *There are many implementations of "Frozen Bubble" on the web, but I can't for the life of me find a good explanation as to how the algorithm for the "Bubble Sticking" works. * I see this: http://www.wikiflashed.com/wiki/BubbleBobble https://frozenbubblexna.svn.codeplex.com/svn/FrozenBubble/ But I can't figure out the algorithims... could anyone explain possibly the general idea behind getting the balls to stick? Code in question: //Counstruct our bounding rectangle for use var nX = currentBall.x + ballvX * gameTime; var nY = currentBall.y - ballvY * gameTime; var movingRect = new BoundingRectangle(nX, nY, 32, 32); var able = false; //Iterate over the cells and draw our bubbles for (var x = 0; x < 8; x++) { for (var y = 0; y < 12; y++) { //Get the bubble at this layout var bubble = bubbleLayout[x][y]; var rowHeight = 27; //If this slot isn't empty, draw if (bubble != null) { var bx = 0, by = 0; if (y % 2 == 0) { bx = x * 32 + 270; by = y * 32 + 45; } else { bx = x * 32 + 270 + 16; by = y * 32 + 45; } //Check var targetBox = new BoundingRectangle(bx, by, 32, 32); if (targetBox.intersects(movingRect)) { able = true; } } } } cellY = Math.round((currentBall.y - 45) / 32); if (cellY % 2 == 0) cellX = Math.round((currentBall.x - 270) / 32); else cellX = Math.round((currentBall.x - 270 - 16) / 32); Any ideas are very much welcome. Things I've tried: Flooring and Ceiling values Changing the wall bounce to a lower value Slowing down the ball None of these seem to affect it. Is there something in my math I'm not getting?

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• Mixing Forms and Token Authentication in a single ASP.NET Application (the Details)

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  The scenario described in my last post works because of the design around HTTP modules in ASP.NET. Authentication related modules (like Forms authentication and WIF WS-Fed/Sessions) typically subscribe to three events in the pipeline – AuthenticateRequest/PostAuthenticateRequest for pre-processing and EndRequest for post-processing (like making redirects to a login page). In the pre-processing stage it is the modules’ job to determine the identity of the client based on incoming HTTP details (like a header, cookie, form post) and set HttpContext.User and Thread.CurrentPrincipal. The actual page (in the ExecuteHandler event) “sees” the identity that the last module has set. So in our case there are three modules in effect: FormsAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) WSFederationAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest, EndRequest) SessionAuthenticationModule (AuthenticateRequest, PostAuthenticateRequest) So let’s have a look at the different scenario we have when mixing Forms auth and WS-Federation. Anoymous request to unprotected resource This is the easiest case. Since there is no WIF session cookie or a FormsAuth cookie, these modules do nothing. The WSFed module creates an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager (if any) to transform it. The result (by default an anonymous ClaimsPrincipal) gets set. Anonymous request to FormsAuth protected resource This is the scenario where an anonymous user tries to access a FormsAuth protected resource for the first time. The principal is anonymous and before the page gets rendered, the Authorize attribute kicks in. The attribute determines that the user needs authentication and therefor sets a 401 status code and ends the request. Now execution jumps to the EndRequest event, where the FormsAuth module takes over. The module then converts the 401 to a redirect (302) to the forms login page. If authentication is successful, the login page sets the FormsAuth cookie.   FormsAuth authenticated request to a FormsAuth protected resource Now a FormsAuth cookie is present, which gets validated by the FormsAuth module. This cookie gets turned into a GenericPrincipal/FormsIdentity combination. The WS-Fed module turns the principal into a ClaimsPrincipal and calls the registered ClaimsAuthenticationManager. The outcome of that gets set on the context. Anonymous request to STS protected resource This time the anonymous user tries to access an STS protected resource (a controller decorated with the RequireTokenAuthentication attribute). The attribute determines that the user needs STS authentication by checking the authentication type on the current principal. If this is not Federation, the redirect to the STS will be made. After successful authentication at the STS, the STS posts the token back to the application (using WS-Federation syntax). Postback from STS authentication After the postback, the WS-Fed module finds the token response and validates the contained token. If successful, the token gets transformed by the ClaimsAuthenticationManager, and the outcome is a) stored in a session cookie, and b) set on the context. STS authenticated request to an STS protected resource This time the WIF Session authentication module kicks in because it can find the previously issued session cookie. The module re-hydrates the ClaimsPrincipal from the cookie and sets it.     FormsAuth and STS authenticated request to a protected resource This is kind of an odd case – e.g. the user first authenticated using Forms and after that using the STS. This time the FormsAuth module does its work, and then afterwards the session module stomps over the context with the session principal. In other words, the STS identity wins.   What about roles? A common way to set roles in ASP.NET is to use the role manager feature. There is a corresponding HTTP module for that (RoleManagerModule) that handles PostAuthenticateRequest. Does this collide with the above combinations? No it doesn’t! When the WS-Fed module turns existing principals into a ClaimsPrincipal (like it did with the FormsIdentity), it also checks for RolePrincipal (which is the principal type created by role manager), and turns the roles in role claims. Nice! But as you can see in the last scenario above, this might result in unnecessary work, so I would rather recommend consolidating all role work (and other claims transformations) into the ClaimsAuthenticationManager. In there you can check for the authentication type of the incoming principal and act accordingly. HTH

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• links for 2011-01-12

  - by Bob Rhubart

  WebCenter Spaces 11g PS2 Template Customization (Javier Ductor's Blog) "Recently, we have been involved in a WebCenter Spaces customization project. A customer sent us a prototype website in HTML, and we had to transform Spaces to set the same look and feel as in the prototype..." Javier Ductor (tags: oracle otn webcenter enteprise2.0) Matt Carter: Risky Business "Incorporating risk detection and mitigation capabilities into apps is becoming all the rage. There are plenty of real-life examples of cases where prevention of cyber-security threats and fraudsters might have kept governments and companies out of the news, and with more money in their accounts." (tags: oracle otn security middleware) John Brunswick: 5 Surprisingly Good Benefits of Corporate Blogs "Some may still propose that not all corporations are going to be able to provide the five benefits above and are more focused around shameless self promotion of products and services.  If that is the case, that corporation is most likely not producing something of high value." - John Brunswick (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 blogging) InfoQ: IT And Architecture: Inside-Out Perspectives The software industry is in disarray, costs are escalating, and quality is diminishing. Promises of newer technologies and processes and methodologies in IT are still far from materializing on any significant scale. Bruce Laidlaw and Michael Poulin - each with more than 30 years of experience compared notes on the past and present of IT and provide insights on what IT needs to make progress. (tags: ping.fm) SOA & Middleware: Canceling a running composite instance - example Useful tips from Niall Commiskey. (tags: soa middleware oracle) BPEL 11.1.1.2 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations (Oracle E-Business Suite Technology) "A new certification was released simultaneously with the E-Business Suite 12.1.3 Maintenance Pack late last year: the use of BPEL 11g Version 11.1.1.2 with E-Business Suite 12.1.3." -- Steven Chan (tags: oracle bpel) Marc Kelderman: OSB: Deploy Service Level Agreement (SLA), aka Alert Rule "The big issue with these SLAs is the deployment. If you have dozens of services, with multiple operations, and you have a lot of environments it takes a while to create them...[But] I have a nice workaround." - Mark Kelderman  (tags: oracle otn soa osb sla) @myfear: Java EE 7 - what's coming up for 2012? First hints. "Even if the actual Java EE 6 version is still not too widespread, we already have seen the first signs of the next EE 7 version written to the sky." -- Markus "myfear" Eisele (tags: oracle otn oracleace java)

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• It is CX a new concept?

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  The Marketing Industry and the Web Industry are talking about CX since some time. However it is only very recently that the concept has reached some common meaning accepted by the analysts’ and the IT community. The new CX model depends on two previous facts: the expansion of the social media, and the impact of the new advanced features of mobile devices regarding brand-customer interaction. CXsers vs UXers First there is some need of disambiguity between User Experience and Customer Experience. User Experience -UX, is a much well established concept related with the design of user interactions for particular devices. UX people are interested on multiple touch points of digital interfaces while CX people are interested on all kind of interfaces including physical ones. UX is an evolution of Web Usability, while CX is a marketing concept. UX is an instrument of User Experience. CX in fact is all about Connections and Interactions. Connections Dan Draper, the creative director Mad Men, understands very well that to market effectively means to connect with people, and the best way to connect to people is to use the connections people have with other people: understanding Social Media connections and taking the customer pulse of customers on those medias, and are strong facilitators of CX strategies.  Interactions We can very simply define CX as the relationship that a customer establishes with a brand through multiple touch points (interactions, channels) through the entire life cycle of his relationship- direct or indirect with the brand. Interactions can be grouped on Customer Journeys through multiple touch points defined as the path a customer follows to achieve a goal. Processes A customer journey today usually starts at the moment he surfs the Web, then he takes a purchase decision; purchases the product;  request a particular service and finally recommends or do not recommends the product.  Customer Journeys are processes, and to analyze customer journeys there exists today a broad offering of modern Customer Journey tools very similar actually to the use cases or UML activity diagrams for IT systems design. As a summary CX is nothing more and nothing less than applying process analysis methods for better understanding how to create value through customer interactions across the multiple user´s touch points with the brand.

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• What Can We Learn About Software Security by Going to the Gym

  - by Nick Harrison

  There was a recent rash of car break-ins at the gym. Not an epidemic by any stretch, probably 4 or 5, but still... My gym used to allow you to hang your keys from a peg board at the front desk. This way you could come to the gym dressed to work out, lock your valuables in your car, and not have anything to worry about. Ignorance is bliss. The problem was that anyone who wanted to could go pick up your car keys, click the unlock button and find your car. Once there, they could rummage through your stuff and then walk back in and finish their workout as if nothing had happened. The people doing this were a little smatter then the average thief and would swipe some but not all of your cash leaving everything else in place. Most thieves would steal the whole car and be busted more quickly. The victims were unaware that anything had happened for several days. Fortunately, once the victims realized what had happened, the gym was still able to pull security tapes and find out who was misbehaving. All of the bad guys were busted, and everyone can now breathe a sigh of relieve. It is once again safe to go to the gym. Except there was still a fundamental problem. Putting your keys on a peg board by the front door is just asking for bad things to happen. One person got busted exploiting this security flaw. Others can still be exploiting it. In fact, others may well have been exploiting it and simply never got caught. How long would it take you to realize that $10 was missing from your wallet, if everything else was there? How would you even know when it went missing? Would you go to the front desk and even bother to ask them to review security tapes if you were only missing a small amount. Once highlighted, it is easy to see how commonly such vulnerability may have been exploited. So the gym did the very reasonable precaution of removing the peg board. To me the most shocking part of this story is the resulting uproar from gym members losing the convenient key peg. How dare they remove the trusted peg board? How can I work out now, I have to carry my keys from machine to machine? How can I enjoy my workout with this added inconvenience? This all happened a couple of weeks ago, and some people are still complaining. In light of the recent high profile hacking, there are a couple of parallels that can be drawn. Many web sites are riddled with vulnerabilities are crazy and easily exploitable as leaving your car keys by the front door while you work out. No one ever considered thanking the people who were swiping these keys for pointing out the vulnerability. Without a hesitation, they had their gym memberships revoked and are awaiting prosecution. The gym did recognize the vulnerability for what it is, and closed up that attack vector. What can we learn from this? Monitoring and logging will not prevent a crime but they will allow us to identify that a crime took place and may help track down who did it. Once we find a security weakness, we need to eliminate it. We may never identify and eliminate all security weaknesses, but we cannot allow well known vulnerabilities to persist in our system. In our case, we are not likely to meet resistance from end users. We are more likely to meet resistance from stake holders, product owners, keeper of schedules and budgets. We may meet resistance from integration partners, co workers, and third party vendors. Regardless of the source, we will see resistance, but the weakness needs to be dealt with. There is no need to glorify a cracker for bringing to light a security weakness. Regardless of their claimed motives, they are not heroes. There is also no point in wasting time defending weaknesses once they are identified. Deal with the weakness and move on. In may be embarrassing to find security weaknesses in our systems, but it is even more embarrassing to continue ignoring them. Even if it is unpopular, we need to seek out security weaknesses and eliminate them when we find them. http://www.sans.org has put together the Common Weakness Enumeration http://cwe.mitre.org/ which lists out common weaknesses. The site navigation takes a little getting used to, but there is a treasure trove here. Here is the detail page for SQL Injection. It clearly states how this can be exploited, in case anyone doubts that the weakness should be taken seriously, and more importantly how to mitigate the risk.

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• How to become a good team player?

  - by Nick

  I've been programming (obsessively) since I was 12. I am fairly knowledgeable across the spectrum of languages out there, from assembly, to C++, to Javascript, to Haskell, Lisp, and Qi. But all of my projects have been by myself. I got my degree in chemical engineering, not CS or computer engineering, but for the first time this fall I'll be working on a large programming project with other people, and I have no clue how to prepare. I've been using Windows all of my life, but this project is going to be very unix-y, so I purchased a Mac recently in the hopes of familiarizing myself with the environment. I was fortunate to participate in a hackathon with some friends this past year -- both CS majors -- and excitingly enough, we won. But I realized as I worked with them that their workflow was very different from mine. They used Git for version control. I had never used it at the time, but I've since learned all that I can about it. They also used a lot of frameworks and libraries. I had to learn what Rails was pretty much overnight for the hackathon (on the other hand, they didn't know what lexical scoping or closures were). All of our code worked well, but they didn't understand mine, and I didn't understand theirs. I hear references to things that real programmers do on a daily basis -- unit testing, code reviews, but I only have the vaguest sense of what these are. I normally don't have many bugs in my little projects, so I have never needed a bug tracking system or tests for them. And the last thing is that it takes me a long time to understand other people's code. Variable naming conventions (that vary with each new language) are difficult (__mzkwpSomRidicAbbrev), and I find the loose coupling difficult. That's not to say I don't loosely couple things -- I think I'm quite good at it for my own work, but when I download something like the Linux kernel or the Chromium source code to look at it, I spend hours trying to figure out how all of these oddly named directories and files connect. It's a programming sin to reinvent the wheel, but I often find it's just quicker to write up the functionality myself than to spend hours dissecting some library. Obviously, people who do this for a living don't have these problems, and I'll need to get to that point myself. Question: What are some steps that I can take to begin "integrating" with everyone else? Thanks!

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• Single Responsibility Principle Implementation

  - by Mike S

  In my spare time, I've been designing a CMS in order to learn more about actual software design and architecture, etc. Going through the SOLID principles, I already notice that ideas like "MVC", "DRY", and "KISS", pretty much fall right into place. That said, I'm still having problems deciding if one of two implementations is the best choice when it comes to the Single Responsibility Principle. Implementation #1: class User getName getPassword getEmail // etc... class UserManager create read update delete class Session start stop class Login main class Logout main class Register main The idea behind this implementation is that all user-based actions are separated out into different classes (creating a possible case of the aptly-named Ravioli Code), but following the SRP to a "tee", almost literally. But then I thought that it was a bit much, and came up with this next implementation class UserView extends View getLogin //Returns the html for the login screen getShortLogin //Returns the html for an inline login bar getLogout //Returns the html for a logout button getRegister //Returns the html for a register page // etc... as needed class UserModel extends DataModel implements IDataModel // Implements no new methods yet, outside of the interface methods // Haven't figured out anything special to go here at the moment // All CRUD operations are handled by DataModel // through methods implemented by the interface class UserControl extends Control implements IControl login logout register startSession stopSession class User extends DataObject getName getPassword getEmail // etc... This is obviously still very organized, and still very "single responsibility". The User class is a data object that I can manipulate data on and then pass to the UserModel to save it to the database. All the user data rendering (what the user will see) is handled by UserView and it's methods, and all the user actions are in one space in UserControl (plus some automated stuff required by the CMS to keep a user logged in or to ensure that they stay out.) I personally can't think of anything wrong with this implementation either. In my personal feelings I feel that both are effectively correct, but I can't decide which one would be easier to maintain and extend as life goes on (despite leaning towards Implementation #1.) So what about you guys? What are your opinions on this? Which one is better? What basics (or otherwise, nuances) of that principle have I missed in either design?

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• The Enterprise is a Curmudgeon

  - by John K. Hines

  Working in an enterprise environment is a unique challenge.  There's a lot more to software development than developing software.  A project lead or Scrum Master has to manage personalities and intra-team politics, has to manage accomplishing the task at hand while creating the opportunities and a reputation for handling desirable future work, has to create a competent, happy team that actually delivers while being careful not to burn bridges or hurt feelings outside the team.  Which makes me feel surprised to read advice like: " The enterprise should figure out what is likely to work best for itself and try to use it." - Ken Schwaber, The Enterprise and Scrum. The enterprises I have experience with are fundamentally unable to be self-reflective.  It's like asking a Roman gladiator if he'd like to carve out a little space in the arena for some silent meditation.  I'm currently wondering how compatible Scrum is with the top-down hierarchy of life in a large organization.  Specifically, manufacturing-mindset, fixed-release, harmony-valuing large organizations.  Now I understand why Agile can be a better fit for companies without much organizational inertia. Recently I've talked with nearly two dozen software professionals and their managers about Scrum and Agile.  I've become convinced that a developer, team, organization, or enterprise can be Agile without using Scrum.  But I'm not sure about what process would be the best fit, in general, for an enterprise that wants to become Agile.  It's possible I should read more than just the introduction to Ken's book. I do feel prepared to answer some of the questions I had asked in a previous post: How can Agile practices (including but not limited to Scrum) be adopted in situations where the highest-placed managers in a company demand software within extremely aggressive deadlines? Answer: In a very limited capacity at the individual level.  The situation here is that the senior management of this company values any software release more than it values developer well-being, end-user experience, or software quality.  Only if the developing organization is given an immediate refactoring opportunity does this sort of development make sense to a person who values sustainable software.   How can Agile practices be adopted by teams that do not perform a continuous cycle of new development, such as those whose sole purpose is to reproduce and debug customer issues? Answer: It depends.  For Scrum in particular, I don't believe Scrum is meant to manage unpredictable work.  While you can easily adopt XP practices for bug fixing, the project-management aspects of Scrum require some predictability.  My question here was meant toward those who want to apply Scrum to non-development teams.  In some cases it works, in others it does not. How can a team measure if its development efforts are both Agile and employ sound engineering practices? Answer: I'm currently leaning toward measuring these independently.  The Agile Principles are a terrific way to measure if a software team is agile.  Sound engineering practices are those practices which help developers meet the principles.  I think Scrum is being mistakenly applied as an engineering practice when it is essentially a project management practice.  In my opinion, XP and Lean are examples of good engineering practices. How can Agile be explained in an accurate way that describes its benefits to sceptical developers and/or revenue-focused non-developers? Answer: Agile techniques will result in higher-quality, lower-cost software development.  This comes primarily from finding defects earlier in the development cycle.  If there are individual developers who do not want to collaborate, write unit tests, or refactor, then these are simply developers who are either working in an area where adding these techniques will not add value (i.e. they are an expert) or they are a developer who is satisfied with the status quo.  In the first case they should be left alone.  In the second case, the results of Agile should be demonstrated by other developers who are willing to receive recognition for their efforts.  It all comes down to individuals, doesn't it?  If you're working in an organization whose Agile adoption consists exclusively of Scrum, consider ways to form individual Agile teams to demonstrate its benefits.  These can even be virtual teams that span people across org-chart boundaries.  Once you can measure real value, whether it's Scrum, Lean, or something else, people will follow.  Even the curmudgeons.

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