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• Silverlight Cream for April 04, 2010 -- #830

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Hassan, David Anson, Jeff Wilcox, UK Application Development Consulting, Davide Zordan, Victor Gaudioso, Anoop Madhusudanan, Phil Middlemiss, and Laurent Bugnion. Shoutouts: Josh Smith has a good-read post up: Design-time data is still data Shawn Hargreaves reported his MIX demo released From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MVVM: Enabling Design-Time Data in Expression Blend When Using Web Services Michael Washington has a tutorial up on MVVM and using a web service to get design-time data that works in Blend also... lots of information and screenshots. WP7 Transition Animation Hassan has a new WP7 tutorial up that demonstrates playing media and adding transition animation between pages. Tip: For a truly read-only custom DependencyProperty in Silverlight, use a read-only CLR property instead David Anson's latest tip is in response to comments on his previous post and details one by Dr. WPF who points out that a read-only DependencyProperty doesn't actually need to be a DependencyProperty as long as the class implements INotifyPropertyChanged. Template parts and custom controls (quick tip) Jeff Wilcox has posted a set of tips and recommendations to use when developing control development in Silverlight ... this is a post to bookmark. Flexible Data Template Support in Silverlight The UK Application Development Consulting details a 'problem' in Silverlight that doesn't exist in WPF and that is data templates that vary by type... and discusses a way around it. Multi-Touch enabling Silverlight Simon using Blend behaviors and the Surface sample for Silverlight Davide Zordan brought Multi-Touch to the Silverlight Simon game on CodePlex using Blend Behaviors. New Video Tutorial: How to Use a Behavior to Fire Methods from Objects in Styles Victor Gaudioso has a video tutorial up responding to a question from a developer. He demonstrates development of a Behavior that can be attached to objects in or out of Styles that allows you to specify what Method they need to fire. Creating a Silverlight Client for @shanselman ’s Nerd Dinner, using oData and Bing Maps Anoop Madhusudanan took Scott Hanselman's post on an OData API for StackOverflow, and has created a Silverlight client for Nerd Dinner, including BingMaps. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 2 Phil Middlemiss has the next part of his Chrome and Glass Theme up. In this one he creates a very nice chrome-look button with visual state changes. MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 for Windows Phone 7 Laurent Bugnion has released a new version of MVVM Light for WP7. Included is an installation manual and information about what was changed. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• MVC's Html.DropDownList and "There is no ViewData item of type 'IEnumerable<SelectListItem>' that has the key '...'

  - by pjohnson

  ASP.NET MVC's HtmlHelper extension methods take out a lot of the HTML-by-hand drudgery to which MVC re-introduced us former WebForms programmers. Another thing to which MVC re-introduced us is poor documentation, after the excellent documentation for most of the rest of ASP.NET and the .NET Framework which I now realize I'd taken for granted. I'd come to regard using HtmlHelper methods instead of writing HTML by hand as a best practice. When I upgraded a project from MVC 3 to MVC 4, several hidden fields with boolean values broke, because MVC 3 called ToString() on those values implicitly, and MVC 4 threw an exception until you called ToString() explicitly. Fields that used HtmlHelper weren't affected. I then went through dozens of views and manually replaced hidden inputs that had been coded by hand with Html.Hidden calls. So for a dropdown list I was rendering on the initial page as empty, then populating via JavaScript after an AJAX call, I tried to use a HtmlHelper method: @Html.DropDownList("myDropdown") which threw an exception: System.InvalidOperationException: There is no ViewData item of type 'IEnumerable<SelectListItem>' that has the key 'myDropdown'. That's funny--I made no indication I wanted to use ViewData. Why was it looking there? Just render an empty select list for me. When I populated the list with items, it worked, but I didn't want to do that: @Html.DropDownList("myDropdown", new List<SelectListItem>() { new SelectListItem() { Text = "", Value = "" } }) I removed this dummy item in JavaScript after the AJAX call, so this worked fine, but I shouldn't have to give it a list with a dummy item when what I really want is an empty select. A bit of research with JetBrains dotPeek (helpfully recommended by Scott Hanselman) revealed the problem. Html.DropDownList requires some sort of data to render or it throws an error. The documentation hints at this but doesn't make it very clear. Behind the scenes, it checks if you've provided the DropDownList method any data. If you haven't, it looks in ViewData. If it's not there, you get the exception above. In my case, the helper wasn't doing much for me anyway, so I reverted to writing the HTML by hand (I ain't scared), and amended my best practice: When an HTML control has an associated HtmlHelper method and you're populating that control with data on the initial view, use the HtmlHelper method instead of writing by hand.

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• Finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure

  - by ScottGu

  Today, I am pleased to announce the ten finalists for the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by TechStars. These startups are about to launch into a three-month program where they will develop new products and businesses using Windows Azure. The response to the program has been fantastic - we received nearly 600 applications from entrepreneurs in 69 countries around the world, spanning a host of industries including retail, travel, entertainment, banking, real estate and more.  There were so many innovative ideas and amazing teams that it really made the selection process hard.  We finally landed on 10 finalists, based on their experience, qualifications, and innovative business ideas built on the cloud. This fall’s Windows Azure class includes: Advertory – Berlin, Germany. Advertory helps local businesses increase revenue and build customer loyalty. Appetas – Seattle, WA. Appetas' mission is to make restaurants look as beautiful online as they do on the plate! BagsUp – Sydney, Australia. Find great places from people you trust. Embarke – San Diego, CA. Embarke allows developers and companies the ability to integrate with any human communication channel (Facebook, Email, Text Message, Twitter) without having to learn the specifics, write code, or spend time on any of them. Fanzo – Seattle, WA. Fanzo puts sports fans in the spotlight. Find other fans, show off your fanswagger and get rewarded for your passion. MetricsHub – Bellevue, WA. A service providing cloud monitoring with incident detection and prebuilt workflows for remedying common problems. Mobilligy – Bellevue, WA. Mobilligy revolutionizes how people pay their bills by bringing convenient, secure, and instant bill payment support to mobile devices. Realty Mogul – Los Angeles, CA. Realty Mogul is a crowdfunding platform for real estate where accredited investors pool capital and invest in properties that are acquired, managed and eventually resold by professional private real estate companies and their management teams. Staq – San Francisco, CA. Back-end as a service for APIs. Socedo – Bellevue, WA. A simple and effective web application for lead generation and relationship management on Twitter. Each startup will be hosted in Seattle and mentored by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well as leaders from Windows Azure and other Microsoft organizations. The teams will spend the first month ideating and refining their business concepts with input and advice from their mentors as well as Microsoft customers, followed by two months of design and development. They will present their results to investors and Microsoft partners at an event in mid-January. We are really looking forward to seeing how their businesses evolve.  These teams have demonstrated incredible energy, passion, and innovative capabilities – and they are ready to show the world what’s possible with Windows Azure. Thanks, Scott P.S. And if you are new to Twitter you can also optionally follow me: @scottgu

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• Silverlight Cream for January 14, 2011 -- #1027

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Sigurd Snørteland, Yochay Kiriaty, WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Kunal Chowdhury, Martin Krüger(-2-), Jonathan Cardy. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Image Viewer using a GridSplitter control" Martin Krüger WP7: "Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part1" WindowsPhoneGeek VS2010 Templates: "MVVM Project Templates for Visual Studio 2010" Jonathan Cardy From SilverlightCream.com: BabySmash7 - a WP7 children's game (source code included) Sigurd Snørteland not only brings Scott Hanselman's Baby Smash to WP7, but he's delivering the source to us as well as discussion of the app. Windows Push Notification Server Side Helper Library Yochay Kiriaty has a tutorial up on Push Notification... not explaining them, but a discussion of a WP7 Push Recipe that provides an easy way for sending all 3 kinds of push notification messages currently supported. Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part1 WindowsPhoneGeek has a great 2-part series up on building a useful WP7 custom control -- a ToggleImage control... this part 1 is definition, deciding on Visual states, etc... buckle up... this is good stuff Implementing WP7 ToggleImageControl from the ground up: Part2 Part 2 in WindowsPhoneGeek's series is also up and where the real fun lives -- implementing the behavior of the control... and the source is available at the end of this post. The Full Stack #5 – Entity Framework Code First Jesse Liberty has episode 5 of the "Full Stack" series he and Jon Galloway are doing and are discussing Entity Framework Code First. Windows Phone From Scratch #18 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts 3 Jesse Liberty also has part 3 of his MVVMLight and WP7 post up and is digging into messaging in this one... for example view <--> ViewModel communication. Exploring Ribbon Control for Silverlight (Part - 1) Kunal Chowdhury has part 1 of a series up on using the Silverlight Ribbon Control from DevComponents... lots of information and a great intro to a great control. Image Viewer using a GridSplitter control Martin Krüger has a very nice picture viewer up as a demo and code available that simply uses the GridSplitter to implement tha aperture... check it out. How to: Gentle animation of a magnify effect Martin Krüger's latest is a take-off on a prior post he links to called 'just for fun' in which he smoothly animates a magnify effect... just very cool animation... explanation and source. MVVM Project Templates for Visual Studio 2010 Jonathan Cardy has a couple resources you probably wanna grab... two MVVM project templates for VS2010... one WPF and one Silverlight Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQL Developer: Why Do You Require Semicolons When Executing SQL in the Worksheet?

  - by thatjeffsmith

  There are many database tools out there that support Oracle database. Oracle SQL Developer just happens to be the one that is produced and shipped by the same folks that bring you the database product. Several other 3rd party tools out there allow you to have a collection of SQL statements in their editor and execute them without requiring a statement delimiter (usually a semicolon.) Let’s look at a quick example: select * from scott.emp select * from hr.employees delete from HR_COPY.BEER where HR_COPY.BEER.STATE like '%West Virginia% In some tools, you can simply place your cursor on say the 2nd statement and ask to execute that statement. The tool assumes that the blank line between it and the next statement, a DELETE, serves as a statement delimiter. This is not bad in and of itself. However, it is very important to understand how your tools work. If you were to try the same trick by running the delete statement, it would empty my entire BEER table instead of just trimming out the breweries from my home state. SQL Developer only executes what you ask it to execute You can paste this same code into SQL Developer and run it without problems and without having to add semicolons to your statements. Highlight what you want executed, and hit Ctrl-Enter If you don’t highlight the text, here’s what you’ll see: See the statement at the cursor vs what SQL Developer actually executed? The parser looks for a query and keeps going until the statement is terminated with a semicolon – UNLESS it’s highlighted, then it assumes you only want to execute what is highlighted. In both cases you are being explicit with what is being sent to the database. Again, there’s not necessarily a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ debate here. What you need to be aware of is the differences and to learn new workflows if you are moving from other database tools to Oracle SQL Developer. I say, when in doubt, back away from the tool, especially if you’re in production. Oh, and to answer the original question… Because we’re trying to emulate SQL*Plus behavior. You end statements in SQL*Plus with delimiters, and the default delimiter is a semicolon.

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• Silverlight Cream for June 15, 2010 -- #882

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Colin Eberhardt Zoltan Arvai, Marcel du Preez, Mark Tucker, John Papa, Phil Middlemiss, Andy Beaulieu, and Chad Campbell. From SilverlightCream.com: Throttling Silverlight Mouse Events to Keep the UI Responsive Colin Eberhardt sent me this link to his latest at Scott Logic... about how to throttle Silverlight -- no not that, you'd have to go to one of the *other* blogs for that :) ... this is throttling the mouse, particularly the mouse wheel to keep the UI from freezing up ... check out the demos, you'll want to read the code Data Driven Applications with MVVM Part I: The Basics Zoltan Arvai started a series of tutorials on Data-Driven Applications with MVVM at SilverlightShow... this is number 1, and it looks like it's going to be a good series to read. Red-To-Green scale using an IValueConverter Marcel du Preez has an interesting post up at SilverlightShow using an IValueConverter to do a red/yellow/green progress bar ... this is pretty cool. Infragistics XamWebOutlookBar & Caliburn With assistance from Rob Eisenburg, Mark Tucker was able to build a Caliburn sample including the Infragistics XamWebOutlookBar, and he's sharing his experience (and code) with all of us. Printing Tip – Handling User Initiated Dialogs Exceptions John Papa responded to a common printing problem by writing it up in his blog. Note this problem quite often appears during debug, so check it out... John also has a quick tip on an update to the PrintAPI in Silverlight 4. Automatic Rectangle Radius X and Y Phil Middlemiss has another great Blend post up -- this one on rounding off buttons... they look great to me, but he's looking for advice -- how about that Phil? They look great to me :) WP7 Back Button in Games Planning on selling 'stuff' in the Windows Phone Marketplace? Are you familiar with the required use of the Back Button? How about in a game? ... Andy Beaulieu discusses all this and has some code you'll want to use. Windows Phone 7 – Call Phone Number from HyperlinkButton Chad Campbell [no relation :) ] is discussing dialing a number from a hyperlink in WP7 - oh yeah, it's a phone as well :) -- I think I've only seen a number attempt to be called -- hmm... and we're not yet either because we all have emulators, but this is a good intro to the functionality for when we may actually have devices! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• How to Write an E-Book

  A few days ago my attention was drawn to a tweet spat between Karl Seguin and Scott Hanselman around the relaunch of ASP.NET and the title element in HTML. Tempest in a teapot of course, but worthwhile as I did some googling on Karl and found his blog at codebetter.com. From there it was a short jump to his free e-book, The Foundations of Programming. This short book is distinguished by its orientation, opinionated, its tone, mentoring and its honesty, which is refreshing. In Foundations, Karl covers what he considers the basics of programming and good design, including test driven development, dependency injection and domain driven design. Karl is opinionated, as the topics suggest, and doesnt bother to pretend that he doesnt think what hes suggesting is the better way, not just another way. He is aligned with ALT.NET, and gives an excellent overview of what that means; an overview more enlightening than the ALT.NET site. ALT.NET has its critics, but presenting a strong opinion grabbed my attention as a reader. It is a short walk from opinionated to hectoring,  but Karl held my attention without insulting me. He takes the time to explain, with examples, from the ground up, the problems that test driven development and dependency injection solve. So for dependency injection he builds it up from no DI, to a hand crafted approach, to a full fledged DI framework. This approach is more persuasive than just proscriptive and engaged me as the reader to follow along with his train of thought. Foundations is not as pedantic as I am making it sound. The final ingredient in Karls mix is honesty. He acknowledges that sometimes unit testing does cost more up front and take more time. He admits that sometimes he designs something a certain way just to be testable. He also warns that focusing too much on DI and loose coupling can lead to the poor design you are trying to avoid. These points add depth to his argument as I could tell hes speaking from experience, with some hard won lessons. I enjoyed The Foundations of Programming. When I was done with it, I was amazed how much I got a lot out of its 80 some pages. It is a rarity to come across something worthwhile that is longer then a tweet, but shorter than a tome these days. Well done Karl.   -- Relevant Links -- The now titled and newly relaunched page in question: http://www.asp.net/ The pleasantly confusing ALT.NET homepage: http://altdotnet.org/ A longer review, with details, chapter listings and all that important stuff: http://accidentaltechnologist.com/book-reviews/book-review-foundations-of-programming-by-karl-seguin/Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Roll your own free .NET technical conference

  - by Brian Schroer

  If you can’t get to a conference, let the conference come to you! There are a ton of free recorded conference presentations online… Microsoft TechEd Let’s start with the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Recent TechEds have recorded the majority of presentations and made them available online the next day. Check out presentations from last month’s TechEd North America 2012 or last week’s TechEd Europe 2012. If you start at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd, you can also drill down to presentations from prior years or from other regional TechEds (Australia, New Zealand, etc.) The top presentations from my “View Queue”: Damian Edwards: Microsoft ASP.NET and the Realtime Web (SignalR) Jennifer Smith: Design for Non-Designers Scott Hunter: ASP.NET Roadmap: One ASP.NET – Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and more Daniel Roth: Building HTTP Services with ASP.NET Web API Benjamin Day: Scrum Under a Waterfall NDC The Norwegian Developer Conference site has the most interesting presentations, in my opinion. You can find the videos from the June 2012 conference at that link. The 2011 and 2010 pages have a lot of presentations that are still relevant also. My View Queue Top 5: Shay Friedman: Roslyn... hmmmm... what? Hadi Hariri: Just ‘cause it’s JavaScript, doesn’t give you a license to write rubbish Paul Betts: Introduction to Rx Greg Young: How to get productive in a project in 24 hours Michael Feathers: Deep Design Lessons ØREDEV Travelling on from Norway to Sweden... I don’t know why, but the Scandinavians seem to have this conference thing figured out. ØREDEV happens each November, and you can find videos here and here. My View Queue Top 5: Marc Gravell: Web Performance Triage Robby Ingebretsen: Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography Jon Skeet: Async 101 Chris Patterson: Hacking Developer Productivity Gary Short: .NET Collections Deep Dive aspConf - The Virtual ASP.NET Conference Formerly known as “mvcConf”, this one’s a little different. It’s a conference that takes place completely on the web. The next one’s happening July 17-18, and it’s not too late to register (It’s free!). Check out the recordings from February 2011 and July 2010. It’s two years old and talks about ASP.NET MVC2, but most of it is still applicable, and Jimmy Bogard’s Put Your Controllers On a Diet presentation is the most useful technical talk I have ever seen. CodeStock Videos from the 2011 edition of this Tennessee conference are available. Presentations from last month’s 2012 conference should be available soon here. I’m looking forward to watching Matt Honeycutt’s Build Your Own Application Framework with ASP.NET MVC 3. UserGroup.tv User Group.tv was founded in January of 2011 by Shawn Weisfeld, with the mission of providing User Group content online for free. You can search by date, group, speaker and category tags. My View Queue Top 5: Sergey Rathon & Ian Henehan: UI Test Automation with Selenium Rob Vettor: The Repository Pattern Latish Seghal: The .NET Ninja’s Toolbelt Amir Rajan: Get Things Done With Dynamic ASP.NET MVC Jeffrey Richter: .NET Nuggets – Houston TechFest Keynote

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• links for 2010-04-20

  - by Bob Rhubart

  smattoon@: Enterprise Architecture for Drupal | DrupalCon San Francisco 2010 Details on today's (4/20/10) Drupalcon presentation by Scott "@smattoon" Mattoon. (tags: oracle sun enterprisearchitecture drupal) Mona Rakibe: Deploying BAM Data Control Application to WLS server "Typically we would test our ADF pages that use BAM Data control using integrated WLS server (ADRS), " writes Mona Rakibe. "If we have to deploy this same application to a standalone WLS we have to make sure we have the BAM server connection created in WLS. Unless we do that we may face runtime errors." (tags: oracle otn weblogic soa adf) George Maggessy: Deploying an Consuming Task Flows as Shared Libraries on WLS "A Java EE library is an easy way to share one or more different types of Java EE modules among multiple Enterprise Applications," says George Maggessy. "A shared Java EE library can be a simple jar file, an EJB module or even a web application module." His post includes a sample. (tags: oracle otn architect java weblogic) Adam Hawley: Oracle VM and JRockit Virtual Edition: Oracle Introduces Java Virtualization Solution for Oracle(R) WebLogic Suite Adam Hawley offers information on "a WebLogic Suite option that permits the Oracle WebLogic Server 11g to run on a Java JVM (JRockit Virtual Edition) that itself runs directly on the Oracle VM Server for x86 / x64 without needing any operating system." (tags: oracle otn weblogic virtualization architect javajrockit) @fteter: Highlights From The Bright Lights - Sunday #c10 "Sunday, the first day of Collaborate 10, was probably the best conference kickoff I've ever experienced," says Oracle ACE Director Floyd Teter. "And that's mostly because 'Oracle Fusion Architecture: Soup To Nuts' absolutely rocked!" (tags: oracle otn oracleace collaborate2010 fusionmiddleware architecture) @ORACLENERD: COLLABORATE: Day 2 Wrap Up Oracle ACE Chet "oraclenerd" Justice's tale of cell phone chargers, beer, and shrimp eyes. (tags: oracle otn oracleace collaborate2010) Registration is Open: Oracle Technology Network Architect Day: Dallas The 2010 series of Oracle Technology Network Architect Days kicks off in Dallas on Wednesday, May 13. Registration is now open for the Dallas event, and will open soon for the events in Anaheim, CA and Redwood Shores, CA. (tags: oracle otn architect entarch community events)

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• Silverlight Cream for May 20, 2010 -- #866

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mike Snow, Victor Gaudioso, Ola Karlsson, Josh Twist(-2-), Yavor Georgiev, Jeff Wilcox, and Jesse Liberty. Shoutouts: Frank LaVigne has an interesting observation on his site: The Big Take-Away from MIX10 Rishi has updated all his work including a release of nRoute to the latest bits: nRoute Samples Revisited Looks like I posted one of Erik Mork's links two days in a row :) ... that's because I meant to post this one: Silverlight Week – How to Choose a Mobile Platform Just in case you missed it (and for me to find it easy), Scott Guthrie has an excellent post up on Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services Released From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Tip of the Day #23 – Working with Strokes and Shapes Mike Snow's Silverlight Tip of the Day number 23 is up and about Strokes and Shapes -- as in dotted and dashed lines. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to Fire a Visual State based upon the value of a Boolean Variable Victor Gaudioso's latest video tutorial is up and is on selecting and firing a video state based on a boolean... project included. Simultaneously calling multiple methods on a WCF service from silverlight Ola Karlsson details a problem he had where he was calling multiple WCF services to pull all his data and had problems... turns out it was a blocking call and he found the solution in the forums and details it all out for us... actually, a search at SilverlightCream.com would have found one of the better posts listed once you knew the problem :) Securing Your Silverlight Applications Josh Twist has an article in MSDN on Silverlight Security. He talks about Windows, forms, and .NET authorization then WCF, WCF Data, cross domain and XAP files. He also has some good external links. Template/View selection with MEF in Silverlight Josh Twist points out that this next article is just a simple demonstration, but he's discussing, and provides code for, a MEF-driven ViewModel navigation scheme with animation on the navigation. Workaround for accessing some ASMX services from Silverlight 4 Are you having problems hitting you asmx web service with Silverlight 4? Yeah... others are too! Yavor Georgiev at the Silverlight Web Services Team blog has a post up about it... why it's a sometimes problem and a workaround for it. Using Silverlight 4 features to create a Zune-like context menu Jeff Wilcox used Silverlight 4 and the Toolkit to create some samples of menus, then demonstrates a duplication of the Zune menu. You Already Are A Windows Phone 7 Programmer Jesse Liberty is demonstrating the fact that Silverlight developers are WP7 developers by creating a Silverlight and a WP7 app side by side using the same code... this is a closer look at the Silverlight TV presentation he did. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• links for 2011-03-08

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The Empowered Business "Someone needs to be the enterprise parent that asks the question, “do you really need that?” It may be a shiny new thing, but does it make a difference in the ability to accomplish the strategy and goals?" - Enterprise Architect Todd Biske (tags: enterprisearchitecture) Knowledge Workers in the British Raj "While we’ve used technology to change business, business has also evolved to the point that it’s changing how we think about and use technology." - Peter Evans Greenwood (tags: enterprisearchitecture enterprise2.0) Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...: OTN Developer Day Boston 2011 - Slides & Trip Report Arun Gupta shares slides from his Developer Day presentations. (tags: oracle otn java) Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination (James Bayer's Blog) James Bayer responds to a question. (tags: oracle otn weblogic jms) Triangle Circle Square: Apex in the Amazon Cloud Scott Wesley shares several links to resources covering Oracle Apex on an Amazon EC2 instance. (tags: oracle apex ec2 amazon cloud) William Vambenepe: Reading IBM's proposed standard for Cloud Architecture The always entertaining William Vambenepe gives IBM's proposed Cloud standards the full Ebert. (tags: oracle cloud ibm standards) Government Information Group Cloud Computing Research Study "The twin pressures of reduced budgets and the need for greater efficiency have led the federal government to strongly promote cloud computing as a solution whenever possible." (tags: cloudcomputing cloud) The Ron Batra Blog: Technology Whispers: Top 10 Reasons to go ExaData "Continuing my exploration of ExaData, I thought I'd take a minute to consolidate my thoughts into key reasons for which Oracle ExaData could be a good fit for your needs." - Oracle ACE Director Ron Batra (tags: oracle oracleace exadata) Oracle WebCenter: Composite Applications & Mash-Ups (Oracle Enterprise 2.0 Blog) "The new Business Mash-up editor allows business users to take any Oracle Application or 3rd party application and wire the backend data sources or APIs to a rich set of visualizations and reuse them in mashups." (tags: oracle webcenter enterprise2.0) Antonio Romero: Great Discussion of ETL and ELT Tooling in TDWI Linkedin Group Antonio says: "There’s a great discussion of ETL and ELT tooling going on in the official TDWI Linkedin group, under the heading 'How Sustainable is SQL for ETL?' It delves into a wide range of topics." (tags: oracle linkedin etl elt) YouTube - Bunny Inc. - Episode 1. Mr. CIO meets Mr. Executive Manager Yes, it's a commercial. But it's well done and it's funny. (tags: e20 enterprise2.0 webcenter) Markus Eisele: Both Weblogic and Glassfish are strategic products for Oracle Oracle ACE Director Markus Eisele shares selected quotes pulled from the recent TechCast Live interview with Oracle's Anil Gaur and Adam Leftik (tags: oracle java weblogic glassfish) How to become an Oracle SOA expert? (SOA Partner Community Blog) Jurgan Kress shares info and links for those interested in capitalizing on SOA. (tags: oracle soa)

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• Star rating not showing in rich snippets

  - by Danny R

  We've recently been doing a lot of work on our site's SEO (www.betterthanreviews.com). We recently did a push to update the rich snippets breadcrumb, meta description, and star rating. After giving Google some time to index the site, it has updated the breadcrumbs and meta descriptions for our review pages, but the stars are still not showing. This is currently how it appears on a Google search (link to the actual page: http://www.betterthanreviews.com/home-security/livewatch): This is what the Rich Snippets is supposed to look like, and how it appears in Google's testing tool: More context: As seen in our html, we are using schema.org language. We initially were using schema.org/Corporation for the site, but we now have the page labeled as schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness because Google will not show star ratings for the Corporation language. However, in our Webmaster Tools, the Structured Data is still showing the Corporation language, which could be a potential issue. Here is a look at some of the coding that we used. But it can be looked at closer by inspecting the element: <div class="aggregate-rating" itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> <div class="review row_fluid" itemprop="review" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Review"> <div class="row_fluid rating" itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating"> <meta content="4.5" itemprop="ratingValue" title="4.5 out of 5 stars" class="star-rating-readonly"> <meta content="2013-12-05" itemprop="datePublished"> <p class="review-headline" itemprop="headline">Way better than my previous system</p> <div> <p class="reviewer" itemprop="author">Scott H. </p> <span class="bullet">•</span> <p class="created_at">2 months ago</p> <p class="content" itemprop="description">I love it! The experience I have had so far is extremely positive. I had another alarm system before and I didn't like it but this one is really nice. I am telling everybody about it.</p> </div> </div> Any suggestions for how to fix this?

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• Please help me give this principle a name

  - by Brent Arias

  As a designer, I like providing interfaces that cater to a power/simplicity balance. For example, I think the LINQ designers followed that principle because they offered both dot-notation and query-notation. The first is more powerful, but the second is easier to read and follow. If you disagree with my assessment of LINQ, please try to see my point anyway; LINQ was just an example, my post is not about LINQ. I call this principle "dial-able power". But I'd like to know what other people call it. Certainly some will say "KISS" is the common term. But I see KISS as a superset, or a "consumerism" practice. Using LINQ as my example again, in my view, a team of programmers who always try to use query notation over dot-notation are practicing KISS. Thus the LINQ designers practiced "dial-able power", whereas the LINQ consumers practice KISS. The two make beautiful music together. I'll give another example. Imagine a C# logging tool that has two signatures allowing two uses: void Write(string message); void Write(Func<string> messageCallback); The purpose of the two signatures is to fulfill these needs: //Every-day "simple" usage, nothing special. myLogger.Write("Something Happened" + error.ToString() ); //This is performance critical, do not call ToString() if logging is //disabled. myLogger.Write( () => { "Something Happened" + error.ToString() }); Having these overloads represents "dial-able power," because the consumer has the choice of a simple interface or a powerful interface. A KISS-loving consumer will use the simpler signature most of the time, and will allow the "busy" looking signature when the power is needed. This also helps self-documentation, because usage of the powerful signature tells the reader that the code is performance critical. If the logger had only the powerful signature, then there would be no "dial-able power." So this comes full-circle. I'm happy to keep my own "dial-able power" coinage if none yet exists, but I can't help think I'm missing an obvious designation for this practice. p.s. Another example that is related, but is not the same as "dial-able power", is Scott Meyer's principle "make interfaces easy to use correctly, and hard to use incorrectly."

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• Why is there nobody talking about an alternative to HTML & CSS? [closed]

  - by Nic

  HTML is such an old and cumbersome language, which was intended just to markup text. Today it's very rare to see a static HTML website, or a site with only text or a very simple layout. As a web developer I find it inconvenient to use HTML & CSS, very repetitive and cumbersome. I think that for a lot of website it could be simplified a lot. Tim Berners-Lee (W3) wrote a document named "The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future" in August 1996 ... though HTML will be considered part of the established infrastructure (rather than an exciting new toy), there will always be new formats coming along, and it may be that a more powerful and perhaps a more consistent set of formats will eventually displace HTML. So, more than 15 years later, HTML is still here and it's here to stay. Why? Why searching for xml alternatives brings so much relevant result, but searching for html alternatives brings almost none relevant results? Answers like "it's too hard to change a standard" aren't answering the question since a lot of new standards emerged since the initiation of the web. I'm also not searching for answers that suggest using tools to simplify the process or formats that anyhow depends on HTML or CSS, technologies that currently require a plugin and not even trying to become an open standards (like Flash) aren't an answer neither. BTW, here are 2 articles written more than two years ago as food for thought, it might help with writing a better answers. "HTML, CSS, and Web Development Practices: Past, Present, and Future" describing a very related problem, by Jens O. Meiert. "A Brief History of HTML" by Scott Reynen, Here is a quote from the end: So now you can answer questions about HTML5 without even looking at the draft, which is handy, because the draft is 400+ pages long. Why is there a new tag in HTML5? Because some browser vendor (maybe the one that also owns a large video site) wanted it. Why are there so many scriptable interface elements in HTML5? Because some browser vendor (maybe the one selling phones without Flash support) wants them. Why is there no support for RDFa in HTML5? Apparently no browser vendor wanted it. Is that the future?

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• Selectively Exposing Functionallity in .Net

  - by David V. Corbin

  Any developer should be aware of the principles of encapsulation, cross-tier isolation, and cross-functional separation of concerns. However, it seems the few take the time to consider the adage of "minimal yet complete"1 when developing the software. Consider the exposure of "business objects" to the user interface. Some common situations occur: Accessing a given element requires a compound set of calls that do not "make sense" to the User Interface. More information than absolutely required is exposed to the user interface It would be much cleaner if a custom interface was provided that exposed exactly (and only) the information that is required by the consumer. Achieving this using conventional techniques would require the creation (and maintenance!) of custom classes to filter and transpose the information into the ideal format. Determining the ROI on this approach can be very difficult to ascertain, and as a result it is often ignored completely. There is another approach, which is largely made practical by virtual of the Action and Func delegates. From a callers point of view, the following two samples can be used interchangeably:     interface ISomeInterface     {         void SampleMethod1(string param);         string SamepleMethod2(string param);     }       class ISomeInterface     {         public Action<string> SampleMethod1 {get; }         public Func<string,string> SamepleMethod2 {get; }     }   The capabilities this simple changes enable are significant (and remember it does not cange the syntax at the call site): The delegates can be initialized to directly call the proper method of any target class. The delegates can be dynamically updated based on the current state. The "interface" can NOT be cast to the concrete class (which often exposes more functionallity). This patterns By limiting the interface to the exact functionallity required, the reduced surface area will typically result in lower development, testing and maintenance costs. We are currently in the process of posting a project on CodePlex which illustrates this (and many other) techniques which have proven helpful in creating robust yet flexible solutions that are highly efficient2 and maintainable. This post will be updated as soon as the project is published. 1) Credit: Scott  Meyers, Effective C++, Addison-Wesley 1992 2) For those who read my previous post on performance it should be noted that the use of delegates is on the same order of magnitude (actually a tiny amount faster) as conventional interfaces.

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - The Gotchas, The Do's and Don'ts for IDM Implementations

  - by Tanu Sood

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mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6 {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; border-top:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-top-themecolor:accent6; border-left:none; border-bottom:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; border-right:none; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} It is generally accepted among business communities that technology by itself is not a silver bullet to all problems, but when it is combined with leading practices, strategy, careful planning and execution, it can create a recipe for success. This post attempts to highlight some of the best practices along with dos & don’ts that our practice has accumulated over the years in the identity & access management space in general, and also in the context of R2, in particular. Best Practices The following section illustrates the leading practices in “How” to plan, implement and sustain a successful OIM deployment, based on our collective experience. Planning is critical, but often overlooked A common approach to planning an IAM program that we identify with our clients is the three step process involving a current state assessment, a future state roadmap and an executable strategy to get there. It is extremely beneficial for clients to assess their current IAM state, perform gap analysis, document the recommended controls to address the gaps, align future state roadmap to business initiatives and get buy in from all stakeholders involved to improve the chances of success. When designing an enterprise-wide solution, the scalability of the technology must accommodate the future growth of the enterprise and the projected identity transactions over several years. Aligning the implementation schedule of OIM to related information technology projects increases the chances of success. As a baseline, it is recommended to match hardware specifications to the sizing guide for R2 published by Oracle. Adherence to this will help ensure that the hardware used to support OIM will not become a bottleneck as the adoption of new services increases. If your Organization has numerous connected applications that rely on reconciliation to synchronize the access data into OIM, consider hosting dedicated instances to handle reconciliation. Finally, ensure the use of clustered environment for development and have at least three total environments to help facilitate a controlled migration to production. If your Organization is planning to implement role based access control, we recommend performing a role mining exercise and consolidate your enterprise roles to keep them manageable. In addition, many Organizations have multiple approval flows to control access to critical roles, applications and entitlements. If your Organization falls into this category, we highly recommend that you limit the number of approval workflows to a small set. Most Organizations have operations managed across data centers with backend database synchronization, if your Organization falls into this category, ensure that the overall latency between the datacenters when replicating the databases is less than ten milliseconds to ensure that there are no front office performance impacts. Ingredients for a successful implementation During the development phase of your project, there are a number of guidelines that can be followed to help increase the chances for success. Most implementations cannot be completed without the use of customizations. If your implementation requires this, it’s a good practice to perform code reviews to help ensure quality and reduce code bottlenecks related to performance. We have observed at our clients that the development process works best when team members adhere to coding leading practices. Plan for time to correct coding defects and ensure developers are empowered to report their own bugs for maximum transparency. Many organizations struggle with defining a consistent approach to managing logs. This is particularly important due to the amount of information that can be logged by OIM. We recommend Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as an alternative to be used for logging. ODL allows log files to be formatted in XML for easy parsing and does not require a server restart when the log levels are changed during troubleshooting. Testing is a vital part of any large project, and an OIM R2 implementation is no exception. We suggest that at least one lower environment should use production-like data and connectors. Configurations should match as closely as possible. For example, use secure channels between OIM and target platforms in pre-production environments to test the configurations, the migration processes of certificates, and the additional overhead that encryption could impose. Finally, we ask our clients to perform database backups regularly and before any major change event, such as a patch or migration between environments. In the lowest environments, we recommend to have at least a weekly backup in order to prevent significant loss of time and effort. Similarly, if your organization is using virtual machines for one or more of the environments, it is recommended to take frequent snapshots so that rollbacks can occur in the event of improper configuration. Operate & sustain the solution to derive maximum benefits When migrating OIM R2 to production, it is important to perform certain activities that will help achieve a smoother transition. At our clients, we have seen that splitting the OIM tables into their own tablespaces by categories (physical tables, indexes, etc.) can help manage database growth effectively. If we notice that a client hasn’t enabled the Oracle-recommended indexing in the applicable database, we strongly suggest doing so to improve performance. Additionally, we work with our clients to make sure that the audit level is set to fit the organization’s auditing needs and sometimes even allocate UPA tables and indexes into their own table-space for better maintenance. Finally, many of our clients have set up schedules for reconciliation tables to be archived at regular intervals in order to keep the size of the database(s) reasonable and result in optimal database performance. For our clients that anticipate availability issues with target applications, we strongly encourage the use of the offline provisioning capabilities of OIM R2. This reduces the provisioning process for a given target application dependency on target availability and help avoid broken workflows. To account for this and other abnormalities, we also advocate that OIM’s monitoring controls be configured to alert administrators on any abnormal situations. Within OIM R2, we have begun advising our clients to utilize the ‘profile’ feature to encapsulate multiple commonly requested accounts, roles, and/or entitlements into a single item. By setting up a number of profiles that can be searched for and used, users will spend less time performing the same exact steps for common tasks. We advise our clients to follow the Oracle recommended guides for database and application server tuning which provides a good baseline configuration. It offers guidance on database connection pools, connection timeouts, user interface threads and proper handling of adapters/plug-ins. All of these can be important configurations that will allow faster provisioning and web page response times. Many of our clients have begun to recognize the value of data mining and a remediation process during the initial phases of an implementation (to help ensure high quality data gets loaded) and beyond (to support ongoing maintenance and business-as-usual processes). A successful program always begins with identifying the data elements and assigning a classification level based on criticality, risk, and availability. It should finish by following through with a remediation process. Dos & Don’ts Here are the most common dos and don'ts that we socialize with our clients, derived from our experience implementing the solution. Dos Don’ts Scope the project into phases with realistic goals. Look for quick wins to show success and value to the stake holders. Avoid “boiling the ocean” and trying to integrate all enterprise applications in the first phase. Establish an enterprise ID (universal unique ID across the enterprise) earlier in the program. Avoid major UI customizations that require code changes. Have a plan in place to patch during the project, which helps alleviate any major issues or roadblocks (product and database). Avoid publishing all the target entitlements if you don't anticipate their usage during access request. Assess your current state and prepare a roadmap to address your operations, tactical and strategic goals, align it with your business priorities. Avoid integrating non-production environments with your production target systems. Defer complex integrations to the later phases and take advantage of lessons learned from previous phases Avoid creating multiple accounts for the same user on the same system, if there is an opportunity to do so. Have an identity and access data quality initiative built into your plan to identify and remediate data related issues early on. Avoid creating complex approval workflows that would negative impact productivity and SLAs. Identify the owner of the identity systems with fair IdM knowledge and empower them with authority to make product related decisions. This will help ensure overcome any design hurdles. Avoid creating complex designs that are not sustainable long term and would need major overhaul during upgrades. Shadow your internal or external consulting resources during the implementation to build the necessary product skills needed to operate and sustain the solution. Avoid treating IAM as a point solution and have appropriate level of communication and training plan for the IT and business users alike. Conclusion In our experience, Identity programs will struggle with scope, proper resourcing, and more. We suggest that companies consider the suggestions discussed in this post and leverage them to help enable their identity and access program. This concludes PwC blog series on R2 for the month and we sincerely hope that the information we have shared thus far has been beneficial. For more information or if you have questions, you can reach out to Rex Thexton, Senior Managing Director, PwC and or Dharma Padala, Director, PwC. We look forward to hearing from you. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL).

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• It's Here! Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Ship

  Today Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0. I've been using the RC version of Visual Studio 2010 quite a bit for the past couple of months and have really grown to like it. It has a host of features and enhancements that improve developer productivity, from improved IntelliSense to better multiple monitor support. Plus there's something about the user experience that, to me, makes it feel better than Visual Studio 2008. I don't know if it's the new blue color motif or what, but the IDE seems more modern looking and more responsive to my mouse movements and other input. Anyway, if you've not yet downloaded Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0, why not? As with previous versions of Visual Studio there's a free Express Edition and VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 runs side-by-side with earlier versions of Visual Studio and ASP.NET. And with Visual Studio 2010's multi-targeting you can even use VS2010 as your development editor for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 web applications. (Although be forewarned if you have multiple developers working on the application that the project files in VS2010 and earlier versions of Visual Studio differ.) This week's article on 4Guys explores my favorite new features of Visual Studio 2010. Here's an excerpt: The Visual Studio 2010 user experience is noticeably different than with previous versions. Some of the changes are cosmetic - gone is the decades-old red and orange color scheme, having been replaced with blues and purples - while others are more substantial. For instance, the Visual Studio 2010 shell was rewritten from the ground up to use Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). In addition to an updated user experience, Visual Studio introduces an array of new features designed to improve developer productivity. There are new tools for searching for files, types, and class members; it's now easier than ever to use IntelliSense; the Toolbox can be searched using the keyboard; and you can use a single editor - Visual Studio 2010 - to work on. This article explores some of the new features in Visual Studio 2010. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather highlights those features that I, as an ASP.NET developer, find most useful in my line of work. Read on to learn more! And, in closing, here are some helpful VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 links: One click installation for ASP.NET 4.0, Visual Web Developer 2010, .NET Framework 4.0, and ASP.NET MVC 2 Eight Quick Hit videos showing some of the cool new VS2010 features VS2010 and ASP.NET 4.0 Release Announcement with some great info/links from none other than Scott Guthrie Happy Programming!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Portland Silverlight User Group: WP7 &amp; XNA &ndash; I survived.

  - by George Clingerman

  Last night I gave a talk to the Portland Silverlight User Group. http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 And I survived (which you should have probably already figured out since you’re reading this post AND that’s what I titled it…) Really though it was a fantastic time and I had a lot of fun! I was a little nervous getting ready for it, but I’m always a little nervous getting ready for things. I had the game all written,  I knew the general flow for what the talk was going to be. I read over Scott Hanselman’s 11 Top Tips for a Successful Technical presentation (which has become something I do EVERY time I’m preparing for a talk). I gave myself a brief list of points I wanted to make sure I covered or worked into the talk. But then I was ready and I waited. I hate the waiting. It makes me nervous. Once I was up in front of the room though with my laptop open and some XNA code in front of me, my nerves go away. Then I’m ready. I know XNA, I love talking about XNA and I love sharing what I know and hearing questions that make me think. And hopefully that came through while I was talking. I had a freaking blast. The swag went quickly (and I was even able to hand out some XNA 2.0 books that have been around forever!) and the pizza was been gobbled down. I started the talk at about 6:10 and managed to cover a very brief intro to programming against the game loop (it’s a different concept and one that seems to trip a lot of people up getting started with game development) and then rolled into making a basic 2D game for Windows Phone 7 using XNA. And I finished the whole thing before 8:30. Wahoo! I’m planning on posting the source code and assets on my site so those should be coming soon. And to make things even better, they recorded the whole thing on video so everyone will get to see me pretend I can speak! Just wait till you hear the new song I wrote for this talk…

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• ?????????????????????????|WebLogic Channel|??????

  - by ???02

  Java EE????????·????????????????/??????????????????????·?????????????????????????WebLogic Server?????????????WebLogic Server???????????????????·??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(???)???????WebLogic Server???????　????WebLogic Server 11g(10.3.5)??????????????????????????????????????????????????(1)WebLogic Server???????(2)????????????????(3)?????????????(4)JDBC????????????(5)?????????????　???????Windows?WebLogic Server??????10.3.5????????Oracle Database Express Edition????????????????????????????????????EXE???ZIP???2????????????????EXE???????　???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????MIDDLEWARE_HOME(?????????????)(????????????????)C:\Oracle\MiddlewareWebLogic Server??????????????Oracle CoherenceOracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse?????????·????????????????????????????????????????????????(Windows?????)??????????Windows????????(??????????????)?????Web????Oracle HTTP Server?????????????(????????????????????)Oracle ADF(Application Development Framework)??????????WebLogic Server????????????????(Oracle ADF??????????????????????????????)Fusion Middleware Control???????????(Oracle HTTP Server?????????????????????????????)???????????TokyoDomain???????ID/?????weblogic/welcome1??????????AdminServer:7001????????????Server1:7011Server2:7012???????????????Host1??????????????????????????Host1?Server1???Host2?Server2???????JVMJRockit????????????????????????(???????)C:\Oracle\Middleware\user_projects\domains???????????????????????????????????????　???WebLogic Server??????????GUI????CUI?????????????????????????????????????????????????·????3??????????????????????????????????GUI???????????????????????¦??????????Oracle WebLogic Server ???????·????????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????!(1)WebLogic Server???????　???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·???·????????????????????????????????????????　????????????????????????????My Oracle Support???????????????????My Oracle Support?????????????????????·??????????????????????????????????????　?????????????·?????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　????????????JDK????????????????????????JDK??????????????????????????????????JDK??????????????????????????????????????·???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　???????????Windows????????????????WebLogic Server?Windows?????????????Windows?????????????????????????????????????????????????????Windows?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　??????????????????????All Users???????·??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　????????????????????????????????????????????????????(2)????????????????　???????????????????????????????????????????1??????JDBC??????????Oracle Database????????????Web????????HTTP??????????????????????????　??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????domain1??????????????JDKJRockit SDK 1.6????????1????????Server1?????????????7002???ID??????ID:weblogic?????:welcome1　????????????????????????????????????????2????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(???????????????)?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Web????·????·???????·????????????????????/??????????????????????(???????·???)?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Web????·???·???????·???????????????????????????????????　???????????????????WebLogic Server??????????????????　WebLogic Server???????????????Configuration Wizard?????????????????Windows???????????????????????-?Oracle WebLogic?-?WebLogic Server 11gR1?-?Tools?-?Configuration Wizard?????????(UNIX???????WLS_HOME/common/bin/config.sh??????)?????????????????WebLogic????????????????????????????　????????????????·???????????WebLogic Server???????????????Oracle SOA Suite?Oracle Business Process Management???Fusion Middleware??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Basic WebLogic Server Domain?????????Basic WebLogic Server Domain??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　????????????????JDK???????????????????????????(????????)???????????JDK???????????????????????JRockit????????????????????????JDK????????????????JDK????????????JDK?????????????????????　???????????????????????????????????????????????????????RDBMS???????·?????????????????????????????????????????????　?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　??????????????????????????????????DOMAIN\startWebLogic.cmd?(UNIX??????startWebLogic.sh?))???????????????????????ID????????????????????????????????????????<??> ?????????????????????????????(3)?????????????　??????????????????????????????????????????????????7001?????????Web??????http://localhost:7001/?????????????????????????????????????????????ID????????????????????????　??????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????(domain1)??????????????????????????????????-??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　??????????????????????????????DOMAIN\bin????????????????????????(??????Server1??????????????7001????)?startManagedWebLogic.cmd Server1 http://localhost:7001　????????????ID????????????????????????????<??> ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????DOMAIN_HOME\bin\stopManagedWebLogic.cmd?????????????????????????stopManagedWebLogic Server1¦??????????????Oracle???????????????????????·????!(4)JDBC????????????　????JDBC??????????????Java EE????????·????????JDBC?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????JNDI(Java Naming and Directory Interface)??????????/??????????????????????????????·???????????????????????????　?????????????????????????????????????????????JDBC???????????????JDBC??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????WebLogic Server????????JDBC???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　???WebLogic Server???????????????????????????????????????????1?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Oracle Database????????·?????????Oracle Real Application Clusters(RAC)?????????????????????　???WebLogic Server 11g????????JDBC?????????????MySQL??Oracle Database????????????????????????????????????Oracle Thin Driver 11gojdbc6.jarTYPE4MySQL5.0 JDBC????mysql-connector-java-commercial-5.0.x-bin.jar WebLogic Type4 JDBC????DB2?:wldb2.jarMS SQL Server?:wlsqlserver.jarInformix?:wlinformix.jarSybase?:wlsybase.jarDataDirect?OEM??　??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(*?????)??Oracle Database????????????*WebLogic Server?????dsAJNDI?*JNDI??????????jdbc/dsA????????*Oracle?DB2???1Oracle???????*????????????????1Oracle Thin Instance-Connection????????·??????XA??????????1phase commit???????*???????IDORCL????*???????????Localhost???*?????????????1521??????·?????????????????SCOTT???????????·??????????TIGER????·????*JDBC??????????2oracle.jdbc.OracleDriverURL*JDBC URL?2jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:ORCLJDBC????·?????JDBC???? ????????(or SQL)??????????????SQLSQL SELECT 1 FROM DUAL?????WLS?????????????????Server1?1　????????????BOX?????2　?????????????????　?????????·?????????????????????????????????????????1??????????????????????????????????????1?????1?????????????????15?????????????????????????1????????????????????????????????????????????(???????????????????)false?????(?)????????????????????????????????????????????????????(???????????????????)120?????????????????????????????????????????????????10????(?)?????????????????????900??????????????(?)?????????????????????????????????????????????????????0(??)???????????(?)????????????????????????????????10??????????(?)?????????????????????????????0???????JDBC????????????SQL????????????????JDBC?????Statement.setQueryTimeout????????????-1?1　???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　???????????·???(?????)???????????????????????????????????????????????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　JDBC?????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????-?JDBC?-?????????????????????????????JDBC???????????????-??????·?????????????　???JDBC????????????JNDI??????????????????·??????????????????Oracle Database Express Edition???????????????????????????????Oracle?????????·????????XA???????　???????????????????????????????·?????????????????????????1????·?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????JDBC?????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????　????????????????????????????????????????-?JDBC?-????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????¦????????????Oracle WebLogic Server - JDBC??????(5)?????????????　???????????????????????????????????????????????????Java EE 5????????????????????Java EE??????????????????Eclipse?Oracle JDeveloper 11g?Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g????????????????·?????????????????????WebLogic Server?????????????????????????WebLogic Server??????????????????????Web?????????WAR?????EJB?????????JAR????????WAR?JAR????????EAR??????????????　?????????????????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　?????????????·??????·????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(????????)????????????????????????????????????　???????????? ??????????????????????????????????????　?????????????????????????????????????????????????????-????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????　???????WebLogic Server????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????WebLogic Server????????????????????????????????????????????·???????????????/????????????????????????????WebLogic Server????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????WebLogic Server?????????????????¦????????WebLogic Server???···????????????????????!

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• Proxy / Squid 2.7 / Debian Wheezy 6.7 / lots of TCP Timed-out

  - by Maroon Ibrahim

  i'm facing a lot of TCP timed-out on a busy cache server and here below my sysctl.conf configuration as well as an output of "netstat -st" Kernel 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.57-3 x86_64 GNU/Linux Any advice or help would be highly appreciated #################### Sysctl.conf cat /etc/sysctl.conf net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 1 fs.file-max = 65536 net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency = 1 net.core.wmem_max = 8388608 net.core.rmem_max = 8388608 net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65000 fs.aio-max-nr = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 10 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 60 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_intvl = 10 net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_probes = 3 kernel.threads-max = 131072 kernel.msgmax = 32768 kernel.msgmni = 64 kernel.msgmnb = 65536 kernel.shmmax = 68719476736 kernel.shmall = 4294967296 net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0 net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1 net.ipv4.ip_dynaddr = 1 vm.swappiness = 0 vm.drop_caches = 3 net.ipv4.tcp_moderate_rcvbuf = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_orphan_retries = 1 net.ipv4.conf.default.rp_filter = 0 net.ipv4.conf.default.accept_source_route = 0 net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 32768 net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 131072 net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 6085248 16227328 67108864 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 131072 33554432 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 174760 33554432 net.core.rmem_default = 33554432 net.core.rmem_max = 33554432 net.core.wmem_default = 33554432 net.core.wmem_max = 33554432 net.core.somaxconn = 10000 # ################ Netstat results /# netstat -st IcmpMsg: InType0: 2 InType3: 233754 InType8: 56251 InType11: 23192 OutType0: 56251 OutType3: 437 OutType8: 4 Tcp: 20680741 active connections openings 63642431 passive connection openings 1126690 failed connection attempts 2093143 connection resets received 13059 connections established 2649651696 segments received 2195445642 segments send out 183401499 segments retransmited 38299 bad segments received. 14648899 resets sent UdpLite: TcpExt: 507 SYN cookies sent 178 SYN cookies received 1376771 invalid SYN cookies received 1014577 resets received for embryonic SYN_RECV sockets 4530970 packets pruned from receive queue because of socket buffer overrun 7233 packets pruned from receive queue 688 packets dropped from out-of-order queue because of socket buffer overrun 12445 ICMP packets dropped because they were out-of-window 446 ICMP packets dropped because socket was locked 33812202 TCP sockets finished time wait in fast timer 622 TCP sockets finished time wait in slow timer 573656 packets rejects in established connections because of timestamp 133357718 delayed acks sent 23593 delayed acks further delayed because of locked socket Quick ack mode was activated 21288857 times 839 times the listen queue of a socket overflowed 839 SYNs to LISTEN sockets dropped 41 packets directly queued to recvmsg prequeue. 79166 bytes directly in process context from backlog 24 bytes directly received in process context from prequeue 2713742130 packet headers predicted 84 packets header predicted and directly queued to user 1925423249 acknowledgments not containing data payload received 877898013 predicted acknowledgments 16449673 times recovered from packet loss due to fast retransmit 17687820 times recovered from packet loss by selective acknowledgements 5047 bad SACK blocks received Detected reordering 11 times using FACK Detected reordering 1778091 times using SACK Detected reordering 97955 times using reno fast retransmit Detected reordering 280414 times using time stamp 839369 congestion windows fully recovered without slow start 4173098 congestion windows partially recovered using Hoe heuristic 305254 congestion windows recovered without slow start by DSACK 933682 congestion windows recovered without slow start after partial ack 77828 TCP data loss events TCPLostRetransmit: 5066 2618430 timeouts after reno fast retransmit 2927294 timeouts after SACK recovery 3059394 timeouts in loss state 75953830 fast retransmits 11929429 forward retransmits 51963833 retransmits in slow start 19418337 other TCP timeouts 2330398 classic Reno fast retransmits failed 2177787 SACK retransmits failed 742371590 packets collapsed in receive queue due to low socket buffer 13595689 DSACKs sent for old packets 50523 DSACKs sent for out of order packets 4658236 DSACKs received 175441 DSACKs for out of order packets received 880664 connections reset due to unexpected data 346356 connections reset due to early user close 2364841 connections aborted due to timeout TCPSACKDiscard: 1590 TCPDSACKIgnoredOld: 241849 TCPDSACKIgnoredNoUndo: 1636687 TCPSpuriousRTOs: 766073 TCPSackShifted: 74562088 TCPSackMerged: 169015212 TCPSackShiftFallback: 78391303 TCPBacklogDrop: 29 TCPReqQFullDoCookies: 507 TCPChallengeACK: 424921 TCPSYNChallenge: 170388 IpExt: InBcastPkts: 351510 InOctets: -609466797 OutOctets: -1057794685 InBcastOctets: 75631402 #

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• Microsoft signed driver appears as publisher not verfied

  - by Priyanka Gupta

  Task at hand: Microsoft sign drivers on Win 7. I microsoft signed my driver package 3 times every time thinking I might have missed a step or something. However, I cannot seem to get rid of the Windows Security error message "Windows can't verify the publisher of this driver software'. This is not the first time I have signed the driver packages. I was successfully able to sign other driver packages a few months ago. However, with this driver package I keep getting Windows security dialog box. Here's the procedure I follow - Create a new cat file using INF2CAT tool. Self sign the driver using a Versign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5.cer. Run the microsoft tests on DTM Servers and clients with the devices that use this driver. Create WLK submission package. Self sign the cab file. Submit the package for certification. The catalog file that comes back after successfully passing tests says Name of signer "Microsoft Windows Hardware Comptibility Publisher". When I check the validity of signature using SignTool, it says the signature is vaild. However, when I try to install the driver with new signed catalog file the windows complain. Any ideas? Edit 11/12/2012: Reply to Eugene's comment Thanks for the help, Eugene. Yes. I did sign two other driver packages before. One of them was modified version of WinUSB driver. I am using the same certificate I used when I signed those two driver packages a few months ago. It costs $250 per signing from Microsoft. I would think that Microsoft would complain about it during certification if the certificate is wrong. I use the following command to self sign the CAT file. I don't have to specify the ceritificate name as there's only one certificate in the directory - Signtool sign /v /a /n CompanyName /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timestamp.dll OurCatalogFile.cat Below is the result from running Verify command on the Microsoft signed OurCatalogFile.cat C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\x64signtool verify /v "C:\User s\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Verifying: C:\Users\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Hash of file (sha1): BDDF39B1DD95881B462164129758A7FFD54F47D9 Signing Certificate Chain: Issued to: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Issued by: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Expires: Sun May 09 18:28:13 2021 SHA1 hash: CDD4EEAE6000AC7F40C3802C171E30148030C072 Issued to: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility PCA Issued by: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Expires: Thu Jun 04 16:15:46 2020 SHA1 hash: 8D42419D8B21E5CF9C3204D0060B19312B96EB78 Issued to: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher Issued by: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility PCA Expires: Wed Sep 18 18:20:55 2013 SHA1 hash: D94345C032D23404231DD3902F22AB1C2100341E The signature is timestamped: Tue Nov 06 11:26:48 2012 Timestamp Verified by: Issued to: Microsoft Root Authority Issued by: Microsoft Root Authority Expires: Thu Dec 31 02:00:00 2020 SHA1 hash: A43489159A520F0D93D032CCAF37E7FE20A8B419 Issued to: Microsoft Timestamping PCA Issued by: Microsoft Root Authority Expires: Sun Sep 15 02:00:00 2019 SHA1 hash: 3EA99A60058275E0ED83B892A909449F8C33B245 Issued to: Microsoft Time-Stamp Service Issued by: Microsoft Timestamping PCA Expires: Tue Apr 09 16:53:56 2013 SHA1 hash: 1895C2C907E0D7E5C0292B92C6EA8D0E236F525E Successfully verified: C:\Users\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Number of files successfully Verified: 1 Number of warnings: 0 Number of errors: 0 Thank you!

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• Microsoft signed drivers appears as publisher not verfied

  - by Priyanka Gupta

  Task at hand: Microsoft sign drivers on Win 7. I microsoft signed my driver package 3 times every time thinking I might have missed a step or something. However, I cannot seem to get rid of the Windows Security error message "Windows can't verify the publisher of this driver software'. This is not the first time I have signed the driver packages. I was successfully able to sign other driver packages a few months ago. However, with this driver package I keep getting Windows security dialog box. Here's the procedure I follow - Create a new cat file using INF2CAT tool. Self sign the driver using a Versign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5.cer. Run the microsoft tests on DTM Servers and clients with the devices that use this driver. Create WLK submission package. Self sign the cab file. Submit the package for certification. The catalog file that comes back after successfully passing tests says Name of signer "Microsoft Windows Hardware Comptibility Publisher". When I check the validity of signature using SignTool, it says the signature is vaild. However, when I try to install the driver with new signed catalog file the windows complain. Any ideas? Edit 11/12/2012: Reply to Eugene's comment Thanks for the help, Eugene. Yes. I did sign two other driver packages before. One of them was modified version of WinUSB driver. I am using the same certificate I used when I signed those two driver packages a few months ago. It costs $250 per signing from Microsoft. I would think that Microsoft would complain about it during certification if the certificate is wrong. I use the following command to self sign the CAT file. I don't have to specify the ceritificate name as there's only one certificate in the directory - Signtool sign /v /a /n CompanyName /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timestamp.dll OurCatalogFile.cat Below is the result from running Verify command on the Microsoft signed OutCatalogFile.cat C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\x64signtool verify /v "C:\User s\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Verifying: C:\Users\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Hash of file (sha1): BDDF39B1DD95881B462164129758A7FFD54F47D9 Signing Certificate Chain: Issued to: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Issued by: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Expires: Sun May 09 18:28:13 2021 SHA1 hash: CDD4EEAE6000AC7F40C3802C171E30148030C072 Issued to: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility PCA Issued by: Microsoft Root Certificate Authority Expires: Thu Jun 04 16:15:46 2020 SHA1 hash: 8D42419D8B21E5CF9C3204D0060B19312B96EB78 Issued to: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publisher Issued by: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility PCA Expires: Wed Sep 18 18:20:55 2013 SHA1 hash: D94345C032D23404231DD3902F22AB1C2100341E The signature is timestamped: Tue Nov 06 11:26:48 2012 Timestamp Verified by: Issued to: Microsoft Root Authority Issued by: Microsoft Root Authority Expires: Thu Dec 31 02:00:00 2020 SHA1 hash: A43489159A520F0D93D032CCAF37E7FE20A8B419 Issued to: Microsoft Timestamping PCA Issued by: Microsoft Root Authority Expires: Sun Sep 15 02:00:00 2019 SHA1 hash: 3EA99A60058275E0ED83B892A909449F8C33B245 Issued to: Microsoft Time-Stamp Service Issued by: Microsoft Timestamping PCA Expires: Tue Apr 09 16:53:56 2013 SHA1 hash: 1895C2C907E0D7E5C0292B92C6EA8D0E236F525E Successfully verified: C:\Users\logotest\Documents\serialdriversigning\OurCatalogFile.cat" Number of files successfully Verified: 1 Number of warnings: 0 Number of errors: 0 Thank you!

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• ssh, "Last Login", `last` and OS X

  - by allentown

  I have hit the googles as much as I can on this, being specific to OS X, I am not finding an answer. Nothing is wrong, but curiosity levels are high. $ssh [email protected] Password: Last login: Wed Apr 7 21:28:03 2010 from my-laptop.local ^lonely tylenol^ Line 1 is my command line 2 is the shell asking for the password line 3 is where my question comes from line 4 comes out of /etc/motd I can find nothing in ~/ of an of the .bash* files that contains the string "Last Login", and would like to alter it. It performs some type of hostname lookup, which I can not determine. If I ssh to another host: $ssh [email protected] Last login: Wed Apr 7 21:14:51 2010 from 123-234-321-123-some.cal.isp.net.example hi there, you are on box 456 line 1 is my command line 2 is again, where my question comes from line 3 is from /etc/motd *The dash'd IP address is not reversed On this remote host, I have ~/.ssh and it's corresponding keys set up, so there was no password request Where is the "Last Login:" coming from, where does the date stamp come from, and most importantly, where does the hostname come from? While on [email protected] (box 456) $echo hostname remote.location.example456.com Or with dig, to make sure I have rDNS/PTR set up, for which I am not authoritative, but my ISP has correctly set... $dig -x 123.234.321.123 PTR remote.location.example456.com or $dig PTR 123.321.234.123.in-addr.arpa. +short remote.location.example456.com. my previous hostname used to be 123-234-321-123-some.cal.isp.net.example, which I set with hostname -s remote.location.example456.com, because it was obnoxious to see such a long name. That solves the value of $echo hostname which now returns remote.location.example456.com. Mac OS X, 10.6 is this case, does seem to honor: touch ~/.hushlogin If leave that file empty, I get nothing on the shell when I login. I want to know what controls the host resolution of the IP, and how it is all working. For example, running last reports a huge list of my logins, which have obtusely long hostnames, when they would be preferable to just be remote.location.example456.com. More confusing to me, reading the man page for wtmp and lastlog, it looks like lastlog is not used on OS X, /var/log/lastlog does not exist. Actually, none of these exist on 10.5 or 10.6: /var/run/utmp The utmp file. /var/log/wtmp The wtmp file. /var/log/lastlog The lastlog file. If I am to assume that the system is doing some kind of reverse lookup, I certainly do not know what it is, as it is not an accurate one.

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• Hosting the Razor Engine for Templating in Non-Web Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  Microsoft’s new Razor HTML Rendering Engine that is currently shipping with ASP.NET MVC previews can be used outside of ASP.NET. Razor is an alternative view engine that can be used instead of the ASP.NET Page engine that currently works with ASP.NET WebForms and MVC. It provides a simpler and more readable markup syntax and is much more light weight in terms of functionality than the full blown WebForms Page engine, focusing only on features that are more along the lines of a pure view engine (or classic ASP!) with focus on expression and code rendering rather than a complex control/object model. Like the Page engine though, the parser understands .NET code syntax which can be embedded into templates, and behind the scenes the engine compiles markup and script code into an executing piece of .NET code in an assembly. Although it ships as part of the ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix the Razor Engine itself is not directly dependent on ASP.NET or IIS or HTTP in any way. And although there are some markup and rendering features that are optimized for HTML based output generation, Razor is essentially a free standing template engine. And what’s really nice is that unlike the ASP.NET Runtime, Razor is fairly easy to host inside of your own non-Web applications to provide templating functionality. Templating in non-Web Applications? Yes please! So why might you host a template engine in your non-Web application? Template rendering is useful in many places and I have a number of applications that make heavy use of it. One of my applications – West Wind Html Help Builder - exclusively uses template based rendering to merge user supplied help text content into customizable and executable HTML markup templates that provide HTML output for CHM style HTML Help. This is an older product and it’s not actually using .NET at the moment – and this is one reason I’m looking at Razor for script hosting at the moment. For a few .NET applications though I’ve actually used the ASP.NET Runtime hosting to provide templating and mail merge style functionality and while that works reasonably well it’s a very heavy handed approach. It’s very resource intensive and has potential issues with versioning in various different versions of .NET. The generic implementation I created in the article above requires a lot of fix up to mimic an HTTP request in a non-HTTP environment and there are a lot of little things that have to happen to ensure that the ASP.NET runtime works properly most of it having nothing to do with the templating aspect but just satisfying ASP.NET’s requirements. The Razor Engine on the other hand is fairly light weight and completely decoupled from the ASP.NET runtime and the HTTP processing. Rather it’s a pure template engine whose sole purpose is to render text templates. Hosting this engine in your own applications can be accomplished with a reasonable amount of code (actually just a few lines with the tools I’m about to describe) and without having to fake HTTP requests. It’s also much lighter on resource usage and you can easily attach custom properties to your base template implementation to easily pass context from the parent application into templates all of which was rather complicated with ASP.NET runtime hosting. Installing the Razor Template Engine You can get Razor as part of the MVC 3 (RC and later) or Web Matrix. Both are available as downloadable components from the Web Platform Installer Version 3.0 (!important – V2 doesn’t show these components). If you already have that version of the WPI installed just fire it up. You can get the latest version of the Web Platform Installer from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx Once the platform Installer 3.0 is installed install either MVC 3 or ASP.NET Web Pages. Once installed you’ll find a System.Web.Razor assembly in C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Pages\v1.0\Assemblies\System.Web.Razor.dll which you can add as a reference to your project. Creating a Wrapper The basic Razor Hosting API is pretty simple and you can host Razor with a (large-ish) handful of lines of code. I’ll show the basics of it later in this article. However, if you want to customize the rendering and handle assembly and namespace includes for the markup as well as deal with text and file inputs as well as forcing Razor to run in a separate AppDomain so you can unload the code-generated assemblies and deal with assembly caching for re-used templates little more work is required to create something that is more easily reusable. For this reason I created a Razor Hosting wrapper project that combines a bunch of this functionality into an easy to use hosting class, a hosting factory that can load the engine in a separate AppDomain and a couple of hosting containers that provided folder based and string based caching for templates for an easily embeddable and reusable engine with easy to use syntax. If you just want the code and play with the samples and source go grab the latest code from the Subversion Repository at: http://www.west-wind.com:8080/svn/articles/trunk/RazorHosting/ or a snapshot from: http://www.west-wind.com/files/tools/RazorHosting.zip Getting Started Before I get into how hosting with Razor works, let’s take a look at how you can get up and running quickly with the wrapper classes provided. It only takes a few lines of code. The easiest way to use these Razor Hosting Wrappers is to use one of the two HostContainers provided. One is for hosting Razor scripts in a directory and rendering them as relative paths from these script files on disk. The other HostContainer serves razor scripts from string templates… Let’s start with a very simple template that displays some simple expressions, some code blocks and demonstrates rendering some data from contextual data that you pass to the template in the form of a ‘context’. Here’s a simple Razor template: @using System.Reflection Hello @Context.FirstName! Your entry was entered on: @Context.Entered @{ // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } AppDomain Id: @AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName Assembly: @Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName Code based output: @{ // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } Response.Write(output); } Pretty easy to see what’s going on here. The only unusual thing in this code is the Context object which is an arbitrary object I’m passing from the host to the template by way of the template base class. I’m also displaying the current AppDomain and the executing Assembly name so you can see how compiling and running a template actually loads up new assemblies. Also note that as part of my context I’m passing a reference to the current Windows Form down to the template and changing the title from within the script. It’s a silly example, but it demonstrates two-way communication between host and template and back which can be very powerful. The easiest way to quickly render this template is to use the RazorEngine<TTemplateBase> class. The generic parameter specifies a template base class type that is used by Razor internally to generate the class it generates from a template. The default implementation provided in my RazorHosting wrapper is RazorTemplateBase. Here’s a simple one that renders from a string and outputs a string: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; string output = engine.RenderTemplate(this.txtSource.Text new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; Simple enough. This code renders a template from a string input and returns a result back as a string. It  creates a custom context and passes that to the template which can then access the Context’s properties. Note that anything passed as ‘context’ must be serializable (or MarshalByRefObject) – otherwise you get an exception when passing the reference over AppDomain boundaries (discussed later). Passing a context is optional, but is a key feature in being able to share data between the host application and the template. Note that we use the Context object to access FirstName, Entered and even the host Windows Form object which is used in the template to change the Window caption from within the script! In the code above all the work happens in the RenderTemplate method which provide a variety of overloads to read and write to and from strings, files and TextReaders/Writers. Here’s another example that renders from a file input using a TextReader: using (reader = new StreamReader("templates\\simple.csHtml", true)) { result = host.RenderTemplate(reader, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, this.CustomContext); } RenderTemplate() is fairly high level and it handles loading of the runtime, compiling into an assembly and rendering of the template. If you want more control you can use the lower level methods to control each step of the way which is important for the HostContainers I’ll discuss later. Basically for those scenarios you want to separate out loading of the engine, compiling into an assembly and then rendering the template from the assembly. Why? So we can keep assemblies cached. In the code above a new assembly is created for each template rendered which is inefficient and uses up resources. Depending on the size of your templates and how often you fire them you can chew through memory very quickly. This slighter lower level approach is only a couple of extra steps: // we can pass any object as context - here create a custom context var context = new CustomContext() { WinForm = this, FirstName = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-10) }; var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); string assId = null; using (StringReader reader = new StringReader(this.txtSource.Text)) { assId = engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll" }, reader); } string output = engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(assId, context); if (output == null) this.txtResult.Text = "*** ERROR:\r\n" + engine.ErrorMessage; else this.txtResult.Text = output; The difference here is that you can capture the assembly – or rather an Id to it – and potentially hold on to it to render again later assuming the template hasn’t changed. The HostContainers take advantage of this feature to cache the assemblies based on certain criteria like a filename and file time step or a string hash that if not change indicate that an assembly can be reused. Note that ParseAndCompileTemplate returns an assembly Id rather than the assembly itself. This is done so that that the assembly always stays in the host’s AppDomain and is not passed across AppDomain boundaries which would cause load failures. We’ll talk more about this in a minute but for now just realize that assemblies references are stored in a list and are accessible by this ID to allow locating and re-executing of the assembly based on that id. Reuse of the assembly avoids recompilation overhead and creation of yet another assembly that loads into the current AppDomain. You can play around with several different versions of the above code in the main sample form:   Using Hosting Containers for more Control and Caching The above examples simply render templates into assemblies each and every time they are executed. While this works and is even reasonably fast, it’s not terribly efficient. If you render templates more than once it would be nice if you could cache the generated assemblies for example to avoid re-compiling and creating of a new assembly each time. Additionally it would be nice to load template assemblies into a separate AppDomain optionally to be able to be able to unload assembli es and also to protect your host application from scripting attacks with malicious template code. Hosting containers provide also provide a wrapper around the RazorEngine<T> instance, a factory (which allows creation in separate AppDomains) and an easy way to start and stop the container ‘runtime’. The Razor Hosting samples provide two hosting containers: RazorFolderHostContainer and StringHostContainer. The folder host provides a simple runtime environment for a folder structure similar in the way that the ASP.NET runtime handles a virtual directory as it’s ‘application' root. Templates are loaded from disk in relative paths and the resulting assemblies are cached unless the template on disk is changed. The string host also caches templates based on string hashes – if the same string is passed a second time a cached version of the assembly is used. Here’s how HostContainers work. I’ll use the FolderHostContainer because it’s likely the most common way you’d use templates – from disk based templates that can be easily edited and maintained on disk. The first step is to create an instance of it and keep it around somewhere (in the example it’s attached as a property to the Form): RazorFolderHostContainer Host = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); public RazorFolderHostForm() { InitializeComponent(); // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. Host.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates Host.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container Host.Start(); } Next anytime you want to render a template you can use simple code like this: private void RenderTemplate(string fileName) { // Pass the template path via the Context var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, Host.TemplatePath); if (!Host.RenderTemplate(relativePath, this.Context, Host.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + Host.ErrorMessage); return; } this.webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + Host.RenderingOutputFile); } You can also render the output to a string instead of to a file: string result = Host.RenderTemplateToString(relativePath,context); Finally if you want to release the engine and shut down the hosting AppDomain you can simply do: Host.Stop(); Stopping the AppDomain and restarting it (ie. calling Stop(); followed by Start()) is also a nice way to release all resources in the AppDomain. The FolderBased domain also supports partial Rendering based on root path based relative paths with the same caching characteristics as the main templates. From within a template you can call out to a partial like this: @RenderPartial(@"partials\PartialRendering.cshtml", Context) where partials\PartialRendering.cshtml is a relative to the template root folder. The folder host example lets you load up templates from disk and display the result in a Web Browser control which demonstrates using Razor HTML output from templates that contain HTML syntax which happens to me my target scenario for Html Help Builder.   The Razor Engine Wrapper Project The project I created to wrap Razor hosting has a fair bit of code and a number of classes associated with it. Most of the components are internally used and as you can see using the final RazorEngine<T> and HostContainer classes is pretty easy. The classes are extensible and I suspect developers will want to build more customized host containers for their applications. Host containers are the key to wrapping up all functionality – Engine, BaseTemplate, AppDomain Hosting, Caching etc in a logical piece that is ready to be plugged into an application. When looking at the code there are a couple of core features provided: Core Razor Engine Hosting This is the core Razor hosting which provides the basics of loading a template, compiling it into an assembly and executing it. This is fairly straightforward, but without a host container that can cache assemblies based on some criteria templates are recompiled and re-created each time which is inefficient (although pretty fast). The base engine wrapper implementation also supports hosting the Razor runtime in a separate AppDomain for security and the ability to unload it on demand. Host Containers The engine hosting itself doesn’t provide any sort of ‘runtime’ service like picking up files from disk, caching assemblies and so forth. So my implementation provides two HostContainers: RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer. The FolderHost works off a base directory and loads templates based on relative paths (sort of like the ASP.NET runtime does off a virtual). The HostContainers also deal with caching of template assemblies – for the folder host the file date is tracked and checked for updates and unless the template is changed a cached assembly is reused. The StringHostContainer similiarily checks string hashes to figure out whether a particular string template was previously compiled and executed. The HostContainers also act as a simple startup environment and a single reference to easily store and reuse in an application. TemplateBase Classes The template base classes are the base classes that from which the Razor engine generates .NET code. A template is parsed into a class with an Execute() method and the class is based on this template type you can specify. RazorEngine<TBaseTemplate> can receive this type and the HostContainers default to specific templates in their base implementations. Template classes are customizable to allow you to create templates that provide application specific features and interaction from the template to your host application. How does the RazorEngine wrapper work? You can browse the source code in the links above or in the repository or download the source, but I’ll highlight some key features here. Here’s part of the RazorEngine implementation that can be used to host the runtime and that demonstrates the key code required to host the Razor runtime. The RazorEngine class is implemented as a generic class to reflect the Template base class type: public class RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase The generic type is used to internally provide easier access to the template type and assignments on it as part of the template processing. The class also inherits MarshalByRefObject to allow execution over AppDomain boundaries – something that all the classes discussed here need to do since there is much interaction between the host and the template. The first two key methods deal with creating a template assembly: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost with various options applied. /// Applies basic namespace imports and the name of the class to generate /// </summary> /// <param name="generatedNamespace"></param> /// <param name="generatedClass"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected RazorTemplateEngine CreateHost(string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass) { Type baseClassType = typeof(TBaseTemplateType); RazorEngineHost host = new RazorEngineHost(new CSharpRazorCodeLanguage()); host.DefaultBaseClass = baseClassType.FullName; host.DefaultClassName = generatedClass; host.DefaultNamespace = generatedNamespace; host.NamespaceImports.Add("System"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Text"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Collections.Generic"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.Linq"); host.NamespaceImports.Add("System.IO"); return new RazorTemplateEngine(host); } /// <summary> /// Parses and compiles a markup template into an assembly and returns /// an assembly name. The name is an ID that can be passed to /// ExecuteTemplateByAssembly which picks up a cached instance of the /// loaded assembly. /// /// </summary> /// <param name="namespaceOfGeneratedClass">The namespace of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="generatedClassName">The name of the class to generate from the template</param> /// <param name="ReferencedAssemblies">Any referenced assemblies by dll name only. Assemblies must be in execution path of host or in GAC.</param> /// <param name="templateSourceReader">Textreader that loads the template</param> /// <remarks> /// The actual assembly isn't returned here to allow for cross-AppDomain /// operation. If the assembly was returned it would fail for cross-AppDomain /// calls. /// </remarks> /// <returns>An assembly Id. The Assembly is cached in memory and can be used with RenderFromAssembly.</returns> public string ParseAndCompileTemplate( string namespaceOfGeneratedClass, string generatedClassName, string[] ReferencedAssemblies, TextReader templateSourceReader) { RazorTemplateEngine engine = CreateHost(namespaceOfGeneratedClass, generatedClassName); // Generate the template class as CodeDom GeneratorResults razorResults = engine.GenerateCode(templateSourceReader); // Create code from the codeDom and compile CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider(); CodeGeneratorOptions options = new CodeGeneratorOptions(); // Capture Code Generated as a string for error info // and debugging LastGeneratedCode = null; using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { codeProvider.GenerateCodeFromCompileUnit(razorResults.GeneratedCode, writer, options); LastGeneratedCode = writer.ToString(); } CompilerParameters compilerParameters = new CompilerParameters(ReferencedAssemblies); // Standard Assembly References compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Core.dll"); compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("Microsoft.CSharp.dll"); // dynamic support! // Also add the current assembly so RazorTemplateBase is available compilerParameters.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase.Substring(8)); compilerParameters.GenerateInMemory = Configuration.CompileToMemory; if (!Configuration.CompileToMemory) compilerParameters.OutputAssembly = Path.Combine(Configuration.TempAssemblyPath, "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n") + ".dll"); CompilerResults compilerResults = codeProvider.CompileAssemblyFromDom(compilerParameters, razorResults.GeneratedCode); if (compilerResults.Errors.Count > 0) { var compileErrors = new StringBuilder(); foreach (System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerError compileError in compilerResults.Errors) compileErrors.Append(String.Format(Resources.LineX0TColX1TErrorX2RN, compileError.Line, compileError.Column, compileError.ErrorText)); this.SetError(compileErrors.ToString() + "\r\n" + LastGeneratedCode); return null; } AssemblyCache.Add(compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName, compilerResults.CompiledAssembly); return compilerResults.CompiledAssembly.FullName; } Think of the internal CreateHost() method as setting up the assembly generated from each template. Each template compiles into a separate assembly. It sets up namespaces, and assembly references, the base class used and the name and namespace for the generated class. ParseAndCompileTemplate() then calls the CreateHost() method to receive the template engine generator which effectively generates a CodeDom from the template – the template is turned into .NET code. The code generated from our earlier example looks something like this: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated by a tool. // Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1 // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace RazorTest { using System; using System.Text; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.IO; using System.Reflection; public class RazorTemplate : RazorHosting.RazorTemplateBase { #line hidden public RazorTemplate() { } public override void Execute() { WriteLiteral("Hello "); Write(Context.FirstName); WriteLiteral("! Your entry was entered on: "); Write(Context.Entered); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\n"); // Code block: Update the host Windows Form passed in through the context Context.WinForm.Text = "Hello World from Razor at " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); WriteLiteral("\r\nAppDomain Id:\r\n "); Write(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.FriendlyName); WriteLiteral("\r\n \r\nAssembly:\r\n "); Write(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().FullName); WriteLiteral("\r\n\r\nCode based output: \r\n"); // Write output with Response object from code string output = string.Empty; for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) { output += i.ToString() + " "; } } } } Basically the template’s body is turned into code in an Execute method that is called. Internally the template’s Write method is fired to actually generate the output. Note that the class inherits from RazorTemplateBase which is the generic parameter I used to specify the base class when creating an instance in my RazorEngine host: var engine = new RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase>(); This template class must be provided and it must implement an Execute() and Write() method. Beyond that you can create any class you chose and attach your own properties. My RazorTemplateBase class implementation is very simple: public class RazorTemplateBase : MarshalByRefObject, IDisposable { /// <summary> /// You can pass in a generic context object /// to use in your template code /// </summary> public dynamic Context { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Class that generates output. Currently ultra simple /// with only Response.Write() implementation. /// </summary> public RazorResponse Response { get; set; } public object HostContainer {get; set; } public object Engine { get; set; } public RazorTemplateBase() { Response = new RazorResponse(); } public virtual void Write(object value) { Response.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLiteral(object value) { Response.Write(value); } /// <summary> /// Razor Parser implements this method /// </summary> public virtual void Execute() {} public virtual void Dispose() { if (Response != null) { Response.Dispose(); Response = null; } } } Razor fills in the Execute method when it generates its subclass and uses the Write() method to output content. As you can see I use a RazorResponse() class here to generate output. This isn’t necessary really, as you could use a StringBuilder or StringWriter() directly, but I prefer using Response object so I can extend the Response behavior as needed. The RazorResponse class is also very simple and merely acts as a wrapper around a TextWriter: public class RazorResponse : IDisposable { /// <summary> /// Internal text writer - default to StringWriter() /// </summary> public TextWriter Writer = new StringWriter(); public virtual void Write(object value) { Writer.Write(value); } public virtual void WriteLine(object value) { Write(value); Write("\r\n"); } public virtual void WriteFormat(string format, params object[] args) { Write(string.Format(format, args)); } public override string ToString() { return Writer.ToString(); } public virtual void Dispose() { Writer.Close(); } public virtual void SetTextWriter(TextWriter writer) { // Close original writer if (Writer != null) Writer.Close(); Writer = writer; } } The Rendering Methods of RazorEngine At this point I’ve talked about the assembly generation logic and the template implementation itself. What’s left is that once you’ve generated the assembly is to execute it. The code to do this is handled in the various RenderXXX methods of the RazorEngine class. Let’s look at the lowest level one of these which is RenderTemplateFromAssembly() and a couple of internal support methods that handle instantiating and invoking of the generated template method: public string RenderTemplateFromAssembly( string assemblyId, string generatedNamespace, string generatedClass, object context, TextWriter outputWriter) { this.SetError(); Assembly generatedAssembly = AssemblyCache[assemblyId]; if (generatedAssembly == null) { this.SetError(Resources.PreviouslyCompiledAssemblyNotFound); return null; } string className = generatedNamespace + "." + generatedClass; Type type; try { type = generatedAssembly.GetType(className); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.UnableToCreateType + className + ": " + ex.Message); return null; } // Start with empty non-error response (if we use a writer) string result = string.Empty; using(TBaseTemplateType instance = InstantiateTemplateClass(type)) { if (instance == null) return null; if (outputWriter != null) instance.Response.SetTextWriter(outputWriter); if (!InvokeTemplateInstance(instance, context)) return null; // Capture string output if implemented and return // otherwise null is returned if (outputWriter == null) result = instance.Response.ToString(); } return result; } protected virtual TBaseTemplateType InstantiateTemplateClass(Type type) { TBaseTemplateType instance = Activator.CreateInstance(type) as TBaseTemplateType; if (instance == null) { SetError(Resources.CouldnTActivateTypeInstance + type.FullName); return null; } instance.Engine = this; // If a HostContainer was set pass that to the template too instance.HostContainer = this.HostContainer; return instance; } /// <summary> /// Internally executes an instance of the template, /// captures errors on execution and returns true or false /// </summary> /// <param name="instance">An instance of the generated template</param> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage for errors</returns> protected virtual bool InvokeTemplateInstance(TBaseTemplateType instance, object context) { try { instance.Context = context; instance.Execute(); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateExecutionError + ex.Message); return false; } finally { // Must make sure Response is closed instance.Response.Dispose(); } return true; } The RenderTemplateFromAssembly method basically requires the namespace and class to instantate and creates an instance of the class using InstantiateTemplateClass(). It then invokes the method with InvokeTemplateInstance(). These two methods are broken out because they are re-used by various other rendering methods and also to allow subclassing and providing additional configuration tasks to set properties and pass values to templates at execution time. In the default mode instantiation sets the Engine and HostContainer (discussed later) so the template can call back into the template engine, and the context is set when the template method is invoked. The various RenderXXX methods use similar code although they create the assemblies first. If you’re after potentially cashing assemblies the method is the one to call and that’s exactly what the two HostContainer classes do. More on that in a minute, but before we get into HostContainers let’s talk about AppDomain hosting and the like. Running Templates in their own AppDomain With the RazorEngine class above, when a template is parsed into an assembly and executed the assembly is created (in memory or on disk – you can configure that) and cached in the current AppDomain. In .NET once an assembly has been loaded it can never be unloaded so if you’re loading lots of templates and at some time you want to release them there’s no way to do so. If however you load the assemblies in a separate AppDomain that new AppDomain can be unloaded and the assemblies loaded in it with it. In order to host the templates in a separate AppDomain the easiest thing to do is to run the entire RazorEngine in a separate AppDomain. Then all interaction occurs in the other AppDomain and no further changes have to be made. To facilitate this there is a RazorEngineFactory which has methods that can instantiate the RazorHost in a separate AppDomain as well as in the local AppDomain. The host creates the remote instance and then hangs on to it to keep it alive as well as providing methods to shut down the AppDomain and reload the engine. Sounds complicated but cross-AppDomain invocation is actually fairly easy to implement. Here’s some of the relevant code from the RazorEngineFactory class. Like the RazorEngine this class is generic and requires a template base type in the generic class name: public class RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase Here are the key methods of interest: /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of the RazorHost in a new AppDomain. This /// version creates a static singleton that that is cached and you /// can call UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current == null) Current = new RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>(); return Current.GetRazorHostInAppDomain(); } public static void UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain() { if (Current != null) Current.UnloadHost(); Current = null; } /// <summary> /// Instance method that creates a RazorHost in a new AppDomain. /// This method requires that you keep the Factory around in /// order to keep the AppDomain alive and be able to unload it. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> GetRazorHostInAppDomain() { LocalAppDomain = CreateAppDomain(null); if (LocalAppDomain == null) return null; /// Create the instance inside of the new AppDomain /// Note: remote domain uses local EXE's AppBasePath!!! RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> host = null; try { Assembly ass = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); string AssemblyPath = ass.Location; host = (RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>) LocalAppDomain.CreateInstanceFrom(AssemblyPath, typeof(RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType>).FullName).Unwrap(); } catch (Exception ex) { ErrorMessage = ex.Message; return null; } return host; } /// <summary> /// Internally creates a new AppDomain in which Razor templates can /// be run. /// </summary> /// <param name="appDomainName"></param> /// <returns></returns> private AppDomain CreateAppDomain(string appDomainName) { if (appDomainName == null) appDomainName = "RazorHost_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n"); AppDomainSetup setup = new AppDomainSetup(); // *** Point at current directory setup.ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; AppDomain localDomain = AppDomain.CreateDomain(appDomainName, null, setup); return localDomain; } /// <summary> /// Allow unloading of the created AppDomain to release resources /// All internal resources in the AppDomain are released including /// in memory compiled Razor assemblies. /// </summary> public void UnloadHost() { if (this.LocalAppDomain != null) { AppDomain.Unload(this.LocalAppDomain); this.LocalAppDomain = null; } } The static CreateRazorHostInAppDomain() is the key method that startup code usually calls. It uses a Current singleton instance to an instance of itself that is created cross AppDomain and is kept alive because it’s static. GetRazorHostInAppDomain actually creates a cross-AppDomain instance which first creates a new AppDomain and then loads the RazorEngine into it. The remote Proxy instance is returned as a result to the method and can be used the same as a local instance. The code to run with a remote AppDomain is simple: private RazorEngine<RazorTemplateBase> CreateHost() { if (this.Host != null) return this.Host; // Use Static Methods - no error message if host doesn't load this.Host = RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); if (this.Host == null) { MessageBox.Show("Unable to load Razor Template Host", "Razor Hosting", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); } return this.Host; } This code relies on a local reference of the Host which is kept around for the duration of the app (in this case a form reference). To use this you’d simply do: this.Host = CreateHost(); if (host == null) return; string result = host.RenderTemplate( this.txtSource.Text, new string[] { "System.Windows.Forms.dll", "Westwind.Utilities.dll" }, this.CustomContext); if (result == null) { MessageBox.Show(host.ErrorMessage, "Template Execution Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation); return; } this.txtResult.Text = result; Now all templates run in a remote AppDomain and can be unloaded with simple code like this: RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Host = null; One Step further – Providing a caching ‘Runtime’ Once we can load templates in a remote AppDomain we can add some additional functionality like assembly caching based on application specific features. One of my typical scenarios is to render templates out of a scripts folder. So all templates live in a folder and they change infrequently. So a Folder based host that can compile these templates once and then only recompile them if something changes would be ideal. Enter host containers which are basically wrappers around the RazorEngine<t> and RazorEngineFactory<t>. They provide additional logic for things like file caching based on changes on disk or string hashes for string based template inputs. The folder host also provides for partial rendering logic through a custom template base implementation. There’s a base implementation in RazorBaseHostContainer, which provides the basics for hosting a RazorEngine, which includes the ability to start and stop the engine, cache assemblies and add references: public abstract class RazorBaseHostContainer<TBaseTemplateType> : MarshalByRefObject where TBaseTemplateType : RazorTemplateBase, new() { public RazorBaseHostContainer() { UseAppDomain = true; GeneratedNamespace = "__RazorHost"; } /// <summary> /// Determines whether the Container hosts Razor /// in a separate AppDomain. Seperate AppDomain /// hosting allows unloading and releasing of /// resources. /// </summary> public bool UseAppDomain { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Base folder location where the AppDomain /// is hosted. By default uses the same folder /// as the host application. /// /// Determines where binary dependencies are /// found for assembly references. /// </summary> public string BaseBinaryFolder { get; set; } /// <summary> /// List of referenced assemblies as string values. /// Must be in GAC or in the current folder of the host app/ /// base BinaryFolder /// </summary> public List<string> ReferencedAssemblies = new List<string>(); /// <summary> /// Name of the generated namespace for template classes /// </summary> public string GeneratedNamespace {get; set; } /// <summary> /// Any error messages /// </summary> public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host. Required to keep the /// reference to the host alive for multiple uses. /// </summary> public RazorEngine<TBaseTemplateType> Engine; /// <summary> /// Cached instance of the Host Factory - so we can unload /// the host and its associated AppDomain. /// </summary> protected RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType> EngineFactory; /// <summary> /// Keep track of each compiled assembly /// and when it was compiled. /// /// Use a hash of the string to identify string /// changes. /// </summary> protected Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem> LoadedAssemblies = new Dictionary<int, CompiledAssemblyItem>(); /// <summary> /// Call to start the Host running. Follow by a calls to RenderTemplate to /// render individual templates. Call Stop when done. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false - check ErrorMessage on false </returns> public virtual bool Start() { if (Engine == null) { if (UseAppDomain) Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHostInAppDomain(); else Engine = RazorEngineFactory<TBaseTemplateType>.CreateRazorHost(); Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = true; Engine.HostContainer = this; if (Engine == null) { this.ErrorMessage = EngineFactory.ErrorMessage; return false; } } return true; } /// <summary> /// Stops the Host and releases the host AppDomain and cached /// assemblies. /// </summary> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool Stop() { this.LoadedAssemblies.Clear(); RazorEngineFactory<RazorTemplateBase>.UnloadRazorHostInAppDomain(); this.Engine = null; return true; } … } This base class provides most of the mechanics to host the runtime, but no application specific implementation for rendering. There are rendering functions but they just call the engine directly and provide no caching – there’s no context to decide how to cache and reuse templates. The key methods are Start and Stop and their main purpose is to start a new AppDomain (optionally) and shut it down when requested. The RazorFolderHostContainer – Folder Based Runtime Hosting Let’s look at the more application specific RazorFolderHostContainer implementation which is defined like this: public class RazorFolderHostContainer : RazorBaseHostContainer<RazorTemplateFolderHost> Note that a customized RazorTemplateFolderHost class template is used for this implementation that supports partial rendering in form of a RenderPartial() method that’s available to templates. The folder host’s features are: Render templates based on a Template Base Path (a ‘virtual’ if you will) Cache compiled assemblies based on the relative path and file time stamp File changes on templates cause templates to be recompiled into new assemblies Support for partial rendering using base folder relative pathing As shown in the startup examples earlier host containers require some startup code with a HostContainer tied to a persistent property (like a Form property): // The base path for templates - templates are rendered with relative paths // based on this path. HostContainer.TemplatePath = Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, TemplateBaseFolder); // Default output rendering disk location HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile = Path.Combine(HostContainer.TemplatePath, "__Preview.htm"); // Add any assemblies you want reference in your templates HostContainer.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Windows.Forms.dll"); // Start up the host container HostContainer.Start(); Once that’s done, you can render templates with the host container: // Pass the template path for full filename seleted with OpenFile Dialog // relativepath is: subdir\file.cshtml or file.cshtml or ..\file.cshtml var relativePath = Utilities.GetRelativePath(fileName, HostContainer.TemplatePath); if (!HostContainer.RenderTemplate(relativePath, Context, HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile)) { MessageBox.Show("Error: " + HostContainer.ErrorMessage); return; } webBrowser1.Navigate("file://" + HostContainer.RenderingOutputFile); The most critical task of the RazorFolderHostContainer implementation is to retrieve a template from disk, compile and cache it and then deal with deciding whether subsequent requests need to re-compile the template or simply use a cached version. Internally the GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache() handles this task: /// <summary> /// Internally checks if a cached assembly exists and if it does uses it /// else creates and compiles one. Returns an assembly Id to be /// used with the LoadedAssembly list. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> protected virtual CompiledAssemblyItem GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(string relativePath) { string fileName = Path.Combine(TemplatePath, relativePath).ToLower(); int fileNameHash = fileName.GetHashCode(); if (!File.Exists(fileName)) { this.SetError(Resources.TemplateFileDoesnTExist + fileName); return null; } CompiledAssemblyItem item = null; this.LoadedAssemblies.TryGetValue(fileNameHash, out item); string assemblyId = null; // Check for cached instance if (item != null) { var fileTime = File.GetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName); if (fileTime <= item.CompileTimeUtc) assemblyId = item.AssemblyId; } else item = new CompiledAssemblyItem(); // No cached instance - create assembly and cache if (assemblyId == null) { string safeClassName = GetSafeClassName(fileName); StreamReader reader = null; try { reader = new StreamReader(fileName, true); } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(Resources.ErrorReadingTemplateFile + fileName); return null; } assemblyId = Engine.ParseAndCompileTemplate(this.ReferencedAssemblies.ToArray(), reader); // need to ensure reader is closed if (reader != null) reader.Close(); if (assemblyId == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } item.AssemblyId = assemblyId; item.CompileTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow; item.FileName = fileName; item.SafeClassName = safeClassName; this.LoadedAssemblies[fileNameHash] = item; } return item; } This code uses a LoadedAssembly dictionary which is comprised of a structure that holds a reference to a compiled assembly, a full filename and file timestamp and an assembly id. LoadedAssemblies (defined on the base class shown earlier) is essentially a cache for compiled assemblies and they are identified by a hash id. In the case of files the hash is a GetHashCode() from the full filename of the template. The template is checked for in the cache and if not found the file stamp is checked. If that’s newer than the cache’s compilation date the template is recompiled otherwise the version in the cache is used. All the core work defers to a RazorEngine<T> instance to ParseAndCompileTemplate(). The three rendering specific methods then are rather simple implementations with just a few lines of code dealing with parameter and return value parsing: /// <summary> /// Renders a template to a TextWriter. Useful to write output into a stream or /// the Response object. Used for partial rendering. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path to the file in the folder structure</param> /// <param name="context">Optional context object or null</param> /// <param name="writer">The textwriter to write output into</param> /// <returns></returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, TextWriter writer) { // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; CompiledAssemblyItem item = GetAssemblyFromFileAndCache(relativePath); if (item == null) { writer.Close(); return false; } try { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error string result = Engine.RenderTemplateFromAssembly(item.AssemblyId, context, writer); if (result == null) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return false; } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } finally { writer.Close(); } return true; } /// <summary> /// Render a template from a source file on disk to a specified outputfile. /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath">Relative path off the template root folder. Format: path/filename.cshtml</param> /// <param name="context">Any object that will be available in the template as a dynamic of this.Context</param> /// <param name="outputFile">Optional - output file where output is written to. If not specified the /// RenderingOutputFile property is used instead /// </param> /// <returns>true if rendering succeeds, false on failure - check ErrorMessage</returns> public bool RenderTemplate(string relativePath, object context, string outputFile) { if (outputFile == null) outputFile = RenderingOutputFile; try { using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(outputFile, false, Engine.Configuration.OutputEncoding, Engine.Configuration.StreamBufferSize)) { return RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return false; } return true; } /// <summary> /// Renders a template to string. Useful for RenderTemplate /// </summary> /// <param name="relativePath"></param> /// <param name="context"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string RenderTemplateToString(string relativePath, object context) { string result = string.Empty; try { using (StringWriter writer = new StringWriter()) { // String result will be empty as output will be rendered into the // Response object's stream output. However a null result denotes // an error if (!RenderTemplate(relativePath, context, writer)) { this.SetError(Engine.ErrorMessage); return null; } result = writer.ToString(); } } catch (Exception ex) { this.SetError(ex.Message); return null; } return result; } The idea is that you can create custom host container implementations that do exactly what you want fairly easily. Take a look at both the RazorFolderHostContainer and RazorStringHostContainer classes for the basic concepts you can use to create custom implementations. Notice also that you can set the engine’s PerRequestConfigurationData() from the host container: // Set configuration data that is to be passed to the template (any object) Engine.TemplatePerRequestConfigurationData = new RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration() { TemplatePath = Path.Combine(this.TemplatePath, relativePath), TemplateRelativePath = relativePath, }; which when set to a non-null value is passed to the Template’s InitializeTemplate() method. This method receives an object parameter which you can cast as needed: public override void InitializeTemplate(object configurationData) { // Pick up configuration data and stuff into Request object RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration config = configurationData as RazorFolderHostTemplateConfiguration; this.Request.TemplatePath = config.TemplatePath; this.Request.TemplateRelativePath = config.TemplateRelativePath; } With this data you can then configure any custom properties or objects on your main template class. It’s an easy way to pass data from the HostContainer all the way down into the template. The type you use is of type object so you have to cast it yourself, and it must be serializable since it will likely run in a separate AppDomain. This might seem like an ugly way to pass data around – normally I’d use an event delegate to call back from the engine to the host, but since this is running over AppDomain boundaries events get really tricky and passing a template instance back up into the host over AppDomain boundaries doesn’t work due to serialization issues. So it’s easier to pass the data from the host down into the template using this rather clumsy approach of set and forward. It’s ugly, but it’s something that can be hidden in the host container implementation as I’ve done here. It’s also not something you have to do in every implementation so this is kind of an edge case, but I know I’ll need to pass a bunch of data in some of my applications and this will be the easiest way to do so. Summing Up Hosting the Razor runtime is something I got jazzed up about quite a bit because I have an immediate need for this type of templating/merging/scripting capability in an application I’m working on. I’ve also been using templating in many apps and it’s always been a pain to deal with. The Razor engine makes this whole experience a lot cleaner and more light weight and with these wrappers I can now plug .NET based templating into my code literally with a few lines of code. That’s something to cheer about… I hope some of you will find this useful as well… Resources The examples and code require that you download the Razor runtimes. Projects are for Visual Studio 2010 running on .NET 4.0 Platform Installer 3.0 (install WebMatrix or MVC 3 for Razor Runtimes) Latest Code in Subversion Repository Download Snapshot of the Code Documentation (CHM Help File) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  .NET  

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• Server compromised. Bounce message contains many email addresses message was not sent to

  - by Tim Duncklee

  This is not a dupe. Please read and understand the issue before marking this as a duplicate question that has been answered already. Several customers are reporting bounce messages like the one below. At first I thought their computers had a virus but then I received one that was server generated so the problem is with the server. I've inspected the logs and these email addresses do not appear in the logs. The only thing I see that I do not remember seeing in the past are entries like this: Apr 30 13:34:49 psa86 qmail-queue-handlers[20994]: hook_dir = '/var/qmail//handlers/before-queue' Apr 30 13:34:49 psa86 qmail-queue-handlers[20994]: recipient[3] = '[email protected]' Apr 30 13:34:49 psa86 qmail-queue-handlers[20994]: handlers dir = '/var/qmail//handlers/before-queue/recipient/[email protected]' I've searched here and the web and maybe I'm just not entering the right search terms but I find nothing on this issue. Does anyone know how a hacker would attach additional email addresses to a message at the server and have them not appear in the logs? CentOS release 5.4, Plesk 8.6, QMail 1.03 Hi. This is the qmail-send program at psa.aaaaaa.com. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out. <[email protected]>: 82.201.133.227 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 #5.1.0 Address rejected. Giving up on 82.201.133.227. <[email protected]>: 64.18.7.10 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 No such user - psmtp Giving up on 64.18.7.10. <[email protected]>: 173.194.68.27 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try 550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or 550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at 550 5.1.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6596 w8si1903qag.18 - gsmtp Giving up on 173.194.68.27. <[email protected]>: 207.115.36.23 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.36.23. <[email protected]>: 207.115.37.22 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.37.22. <[email protected]>: 207.115.37.20 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.37.20. <[email protected]>: 207.115.37.23 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.37.23. <[email protected]>: 207.115.36.22 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.36.22. <[email protected]>: 74.205.16.140 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts; no valid cert for gatewaying (#5.7.1) Giving up on 74.205.16.140. <[email protected]>: 207.115.36.20 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.36.20. <[email protected]>: 207.115.37.21 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.2.1 <[email protected]>... Addressee unknown, relay=[174.142.62.210] Giving up on 207.115.37.21. <[email protected]>: 192.169.41.23 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 554 qq Sorry, no valid recipients (#5.1.3) --- Below this line is a copy of the message. Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: (qmail 15962 invoked from network); 1 May 2013 06:49:34 -0400 Received: from exprod6mo107.postini.com (64.18.1.18) by psa.aaaaaa.com with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted) SMTP; 1 May 2013 06:49:34 -0400 Received: from aaaaaa.com (exprod6lut001.postini.com [64.18.1.199]) by exprod6mo107.postini.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 47F80B8CA4 for <[email protected]>; Wed, 1 May 2013 03:49:33 -0700 (PDT) From: "Support" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Detected Potential Junk Mail Date: Wed, 1 May 2013 03:49:33 -0700 Dear [email protected], junk mail protection service has detected suspicious email message(s) since your last visit and directed them to your Message Center. You can inspect your suspicious email at: ... UPDATE: After not seeing this problem for a while, I personally sent a message and immediately got a bounce with several bad addresses that I know I did not send to. These are addresses that are not on my system or on the server. This problem happens with both Mac and Windows clients and with messages generated from Postini and sent to users on my system. This is NOT backscatter. If it was backscatter it would not have the contents of my message in it. UPDATE #2 Here is another bounce. This one was sent by me and the bounce came back immediately. Hi. This is the qmail-send program at psa.aaaaaa.com. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out. <[email protected]>: 71.74.56.227 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.1.1 <[email protected]>... User unknown Giving up on 71.74.56.227. <[email protected]>: Connected to 208.34.236.3 but sender was rejected. Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 This system is configured to reject mail from 174.142.62.210 [174.142.62.210] (Host blacklisted - Found on Realtime Black List server 'bl.mailspike.net') <[email protected]>: 66.96.80.22 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 552 sorry, mailbox [email protected] is over quota temporarily (#5.1.1) <[email protected]>: 83.145.109.52 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.1.1 <[email protected]>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual mailbox table Giving up on 83.145.109.52. <[email protected]>: 69.49.101.234 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 <[email protected]>... H:M12 [174.142.62.210] Connection refused due to abuse. Please see http://mailspike.org/anubis/lookup.html or contact your E-mail provider. Giving up on 69.49.101.234. <[email protected]>: 212.55.154.36 does not like recipient. Remote host said: 550-The account has been suspended for inactivity 550 A conta do destinatario encontra-se suspensa por inactividade (#5.2.1) Giving up on 212.55.154.36. <[email protected]>: 199.168.90.102 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 552 Transaction [email protected] failed, remote said "550 No such user" (#5.1.1) <[email protected]>: 98.136.217.192 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd Sorry your message to [email protected] cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued [#102]. - mta1210.sbc.mail.gq1.yahoo.com --- Below this line is a copy of the message. Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: (qmail 2618 invoked from network); 2 Jun 2013 22:32:51 -0400 Received: from 75-138-254-239.dhcp.jcsn.tn.charter.com (HELO ?192.168.0.66?) (75.138.254.239) by psa.aaaaaa.com with SMTP; 2 Jun 2013 22:32:48 -0400 User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/12.34.0.120813 Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2013 21:32:39 -0500 Subject: Refinance From: Tim Duncklee <[email protected]> To: Scott jones <[email protected]> Message-ID: <CDD16A79.67344%[email protected]> Thread-Topic: Reference Thread-Index: Ac5gAp2QmTs+LRv0SEOy7AJTX2DWzQ== Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary="B_3453053568_12034440" > This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --B_3453053568_12034440 Content-type: multipart/related; boundary="B_3453053568_11982218" --B_3453053568_11982218 Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="B_3453053568_12000660" --B_3453053568_12000660 Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Scott, ... email body here ... Here are the relevant log entries: Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue[2616]: mail: all addreses are uncheckable - need to skip scanning (by deny mode) Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue[2616]: scan: the message(drweb.tmp.i2SY0n) sent by [email protected] to [email protected] should be passed without checks, because contains uncheckable addresses Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: Handlers Filter before-queue for qmail started ... Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: hook_dir = '/var/qmail//handlers/before-queue' Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: recipient[3] = '[email protected]' Jun 2 22:32:50 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: handlers dir = '/var/qmail//handlers/before-queue/recipient/[email protected]' Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.060211 starting delivery 57: msg 1540285 to remote [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.060402 status: local 0/10 remote 1/20 Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.060556 new msg 4915232 Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.060671 info msg 4915232: bytes 687899 from <[email protected]> qp 2618 uid 2020 Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2619]: Handlers Filter before-remote for qmail started ... Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-queue-handlers[2617]: starter: submitter[2618] exited normally Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2619]: from= Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2619]: [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.078732 starting delivery 58: msg 4915232 to remote [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail: 1370226771.078825 status: local 0/10 remote 2/20 Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2621]: Handlers Filter before-remote for qmail started ... Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2621]: [email protected] Jun 2 22:32:51 psa qmail-remote-handlers[2621]: [email protected]

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