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  • Inexpensive (used) hardware for Xen virtualization test?

    - by Jason Antman
    Virtualization is one of the areas where I could really use some experience. I also run quite a few services (web, mail, dns, etc.) out of my home. Since most of my hardware is getting a bit old (I'm running on stuff that was surplused years ago...) I decided that it's about time I start renewing some things, and also play around with virtualization a bit more. My plan is to setup a SAN box (simple iSCSI target, relatively inexpensive gigE switch), get a pair (for starters) of new servers, and start building some new stuff with Xen, specifically planning on playing with live migration and full virtualization. Does anyone have recommendations for used, older "servers" (really anything in a rack-mount form factor, I'm not too worried about things like iLO/iLOM for the test nodes) that support VT-x/AMD-V? I'm biased to HP, but it looks like they didn't make Proliants with VT-x/Vanderpool processors until G6 (for the DL360) or so, which is way out of my price range. I'm looking in the sub-$300 range (or less, if possible), used, probably Ebay. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. Edit:And, to catch this before the comments start coming - these are personal systems. I have first-generation Proliants still in use (I got them as corporate surplus in 05, they've been running since then, and probably were running since 01 or 02 prior to being sold). I don't need anything shiny and new - I've got a bunch of old boxes, at least one complete replacement for every model in use, and that's fine for me (and easy on the wallet).

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  • Debugging methods for Windows XP hangups

    - by Cooper
    I experience occasional 'freezes' on my desktop machine (Windows XP SP3). I've tried the normal debugging methods I know (watching Process Explorer, running ProcMon (hard to get a good trace because the hangups are so intermittent). Are there any additional system debugging methods that might be useful in discovering what would cause these hang ups? While this question is more about debugging methods than the actual issue itself (which is probably more of a superuser question), the symptoms of the hangup are: All windows become non-responding. Can be brought the foreground, but do not repaint. Taskbar/explorer windows are non-responsive Ctrl+Alt+Del, Ctrl+Shift+Esc, Win+L, do not do anything (though the actions are queued up, and when the system unhangs, they are performed) Oddly enough, usually I can still scroll through the current page I have open in Google Chrome, but I cannot change tabs. Hangup can happen when I have tons of apps open, but also when I only have Outlook, Chrome, and MS Communicator (plus all the corporate spyware). Usually the hang lasts between 30sec and 3 minutes or so. After which I can continue working as usual.

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  • What is wrong with my home network? (Routing and connection issues)

    - by David
    I have a corporate laptop that was provided to me by a client and I'm having some rather odd difficulties with it when I put the laptop on my home network. When I first brought the machine home it behaved like any other laptop. Once it was connected to the network it was assigned an IP address and I could remote into it just fine using the machine name. Lately though, whenever I put this laptop on my network I am not able to ping or RDP into the machine as the host name doesn't properly resolve. Additionally I'm able to see the device and it's assigned IP address clearly in my router firmware. This gets even more strange as now when I try to ping it's IP address listed in my router, I see that it's actually trying to ping my own machine (screenshot of this very odd event below). This has actually driven me crazy to the point that I have actually replaced my router (it was behaving oddly in other ways), and I'm continuing to have these problems. The above ping capture is from the new router. As far as network goes I am now currently using an NetGear R7000 Nighthawk and I haven't customized any of the networking settings in the router just yet (installed yesterday). I would appreciate any advice possible and would be happy to provide further diagnostic information. Networking isn't my strong suit, so I'm not even sure where to begin unraveling this thing.

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  • Integrating external computer into a domain - some recommendations please

    - by TomTom
    Given: * A multi loation company. Every office has local routers that connect to a central VPN capable rouer in a data center. All fine so far. We now need to move a computer off site into a hosting center across the globe, to get it closer to some supplier computers we work for. it will run limited logic but latency is important, and our latency so far is too large. This computer will be in a data center and does no require incoming connections except for adminsitrative purposes, although it needs outgoing connetions. I have no real chance to put one of my VPN routers there, sadly - otherwise I would have no problem. Usage of RRAs is not recommended (we had various probblems there over time). I could deal with it. The computer MUSt integrate into the corporate structure via VPN and join the domain and be fully "tracked" (controlled for performance). What is the best suggestion? So far it looks like my best bets woudl be to log in via RRAS and deal with whatever issues arise there plus uise the local firewall the limit incoming connections to this computer to what is needed (which runs down to an emergency RDP connection allowance). Anyone a better idea?

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  • Service Discovery in WCF 4.0 &ndash; Part 1

    - by Shaun
    When designing a service oriented architecture (SOA) system, there will be a lot of services with many service contracts, endpoints and behaviors. Besides the client calling the service, in a large distributed system a service may invoke other services. In this case, one service might need to know the endpoints it invokes. This might not be a problem in a small system. But when you have more than 10 services this might be a problem. For example in my current product, there are around 10 services, such as the user authentication service, UI integration service, location service, license service, device monitor service, event monitor service, schedule job service, accounting service, player management service, etc..   Benefit of Discovery Service Since almost all my services need to invoke at least one other service. This would be a difficult task to make sure all services endpoints are configured correctly in every service. And furthermore, it would be a nightmare when a service changed its endpoint at runtime. Hence, we need a discovery service to remove the dependency (configuration dependency). A discovery service plays as a service dictionary which stores the relationship between the contracts and the endpoints for every service. By using the discovery service, when service X wants to invoke service Y, it just need to ask the discovery service where is service Y, then the discovery service will return all proper endpoints of service Y, then service X can use the endpoint to send the request to service Y. And when some services changed their endpoint address, all need to do is to update its records in the discovery service then all others will know its new endpoint. In WCF 4.0 Discovery it supports both managed proxy discovery mode and ad-hoc discovery mode. In ad-hoc mode there is no standalone discovery service. When a client wanted to invoke a service, it will broadcast an message (normally in UDP protocol) to the entire network with the service match criteria. All services which enabled the discovery behavior will receive this message and only those matched services will send their endpoint back to the client. The managed proxy discovery service works as I described above. In this post I will only cover the managed proxy mode, where there’s a discovery service. For more information about the ad-hoc mode please refer to the MSDN.   Service Announcement and Probe The main functionality of discovery service should be return the proper endpoint addresses back to the service who is looking for. In most cases the consume service (as a client) will send the contract which it wanted to request to the discovery service. And then the discovery service will find the endpoint and respond. Sometimes the contract and endpoint are not enough. It also contains versioning, extensions attributes. This post I will only cover the case includes contract and endpoint. When a client (or sometimes a service who need to invoke another service) need to connect to a target service, it will firstly request the discovery service through the “Probe” method with the criteria. Basically the criteria contains the contract type name of the target service. Then the discovery service will search its endpoint repository by the criteria. The repository might be a database, a distributed cache or a flat XML file. If it matches, the discovery service will grab the endpoint information (it’s called discovery endpoint metadata in WCF) and send back. And this is called “Probe”. Finally the client received the discovery endpoint metadata and will use the endpoint to connect to the target service. Besides the probe, discovery service should take the responsible to know there is a new service available when it goes online, as well as stopped when it goes offline. This feature is named “Announcement”. When a service started and stopped, it will announce to the discovery service. So the basic functionality of a discovery service should includes: 1, An endpoint which receive the service online message, and add the service endpoint information in the discovery repository. 2, An endpoint which receive the service offline message, and remove the service endpoint information from the discovery repository. 3, An endpoint which receive the client probe message, and return the matches service endpoints, and return the discovery endpoint metadata. WCF 4.0 discovery service just covers all these features in it's infrastructure classes.   Discovery Service in WCF 4.0 WCF 4.0 introduced a new assembly named System.ServiceModel.Discovery which has all necessary classes and interfaces to build a WS-Discovery compliant discovery service. It supports ad-hoc and managed proxy modes. For the case mentioned in this post, what we need to build is a standalone discovery service, which is the managed proxy discovery service mode. To build a managed discovery service in WCF 4.0 just create a new class inherits from the abstract class System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. This class implemented and abstracted the procedures of service announcement and probe. And it exposes 8 abstract methods where we can implement our own endpoint register, unregister and find logic. These 8 methods are asynchronized, which means all invokes to the discovery service are asynchronously, for better service capability and performance. 1, OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement, OnEndOnlineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the online announcement message. We need to add the endpoint information to the repository in this method. 2, OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement, OnEndOfflineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the offline announcement message. We need to remove the endpoint information from the repository in this method. 3, OnBeginFind, OnEndFind: Invoked when a client sent the probe message that want to find the service endpoint information. We need to look for the proper endpoints by matching the client’s criteria through the repository in this method. 4, OnBeginResolve, OnEndResolve: Invoked then a client sent the resolve message. Different from the find method, when using resolve method the discovery service will return the exactly one service endpoint metadata to the client. In our example we will NOT implement this method.   Let’s create our own discovery service, inherit the base System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. We also need to specify the service behavior in this class. Since the build-in discovery service host class only support the singleton mode, we must set its instance context mode to single. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using System.ServiceModel; 7:  8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 11: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 12: { 13: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 14: { 15: throw new NotImplementedException(); 16: } 17:  18: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 19: { 20: throw new NotImplementedException(); 21: } 22:  23: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 24: { 25: throw new NotImplementedException(); 26: } 27:  28: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginResolve(ResolveCriteria resolveCriteria, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 29: { 30: throw new NotImplementedException(); 31: } 32:  33: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: throw new NotImplementedException(); 36: } 37:  38: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 39: { 40: throw new NotImplementedException(); 41: } 42:  43: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 44: { 45: throw new NotImplementedException(); 46: } 47:  48: protected override EndpointDiscoveryMetadata OnEndResolve(IAsyncResult result) 49: { 50: throw new NotImplementedException(); 51: } 52: } 53: } Then let’s implement the online, offline and find methods one by one. WCF discovery service gives us full flexibility to implement the endpoint add, remove and find logic. For the demo purpose we will use an internal dictionary to store the services’ endpoint metadata. In the next post we will see how to serialize and store these information in database. Define a concurrent dictionary inside the service class since our it will be used in the multiple threads scenario. 1: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 2: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 3: { 4: private ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata> _services; 5:  6: public ManagedProxyDiscoveryService() 7: { 8: _services = new ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata>(); 9: } 10: } Then we can simply implement the logic of service online and offline. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.AddOrUpdate(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, endpointDiscoveryMetadata, (key, value) => endpointDiscoveryMetadata); 4: return new OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 5: } 6:  7: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 8: { 9: OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 10: } 11:  12: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: { 14: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpoint = null; 15: _services.TryRemove(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, out endpoint); 16: return new OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 17: } 18:  19: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 20: { 21: OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 22: } Regards the find method, the parameter FindRequestContext.Criteria has a method named IsMatch, which can be use for us to evaluate which service metadata is satisfied with the criteria. So the implementation of find method would be like this. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.Where(s => findRequestContext.Criteria.IsMatch(s.Value)) 4: .Select(s => s.Value) 5: .All(meta => 6: { 7: findRequestContext.AddMatchingEndpoint(meta); 8: return true; 9: }); 10: return new OnFindAsyncResult(callback, state); 11: } 12:  13: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 14: { 15: OnFindAsyncResult.End(result); 16: } As you can see, we checked all endpoints metadata in repository by invoking the IsMatch method. Then add all proper endpoints metadata into the parameter. Finally since all these methods are asynchronized we need some AsyncResult classes as well. Below are the base class and the inherited classes used in previous methods. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.Threading; 6:  7: namespace Phare.Service 8: { 9: abstract internal class AsyncResult : IAsyncResult 10: { 11: AsyncCallback callback; 12: bool completedSynchronously; 13: bool endCalled; 14: Exception exception; 15: bool isCompleted; 16: ManualResetEvent manualResetEvent; 17: object state; 18: object thisLock; 19:  20: protected AsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 21: { 22: this.callback = callback; 23: this.state = state; 24: this.thisLock = new object(); 25: } 26:  27: public object AsyncState 28: { 29: get 30: { 31: return state; 32: } 33: } 34:  35: public WaitHandle AsyncWaitHandle 36: { 37: get 38: { 39: if (manualResetEvent != null) 40: { 41: return manualResetEvent; 42: } 43: lock (ThisLock) 44: { 45: if (manualResetEvent == null) 46: { 47: manualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(isCompleted); 48: } 49: } 50: return manualResetEvent; 51: } 52: } 53:  54: public bool CompletedSynchronously 55: { 56: get 57: { 58: return completedSynchronously; 59: } 60: } 61:  62: public bool IsCompleted 63: { 64: get 65: { 66: return isCompleted; 67: } 68: } 69:  70: object ThisLock 71: { 72: get 73: { 74: return this.thisLock; 75: } 76: } 77:  78: protected static TAsyncResult End<TAsyncResult>(IAsyncResult result) 79: where TAsyncResult : AsyncResult 80: { 81: if (result == null) 82: { 83: throw new ArgumentNullException("result"); 84: } 85:  86: TAsyncResult asyncResult = result as TAsyncResult; 87:  88: if (asyncResult == null) 89: { 90: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid async result.", "result"); 91: } 92:  93: if (asyncResult.endCalled) 94: { 95: throw new InvalidOperationException("Async object already ended."); 96: } 97:  98: asyncResult.endCalled = true; 99:  100: if (!asyncResult.isCompleted) 101: { 102: asyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); 103: } 104:  105: if (asyncResult.manualResetEvent != null) 106: { 107: asyncResult.manualResetEvent.Close(); 108: } 109:  110: if (asyncResult.exception != null) 111: { 112: throw asyncResult.exception; 113: } 114:  115: return asyncResult; 116: } 117:  118: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously) 119: { 120: if (isCompleted) 121: { 122: throw new InvalidOperationException("This async result is already completed."); 123: } 124:  125: this.completedSynchronously = completedSynchronously; 126:  127: if (completedSynchronously) 128: { 129: this.isCompleted = true; 130: } 131: else 132: { 133: lock (ThisLock) 134: { 135: this.isCompleted = true; 136: if (this.manualResetEvent != null) 137: { 138: this.manualResetEvent.Set(); 139: } 140: } 141: } 142:  143: if (callback != null) 144: { 145: callback(this); 146: } 147: } 148:  149: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously, Exception exception) 150: { 151: this.exception = exception; 152: Complete(completedSynchronously); 153: } 154: } 155: } 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using Phare.Service; 7:  8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: internal sealed class OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 11: { 12: public OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: : base(callback, state) 14: { 15: this.Complete(true); 16: } 17:  18: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 19: { 20: AsyncResult.End<OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 21: } 22:  23: } 24:  25: sealed class OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 26: { 27: public OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 28: : base(callback, state) 29: { 30: this.Complete(true); 31: } 32:  33: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: AsyncResult.End<OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 36: } 37: } 38:  39: sealed class OnFindAsyncResult : AsyncResult 40: { 41: public OnFindAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 42: : base(callback, state) 43: { 44: this.Complete(true); 45: } 46:  47: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 48: { 49: AsyncResult.End<OnFindAsyncResult>(result); 50: } 51: } 52:  53: sealed class OnResolveAsyncResult : AsyncResult 54: { 55: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint; 56:  57: public OnResolveAsyncResult(EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 58: : base(callback, state) 59: { 60: this.matchingEndpoint = matchingEndpoint; 61: this.Complete(true); 62: } 63:  64: public static EndpointDiscoveryMetadata End(IAsyncResult result) 65: { 66: OnResolveAsyncResult thisPtr = AsyncResult.End<OnResolveAsyncResult>(result); 67: return thisPtr.matchingEndpoint; 68: } 69: } 70: } Now we have finished the discovery service. The next step is to host it. The discovery service is a standard WCF service. So we can use ServiceHost on a console application, windows service, or in IIS as usual. The following code is how to host the discovery service we had just created in a console application. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: using (var host = new ServiceHost(new ManagedProxyDiscoveryService())) 4: { 5: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 6: { 7: host.Description.Endpoints.All((ep) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine(ep.ListenUri); 10: return true; 11: }); 12: }; 13:  14: try 15: { 16: // retrieve the announcement, probe endpoint and binding from configuration 17: var announcementEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 18: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 19: var binding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 20: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(binding, announcementEndpointAddress); 21: var probeEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(binding, probeEndpointAddress); 22: probeEndpoint.IsSystemEndpoint = false; 23: // append the service endpoint for announcement and probe 24: host.AddServiceEndpoint(announcementEndpoint); 25: host.AddServiceEndpoint(probeEndpoint); 26:  27: host.Open(); 28:  29: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 30: Console.ReadKey(); 31: } 32: catch (Exception ex) 33: { 34: Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString()); 35: } 36: } 37:  38: Console.WriteLine("Done."); 39: Console.ReadKey(); 40: } What we need to notice is that, the discovery service needs two endpoints for announcement and probe. In this example I just retrieve them from the configuration file. I also specified the binding of these two endpoints in configuration file as well. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> And this is the console screen when I ran my discovery service. As you can see there are two endpoints listening for announcement message and probe message.   Discoverable Service and Client Next, let’s create a WCF service that is discoverable, which means it can be found by the discovery service. To do so, we need to let the service send the online announcement message to the discovery service, as well as offline message before it shutdown. Just create a simple service which can make the incoming string to upper. The service contract and implementation would be like this. 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface IStringService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: string ToUpper(string content); 6: } 1: public class StringService : IStringService 2: { 3: public string ToUpper(string content) 4: { 5: return content.ToUpper(); 6: } 7: } Then host this service in the console application. In order to make the discovery service easy to be tested the service address will be changed each time it’s started. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var baseAddress = new Uri(string.Format("net.tcp://localhost:11001/stringservice/{0}/", Guid.NewGuid().ToString())); 4:  5: using (var host = new ServiceHost(typeof(StringService), baseAddress)) 6: { 7: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Service opened at {0}", host.Description.Endpoints.First().ListenUri); 10: }; 11:  12: host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IStringService), new NetTcpBinding(), string.Empty); 13:  14: host.Open(); 15:  16: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 17: Console.ReadKey(); 18: } 19: } Currently this service is NOT discoverable. We need to add a special service behavior so that it could send the online and offline message to the discovery service announcement endpoint when the host is opened and closed. WCF 4.0 introduced a service behavior named ServiceDiscoveryBehavior. When we specified the announcement endpoint address and appended it to the service behaviors this service will be discoverable. 1: var announcementAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 2: var announcementBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 3: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(announcementBinding, announcementAddress); 4: var discoveryBehavior = new ServiceDiscoveryBehavior(); 5: discoveryBehavior.AnnouncementEndpoints.Add(announcementEndpoint); 6: host.Description.Behaviors.Add(discoveryBehavior); The ServiceDiscoveryBehavior utilizes the service extension and channel dispatcher to implement the online and offline announcement logic. In short, it injected the channel open and close procedure and send the online and offline message to the announcement endpoint.   On client side, when we have the discovery service, a client can invoke a service without knowing its endpoint. WCF discovery assembly provides a class named DiscoveryClient, which can be used to find the proper service endpoint by passing the criteria. In the code below I initialized the DiscoveryClient, specified the discovery service probe endpoint address. Then I created the find criteria by specifying the service contract I wanted to use and invoke the Find method. This will send the probe message to the discovery service and it will find the endpoints back to me. The discovery service will return all endpoints that matches the find criteria, which means in the result of the find method there might be more than one endpoints. In this example I just returned the first matched one back. In the next post I will show how to extend our discovery service to make it work like a service load balancer. 1: static EndpointAddress FindServiceEndpoint() 2: { 3: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 4: var probeBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 5: var discoveryEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(probeBinding, probeEndpointAddress); 6:  7: EndpointAddress address = null; 8: FindResponse result = null; 9: using (var discoveryClient = new DiscoveryClient(discoveryEndpoint)) 10: { 11: result = discoveryClient.Find(new FindCriteria(typeof(IStringService))); 12: } 13:  14: if (result != null && result.Endpoints.Any()) 15: { 16: var endpointMetadata = result.Endpoints.First(); 17: address = endpointMetadata.Address; 18: } 19: return address; 20: } Once we probed the discovery service we will receive the endpoint. So in the client code we can created the channel factory from the endpoint and binding, and invoke to the service. When creating the client side channel factory we need to make sure that the client side binding should be the same as the service side. WCF discovery service can be used to find the endpoint for a service contract, but the binding is NOT included. This is because the binding was not in the WS-Discovery specification. In the next post I will demonstrate how to add the binding information into the discovery service. At that moment the client don’t need to create the binding by itself. Instead it will use the binding received from the discovery service. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 4: var content = Console.ReadLine(); 5: while (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(content)) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Finding the service endpoint..."); 8: var address = FindServiceEndpoint(); 9: if (address == null) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("There is no endpoint matches the criteria."); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Found the endpoint {0}", address.Uri); 16:  17: var factory = new ChannelFactory<IStringService>(new NetTcpBinding(), address); 18: factory.Opened += (sender, e) => 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("Connecting to {0}.", factory.Endpoint.ListenUri); 21: }; 22: var proxy = factory.CreateChannel(); 23: using (proxy as IDisposable) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("ToUpper: {0} => {1}", content, proxy.ToUpper(content)); 26: } 27: } 28:  29: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 30: content = Console.ReadLine(); 31: } 32: } Similarly, the discovery service probe endpoint and binding were defined in the configuration file. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> OK, now let’s have a test. Firstly start the discovery service, and then start our discoverable service. When it started it will announced to the discovery service and registered its endpoint into the repository, which is the local dictionary. And then start the client and type something. As you can see the client asked the discovery service for the endpoint and then establish the connection to the discoverable service. And more interesting, do NOT close the client console but terminate the discoverable service but press the enter key. This will make the service send the offline message to the discovery service. Then start the discoverable service again. Since we made it use a different address each time it started, currently it should be hosted on another address. If we enter something in the client we could see that it asked the discovery service and retrieve the new endpoint, and connect the the service.   Summary In this post I discussed the benefit of using the discovery service and the procedures of service announcement and probe. I also demonstrated how to leverage the WCF Discovery feature in WCF 4.0 to build a simple managed discovery service. For test purpose, in this example I used the in memory dictionary as the discovery endpoint metadata repository. And when finding I also just return the first matched endpoint back. I also hard coded the bindings between the discoverable service and the client. In next post I will show you how to solve the problem mentioned above, as well as some additional feature for production usage. You can download the code here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • How to deploy the advanced search page using Module in SharePoint 2013

    - by ybbest
    Today, I’d like to show you how to deploy your custom advanced search page using module in Visual Studio 2012.Using a module is the way how SharePoint deploy all the publishing pages to the search centre. Browse to the template under 15 hive of SharePoint2013, then go to the SearchCenterFiles under Features(as shown below).Then open the Files.xml it shows how SharePoint using module to deploy advanced search.You can download the solution here. Now I am going to show you how to deploy your custom advanced search page.The feature is located  in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\SearchCenterFiles . To deploy SharePoint advanced Search pages, you need to do the following: 1. Create SharePoint2013 project and then create a module item. 2. Find how Out of box SharePoint deploy the Advanced Search Page from Files.xml and copy and paste it into the elements.xml <File Url="advanced.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary"> <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/AdvancedSearchLayout.aspx, $Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,SearchCenterAdvancedSearchTitle;" /> <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,Search_Advanced_Page_Title;" /> <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,contenttype_welcomepage_name;" /> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MainZone" WebPartOrder="1"> <![CDATA[ <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"> <Assembly>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly> <TypeName>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.AdvancedSearchBox</TypeName> <Title>$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_Webpart_Title;</Title> <Description>$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_Webpart_Description;</Description> <FrameType>None</FrameType> <AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize> <AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove> <IsVisible>true</IsVisible> <SearchResultPageURL xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">results.aspx</SearchResultPageURL> <TextQuerySectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_FindDocsWith_Title;</TextQuerySectionLabelText> <ShowAndQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowAndQueryTextBox> <ShowPhraseQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPhraseQueryTextBox> <ShowOrQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowOrQueryTextBox> <ShowNotQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowNotQueryTextBox> <ScopeSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_NarrowSearch_Title;</ScopeSectionLabelText> <ShowLanguageOptions xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowLanguageOptions> <ShowResultTypePicker xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowResultTypePicker> <ShowPropertiesSection xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPropertiesSection> <PropertiesSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_AddPropRestrictions_Title;</PropertiesSectionLabelText> </WebPart> ]]> </AllUsersWebPart> </File> 3. Customize your SharePoint advanced Search Page by modifying the Advanced Search Box and Export the webpart and copy the webpart file to the elements under module. 4. Export the web part and copy the content of the web part file to the elements.xml in the module. <File Path="AdvancedSearchPage\advanced.aspx" Url="employeeAdvanced.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary"> <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/AdvancedSearchLayout.aspx, $Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,SearchCenterAdvancedSearchTitle;" /> <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,Search_Advanced_Page_Title;" /> <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,contenttype_welcomepage_name;" /> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MainZone" WebPartOrder="1"> <![CDATA[ <WebPart xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"> <Title>Advanced Search Box</Title> <FrameType>None</FrameType> <Description>Displays parameterized search options based on properties and combinations of words.</Description> <IsIncluded>true</IsIncluded> <ZoneID>MainZone</ZoneID> <PartOrder>1</PartOrder> <FrameState>Normal</FrameState> <Height /> <Width /> <AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove> <AllowZoneChange>true</AllowZoneChange> <AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize> <AllowConnect>true</AllowConnect> <AllowEdit>true</AllowEdit> <AllowHide>true</AllowHide> <IsVisible>true</IsVisible> <DetailLink /> <HelpLink /> <HelpMode>Modeless</HelpMode> <Dir>Default</Dir> <PartImageSmall /> <MissingAssembly>Cannot import this Web Part.</MissingAssembly> <PartImageLarge /> <IsIncludedFilter /> <Assembly>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly> <TypeName>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.AdvancedSearchBox</TypeName> <SearchResultPageURL xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">results.aspx</SearchResultPageURL> <TextQuerySectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Find documents that have...</TextQuerySectionLabelText> <ShowAndQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowAndQueryTextBox> <AndQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowPhraseQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPhraseQueryTextBox> <PhraseQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowOrQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowOrQueryTextBox> <OrQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowNotQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowNotQueryTextBox> <NotQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ScopeSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Narrow the search...</ScopeSectionLabelText> <ShowScopes xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">false</ShowScopes> <ScopeLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <DisplayGroup xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Advanced Search</DisplayGroup> <ShowLanguageOptions xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">false</ShowLanguageOptions> <LanguagesLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowResultTypePicker xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowResultTypePicker> <ResultTypeLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowPropertiesSection xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPropertiesSection> <PropertiesSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Add property restrictions...</PropertiesSectionLabelText> <Properties xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">&lt;root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"&gt;  &lt;LangDefs&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Arabic" LangID="ar"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Bengali" LangID="bn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Bulgarian" LangID="bg"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Catalan" LangID="ca"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Simplified Chinese" LangID="zh-cn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Traditional Chinese" LangID="zh-tw"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Croatian" LangID="hr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Czech" LangID="cs"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Danish" LangID="da"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Dutch" LangID="nl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="English" LangID="en"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Finnish" LangID="fi"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="French" LangID="fr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="German" LangID="de"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Greek" LangID="el"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Gujarati" LangID="gu"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hebrew" LangID="he"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hindi" LangID="hi"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hungarian" LangID="hu"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Icelandic" LangID="is"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Indonesian" LangID="id"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Italian" LangID="it"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Japanese" LangID="ja"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Kannada" LangID="kn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Korean" LangID="ko"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Latvian" LangID="lv"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Lithuanian" LangID="lt"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Malay" LangID="ms"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Malayalam" LangID="ml"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Marathi" LangID="mr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Norwegian" LangID="no"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Polish" LangID="pl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Portuguese" LangID="pt"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Punjabi" LangID="pa"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Romanian" LangID="ro"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Russian" LangID="ru"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Slovak" LangID="sk"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Slovenian" LangID="sl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Spanish" LangID="es"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Swedish" LangID="sv"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Tamil" LangID="ta"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Telugu" LangID="te"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Thai" LangID="th"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Turkish" LangID="tr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Ukrainian" LangID="uk"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Urdu" LangID="ur"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Vietnamese" LangID="vi"/&gt;  &lt;/LangDefs&gt;  &lt;Languages&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="en"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="fr"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="de"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="ja"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="zh-cn"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="es"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="zh-tw"/&gt;  &lt;/Languages&gt;  &lt;PropertyDefs&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Path" DataType="url" DisplayName="URL"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Size" DataType="integer" DisplayName="Size (bytes)"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Write" DataType="datetime" DisplayName="Last Modified Date"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="FileName" DataType="text" DisplayName="Name"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Description" DataType="text" DisplayName="Description"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Title" DataType="text" DisplayName="Title"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Author" DataType="text" DisplayName="Author"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocSubject" DataType="text" DisplayName="Subject"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocKeywords" DataType="text" DisplayName="Keywords"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocComments" DataType="text" DisplayName="Comments"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="CreatedBy" DataType="text" DisplayName="Created By"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="ModifiedBy" DataType="text" DisplayName="Last Modified By"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeNumber" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeNumber"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeId" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeId"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeFirstName" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeFirstName"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeLastName" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeLastName"/&gt;  &lt;/PropertyDefs&gt;  &lt;ResultTypes&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Employee Document" Name="default"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeNumber" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeId" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeFirstName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeLastName" /&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="All Results"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Documents" Name="documents"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;IsDocument="True"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Word Documents" Name="worddocuments"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="doc" OR FileExtension="docx" OR FileExtension="dot" OR FileExtension="docm" OR FileExtension="odt"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Excel Documents" Name="exceldocuments"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="xls" OR FileExtension="xlsx" OR FileExtension="xlsm" OR FileExtension="xlsb" OR FileExtension="ods"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="PowerPoint Presentations" Name="presentations"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="ppt" OR FileExtension="pptx" OR FileExtension="pptm" OR FileExtension="odp"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;  &lt;/ResultTypes&gt;&lt;/root&gt;</Properties> </WebPart> ]]> </AllUsersWebPart> </File> 5.Deploy your custom solution and you will have a custom advanced search page.

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  • An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

    - by Rick Strahl
    I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • How to deploy the advanced search page using Module in SharePoint 2013

    - by ybbest
    Today, I’d like to show you how to deploy your custom advanced search page using module in Visual Studio 2012.Using a module is the way how SharePoint deploy all the publishing pages to the search centre. Browse to the template under 15 hive of SharePoint2013, then go to the SearchCenterFiles under Features(as shown below).Then open the Files.xml it shows how SharePoint using module to deploy advanced search.You can download the solution here. Now I am going to show you how to deploy your custom advanced search page.The feature is located  in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\FEATURES\SearchCenterFiles . To deploy SharePoint advanced Search pages, you need to do the following: 1. Create SharePoint2013 project and then create a module item. 2. Find how Out of box SharePoint deploy the Advanced Search Page from Files.xml and copy and paste it into the elements.xml <File Url="advanced.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary"> <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/AdvancedSearchLayout.aspx, $Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,SearchCenterAdvancedSearchTitle;" /> <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,Search_Advanced_Page_Title;" /> <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,contenttype_welcomepage_name;" /> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MainZone" WebPartOrder="1"> <![CDATA[ <WebPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"> <Assembly>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly> <TypeName>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.AdvancedSearchBox</TypeName> <Title>$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_Webpart_Title;</Title> <Description>$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_Webpart_Description;</Description> <FrameType>None</FrameType> <AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize> <AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove> <IsVisible>true</IsVisible> <SearchResultPageURL xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">results.aspx</SearchResultPageURL> <TextQuerySectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_FindDocsWith_Title;</TextQuerySectionLabelText> <ShowAndQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowAndQueryTextBox> <ShowPhraseQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPhraseQueryTextBox> <ShowOrQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowOrQueryTextBox> <ShowNotQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowNotQueryTextBox> <ScopeSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_NarrowSearch_Title;</ScopeSectionLabelText> <ShowLanguageOptions xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowLanguageOptions> <ShowResultTypePicker xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowResultTypePicker> <ShowPropertiesSection xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPropertiesSection> <PropertiesSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,AdvancedSearch_AddPropRestrictions_Title;</PropertiesSectionLabelText> </WebPart> ]]> </AllUsersWebPart> </File> 3. Customize your SharePoint advanced Search Page by modifying the Advanced Search Box and Export the webpart and copy the webpart file to the elements under module. 4. Export the web part and copy the content of the web part file to the elements.xml in the module. <File Path="AdvancedSearchPage\advanced.aspx" Url="employeeAdvanced.aspx" Type="GhostableInLibrary"> <Property Name="PublishingPageLayout" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/AdvancedSearchLayout.aspx, $Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,SearchCenterAdvancedSearchTitle;" /> <Property Name="Title" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,Search_Advanced_Page_Title;" /> <Property Name="ContentType" Value="$Resources:Microsoft.Office.Server.Search,contenttype_welcomepage_name;" /> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="MainZone" WebPartOrder="1"> <![CDATA[ <WebPart xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2"> <Title>Advanced Search Box</Title> <FrameType>None</FrameType> <Description>Displays parameterized search options based on properties and combinations of words.</Description> <IsIncluded>true</IsIncluded> <ZoneID>MainZone</ZoneID> <PartOrder>1</PartOrder> <FrameState>Normal</FrameState> <Height /> <Width /> <AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove> <AllowZoneChange>true</AllowZoneChange> <AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize> <AllowConnect>true</AllowConnect> <AllowEdit>true</AllowEdit> <AllowHide>true</AllowHide> <IsVisible>true</IsVisible> <DetailLink /> <HelpLink /> <HelpMode>Modeless</HelpMode> <Dir>Default</Dir> <PartImageSmall /> <MissingAssembly>Cannot import this Web Part.</MissingAssembly> <PartImageLarge /> <IsIncludedFilter /> <Assembly>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=15.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly> <TypeName>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.AdvancedSearchBox</TypeName> <SearchResultPageURL xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">results.aspx</SearchResultPageURL> <TextQuerySectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Find documents that have...</TextQuerySectionLabelText> <ShowAndQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowAndQueryTextBox> <AndQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowPhraseQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPhraseQueryTextBox> <PhraseQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowOrQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowOrQueryTextBox> <OrQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowNotQueryTextBox xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowNotQueryTextBox> <NotQueryTextBoxLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ScopeSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Narrow the search...</ScopeSectionLabelText> <ShowScopes xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">false</ShowScopes> <ScopeLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <DisplayGroup xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Advanced Search</DisplayGroup> <ShowLanguageOptions xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">false</ShowLanguageOptions> <LanguagesLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowResultTypePicker xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowResultTypePicker> <ResultTypeLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox" /> <ShowPropertiesSection xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">true</ShowPropertiesSection> <PropertiesSectionLabelText xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">Add property restrictions...</PropertiesSectionLabelText> <Properties xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:AdvancedSearchBox">&lt;root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"&gt;  &lt;LangDefs&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Arabic" LangID="ar"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Bengali" LangID="bn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Bulgarian" LangID="bg"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Catalan" LangID="ca"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Simplified Chinese" LangID="zh-cn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Traditional Chinese" LangID="zh-tw"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Croatian" LangID="hr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Czech" LangID="cs"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Danish" LangID="da"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Dutch" LangID="nl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="English" LangID="en"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Finnish" LangID="fi"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="French" LangID="fr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="German" LangID="de"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Greek" LangID="el"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Gujarati" LangID="gu"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hebrew" LangID="he"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hindi" LangID="hi"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Hungarian" LangID="hu"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Icelandic" LangID="is"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Indonesian" LangID="id"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Italian" LangID="it"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Japanese" LangID="ja"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Kannada" LangID="kn"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Korean" LangID="ko"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Latvian" LangID="lv"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Lithuanian" LangID="lt"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Malay" LangID="ms"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Malayalam" LangID="ml"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Marathi" LangID="mr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Norwegian" LangID="no"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Polish" LangID="pl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Portuguese" LangID="pt"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Punjabi" LangID="pa"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Romanian" LangID="ro"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Russian" LangID="ru"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Slovak" LangID="sk"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Slovenian" LangID="sl"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Spanish" LangID="es"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Swedish" LangID="sv"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Tamil" LangID="ta"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Telugu" LangID="te"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Thai" LangID="th"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Turkish" LangID="tr"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Ukrainian" LangID="uk"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Urdu" LangID="ur"/&gt;    &lt;LangDef DisplayName="Vietnamese" LangID="vi"/&gt;  &lt;/LangDefs&gt;  &lt;Languages&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="en"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="fr"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="de"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="ja"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="zh-cn"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="es"/&gt;    &lt;Language LangRef="zh-tw"/&gt;  &lt;/Languages&gt;  &lt;PropertyDefs&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Path" DataType="url" DisplayName="URL"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Size" DataType="integer" DisplayName="Size (bytes)"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Write" DataType="datetime" DisplayName="Last Modified Date"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="FileName" DataType="text" DisplayName="Name"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Description" DataType="text" DisplayName="Description"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Title" DataType="text" DisplayName="Title"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="Author" DataType="text" DisplayName="Author"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocSubject" DataType="text" DisplayName="Subject"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocKeywords" DataType="text" DisplayName="Keywords"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="DocComments" DataType="text" DisplayName="Comments"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="CreatedBy" DataType="text" DisplayName="Created By"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="ModifiedBy" DataType="text" DisplayName="Last Modified By"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeNumber" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeNumber"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeId" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeId"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeFirstName" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeFirstName"/&gt;    &lt;PropertyDef Name="EmployeeLastName" DataType="text" DisplayName="EmployeeLastName"/&gt;  &lt;/PropertyDefs&gt;  &lt;ResultTypes&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Employee Document" Name="default"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeNumber" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeId" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeFirstName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="EmployeeLastName" /&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="All Results"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Documents" Name="documents"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;IsDocument="True"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Word Documents" Name="worddocuments"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="doc" OR FileExtension="docx" OR FileExtension="dot" OR FileExtension="docm" OR FileExtension="odt"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="Excel Documents" Name="exceldocuments"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="xls" OR FileExtension="xlsx" OR FileExtension="xlsm" OR FileExtension="xlsb" OR FileExtension="ods"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;    &lt;ResultType DisplayName="PowerPoint Presentations" Name="presentations"&gt;      &lt;KeywordQuery&gt;FileExtension="ppt" OR FileExtension="pptx" OR FileExtension="pptm" OR FileExtension="odp"&lt;/KeywordQuery&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Author" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocComments"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Description" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocKeywords"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="FileName" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Size" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="DocSubject"/&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Path" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Write" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="CreatedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="ModifiedBy" /&gt;      &lt;PropertyRef Name="Title"/&gt;    &lt;/ResultType&gt;  &lt;/ResultTypes&gt;&lt;/root&gt;</Properties> </WebPart> ]]> </AllUsersWebPart> </File> 5.Deploy your custom solution and you will have a custom advanced search page.

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  • Designing an email system to guarantee delivery

    - by GlenH7
    We are looking to expand our use of email for notification purposes. We understand it will generate more inbox volume, but we are being selective about which events we fire notification on in order to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. The big question we are struggling with is designing a system that guarantees that the email was delivered. If an email isn't delivered, we will consider that an exception event that needs to be investigated. In reality, I say almost guarantees because there aren't any true guarantees with email. We're just looking for a practical solution to making sure the email got there and experiences others have had with the various approaches to guaranteeing delivery. For the TL;DR crowd - how do we go about designing a system to guarantee delivery of emails? What techniques should we consider so we know the emails were delivered? Our biggest area of concern is what techniques to use so that we know when a message is sent out that it either lands in an inbox or it failed and we need to do something else. Additional requirements: We're not at the stage of including an escalation response, but we'll want that in the future or so we think. Most notifications will be internal to our enterprise, but we will have some notifications being sent to external clients. Some of our application is in a hosted environment. We haven't determined if those servers can access our corporate email servers for relaying or if they'll be acting as their own mail servers. Base design / modules (at the moment): A module to assign tracking identification A module to send out emails A module to receive delivery notification (perhaps this is the same as the email module) A module that checks sent messages against delivery notification and alerts on undelivered email. Some references: Atwood: Send some email Email Tracking Some approaches: Request a response (aka read-receipt or Message Disposition Notification). Seems prone to failure since we have cross-compatibility issues due to differing mail servers and software. Return receipt (aka Delivery Status Notification). Not sure if all mail servers honor this request or not Require an action and therefore prove reply. Seems burdensome to force the recipients to perform an additional task not related to resolving the issue. And no, we haven't come up with a way of linking getting the issue fixed to whether or not the email was received. Force a click-through / Other site sign-in. Similar to requiring some sort of action, this seems like an additional burden and will annoy the users. On the other hand, it seems the most likely to guarantee someone received the notification. Hidden image tracking. Not all email providers automatically load the image, and how would we associate the image(s) with the email tracking ID? Outsource delivery. This gets us out of the email business, but goes back to how to guarantee the out-sourcer's receipt and subsequent delivery to the end recipient. As a related concern, there will be an n:n relationship between issue notification and recipients. The 1 issue : n recipients subset isn't as much of a concern although if we had a delivery failure we would want to investigate and fix the core issue. Of bigger concern is n issues : 1 recipient, and we're specifically concerned in making sure that all n issues were received by the recipient. How does forum software or issue tracking software handle this requirement? If a tracking identifier is used, Where is it placed in the email? In the Subject, or the Body?

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  • This Week in Geek History: Gmail Goes Public, Deep Blue Wins at Chess, and the Birth of Thomas Edison

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Every week we bring you a snapshot of the week in Geek History. This week we’re taking a peek at the public release of Gmail, the first time a computer won against a chess champion, and the birth of prolific inventor Thomas Edison. Gmail Goes Public It’s hard to believe that Gmail has only been around for seven years and that for the first three years of its life it was invite only. In 2007 Gmail dropped the invite only requirement (although they would hold onto the “beta” tag for another two years) and opened its doors for anyone to grab a username @gmail. For what seemed like an entire epoch in internet history Gmail had the slickest web-based email around with constant innovations and features rolling out from Gmail Labs. Only in the last year or so have major overhauls at competitors like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail brought other services up to speed. Can’t stand reading a Week in Geek History entry without a random fact? Here you go: gmail.com was originally owned by the Garfield franchise and ran a service that delivered Garfield comics to your email inbox. No, we’re not kidding. Deep Blue Proves Itself a Chess Master Deep Blue was a super computer constructed by IBM with the sole purpose of winning chess matches. In 2011 with the all seeing eye of Google and the amazing computational abilities of engines like Wolfram Alpha we simply take powerful computers immersed in our daily lives for granted. The 1996 match against reigning world chest champion Garry Kasparov where in Deep Blue held its own, but ultimately lost, in a  4-2 match shook a lot of people up. What did it mean if something that was considered such an elegant and quintessentially human endeavor such as chess was so easy for a machine? A series of upgrades helped Deep Blue outright win a match against Kasparov in 1997 (seen in the photo above). After the win Deep Blue was retired and disassembled. Parts of Deep Blue are housed in the National Museum of History and the Computer History Museum. Birth of Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in history and holds an astounding 1,093 US Patents. He is responsible for outright inventing or greatly refining major innovations in the history of world culture including the phonograph, the movie camera, the carbon microphone used in nearly every telephone well into the 1980s, batteries for electric cars (a notion we’d take over a century to take seriously), voting machines, and of course his enormous contribution to electric distribution systems. Despite the role of scientist and inventor being largely unglamorous, Thomas Edison and his tumultuous relationship with fellow inventor Nikola Tesla have been fodder for everything from books, to comics, to movies, and video games. Other Notable Moments from This Week in Geek History Although we only shine the spotlight on three interesting facts a week in our Geek History column, that doesn’t mean we don’t have space to highlight a few more in passing. This week in Geek History: 1971 – Apollo 14 returns to Earth after third Lunar mission. 1974 – Birth of Robot Chicken creator Seth Green. 1986 – Death of Dune creator Frank Herbert. Goodnight Dune. 1997 – Simpsons becomes longest running animated show on television. Have an interesting bit of geek trivia to share? Shoot us an email to [email protected] with “history” in the subject line and we’ll be sure to add it to our list of trivia. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The How-To Geek Valentine’s Day Gift Guide Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? Clean Up Google Calendar’s Interface in Chrome and Iron The Rise and Fall of Kramerica? [Seinfeld Video] GNOME Shell 3 Live CDs for OpenSUSE and Fedora Available for Testing Picplz Offers Special FX, Sharing, and Backup of Your Smartphone Pics BUILD! An Epic LEGO Stop Motion Film [VIDEO] The Lingering Glow of Sunset over a Winter Landscape Wallpaper

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  • UPK 3.6.1 (is Coming)

    - by marc.santosusso
    In anticipation of the release of UPK 3.6.1, I'd like to briefly describe some of the features that will be available in this new version. Topic Editor in Tabs Topic Editors now open in tabs instead of separate Developer windows. This offers several improvements: First, the bubble editor can be docked and resized in the same way as other editor panes. That's right, you can resize the bubble editor! The second enhancement that this changes brings is an improved undo and redo which allows each action to be undone and redone in the Topic Editor. New Sound Editor The topic and web page editors include a new sound editor with all the bells and whistles necessary to record, edit, import, and export, sound. Sound can be captured during topic recording--which is great for a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to narrate what they're recording--or after the topic has been recorded. Sound can also be added to web pages and played on the concept panes of modules, sections and topics. Turn off bubbles in Topics Authors may opt to hide bubbles either per frame or for an entire topic. When you want to draw a user's attention to the content on the screen instead of the bubble. This feature works extremely well in conjunction with the new sound capabilities. For instance, consider recording conceptual information with narration and no bubbles. Presentation Output UPK content can be published as a Presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint format. Publishing for Presentation will create a presentation for each topic published. The presentation template can be customized Using the same methods offered for the UPK document outputs, allowing your UPK-generated presentations to match your corporate branding. Autosave and Recovery The Developer will automatically save your work as often as you would like. This affords authors the ability to recover these automatically saved documents if their system or UPK were to close unexpectedly. The Developer defaults to save open documents every ten minutes. Package Editor Enhancement Files in packages will now open in the associated application when double-clicked. Authors can also choose to "Open with..." from the context menu (AKA right click menu.) See It! Window See It! mode may now be launched in a non-fullscreen window. This is available from the kp.html file in any Player package. This version of See It! mode offers on-screen navigation controls including previous frame, next frame, pause etc. Firefox Enhancments The UPK Player will now offer both Do It! mode and sound playback when viewed using Firefox web browser. Player Support for Safari The UPK Player is now fully supported on the Safari web browser for both Mac OS and Windows platforms. Keep document checked out Authors may choose to keep a document checked out when performing a check in. This allows an author to have a new version created on the server and continue editing. Close button on individual tabs A close button has been added to the tabs making it easier to close a specific tab. Outline Editor Enhancements Authors will have the option to prevent concepts from immediately displaying in the Developer when an outline item is selected. This makes it faster to move around in the outline editor. Tell us which feature you're most excited to use in the comments.

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  • If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

    - by [email protected]
    By Brian Dayton on April 22, 2010 2:02 PM I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

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  • 11 Types of Developers

    - by Lee Brandt
    Jack Dawson Jack Dawson is the homeless drifter in Titanic. At one point in the movie he says, “I figure life’s a gift, and I don’t intend on wasting it.” He is happy to wander wherever life takes him. He works himself from place to place, making just enough money to make it to his next adventure. The “Jack Dawson” developer clings on to any new technology as the ‘next big thing’, and will find ways to shoe-horn it in to places where it is not a fit. He is very appealing to the other developers because they want to try the newest techniques and tools too, He will only stay until the new technology either bores him or becomes problematic. Jack will also be hard to find once the technology has been implemented, because he will be on to the next shiny thing. However, having a Jack Dawson on your team can be beneficial. Jack can be a great ally when attempting to convince a stodgy, corporate entity to upgrade. Jack usually has an encyclopedic recall of all the new features of the technology upgrade and is more than happy to interject them in any conversation. Tom Smykowski Tom is the neurotic employee in Office Space, and is deathly afraid of being fired. He will do only what is necessary to keep the status quo. He believes as long as nothing changes, his job is safe. He will scoff at anything new and be the naysayer during any change initiative. Tom can be useful in off-setting Jack Dawson. Jack will constantly be pushing for change and Tom will constantly be fighting it. When you see that Jack is getting kind of bored with a new technology and Tom has finally stopped wetting himself at the mere mention of it, then it is probably the sweet spot of beginning to implement that new technology (providing it is the right tool for the job). Ray Consella Ray is the guy who built the Field of Dreams. He took a risk. Sometimes he screwed it up, but he knew he didn’t want to end up regretting not attempting it. He constantly doubted himself, but he knew he had to keep going. Granted, he was doing what the voices in his head were telling him to do, but my point is he was driven to do something that most people considered crazy. Even when his friends, his wife and even he told himself he was crazy, somewhere inside himself, he knew it was the right thing to do. These are the innovators. These are the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of the world. The take risks, they fail, they learn and the get better. Obviously, this kind of person thrives in start-ups and smaller companies, but that is due to their natural aversion to bureaucracy. They want to see their ideas put into motion quickly, and withdrawn quickly if it doesn’t work. Short feedback cycles are essential to Ray. He wants to know if his idea is working or not. He wants to modify or reverse his idea if it is not working or makes things worse. These are the agilistas. May I always be one.

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  • SQL SERVER – A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – A Collection of Inspiring and Funny Posts by Vinod Kumar

    - by pinaldave
    One of the most popular quotes is: A picture is worth a thousand words. Working on this concept I started a series over my blog called the “Picture Post”. Rather than rambling over tons of material over text, we are trying to give you a capsule mode of the blog in a quick glance. Some of the picture posts already available over my blog are: Correlation of Ego and Work: Ego and Pride most of the times become a hindrance when we work inside a team. Take this cue, the first ever Picture post was published. Simple and easy to understand concept. Would want to say, Ego is the biggest enemy to humans. Read Original Post. Success (Perception Vs Reality): Personally, have always thought success is not something the talented achieve with the opportunity presented to them, but success is developed using the opportunity in hand now. In this fast paced world where success is pre-defined and convoluted by metrics it is hard to understand how complex it can sometimes be. So I took a stab at this concept in a simple way. Read Original Post. Doing Vs Saying: As Einstein would describe, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Given the amount of information we get, it is difficult to keep track, learn and implement the same. If you were ever reminded of your college days, there will always be 5-6 people doing different things and we naturally try to emulate what they are doing. This could be from competitive exams GMAT, GRE, CAT, Higher-Ed, B-School hunting etc. Rather than saying you are going to do, it is best to do and then say!!! Read Original Picture Post. Your View Vs Management View: Being in the corporate world can be really demanding and we keep asking this question – “Why me?” when the performance appraisal process ends. In this post I just want to ask you one frank opinion – “Are you really self-critical in your assessments?”. If that is the case there shouldn’t be any heartburns or surprises. If you had just one thing to take back, well forget what others are getting but invest time in making yourself better because that is going to take you longer and further in your career. Read Picture Post. Blogging lifecycle for majority: I am happy and fortunate to be in this blog post because this picture post surely doesn’t apply to SQLAuthority where consistency and persistence have been the hallmark of the blog. For the majority others, who have a tendency to start a blog, get into slumber for a while and write saying they want to get back to blogging, the picture post was specifically done for them. Paradox of being someone else: It is always a dream that we want to become somebody and in this process of doing so, we become nobody. In this constant tussle of lost identity we forget to enjoy the moment that is in front of us. I just depicted this using a simple analogy of our constant struggle to get to the other side, just to realize we missed the wonderful moments. Grass is not greener on the other side, but grass is greener where we water the surface. Read Picture Post. And on the lighter side… Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • BI and EPM Landscape

    - by frank.buytendijk
    Most of my blog entries are not about Oracle products, and most of the latest entries are about topics such as IT strategy and enterprise architecture. However, given my background at Gartner, and at Hyperion, I still keep a close eye on what's happening in BI and EPM. One important reason is that I believe there is significant competitive value for organizations getting BI and EPM right. Davenport and Harris wrote a great book called "Competing on Analytics", in which they explain this in a very engaging and convincing way. At Oracle we have defined the concept of "management excellence" that outlines what organizations have to do to keep or create a competitive edge. It's not only in the business processes, but also in the management processes. Recently, Gartner published its 2009 market shares report for BI, Analytics, and Performance Management. Gartner identifies the same three segments that Oracle does: (1) CPM Suites (Oracle refers not to Corporate Performance Management, but Enterprise Performance Management), (2) BI Platform, and (3) Analytic Applications & Performance Management. According to Gartner, Oracle's share is increasing with revenue growing by more than 5%. Oracle currently holds the #2 market share position in the overall BI Software space based on total BI software revenue. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 Gartner has ranked Oracle as #1 in the CPM Suites worldwide sub-segment based on total BI software revenue, and Oracle is gaining share with revenue growing by more than 6% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 The Analytic Applications & Performance Management subsegment is more fragmented. It has for instance a very large "Other Vendors" category. The largest player traditionally is SAS. Analytic Applications are often meant for very specific analytic needs in very specific industry sectors. According to Gartner, from the large vendors, again Oracle is the one who is gaining the most share - with total BI software revenue growth close to 15% in 2009. Source: Gartner Dataquest Market Share: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management Software, Worldwide, 2009; Dan Sommer and Bhavish Sood; Apr 2010 I believe this shows Oracle's integration strategy is working. In fact, integration actually is the innovation. BI and EPM have been silo technology platforms and application suites way too long. Management and measuring performance should be very closely linked to strategy execution, which is the domain of other business application areas such as CRM, ERP, and Supply Chain. BI and EPM are not about "making better decisions" anymore, but are part of a tangible action framework. Furthermore, organizations are getting more serious about ecosystem thinking. They do not evaluate single tools anymore for different application areas, but buy into a complete ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The best ecosystem is the one that offers the most options, in environments where the uncertainty is high and investments are hard to reverse. The key to successfully managing such an environment is middleware, and BI and EPM become increasingly middleware intensive. In fact, given the horizontal nature of BI and EPM, sitting on top of all business functions and applications, you could call them "upperware". Many are active in the BI and EPM space. Big players can offer a lot, but there are always many areas that are covered by specialty vendors. Oracle openly embraces those technologies within the ecosystem as well. Complete, open and integrated still accurately describes the Oracle product strategy. frank

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  • SQLAuthority News – Public Training Classes In Hyderabad 12-14 May – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008

    - by pinaldave
    After successfully delivering many corporate trainings as well as the private training Solid Quality Mentors, India is launching the Public Training in Hyderabad for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint 2010. This is going to be one of the most unique and one-of-a-kind events in India where Solid Quality Mentors are offering public classes. I will be leading the training on Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization & Performance Tuning. This intensive, 3-day course intends to give attendees an in-depth look at Query Optimization and Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Designed to prepare SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition into SQL Server 2005 or 2008, the course covers the best practices for a variety of essential tasks in order to maximize the performance. At the end of the course, there would be daily discussions about your real-world problems and find appropriate solutions. Note: Scroll down for course fees, discount, dates and location. Do not forget to take advantage of Discount code ‘SQLAuthority‘. The training premises are very well-equipped as they will be having 1:1 computers. Every participant will be provided with printed course materials. I will pick up your entire lunch tab and we will have lots of SQL talk together. The best participant will receive a special gift at the end of the course. Even though the quality of the material to be delivered together with the course will be of extremely high standard, the course fees are set at a very moderate rate. The fee for the course is INR 14,000/person for the whole 3-day convention. At the rate of 1 USD = 44 INR, this fee converts to less than USD 300. At this rate, it is totally possible to fly from anywhere from the world to India and take the training and still save handsome pocket money. It would be even better if you register using the discount code “SQLAuthority“, for you will instantly get an INR 3000 discount, reducing the total cost of the training to INR 11,000/person for whole 3 days course. This is a onetime offer and will not be available in the future. Please note that there will be a 10.3% service tax on course fees. To register, either send an email to [email protected] or call +91 95940 43399. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any additional information and clarification. Training Date and Time: May 12-14, 2010 10 AM- 6 PM. Training Venue: Abridge Solutions, #90/B/C/3/1, Ganesh GHR & MSY Plaza, Vittalrao Nagar, Near Image Hospital, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500 081. The details of the course is as listed below. Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations Module 02: Table Expressions Module 03: TOP and APPLY Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1 Module 05: Logical Query Processing Module 06: Query Tuning Module 07:  Introduction to the Query Processor Module 08:  Review of common query coding which causes poor performance Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2 Module 09:  SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance Module 10:  Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns Module 11:  Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips Download the complete PDF brochure. We are also going to have SharePoint 2010 training by Joy Rathnayake on 10-11 May. All the details for discount applies to the same as well. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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  • They may block off Howard Street—but Oracle OpenWorld is a two-way street.

    - by Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 by Jim Lein, Sr. Director, Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies “Engineered to Inform and Inspire”—that’s the theme of Oracle OpenWorld 2012. In early October, tens of thousands of attendees will descend on the streets of San Francisco because they share one thing in common: the desire to learn more about Oracle. You might think that’s the way we, Oracle employees, look at this event—as just another opportunity for attendees to learn about what we do. But it’s really a two way street. Every year I’m amazed by how informed and inspired I am by our customers and their companies. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow. As part of the Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies team I get to talk with our partners and business leaders at growing companies almost every day, usually via phone. Oracle OpenWorld presents the perfect opportunity to meet some of them in person, in an informal setting, and in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The stories our customers tell me about their businesses provide vivid examples of how they have overcome the challenges of managing increasingly complex global operations and growing during uncertain economic conditions. It’s no secret that my favorite session at Oracle OpenWorld (besides Larry Ellison’s keynotes and the Customer Appreciation Event, of course) is the Oracle Accelerate Customer Panel. This year we’re featuring executives from three companies who deployed Oracle ERP rapidly to support their company’s growth: Chris Powell, VP and Corporate Controller of Beats by Dr. Dre, a California based designer and manufacturer of premium headphones (sorry, no free samples), Iñaki Zuazo, CIO of Industrias Juno, a building materials provider based in Spain, Kamran Moosa, Project Coordinator for Spartan Engineering, a provider of engineering and construction support services for an LPG storage project in Texas, and That’s a pretty diverse lineup and it will be interesting to hear the perspectives of both IT and financial project stakeholders. The session, “Oracle Accelerate Customer Case Studies: Rapid Deployment of Oracle Applications”, is at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, October 3, in the Concert room at the Palace Hotel. Oracle loves our hometown of San Francisco and it’s a great place to host Oracle OpenWorld. It’s now San Francisco’s largest conference and the city closes off Howard Street to better accommodate the attendees. Some Bay Area commuters may be inconvenienced for a few days by this closure but the conference brings about $100 million into the local economy. Now that’s a two-way street. More Oracle Accelerate at Oracle OpenWorld “Faster, Better, Cheaper Application Deployment with Oracle Business Accelerators”, Monday, October 1st, 10:45 a.m., Moscone West Room 3016 “Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerators for Midsize Companies”, (partners only), Wednesday, October 3, 10:15 a.m., Marriott – Golden Gate B Visit the Oracle Accelerate and Oracle Business Accelerator Kiosk in the Moscone West Exhibit Grounds Download the Focus On Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies Focus document /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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  • Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture?

    - by Michael Glas
    I recently had a discussion around who should own an organization’s Enterprise Architecture. It was spawned by an article titled “Busting CIO Myths” in CIO magazine1 where the author interviewed Jeanne Ross, director of MIT's Center for Information Systems Research and co-author of books on enterprise architecture, governance and IT value.In the article Jeanne states that companies need to acknowledge that "architecture says everything about how the company is going to function, operate, and grow; the only person who can own that is the CEO". "If the CEO doesn't accept that role, there really can be no architecture."The first question that came up when talking about ownership was whether you are talking about a person, role, or organization (there are pros and cons to each, but in general, I like to assign accountability to as few people as possible). After much thought and discussion, I came to the conclusion that we were answering the wrong question. Instead of talking about ownership we were talking about responsibility and accountability, and the answer varies depending on the particular role of the organization’s Enterprise Architecture and the activities of the enterprise architect(s).Instead of looking at just who owns the architecture, think about what the person/role/organization should do. This is one possible scenario (thanks to Bob Covington): The CEO should own the Enterprise Strategy which guides the business architecture. The Business units should own the business processes and information which guide the business, application and information architectures. The CIO should own the technology, IT Governance and the management of the application and information architectures/implementations. The EA Governance Team owns the EA process.  If EA is done well, the governance team consists of both IT and the business. While there are many more roles and responsibilities than listed here, it starts to provide a clearer understanding of ‘ownership’. Now back to Jeanne’s statement that the CEO should own the architecture. If you agree with the statement about what the architecture is (and I do agree), then ultimately the CEO does need to own it. However, what we ended up with was not really ownership, but more statements around roles and responsibilities tied to aspects of the enterprise architecture. You can debate the semantics of ownership vs. responsibility and accountability, but in the end the important thing is to come to a clearer understanding that is easily communicated (and hopefully measured) around the question “Who owns the Enterprise Architecture”.The next logical step . . . create a RACI matrix that details the findings . . . but that is a step that each organization needs to do on their own as it will vary based on current EA maturity, company culture, and a variety of other factors. Who ‘owns’ the Enterprise Architecture in your organization? 1 CIO Magazine Article (Busting CIO Myths): http://www.cio.com/article/704943/Busting_CIO_Myths Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Explorer

    - by Matthew Guay
    Would you like to clean up the Open with menu in Windows Explorer?  Here’s how you can remove program entries you don’t want in this menu on any version of Windows. Have you ever accidently opened an mp3 with Notepad, or a zip file with Word?  If so, you’re also likely irritated that these programs now show up in the Open with menu in Windows Explorer every time you select one of those files.  Whenever you open a file type with a particular program, Windows will add an entry for it to the Open with menu.  Usually this is helpful, but it can also clutter up the menu with wrong entries. On our computer, we have tried to open a PDF file with Word and Notepad, neither which can actually view the PDF itself.  Let’s remove these entries.  To do this, we need to remove the registry entries for these programs.  Enter regedit in your Start menu search or in the Run command to open the Registry editor. Backup your registry first just in case, so you can roll-back any changes you make if you accidently delete the wrong value.  Now, browse to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \ Explorer \FileExts\ Here you’ll see a list of all the file extensions that are registered on your computer. Browse to the file extension you wish to edit, click the white triangle beside it to see the subfolders, and select OpenWithList.  In our test, we want to change the programs associated with PDF files, so we select the OpenWithList folder under .pdf. Notice the names of the programs under the Data column on the right.  Right-click the value for the program you don’t want to see in the Open With menu and select Delete. Click Yes at the prompt to confirm that you want to delete this value. Repeat these steps with all the programs you want to remove from this file type’s Open with menu.  You can go ahead and remove entries from other file types as well if you wish. Once you’ve removed the entries you didn’t want to see, check out the Open with menu in Explorer again.  Now it will be much more streamlined and will only show the programs you want to see. Conclusion This simple trick can help you keep your Open with menu tidy, and only show the programs you want in the list.  It can be irritating to accidently open files in programs that can’t even read them.  This trick works in all versions of Windows, including 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title BarRemove the Username From the Start Menu in XPKeep Start Menu From Closing After Opening ApplicationsRemove PartyPoker (Or Other Items) from the Internet Explorer Tools MenuUninstall, Disable, or Delete Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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  • WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 Active Directory Forms Based Authentication PeoplePicker no users found

    - by John Haigh
    WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007 Active Directory Forms Based Authentication PeoplePicker no users found After finding these steps online from http://dattard.blogspot.com/2008/11/active-directory-forms-based.html in order to setup Active Directory Forms Based Authentication I was all set to complete this task, except for one problem. These steps are missing one very important vital step in order for FBA to work with Active Directory. A supplement to step 3 before granting access in step 5 through the people picker. You need to specify the Active Directory Provider Name to the people picker, otherwise you will not be able specify users through the Policy for Web Application. <PeoplePickerWildcards>       <clear />          <add key="ADMembershipProvider" value="%" />     </PeoplePickerWildcards> Recently we needed to use Forms Based Authentication with Active Directory from an Extranet. This is how we got it to work. 1. Extend the Web Application Instead of tweaking the internal web app, Extend the web application you want to expose to the Extranet, giving it the required host headers etc. 2. Configure SharePoint Central Admin to use FBA for the "new" Web Applications Login to SharePoint Central Admin Go to Application Management / Application Security / Authentication Providers and Change the Web Application to the one which needs to be configured for Forms Based Authentication Click zone / default, change authentication type to forms and enter ActiveDirectoryMemebershipProvider under membership provider name ( for example , "ADMembershipProvider") and save this change 3. Update the web.config of SharePoint Central admin site under configuration node <connectionStrings> <add name="ADConnectionString" connectionString="LDAP://DynamicsAX.local/CN=Users,DC=DynamicsAX,DC=local /> </connectionStrings> under system.web node <membership defaultProvider="ADMembershipProvider"> <providers> <add name="ADMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="ADConnectionString" connectionUsername="xxx" connectionPassword="yyy" enableSearchMethods="true" attributeMapUsername="sAMAccountName"/> </providers> </membership> 4.Update the web.config of SharePoint Web application Repeat step 3 for the web.config of the SharePoint webapplication to be configured for Forms Based Authentication Change the authentication in web.config to <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms loginUrl="/_layouts/login.aspx"></forms> </authentication> 5. Grant Access on the extended Web Application Your extranet web application is now configured to use FBA. However, until users, who will be accessing the site via FBA, are given permissions for the site, it will be inaccessible to them. To get started, open your browser and navigate to your farm’s Central Administration site. Click on Application Management and then click on Policy for Web Application. Make sure that you are working on the extranet web application. Do the following steps: Click on Add Users. In the Zones drop down, select the appropriate Extranet zone. IMPORTANT: If you select the incorrect zone, you may not be able to resolve user names. Hence, the zone you select must match the zone of the web application that is configured to use FBA. Click the Next button. In the Users edit box, type the name of the FBA user whom you wish to have full control for the site. Click the Resolve link next to the Users edit box. If the web application's FBA information has been configured correctly, the name will resolve and become underlined. Check the Full Control checkbox. Click the Finish button.

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  • Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

    - by user801960
    Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

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  • Odd MVC 4 Beta Razor Designer Issue

    - by Rick Strahl
    This post is a small cry for help along with an explanation of a problem that is hard to describe on twitter or even a connect bug and written in hopes somebody has seen this before and any ideas on what might cause this. Lots of helpful people had comments on Twitter for me, but they all assumed that the code doesn't run, which is not the case - it's a designer issue. A few days ago I started getting some odd problems in my MVC 4 designer for an app I've been working on for the past 2 weeks. Basically the MVC 4 Razor designer keeps popping me errors, about the call signature to various Html Helper methods being incorrect. It also complains about the ViewBag object and not supporting dynamic requesting to load assemblies into the project. Here's what the designer errors look like: You can see the red error underlines under the ViewBag and an Html Helper I plopped in at the top to demonstrate the behavior. Basically any HtmlHelper I'm accessing is showing the same errors. Note that the code *runs just fine* - it's just the designer that is complaining with Errors. What's odd about this is that *I think* this started only a few days ago and nothing consequential that I can think of has happened to the project or overall installations. These errors aren't critical since the code runs but pretty annoying especially if you're building and have .csHtml files open in Visual Studio mixing these fake errors with real compiler errors. What I've checked Looking at the errors it indeed looks like certain references are missing. I can't make sense of the Html Helpers error, but certainly the ViewBag dynamic error looks like System.Core or Microsoft.CSharp assemblies are missing. Rest assured they are there and the code DOES run just fine at runtime. This is a designer issue only. I went ahead and checked the namespaces that MVC has access to in Razor which lives in the Views folder's web.config file: /Views/web.config For good measure I added <system.web.webPages.razor> <host factoryType="System.Web.Mvc.MvcWebRazorHostFactory, System.Web.Mvc, <split for layout> Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" /> <pages pageBaseType="System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage"> <namespaces> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Ajax" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Mvc.Html" /> <add namespace="System.Web.Routing" /> <add namespace="System.Linq" /> <add namespace="System.Linq.Expressions" /> <add namespace="ClassifiedsBusiness" /> <add namespace="ClassifiedsWeb"/> <add namespace="Westwind.Utilities" /> <add namespace="Westwind.Web" /> <add namespace="Westwind.Web.Mvc" /> </namespaces> </pages> </system.web.webPages.razor> For good measure I added System.Linq and System.Linq.Expression on which some of the Html.xxxxFor() methods rely, but no luck. So, has anybody seen this before? Any ideas on what might be causing these issues only at design time rather, when the final compiled code runs just fine?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Razor  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Microsoft ReportViewer SetParameters continuous refresh issue

    - by Ilya Verbitskiy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/ilich/archive/2013/10/16/microsoft-reportviewer-setparameters-continuous-refresh-issue.aspxI am a big fun of using ASP.NET MVC for building web-applications. It allows us to create simple, robust and testable solutions. However, .NET world is not perfect. There is tons of code written in ASP.NET web-forms. You cannot simply ignore it, even if you want to. Sometimes ASP.NET web-forms controls bring us non-obvious issues. The good example is Microsoft ReportViewer control. I have an example for you. 1: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %> 2: <%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91" Namespace="Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms" TagPrefix="rsweb" %> 3:   4: <!DOCTYPE html> 5:   6: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 7: <head runat="server"> 8: <title>Report Viewer Continiuse Resfresh Issue Example</title> 9: </head> 10: <body> 11: <form id="form1" runat="server"> 12: <div> 13: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server"></asp:ScriptManager> 14: <rsweb:ReportViewer ID="_reportViewer" runat="server" Width="100%" Height="100%"></rsweb:ReportViewer> 15: </div> 16: </form> 17: </body> 18: </html>   The back-end code is simple as well. I want to show a report with some parameters to a user. 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: _reportViewer.ProcessingMode = ProcessingMode.Remote; 4: _reportViewer.ShowParameterPrompts = false; 5:   6: var serverReport = _reportViewer.ServerReport; 7: serverReport.ReportServerUrl = new Uri("http://localhost/ReportServer_SQLEXPRESS"); 8: serverReport.ReportPath = "/Reports/TestReport"; 9:   10: var reportParameter1 = new ReportParameter("Parameter1"); 11: reportParameter1.Values.Add("Hello World!"); 12:   13: var reportParameter2 = new ReportParameter("Parameter2"); 14: reportParameter2.Values.Add("10/16/2013"); 15:   16: var reportParameter3 = new ReportParameter("Parameter3"); 17: reportParameter3.Values.Add("10"); 18:   19: serverReport.SetParameters(new[] { reportParameter1, reportParameter2, reportParameter3 }); 20: }   I set ShowParametersPrompts to false because I do not want user to refine the search. It looks good until you run the report. The report will refresh itself all the time. The problem caused by ServerReport.SetParameters method in Page_Load. The method cause ReportViewer control to execute the report on the NEXT post back. That is why the page has continuous post-backs. The fix is very simple: do nothing if Page_Load method executed during post-back. 1: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: if (IsPostBack) 4: { 5: return; 6: } 7:   8: _reportViewer.ProcessingMode = ProcessingMode.Remote; 9: _reportViewer.ShowParameterPrompts = false; 10:   11: var serverReport = _reportViewer.ServerReport; 12: serverReport.ReportServerUrl = new Uri("http://localhost/ReportServer_SQLEXPRESS"); 13: serverReport.ReportPath = "/Reports/TestReport"; 14:   15: var reportParameter1 = new ReportParameter("Parameter1"); 16: reportParameter1.Values.Add("Hello World!"); 17:   18: var reportParameter2 = new ReportParameter("Parameter2"); 19: reportParameter2.Values.Add("10/16/2013"); 20:   21: var reportParameter3 = new ReportParameter("Parameter3"); 22: reportParameter3.Values.Add("10"); 23:   24: serverReport.SetParameters(new[] { reportParameter1, reportParameter2, reportParameter3 }); 25: } You can download sample code from GitHub - https://github.com/ilich/Examples/tree/master/ReportViewerContinuousRefresh

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  • SharePoint 2010 Sandboxed solution SPGridView

    - by Steve Clements
    If you didn’t know, you probably will soon, the SPGridView is not available in Sandboxed solutions. To be honest there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of information out there about the whys and what nots, basically its not part of the Sandbox SharePoint API. Of course the error message from SharePoint is about as useful as punch in the face… An unexpected error has been encountered in this Web Part.  Error: A Web Part or Web Form Control on this Page cannot be displayed or imported. You don't have Add and Customize Pages permissions required to perform this action …that’s if you have debug=true set, if not the classic “This webpart cannot be added” !! Love that one! but will a little digging you should find something like this… [TypeLoadException: Could not load  type Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.SPGridView from assembly 'Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.900.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c'.]   Depending on what you want to do with the SPGridView, this may not help at all.  But I’m looking to inherit the theme of the site and style it accordingly. After spending a bit of time with Chrome’s FireBug I was able to get the required CSS classes.  I created my own class inheriting from GridView (note the lack of a preceding SP!) and simply set the styles in there. Inherit from the standard GridView public class PSGridView : GridView   Set the styles in the contructor… public PSGridView() {     this.CellPadding = 2;     this.CellSpacing = 0;     this.GridLines = GridLines.None;     this.CssClass = "ms-listviewtable";     this.Attributes.Add("style", "border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none;");       this.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "ms-viewheadertr";          this.RowStyle.CssClass = "ms-itmhover";     this.SelectedRowStyle.CssClass = "s4-itm-selected";     this.RowStyle.Height = new Unit(25); }   Then as you cant override the Columns property setter, a custom method to add the column and set the style… public PSGridView() {     this.CellPadding = 2;     this.CellSpacing = 0;     this.GridLines = GridLines.None;     this.CssClass = "ms-listviewtable";     this.Attributes.Add("style", "border-bottom-style: none; border-right-style: none; width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; border-top-style: none; border-left-style: none;");       this.HeaderStyle.CssClass = "ms-viewheadertr";          this.RowStyle.CssClass = "ms-itmhover";     this.SelectedRowStyle.CssClass = "s4-itm-selected";     this.RowStyle.Height = new Unit(25); }   And that should be enough to get the nicely styled SPGridView without the need for the SPGridView, but seriously….get the SPGridView in the SandBox!!!   Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,SPGridView,Sandbox Solutions,Sandbox Technorati Tags: Sharepoint 2010,SPGridView,Sandbox Solutions,Sandbox

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  • Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project

    Common business drivers that lead to creating and sustaining a project include and are not limited to: cost reduction, increased return on investment (ROI), reduced time to market, increased speed and efficiency, increased security, and increased interoperability. These drivers primarily focus on streamlining and reducing cost to make a company more profitable with less overhead. According to Answers.com cost reduction is defined as reducing costs to improve profitability, and may be implemented when a company is having financial problems or prevent problems. ROI is defined as the amount of value received relative to the amount of money invested according to PayperclickList.com.  With the ever increasing demands on businesses to compete in today’s market, companies are constantly striving to reduce the time it takes for a concept to become a product and be sold within the global marketplace. In business, some people say time is money, so if a project can reduce the time a business process takes it in fact saves the company which is always good for the bottom line. The Social Security Administration states that data security is the protection of data from accidental or intentional but unauthorized modification, destruction. Interoperability is the capability of a system or subsystem to interact with other systems or subsystems. In my personal opinion, these drivers would not really differ for a profit-based organization, compared to a non-profit organization. Both corporate entities strive to reduce cost, and strive to keep operation budgets low. However, the reasoning behind why they want to achieve this does contrast. Typically profit based organizations strive to increase revenue and market share so that the business can grow. Alternatively, not-for-profit businesses are more interested in increasing their reach within communities whether it is to increase annual donations or invest in the lives of others. Success or failure of a project can be determined by one or more of these drivers based on the scope of a project and the company’s priorities associated with each of the drivers. In addition, if a project attempts to incorporate multiple drivers and is only partially successful, then the project might still be considered to be a success due to how close the project was to meeting each of the priorities. Continuous evaluation of the project could lead to a decision to abort a project, because it is expected to fail before completion. Evaluations should be executed after the completion of every software development process stage. Pfleeger notes that software development process stages include: Requirements Analysis and Definition System Design Program Design Program Implementation Unit Testing Integration Testing System Delivery Maintenance Each evaluation at every state should consider all the business drivers included in the scope of a project for how close they are expected to meet expectations. In addition, minimum requirements of acceptance should also be included with the scope of the project and should be reevaluated as the project progresses to ensure that the project makes good economic sense to continue. If the project falls below these benchmarks then the project should be put on hold until it does make more sense or the project should be aborted because it does not meet the business driver requirements.   References Cost Reduction Program. (n.d.). Dictionary of Accounting Terms. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Answers.com Web site: http://www.answers.com/topic/cost-reduction-program Government Information Exchange. (n.d.). Government Information Exchange Glossary. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from SSA.gov Web site: http://www.ssa.gov/gix/definitions.html PayPerClickList.com. (n.d.). Glossary Term R - Pay Per Click List. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from PayPerClickList.com Web site: http://www.payperclicklist.com/glossary/termr.html Pfleeger, S & Atlee, J.(2009). Software Engineering: Theory and Practice. Boston:Prentice Hall Veluchamy, Thiyagarajan. (n.d.). Glossary « Thiyagarajan Veluchamy’s Blog. Retrieved July 19, 2009, from Thiyagarajan.WordPress.com Web site: http://thiyagarajan.wordpress.com/glossary/

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