grant smith - Page 86 - Developer IT

December release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available now.

- by Jialiang

The code samples in Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework are updated on 2010-12-13. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/, and this Port25 article http://port25.technet.com/archive/2010/01/18/the-all-in-one-code-framework.aspx. -------------- New ASP.NET Code Samples VBASPNETAJAXWebChat and CSASPNETAJAXWebChat Most of you have some experience in chatting with friends on the web. So you may want to know how to make a web chat application, it seems to be quite complicated. But ASP.NET gives you the power to buiild a chat room easily. In this code sample, we will construct our own web chat room with the amazing AJAX feature. The principle is simple relatively. As we all know, a base chat application need 4 base controls: one List control to show the chat room members, one List control to show the message list, one TextBox control to input messages and one button to send message. User inputs his message in the textbox first and then presses Send button, it will send the message to the server. The message list will update every 2 seconds to get the newest message list in the chat room from the server. We need to know, it is hard for us to make an AJAX web chat application like a windows form application because we cannot keep the connection after one web request ended. So a lot of events which communicates between client side and server side cannot be realized. The common workaround is to make web requests in every some seconds to check whether the server side has been updated. But another technique called COMET makes it possible. But it is different with AJAX and will not be talked in details in this KB. For more details about COMET, we can get some clues from the Reference. CSASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList and VBASPNETCurrentOnlineUserList This sample demos a system that needs to display a list of current online users' information. As a matter of fact, Membership.GetNumberOfUsersOnline Method can get the number of online users and there is a convenient approach to check whether the user is online by using Membership.GetUser(string userName).IsOnline property,however many asp.net projects are not using membership.So in this case,the sample shows how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider. It is not difficult to check whether the user is online by using session.Many projects tend to be used “Session_End” event to mark a user as “Offline”,however ,it may not be a good idea,because it can’t detect the user status accurately. In addition, "Session_End" event is only available in the "InProc" session mode. If you are storing session states in the State Server or SQL Server, "Session_End" event will never fire. To handle this issue, we need to save the user online status to a global DataTable or DataBase. In the sample application, define a global DataTable to store the information of online users.Use XmlHttpRequest in the pages to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. The sample project can auto delete offline users' information from a global DataTable by checking users’ last active time. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to display a list of current online users' information without using membership provider: 1. Login page. Let user sign in and add current user’s information to a global datatable while Initialize the global datatable which used to store information of current online users. 2. Current online user list page. Use XmlHttpRequest in this page to update and check user's last active time at intervals and also retrieve information on how many users are still online. 3. If user closes the page without clicking the sign out link button ,the sample project can auto mark the user as offline and delete offline users' information from a global DataTable which used to store information of current online users by checking users’ last active time. Then the current online user list will be like this: CSASPNETIPtoLocation This sample demonstrates how to find the geographical location from an IP address. As we know, it is not hard for us to get the IP address of visitors via Request.ServerVariable property, but it is really difficult for us to know where they come from. To achieve this feature, the sample uses a free third party web service from http://freegeoip.appspot.com/, which returns the information about an IP address we send to the server in the format of XML, JSON or CSV. It makes all things easier. CSASPNETBackgroundWorker Sometimes we do an operation which needs long time to complete. It will stop the response and the page is blank until the operation finished. In this case, we want the operation to run in the background, and in the page, we want to display the progress of the running operation. Therefore, the user can know the operation is running and can know the progress. CSASPNETInheritingFromTreeNode In windows forms TreeView, each tree node has a property called "Tag" which can be used to store a custom object. Many customers want to implement the same tag feature in ASP.NET TreeView. This project creates a custom TreeView control named "CustomTreeView" to achieve this goal. CSASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload and VBASPNETRemoteUploadAndDownload This code sample was created in response to a code sample request in our new code sample request frunction for customers. The code samples demonstrate uploading files to and downloading files from a remote HTTP or FTP server. In .NET Framework 2.0 and higher versions, there are some lightweight class libraries which support HTTP and FTP protocol transmission. By using these classes, we can achieve this programming requirement. CSASPNETImageEditUpload and VBASPNETImageEditUpload This demo will shows how to insert, edit and update a common image with the type of "jpg", "png", "gif" or "bmp" . We mainly use two different SqlDataSources with the same database to bind to GridView and FormView in order to establish the “cascading” effort. Besides we apply our self-made ImageHanlder to encoding or decoding images of different types, and use context to output the stream of images. We will explicitly assign the binary streams of images through the event of “FormView_ItemInserting” or “Form_ItemUpdating” to synchronize the stream both in what we can see on an aspx page as well as in what’s really stored in the database. WebBrowser Control, Network and other Windows General New Code Samples CSWebBrowserSuppressError and VBWebBrowserSuppressError The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser suppress errors, such as script error, navigation error and so on. CSWebBrowserWithProxy and VBWebBrowserWithProxy The sample demonstrates how to make WebBrowser use a proxy server. CSWebDownloadProgress and VBWebDownloadProgress The sample demonstrates how to show progress during the download. It also supplies the features to Start, Pause, Resume and Cancel a download. CppSetDesktopWallpaper, CSSetDesktopWallpaper and VBSetDesktopWallpaper This code sample application allows you select an image, view a preview (resized smaller to fit if necessary), select a display style among Tile, Center, Stretch, Fit (Windows 7 and later) and Fill (Windows 7 and later), and set the image as the Desktop wallpaper. CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty and VBWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty CSWindowsServiceRecoveryProperty example demonstrates how to use ChangeServiceConfig2 to configure the service "Recovery" properties in C#. This example operates all the options you can see on the service "Recovery" tab, including setting the "Enable actions for stops with errors" option in Windows Vista and later operating systems. This example also include how to grant the shut down privilege to the process, so that we can configure a special option in the "Recovery" tab - "Restart Computer Options...". New Office Development Code Samples CSOneNoteRibbonAddIn and VBOneNoteRibbonAddIn The code sample demonstrates a OneNote 2010 COM add-in that implements IDTExtensibility2. The add-in also supports customizing the Ribbon by implementing the IRibbonExtensibility interface. It is a skeleton OneNote add-in that developers can extend it to implement more functions. The code sample was requested by a customer in our code sample request service. We expect that this could help developers in the community. New Windows Shell Code Samples CppShellExtPreviewHandler, CSShellExtPreviewHandler and VBShellExtPreviewHandler In the past two months, we released the code samples of Windows Context Menu Handler, Infotip Handler, and Thumbnail Handler. This is the fourth part of the shell extension series: Preview Handler. The code samples demo the C++, C# and VB.NET implementation of a preview handler for a new file type registered with the .recipe extension. Preview handlers are called when an item is selected to show a lightweight, rich, read-only preview of the file's contents in the view's reading pane. This is done without launching the file's associated application. Windows Vista and later operating systems support preview handlers. To be a valid preview handler, several interfaces must be implemented. This includes IPreviewHandler (shobjidl.h); IInitializeWithFile, IInitializeWithStream, or IInitializeWithItem (propsys.h); IObjectWithSite (ocidl.h); and IOleWindow (oleidl.h). There are also optional interfaces, such as IPreviewHandlerVisuals (shobjidl.h), that a preview handler can implement to provide extended support. Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework makes the implementation of these interfaces very easy in .NET. The example preview handler provides previews for .recipe files. The .recipe file type is simply an XML file registered as a unique file name extension. It includes the title of the recipe, its author, difficulty, preparation time, cook time, nutrition information, comments, an embedded preview image, and so on. The preview handler extracts the title, comments, and the embedded image, and display them in a preview window. In response to many customers' request, we added setup projects in every shell extension samples in this release. Those setup projects allow you to deploy the shell extensions to your end users' machines. ---------- Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/57459#DownloadId=185534 Updated code sample index categorized by technologies: http://1code.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=All-In-One%20Code%20Framework%20Sample%20Catalog (it also allows you to download individual code samples instead of the entire All-In-One Code Framework sample package.) If you have any feedback for us, please email: [email protected]. We look forward to your comments.

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Heaps of Trouble?

- by Paul White NZ

If you’re not already a regular reader of Brad Schulz’s blog, you’re missing out on some great material. In his latest entry, he is tasked with optimizing a query run against tables that have no indexes at all. The problem is, predictably, that performance is not very good. The catch is that we are not allowed to create any indexes (or even new statistics) as part of our optimization efforts. In this post, I’m going to look at the problem from a slightly different angle, and present an alternative solution to the one Brad found. Inevitably, there’s going to be some overlap between our entries, and while you don’t necessarily need to read Brad’s post before this one, I do strongly recommend that you read it at some stage; he covers some important points that I won’t cover again here. The Example We’ll use data from the AdventureWorks database, copied to temporary unindexed tables. A script to create these structures is shown below: CREATE TABLE #Custs ( CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, TerritoryID INTEGER NULL, CustomerType NCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #Prods ( ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, Name NVARCHAR(50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL, SalesOrderNumber NVARCHAR(25) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderQty SMALLINT NOT NULL, LineTotal NUMERIC(38,6) NOT NULL, ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO INSERT #Custs ( CustomerID, TerritoryID, CustomerType ) SELECT C.CustomerID, C.TerritoryID, C.CustomerType FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.Customer C WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #Prods ( ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID, Name ) SELECT P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.Name FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product P WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID, OrderDate, SalesOrderNumber, CustomerID ) SELECT H.SalesOrderID, H.OrderDate, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.CustomerID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderHeader H WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID, OrderQty, LineTotal, ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID ) SELECT D.SalesOrderID, D.OrderQty, D.LineTotal, D.ProductID, D.ProductID, D.ProductID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail D WITH (TABLOCK); The query itself is a simple join of the four tables: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #OrdDetail D ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID ORDER BY P.ProductMainID ASC OPTION (RECOMPILE, MAXDOP 1); Remember that these tables have no indexes at all, and only the single-column sampled statistics SQL Server automatically creates (assuming default settings). The estimated query plan produced for the test query looks like this (click to enlarge): The Problem The problem here is one of cardinality estimation – the number of rows SQL Server expects to find at each step of the plan. The lack of indexes and useful statistical information means that SQL Server does not have the information it needs to make a good estimate. Every join in the plan shown above estimates that it will produce just a single row as output. Brad covers the factors that lead to the low estimates in his post. In reality, the join between the #Prods and #OrdDetail tables will produce 121,317 rows. It should not surprise you that this has rather dire consequences for the remainder of the query plan. In particular, it makes a nonsense of the optimizer’s decision to use Nested Loops to join to the two remaining tables. Instead of scanning the #OrdHeader and #Custs tables once (as it expected), it has to perform 121,317 full scans of each. The query takes somewhere in the region of twenty minutes to run to completion on my development machine. A Solution At this point, you may be thinking the same thing I was: if we really are stuck with no indexes, the best we can do is to use hash joins everywhere. We can force the exclusive use of hash joins in several ways, the two most common being join and query hints. A join hint means writing the query using the INNER HASH JOIN syntax; using a query hint involves adding OPTION (HASH JOIN) at the bottom of the query. The difference is that using join hints also forces the order of the join, whereas the query hint gives the optimizer freedom to reorder the joins at its discretion. Adding the OPTION (HASH JOIN) hint results in this estimated plan: That produces the correct output in around seven seconds, which is quite an improvement! As a purely practical matter, and given the rigid rules of the environment we find ourselves in, we might leave things there. (We can improve the hashing solution a bit – I’ll come back to that later on). Faster Nested Loops It might surprise you to hear that we can beat the performance of the hash join solution shown above using nested loops joins exclusively, and without breaking the rules we have been set. The key to this part is to realize that a condition like (A = B) can be expressed as (A <= B) AND (A >= B). Armed with this tremendous new insight, we can rewrite the join predicates like so: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #OrdDetail D JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID >= H.SalesOrderID AND D.SalesOrderID <= H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID >= C.CustomerID AND H.CustomerID <= C.CustomerID JOIN #Prods P ON P.ProductMainID >= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductMainID <= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (RECOMPILE, LOOP JOIN, MAXDOP 1, FORCE ORDER); I’ve also added LOOP JOIN and FORCE ORDER query hints to ensure that only nested loops joins are used, and that the tables are joined in the order they appear. The new estimated execution plan is: This new query runs in under 2 seconds. Why Is It Faster? The main reason for the improvement is the appearance of the eager Index Spools, which are also known as index-on-the-fly spools. If you read my Inside The Optimiser series you might be interested to know that the rule responsible is called JoinToIndexOnTheFly. An eager index spool consumes all rows from the table it sits above, and builds a index suitable for the join to seek on. Taking the index spool above the #Custs table as an example, it reads all the CustomerID and TerritoryID values with a single scan of the table, and builds an index keyed on CustomerID. The term ‘eager’ means that the spool consumes all of its input rows when it starts up. The index is built in a work table in tempdb, has no associated statistics, and only exists until the query finishes executing. The result is that each unindexed table is only scanned once, and just for the columns necessary to build the temporary index. From that point on, every execution of the inner side of the join is answered by a seek on the temporary index – not the base table. A second optimization is that the sort on ProductMainID (required by the ORDER BY clause) is performed early, on just the rows coming from the #OrdDetail table. The optimizer has a good estimate for the number of rows it needs to sort at that stage – it is just the cardinality of the table itself. The accuracy of the estimate there is important because it helps determine the memory grant given to the sort operation. Nested loops join preserves the order of rows on its outer input, so sorting early is safe. (Hash joins do not preserve order in this way, of course). The extra lazy spool on the #Prods branch is a further optimization that avoids executing the seek on the temporary index if the value being joined (the ‘outer reference’) hasn’t changed from the last row received on the outer input. It takes advantage of the fact that rows are still sorted on ProductMainID, so if duplicates exist, they will arrive at the join operator one after the other. The optimizer is quite conservative about introducing index spools into a plan, because creating and dropping a temporary index is a relatively expensive operation. It’s presence in a plan is often an indication that a useful index is missing. I want to stress that I rewrote the query in this way primarily as an educational exercise – I can’t imagine having to do something so horrible to a production system. Improving the Hash Join I promised I would return to the solution that uses hash joins. You might be puzzled that SQL Server can create three new indexes (and perform all those nested loops iterations) faster than it can perform three hash joins. The answer, again, is down to the poor information available to the optimizer. Let’s look at the hash join plan again: Two of the hash joins have single-row estimates on their build inputs. SQL Server fixes the amount of memory available for the hash table based on this cardinality estimate, so at run time the hash join very quickly runs out of memory. This results in the join spilling hash buckets to disk, and any rows from the probe input that hash to the spilled buckets also get written to disk. The join process then continues, and may again run out of memory. This is a recursive process, which may eventually result in SQL Server resorting to a bailout join algorithm, which is guaranteed to complete eventually, but may be very slow. The data sizes in the example tables are not large enough to force a hash bailout, but it does result in multiple levels of hash recursion. You can see this for yourself by tracing the Hash Warning event using the Profiler tool. The final sort in the plan also suffers from a similar problem: it receives very little memory and has to perform multiple sort passes, saving intermediate runs to disk (the Sort Warnings Profiler event can be used to confirm this). Notice also that because hash joins don’t preserve sort order, the sort cannot be pushed down the plan toward the #OrdDetail table, as in the nested loops plan. Ok, so now we understand the problems, what can we do to fix it? We can address the hash spilling by forcing a different order for the joins: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #Custs C JOIN #OrdHeader H ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN #OrdDetail D ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (MAXDOP 1, HASH JOIN, FORCE ORDER); With this plan, each of the inputs to the hash joins has a good estimate, and no hash recursion occurs. The final sort still suffers from the one-row estimate problem, and we get a single-pass sort warning as it writes rows to disk. Even so, the query runs to completion in three or four seconds. That’s around half the time of the previous hashing solution, but still not as fast as the nested loops trickery. Final Thoughts SQL Server’s optimizer makes cost-based decisions, so it is vital to provide it with accurate information. We can’t really blame the performance problems highlighted here on anything other than the decision to use completely unindexed tables, and not to allow the creation of additional statistics. I should probably stress that the nested loops solution shown above is not one I would normally contemplate in the real world. It’s there primarily for its educational and entertainment value. I might perhaps use it to demonstrate to the sceptical that SQL Server itself is crying out for an index. Be sure to read Brad’s original post for more details. My grateful thanks to him for granting permission to reuse some of his material. Paul White Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PaulWhiteNZ

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How to Use USER_DEFINED Activity in OWB Process Flow

- by Jinggen He

Process Flow is a very important component of Oracle Warehouse Builder. With Process Flow, we can create and control the ETL process by setting all kinds of activities in a well-constructed flow. In Oracle Warehouse Builder 11gR2, there are 28 kinds of activities, which fall into three categories: Control activities, OWB specific activities and Utility activities. For more information about Process Flow activities, please refer to OWB online doc. Most of those activities are pre-defined for some specific use. For example, the Mapping activity allows execution an OWB mapping in Process Flow and the FTP activity allows an interaction between the local host and a remote FTP server. Besides those activities for specific purposes, the User Defined activity enables you to incorporate into a Process Flow an activity that is not defined within Warehouse Builder. So the User Defined activity brings flexibility and extensibility to Process Flow. In this article, we will take an amazing tour of using the User Defined activity. Let's start. Enable execution of User Defined activity Let's start this section from creating a very simple Process Flow, which contains a Start activity, a User Defined activity and an End Success activity. Leave all parameters of activity USER_DEFINED unchanged except that we enter /tmp/test.sh into the Value column of the COMMAND parameter. Then let's create the shell script test.sh in /tmp directory. Here is the content of /tmp/test.sh (this article is demonstrating a scenario in Linux system, and /tmp/test.sh is a Bash shell script): echo Hello World! > /tmp/test.txt Note: don't forget to grant the execution privilege on /tmp/test.sh to OS Oracle user. For simplicity, we just use the following command. chmod +x /tmp/test.sh OK, it's so simple that we’ve almost done it. Now deploy the Process Flow and run it. For a newly installed OWB, we will come across an error saying "RPE-02248: For security reasons, activity operator Shell has been disabled by the DBA". See below. That's because, by default, the User Defined activity is DISABLED. Configuration about this can be found in <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/bin/admin/Runtime.properties: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint=DISABLED The property can be set to three different values: NATIVE_JAVA, SCHEDULER and DISBALED. Where NATIVE_JAVA uses the Java 'Runtime.exec' interface, SCHEDULER uses a DBMS Scheduler external job submitted by the Control Center repository owner which is executed by the default operating system user configured by the DBA. DISABLED prevents execution via these operators. We enable the execution of User Defined activity by setting: property.RuntimePlatform.0.NativeExecution.Shell.security_constraint= NATIVE_JAVA Restart the Control Center service for the change of setting to take effect. cd <ORACLE_HOME>/owb/rtp/sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @stop_service.sql sqlplus OWBSYS/<password of OWBSYS> @start_service.sql And then run the Process Flow again. We will see that the Process Flow completes successfully. The execution of /tmp/test.sh successfully generated a file /tmp/test.txt, containing the line Hello World!. Pass parameters to User Defined Activity The Process Flow created in the above section has a drawback: the User Defined activity doesn't accept any information from OWB nor does it give any meaningful results back to OWB. That's to say, it lacks interaction. Maybe, sometimes such a Process Flow can fulfill the business requirement. But for most of the time, we need to get the User Defined activity executed according to some information prior to that step. In this section, we will see how to pass parameters to the User Defined activity and pass them into the to-be-executed shell script. First, let's see how to pass parameters to the script. The User Defined activity has an input parameter named PARAMETER_LIST. This is a list of parameters that will be passed to the command. Parameters are separated from one another by a token. The token is taken as the first character on the PARAMETER_LIST string, and the string must also end in that token. Warehouse Builder recommends the '?' character, but any character can be used. For example, to pass 'abc,' 'def,' and 'ghi' you can use the following equivalent: ?abc?def?ghi? or !abc!def!ghi! or |abc|def|ghi| If the token character or '\' needs to be included as part of the parameter, then it must be preceded with '\'. For example '\\'. If '\' is the token character, then '/' becomes the escape character. Let's configure the PARAMETER_LIST parameter as below: And modify the shell script /tmp/test.sh as below: echo $1 is saying hello to $2! > /tmp/test.txt Re-deploy the Process Flow and run it. We will see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: Bob is saying hello to Alice! In the example above, the parameters passed into the shell script are static. This case is not so useful because: instead of passing parameters, we can directly write the value of the parameters in the shell script. To make the case more meaningful, we can pass two dynamic parameters, that are obtained from the previous activity, to the shell script. Prepare the Process Flow as below: The Mapping activity MAPPING_1 has two output parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. The User Defined activity has two input parameters: FROM_USER, TO_USER. All the four parameters are of String type. Additionally, the Process Flow has two string variables: VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER. Through VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER, the input parameter FROM_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter FROM_USER of MAPPING_1. We achieve this by binding both parameters to VARIABLE_FOR_FROM_USER. See the two figures below. In the same way, through VARIABLE_FOR_TO_USER, the input parameter TO_USER of USER_DEFINED gets value from output parameter TO_USER of MAPPING_1. Also, we need to change the PARAMETER_LIST of the User Defined activity like below: Now, the shell script is getting input from the Mapping activity dynamically. Deploy the Process Flow and all of its necessary dependees then run the Process Flow. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! 'USER B' and 'USER A' are two outputs of the Mapping execution. Write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder In the previous section, the shell script is located in the /tmp directory. But sometimes, when the shell script is small, or for the sake of maintaining consistency, you may want to keep the shell script inside Oracle Warehouse Builder. We can achieve this by configuring these three parameters of a User Defined activity properly: COMMAND: Set the path of interpreter, by which the shell script will be interpreted. PARAMETER_LIST: Set it blank. SCRIPT: Enter the shell script content. Note that in Linux the shell script content is passed into the interpreter as standard input at runtime. About how to actually pass parameters to the shell script, we can utilize variable substitutions. As in the following figure, ${FROM_USER} will be replaced by the value of the FROM_USER input parameter of the User Defined activity. So will the ${TO_USER} symbol. Besides the custom substitution variables, OWB also provide some system pre-defined substitution variables. You can refer to the online document for that. Deploy the Process Flow and run it. We see that the generated /tmp/test.txt contains the following line: USER B is saying hello to USER A! Leverage the return value of User Defined activity All of the previous sections are connecting the User Defined activity to END_SUCCESS with an unconditional transition. But what should we do if we want different subsequent activities for different shell script execution results? 1. The simplest way is to add three simple-conditioned out-going transitions for the User Defined activity just like the figure below. In the figure, to simplify the scenario, we connect the User Defined activity to three End activities. Basically, if the shell script ends successfully, the whole Process Flow will end at END_SUCCESS, otherwise, the whole Process Flow will end at END_ERROR (in our case, ending at END_WARNING seldom happens). In the real world, we can add more complex and meaningful subsequent business logic. 2. Or we can utilize complex conditions to work with different results of the User Defined activity. Previously, in our script, we only have this line: echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt We can add more logic in it and return different values accordingly. echo ${FROM_USER} is saying hello to ${TO_USER}! > /tmp/test.txt if CONDITION_1 ; then ...... exit 0 fi if CONDITION_2 ; then ...... exit 2 fi if CONDITION_3 ; then ...... exit 3 fi After that we can leverage the result by checking RESULT_CODE in condition expression of those out-going transitions. Let's suppose that we have the Process Flow as the following graph (SUB_PROCESS_n stands for more different further processes): We can set complex condition for the transition from USER_DEFINED to SUB_PROCESS_1 like this: Other transitions can be set in the same way. Note that, in our shell script, we return 0, 2 and 3, but not 1. As in Linux system, if the shell script comes across a system error like IO error, the return value will be 1. We can explicitly handle such a return value. Summary Let's summarize what has been discussed in this article: How to create a Process Flow with a User Defined activity in it How to pass parameters from the prior activity to the User Defined activity and finally into the shell script How to write the shell script within Oracle Warehouse Builder How to do variable substitutions How to let the User Defined activity return different values and in what way can we leverage

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top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – October 2012

- by JuergenKress

Send your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/wlscommunity WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Real World Java EE Patterns by Adam Bien http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mp Markus Eisele?@myfear #JavaOne Content Available for Free https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/javaone_content_available_for_free … /via @java Adam Bien?@AdamBien Thought that 1h screencast is way too long to be popular. I was wrong. Lightweight Java EE is doing very well: http://www.adam-bien.com/roller/abien/entry/lightweight_java_ee_screencast … OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs COLLABORATE 13 Call for Papers http://ow.ly/2szPuZ Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic New Blog Post: Data Source Security Part 1 http://ow.ly/2szFbv Markus Eisele?@myfear My Three Days at #JavaOne 2012 http://yakovfain.com/2012/10/04/my-three-days-at-javaone-2012/ … < nice writeup ;) Adam Bien?@AdamBien JavaOne 2012 Announcements And Surprises: NetBeans 7.3+ comes with HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS 3 support. JavaScript... http://bit.ly/Uy14eD Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb OOW'12: Oracle ADF Implementations Around the Globe: Best Practices http://fb.me/1IVg6gzU0 gschmutz?@gschmutz Just published a blog with a wrap-up of my presentations at OOW 2012. https://guidoschmutz.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/my-presentations-at-oracle-open-world-2012/ … #oow2012 #trivadis Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb OOW'12: Oracle Business Process Management/Oracle ADF Integration Best Practices http://fb.me/1GY3nz1lb WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity ExaLogic 2.01 ppt & training & Installation check-list & tips & Web tier roadmap http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mh Adam Bien?@AdamBien JavaOne 2012, First Feedback and The Strange Thing: NetBeans day was surprising well attended. A big room was fu... http://bit.ly/PwWwx8 OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Free registration for our next webcast on setting up and using a #weblogic #cluster http://pub.vitrue.com/xWV8 WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity UKOUG Application Server & Middleware SIG Meeting http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mC Ronald Luttikhuizen?@rluttikhuizen Discussing future plans for Oracle Middleware Infrastructure Group with @simon_haslam @Jphjulstad and Rene van Wijk #oow @wlscommunity JAX London?@jaxlondon Be part of #JAXLondon- only 11 days to go! Still need a ticket? http://buff.ly/TUPKmL WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity ExaLogic X3-2 launched at OOW 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mM WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity @OracleEvents Dear Oracle Team thanks for promoting the WebLogic bootcamp, new schedules are online https://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnerweblogic/resource/weblogic12c.htm … #weblogiccommunity OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs Partner Webcast Introducing Oracle Business Activity Monitoring - 18 October 2012 http://ow.ly/2svzyz AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Grant posted a nice little video on youtube about the #ADF EMG activities during Oracle Open World. http://youtu.be/qZhtBqnK-Zc GlassFish?@glassfish ADF Essentials - Available for free and certified on GlassFish!: If you are an Oracle customer, you are probably... http://bit.ly/UCtVwY OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs WebLogic 12 hands-on bootcamps for partnersnew dates & locations http://ow.ly/2smOfs Pieter Kranenburg?@pskranenburg I'm EXA and I know IT! How about you? Go to http://bit.ly/OnSlDd and find out! (you might win an #iphone5 ;-) #OOW please RT Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb Enabling WebLogic Administrator Group Inside Custom ADF Application http://fb.me/2d5SCeJ2g Michel Schildmeijer?@MNEMONIC01 I'm EXA and I know IT! How about you? Go to http://bit.ly/OnSlDd (you might win an #iphone5 ;-) #oow OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Step-by-step instructions on how to configure mail Alerts in #OEM 11g for #WebLogic Servers up/down status http://pub.vitrue.com/KpZq Jeff West?@jeffreyawest Answer: Deliver JMS message to a single node in a Weblogic Cluster with a Distributed Topic http://stackoverflow.com/a/12396492/697114?stw=2 … Java?@java Bucharest Java User Group: Launched and Growing! #JUG http://ow.ly/dDnbN OracleSupport_WLS?@weblogicsupport Don't shoot the messenger! #Java source code analyzer @ http://pub.vitrue.com/Cy2J JAX London?@jaxlondon .@BrianGoetz gives in depth session on the details of how #Lambda expressions are implemented in the #Java language at #JAXLondon" ADF Community DE?@ADFCommunityDE Webcast ADFNewsSession: ADF as a basis of Fusion Apps - the biggest ADF project ever. Sep 14, 8:30 AM CET. Dial in https://blogs.oracle.com/jdevotnharvest/entry/adf_partner_community_news_session … OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs WebLogic & Coherence & Cloud presentations for customer meetings http://ow.ly/1mqwrC Pieter Kranenburg?@pskranenburg Seminar: Oracle WebLogic 12c at Qualogy. You are invited! http://bit.ly/Ps9LDF Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic New Blog Post: Oracle OpenWorld Update -- General Session: Oracle Fusion Middleware Strategies Driving Business Inno... http://ow.ly/2stylf Oracle Cloud Zone?@OracleCloudZone New partner programs for Oracle Cloud Solutions http://bit.ly/PrVq5O #cloud #oow Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema The strategy on Java - JEE, SE, ME, FX: http://technology.amis.nl/2012/10/02/javaone-2012-strategy-and-technical-keynote/ … #javaone #oow_amis WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Send your #WebLogicCommunity #oow pictures and blog posts @wlscommunity or http://www.facebook.com/weblogiccommunity … Enjoy OOW ;-) WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity Become an WebLogic 12c expert, attend our partner bootcampshttps://blogs.oracle.com/emeapartnerweblogic/resource/weblogic12c.htm … #WebLogicCommunity #opn AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Volgende #oracle #ADF training bij @AMIS_SERVICES is van 12 tot 16 november. Meer info of aanmelden? http://www.amis.nl/Trainingen/oracle-adf-11g-applicatieontwikkeling/ … Devoxx?@Devoxx ALL the Devoxx 2011 talks are now freely available on Parleys @ http://www.parleys.com/#st=4&id=102998 Pls RT! Adam Bien?@AdamBien Use the coupon code "PLUMA" and you will get 20% off for "Real World Java EE Patterns": http://realworldpatterns.com Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema Very good summary of the #JavaOne Technical Keynote last night: http://java.dzone.com/articles/javaone-2012-javaone-technical … Arun Gupta?@arungupta Blogged: JavaOne 2012 Keynote and GlassFish Party Pictures: Some pictures from the keynote ... And som... http://bit.ly/ViH0ue Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema Most recent promoted build for GassFish 4.0 (EE7) has WebSocket support: to play with: http://dlc.sun.com.edgesuite.net/glassfish/4.0/promoted/ … #javaone michael palmeter?@michaelpalmeter If you haven't seen the 5-minute Exalogic demo, you need to (do it now!) - http://lnkd.in/GRqy3x Lonneke Dikmans?@lonnekedikmans VENNSTER BLOG: Running EclipseLink DBWS 2.4.0 on GlassFish 3.1.2 http://blog.vennster.nl/2012/09/running-eclipselink-dbws-240-on.html?spref=tw … WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter September 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-mf WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity again again again…. it is Oracle Open World 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-m6 Markus Eisele?@myfear #WebLogic and #JavaEE Roadmap and Strategy Session at OOW http://ow.ly/2slZEY /via @OracleWebLogic Adam Bien?@AdamBien An Article About Java EE Connector Architectures 1.6 (JCA 1.6): The free Java Magazine article: Java EE Connect... http://bit.ly/St6sxq Lucas Jellema?@lucasjellema ADF Essentials - free to develop and to deploy (I said: free!) - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/overview/adfessentials-1719844.html … AMIS, Oracle & Java?@AMIS_Services Blog by Lucas Jellema: "Develop and Deploy ADF applications – free of charge using the new ADF Essentials" http://bit.ly/StAhxY Andrejus Baranovskis?@andrejusb ADF Essentials - Quick Technical Review http://fb.me/2hKCXyF43 OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs GlassFish Extension for Oracle JDeveloper http://ow.ly/2slIO8 Retweetet von WebLogic Community Oracle Eclipse?@OEPE New Tutorial: Using ADF Faces and ADF Controller with Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse. #OEPE http://pub.vitrue.com/QoUg Simon Haslam?@simon_haslam As of the last day or two there's a new Java Products Media Pack on http://edelivery.oracle.com (rather than it being in FMW pack) WebLogic Community?@wlscommunity top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – September 2012 http://wp.me/p1LMIb-m2 Adam Bien?@AdamBien I was interviewed by OTN: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/jaxawards-1843595.html …See you at JavaOne! Oracle WebLogic?@OracleWebLogic DevOps Basics for #WebLogic: Track Down High CPU Thread with ps, top and the new JDK7 jcmd tool. Great blog @frankmuz. http://ow.ly/dOBM4 Simon Haslam?@simon_haslam Looking for "oak style"(!) advanced content but you're a middleware specialist? See #ukoug2012 #middlewaresunday http://2012.ukoug.org/default.asp?p=9355 … Julien Ponge ?@jponge Just finished Java EE 6 + AngularJS samples for my upcoming middleware lectures. Code at https://github.com/jponge/todoapp-javaee6-angularjs … and https://github.com/jponge/todoapp-bosswatch … Markus Eisele?@myfear #Oracle #WebLogic is now totally #FREE for #Developer - more than just OTN license to develop the 1st prototype! http://bit.ly/SWltsR Markus Eisele?@myfear #WebSockets on #WebLogic Server http://ow.ly/1mv4QP by @wlsteve < need to give this a testdrive ;) OracleEnterpriseMgr?@oracle_em EM Blog : Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 2 (12.1.0.2) is Available Now ! #em12c http://pub.vitrue.com/mk7o OracleBlogs?@OracleBlogs ADF training material now on the iPad http://ow.ly/1mqz1Q GlassFish?@glassfish GlassFish grows by 50% in Software Stack Market Share Report for August 2012 by @Jelastic http://awe.sm/o4ZAp WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Can static methods be called using object/instance in .NET

Ans is Yes and No Yes in C++, Java and VB.NET No in C# This is only compiler restriction in c#. You might see in some websites that we can break this restriction using reflection and delegates, but we can’t, according to my little research J I shall try to explain you… Following is code sample to break this rule using reflection, it seems that it is possible to call a static method using an object, p1 using System; namespace T { class Program { static void Main() { var p1 = new Person() { Name = "Smith" }; typeof(Person).GetMethod("TestStatMethod").Invoke(p1, new object[] { }); } class Person { public string Name { get; set; } public static void TestStatMethod() { Console.WriteLine("Hello"); } } } } but I do not think so this method is being called using p1 rather Type Name “Person”. I shall try to prove this… look at another example… Test2 has been inherited from Test1. Let’s see various scenarios… Scenario1 using System; namespace T { class Program { static void Main() { Test1 t = new Test1(); typeof(Test2).GetMethod("Method1").Invoke(t, new object[] { }); } } class Test1 { public static void Method1() { Console.WriteLine("At test1::Method1"); } } class Test2 : Test1 { public static void Method1() { Console.WriteLine("At test1::Method2"); } } } Output: At test1::Method2 Scenario2 static void Main() { Test2 t = new Test2(); typeof(Test2).GetMethod("Method1").Invoke(t, new object[] { }); } Output: At test1::Method2 Scenario3 static void Main() { Test1 t = new Test2(); typeof(Test2).GetMethod("Method1").Invoke(t, new object[] { }); } Output: At test1::Method2 In all above scenarios output is same, that means, Reflection also not considering the object what you pass to Invoke method in case of static methods. It is always considering the type which you specify in typeof(). So, what is the use passing instance to “Invoke”. Let see below sample using System; namespace T { class Program { static void Main() { typeof(Test2).GetMethod("Method1"). Invoke(null, new object[] { }); } } class Test1 { public static void Method1() { Console.WriteLine("At test1::Method1"); } } class Test2 : Test1 { public static void Method1() { Console.WriteLine("At test1::Method2"); } } } Output is At test1::Method2 I was able to call Invoke “Method1” of Test2 without any object. Yes, there no wonder here as Method1 is static. So we may conclude that static methods cannot be called using instances (only in c#) Why Microsoft has restricted it in C#? Ans: Really there Is no use calling static methods using objects because static methods are stateless. but still Java and C++ latest compilers allow calling static methods using instances. Java sample class Test { public static void main(String str[]) { Person p = new Person(); System.out.println(p.GetCount()); } } class Person { public static int GetCount() { return 100; } } Output 100 span.fullpost {display:none;}

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How I Record Screencasts

- by Daniel Moth

I get this asked a lot so here is my brain dump on the topic. What A screencast is just a demo that you present to yourself while recording the screen. As such, my advice for clearing your screen for demo purposes and setting up Visual Studio still applies here (adjusting for the fact I wrote those blog posts when I was running Vista and VS2008, not Windows 8 and VS2012). To see examples of screencasts, watch any of my screencasts on channel9. Why If you are a technical presenter, think of when you get best reactions from a developer audience in your sessions: when you are doing demos, of course. Imagine if you could package those alone and share them with folks to watch over and over? If you have ever gone through a tutorial trying to recreate steps to explore a feature, think how much more helpful it would be if you could watch a video and follow along. Think of how many folks you "touch" with a conference presentation, and how many more you can reach with an online shorter recording of the demo. If you invest so much of your time for the first type of activity, isn't the second type of activity also worth an investment? Fact: If you are able to record a screencast of a demo, you will be much better prepared to deliver it in person. In fact lately I will force myself to make a screencast of any demo I need to present live at an upcoming event. It is also a great backup - if for whatever reason something fails (software, network, etc) during an attempt of a live demo, you can just play the recorded video for the live audience. There are other reasons (e.g. internal sharing of the latest implemented feature) but the context above is the one within which I create most of my screencasts. Software & Hardware I use Camtasia from Tech Smith, version 7.1.1. Microsoft has a variety of options for capturing the screen to video, but I have been using this software for so long now that I have not invested time to explore alternatives… I also use whatever cheapo headset is near me, but sometimes I get some complaints from some folks about the audio so now I try to remember to use "the good headset". I do not use a web camera as I am not a huge fan of PIP. Preparation First you have to know your technology and demo. Once you think you know it, write down the outline and major steps of the demo. Keep it short 5-20 minutes max. I break that rule sometimes but try not to. The longer the video is the more chances that people will not have the patience to sit through it and the larger the download wmv file ends up being. Run your demo a few times, timing yourself each time to ensure that you have the planned timing correct, but also to make sure that you are comfortable with what you are going to demo. Unlike with a live audience, there is no live reaction/feedback to steer you, so it can be a bit unnerving at first. It can also lead you to babble too much, so try extra hard to be succinct when demoing/screencasting on your own. TIP: Before recording, hide your desktop/taskbar clock if it is showing. Recording To record you start the Camtasia Recorder tool Configure the settings thought the menus Capture menu to choose custom size or full screen. I try to use full screen and remember to lower the resolution of your screen to as low as possible, e.g. 1024x768 or 1360x768 or something like that. From the Tools -> Options dialog you can choose to record audio and the volume level. Effects menu I typically leave untouched but you should explore and experiment to your liking, e.g. how the mouse pointer is captured, and whether there should be a delay for the recording when you start it. Once you've configured these settings, typically you just launch this tool and hit the F9 key to start recording. TIP: As you record, if you ever start to "lose your way" hit F9 again to pause recording, regroup your thoughts and flow, and then hit F9 again to resume. Finally, hit F10 to stop recording. At that point the video starts playing for you in the recorder. This is where you can preview the video to see that you are happy with it before saving. If you are happy, hit the Save As menu to choose where you want to save the video. TIP: If you've really lost your way to the extent where you'll need to do some editing, hit F10 to stop recording, save the video and then record some more - you'll be able to stitch the videos together later and this will make it easier for you to delete the parts where you messed up. TIP: Before you commit to recording the whole demo, every time you should record 5 seconds and preview them to ensure that you are capturing the screen the way you want to and that your audio is still correctly configured and at the right level. Trust me, you do not want to be recording 15 minutes only to find out that you messed up on the configuration somewhere. Editing To edit the video you launch another Camtasia app, the Camtasia Studio. File->New Project. File->Save Project and choose location. File->Import Media and choose the video(s) you saved earlier. These adds them to the area at the top/middle but not at the timeline at the bottom. Right click on the video and choose Add to timeline. It will prompt you for the Editing dimensions and I always choose Recording Dimensions. Do whatever edits you want to do for this video, then add the next video if you have one to stitch and repeat. In terms of edits there are many options. The simplest is to do nothing, which is the option I did when I first starting doing these in 2006. Nowadays, I typically cut out pieces that I don't like and also lower/mute the audio in other areas and also speed up the video in some areas. A full tutorial on how to do this is beyond the scope of this blog post, but your starting point is to select portions on the timeline and then open the Edit menu at the very top (tip: the context menu doesn't have all options). You can spend hours editing a recording, so don’t lose track of time! When you are done editing, save again, and you are now ready to Produce. Producing Production is specific to where you will publish. I've only ever published on channel9, so for that I do the following File -> Produce and share. This opens a wizard dialog In the dropdown choose Custom production settings Hit Next and then choose WMV Hit Next and keep the default of Camtasia Studio Best Quality and File Size (recommended) Hit Next and choose Editing dimensions video size Hit Next, hit Options and you get a dialog. Enter a Title for the project tab and then on the author tab enter the Creator and Homepage. Hit OK Hit Next. Hit Next again. Enter a video file name in the Production name textbox and then hit Finish. Now do other stuff while you wait for the video to be produced and you hear it playing. After the video is produced watch it to ensure it was produced correctly (e.g. sometimes you get mouse issues) and then you are ready for publishing it. Publishing Follow the instructions of the place where you are going to publish. If you are MSFT internal and want to choose channel9 then contact those folks so they can share their instructions (if you don't know who they are ping me and I'll connect you but they are easy to find in the GAL). For me this involves using a tool to point to the video, choosing a file name (again), choosing an image from the video to display when it is not playing, choosing what output formats I want, and then later on a webpage adding tags, adding a description, and adding a title. That’s all folks, have fun! Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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unexpected EOF and end of document

- by WASasquatch

I have been fiddling with this code for a few days. Mind you I am a beginner. I just want to get my script to be able to download a remote file, and scan MineCraft plugins. I got the scan plugins to work, but I'm having two other issues. One, I can't get the mc_addplugin to work correctly, and I get a Unexpected EOF and unexpected end of document when running any other command besides mc_scanplugins or mc_start bash: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"' bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file Help would be so much appreciated! Thanks in advance. #!/bin/bash # /etc/init.d/craftbukkit # version 0.9.1 2012-07-06 (YYYY-MM-DD) ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: craftbukkit # Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs # Required-Stop: $local_fs $remote_fs # Should-Start: $network # Should-Stop: $network # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: Starts craftbukkit server # Description: Starts and controls the craftbukkit server ### END INIT INFO # SETTINGS SERVICE='craftbukkit-1.2.5-R1.0.jar' OPTIONS='nogui' USERNAME='smith' # LIST ALL THE WORLDS IN YOUR CRAFTBUKKIT SERVER FOLDER WORLDS[1]='world' WORLDS[2]='world_nether' WORLDS[3]='world_the_end' WORLDS[4]='flat_world' MCPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation' PLUGINSPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation/plugins' TEMPPLUGINS='/var/www/servers/Foundationplugins/temp_plugins' BACKUPPATH='/var/www/servers/Foundation/backup' CPU_COUNT=2 INVOCATION="java -Xmx2024M -Xms2024M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSIncrementalPacing -XX:ParallelGCThreads=$CPU_COUNT -XX:+AggressiveOpts -jar $SERVICE $OPTIONS" ME=`whoami` as_user() { if [ $ME == $USERNAME ] ; then bash -c "$1" else su - $USERNAME -c "$1" fi } mc_start() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is already running!" else echo "Starting $SERVICE..." cd $MCPATH as_user "cd $MCPATH && screen -dmS craftbukkit $INVOCATION" sleep 7 if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is now running." else echo "Error! Could not start $SERVICE!" fi fi } mc_saveoff() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... suspending saves" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say The server is preforming a backup. Server going to read-only mode. Do not build...\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-off\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sync sleep 10 else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Not suspending saves." fi } mc_save() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... Saving worlds..." as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sync sleep 10 echo "Save complete!" else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Cannot save!" fi } mc_saveon() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running... re-enabling saves" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-on\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say Server backup has completed. Server going to read-write mode. You can now continue building...\"\015'" else echo "$SERVICE is not running. Not resuming saves." fi } mc_stop() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "Stopping $SERVICE" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"say $SERVERNAME is shutting down in 30 seconds! Please stop what you are doing. Check back later, we'll be back!\"\015'" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"save-all\"\015'" sleep 30 as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"stop\"\015'" sleep 7 else echo "$SERVICE was not running." fi if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "Error! $SERVICE could not be stopped." else echo "$SERVICE is stopped." fi } mc_update() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running! Will not start update." else MC_SERVER_URL=http://dl.bukkit.org/latest-rb/craftbukkit.jar as_user "cd $MCPATH && wget -q -O $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MC_SERVER_URL" if [ -f $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update ] then if `diff $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update >/dev/null` then echo "You are already running the latest version of $SERVICE. Update anyway? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/${SERVICE}_old.jar" as_user "mv $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MCPATH/$SERVICE" echo "$SERVICE updated successfully!"; break;; No ) echo "The update was not installed! Removing temporary files and exiting..." as_user "rm $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update" exit;; esac done else as_user "mv $MCPATH/$SERVICE $MCPATH/${SERVICE}_old.jar" as_user "mv $MCPATH/craftbukkit_server.jar.update $MCPATH/$SERVICE" echo "$SERVICE updated successfully!" fi else echo "$SERVICE update could not be downloaded." fi fi } mc_addplugin() { if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running! Please stop the service before adding a plugin." else echo "Paste the URL to the .JAR Plugin..." read JARURL JARNAME=$(basename "$JARURL") if [ -d "$TEMPPLUGINS" ] then as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && wget -r -A.jar $JARURL -o temp_plugins/$JARNAME" else as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && mkdir $TEMPPLUGINS && wget -r -A.jar $JARURL -o temp_plugins/$JARNAME" fi if [ -f "$TMPDIR/$JARNAME" ] then if [ -f "$PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME" ] then if `diff $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TMPDIR/$JARNAME >/dev/null` then echo "You are already running the latest version of $JARNAME." else NOW=`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M"` echo "Are you sure you want to overwrite this plugin? [Y/n]" echo "Note: Your old plugin will be moved to the "$TEMPPLUGINS" folder with todays date." select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TEMPPLUGINS/${JARNAME}_${NOW} && mv $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME"; break;; No ) echo "The plugin has not been installed! Removing temporary plugin and exiting..." as_user "rm $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME"; exit;; esac done echo "Would you like to start the $SERVICE now? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) mc_start; break;; No ) "$SERVICE not running! To start the service run: /etc/init.d/craftbukkit start"; exit;; esac done fi else echo "Are you sure you want to add this new plugin? [Y/n]" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) as_user "mv $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME $TEMPPLUGINS/${JARNAME}_${NOW} && mv $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME $PLUGINSPATH/$JARNAME"; break;; No ) echo "The plugin has not been installed! Removing temporary plugin and exiting..." as_user "rm $TEMPPLUGINS/$JARNAME"; exit;; esac done echo "Would you like to start the $SERVICE now? [Y/n]?" select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in Yes ) mc_start; break;; No ) "$SERVICE not running! To start the service run: /etc/init.d/craftbukkit start"; exit;; esac done fi else echo "Failed to download the plugin from the URL you specified!" exit; fi fi } mc_scanplugins() { if [ "$(ls -A $PLUGINSPATH)" ] then shopt -s nullglob PLUGINS=($PLUGINSPATH/*.jar) i=1 for f in "${PLUGINS[@]}" do echo "${i}: $f" PLUGIN[$i]=$f i=$(( $i + 1 )) done echo "Enter the ID of a plugin you want removed, or any other key to cancel." read INPUT if [ ! -z "${INPUT##*[!0-9]*}" ] then if [ -f "${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" ] then echo "Removing plugin..." JAR=$(basename ${PLUGIN[INPUT]}) JARNAME=${JAR%.jar} as_user "rm -f ${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" sleep 2 as_user "cd $PLUGINSPATH && rm -rf ./${JARNAME}" if [ -f "${PLUGINSPATH}/${JARNAME}" ] then echo "Plugin folder could not be removed..." fi echo "Plugin removed." else echo "${PLUGIN[INPUT]}" echo "Invalid plugin! Does not exist! Canceling..." exit; fi else echo "Canceling..." exit; fi else echo "You have no plugins installed." exit; fi } mc_backup() { mc_saveoff for i in "${WORLDS[@]}"; do NOW=`date "+%Y-%m-%d_%Hh%M"` BACKUP_FILE="$BACKUPPATH/${i}_${NOW}.tar" echo "Backing up world: $i..." #as_user "cd $MCPATH && cp -r $i $BACKUPPATH/${i}_`date "+%Y.%m.%d_%H.%M""` as_user "tar -C \"$MCPATH\" -cf \"$BACKUP_FILE\" $i" done echo "Backing up $SERVICE" as_user "tar -C \"$MCPATH\" -rf \"$BACKUP_FILE\" $SERVICE" #as_user "cp \"$MCPATH/$SERVICE\" \"$BACKUPPATH/craftbukkit_server_${NOW}.jar\"" mc_saveon echo "Compressing backup..." as_user "tar -cvzf $BACKUPPATH/server_backup_${NOW}.tar.gz $MCPATH" echo "Backup has completed successfully." } mc_command() { command="$1"; if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then pre_log_len=`wc -l "$MCPATH/server.log" | awk '{print $1}'` echo "$SERVICE is running... executing command" as_user "screen -p 0 -S craftbukkit -X eval 'stuff \"$command\"\015'" sleep .1 # assumes that the command will run and print to the log file in less than .1 seconds # print output tail -n $[`wc -l "$MCPATH/server.log" | awk '{print $1}'`-$pre_log_len] "$MCPATH/server.log" fi } #Start-Stop here case "$1" in start) mc_start ;; stop) mc_stop ;; restart) mc_stop mc_start ;; save) mc_save ;; update) mc_stop mc_backup mc_update mc_start ;; scanplugins) mc_scanplugins ;; addplugin) mc_addplugin ;; backup) mc_backup ;; status) if pgrep -u $USERNAME -f $SERVICE > /dev/null then echo "$SERVICE is running." else echo "$SERVICE is not running." fi ;; command) if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then shift mc_command "$*" else echo "Must specify server command (try 'help'?)" fi ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|update|backup|status|restart|command \"server command\"}" exit 1 ;; esac exit 0

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Set up linux box for hosting a-z

- by microchasm

I am in the process of reinstalling the OS on a machine that will be used to host a couple of apps for our business. The apps will be local only; access from external clients will be via vpn only. The prior setup used a hosting control panel (Plesk) for most of the admin, and I was looking at using another similar piece of software for the reinstall - but I figured I should finally learn how it all works. I can do most of the things the software would do for me, but am unclear on the symbiosis of it all. This is all an attempt to further distance myself from the land of Configuration Programmer/Programmer, if at all possible. I can't find a full walkthrough anywhere for what I'm looking for, so I thought I'd put up this question, and if people can help me on the way I will edit this with the answers, and document my progress/pitfalls. Hopefully someday this will help someone down the line. The details: CentOS 5.5 x86_64 httpd: Apache/2.2.3 mysql: 5.0.77 (to be upgraded) php: 5.1 (to be upgraded) The requirements: SECURITY!! Secure file transfer Secure client access (SSL Certs and CA) Secure data storage Virtualhosts/multiple subdomains Local email would be nice, but not critical The Steps: Download latest CentOS DVD-iso (torrent worked great for me). Install CentOS: While going through the install, I checked the Server Components option thinking I was going to be using another Plesk-like admin. In hindsight, considering I've decided to try to go my own way, this probably wasn't the best idea. Basic config: Setup users, networking/ip address etc. Yum update/upgrade. Upgrade PHP/MySQL: To upgrade PHP and MySQL to the latest versions, I had to look to another repo outside CentOS. IUS looks great and I'm happy I found it! Add IUS repository to our package manager cd /tmp wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/x86_64/epel-release-1-1.ius.el5.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh epel-release-1-1.ius.el5.noarch.rpm wget http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/x86_64/ius-release-1-4.ius.el5.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh ius-release-1-4.ius.el5.noarch.rpm yum list | grep -w \.ius\. # list all the packages in the IUS repository; use this to find PHP/MySQL version and libraries you want to install Remove old version of PHP and install newer version from IUS rpm -qa | grep php # to list all of the installed php packages we want to remove yum shell # open an interactive yum shell remove php-common php-mysql php-cli #remove installed PHP components install php53 php53-mysql php53-cli php53-common #add packages you want transaction solve #important!! checks for dependencies transaction run #important!! does the actual installation of packages. [control+d] #exit yum shell php -v PHP 5.3.2 (cli) (built: Apr 6 2010 18:13:45) Upgrade MySQL from IUS repository /etc/init.d/mysqld stop rpm -qa | grep mysql # to see installed mysql packages yum shell remove mysql mysql-server #remove installed MySQL components install mysql51 mysql51-server mysql51-devel transaction solve #important!! checks for dependencies transaction run #important!! does the actual installation of packages. [control+d] #exit yum shell service mysqld start mysql -v Server version: 5.1.42-ius Distributed by The IUS Community Project Upgrade instructions courtesy of IUS wiki: http://wiki.iuscommunity.org/Doc/ClientUsageGuide Install rssh (restricted shell) to provide scp and sftp access, without allowing ssh login cd /tmp wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rssh/rssh-2.3.2-1.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm rpm -ivh rssh-2.3.2-1.2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm useradd -m -d /home/dev -s /usr/bin/rssh dev passwd dev Edit /etc/rssh.conf to grant access to SFTP to rssh users. vi /etc/rssh.conf Uncomment or add: allowscp allowsftp This allows me to connect to the machine via SFTP protocol in Transmit (my FTP program of choice; I'm sure it's similar with other FTP apps). rssh instructions appropriated (with appreciation!) from http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-restrict-shell-access-with-rssh.html Set up virtual interfaces ifconfig eth1:1 192.168.1.3 up #start up the virtual interface cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ cp ifcfg-eth1 ifcfg-eth1:1 #copy default script and match name to our virtual interface vi ifcfg-eth1:1 #modify eth1:1 script #ifcfg-eth1:1 | modify so it looks like this: DEVICE=eth1:1 IPADDR=192.168.1.3 NETMASK=255.255.255.0 NETWORK=192.168.1.0 ONBOOT=yes NAME=eth1:1 Add more Virtual interfaces as needed by repeating. Because of the ONBOOT=yes line in the ifcfg-eth1:1 file, this interface will be brought up when the system boots, or the network starts/restarts. service network restart Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ] Shutting down interface eth1: [ OK ] Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ] Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ] Bringing up interface eth0: [ OK ] Bringing up interface eth1: [ OK ] ping 192.168.1.3 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.105 ms And this is where I'm at. I will keep editing this as I make progress. Any tips on how to Configure virtual interfaces/ip based virtual hosts for SSL, setting up a CA, or anything else would be appreciated.

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Masters vs. PhD - long [closed]

- by Sterling

I'm 21 years old and a first year master's computer science student. Whether or not to continue with my PhD has been plaguing me for the past few months. I can't stop thinking about it and am extremely torn on the issue. I have read http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html and many, many other masters vs phd articles on the web. Unfortunately, I have not yet come to a conclusion. I was hoping that I could post my ideas about the issue on here in hopes to 1) get some extra insight on the issue and 2) make sure that I am correct in my assumptions. Hopefully having people who have experience in the respective fields can tell me if I am wrong so I don't make my decision based on false ideas. Okay, to get this topic out of the way - money. Money isn't the most important thing to me, but it is still important. It's always been a goal of mine to make 6 figures, but I realize that will probably take me a long time with either path. According to most online salary calculating sites, the average starting salary for a software engineer is ~60-70k. The PhD program here is 5 years, so that's about 300k I am missing out on by not going into the workforce with a masters. I have only ever had ~1k at one time in my life so 300k is something I can't even really accurately imagine. I know that I wouldn't have at once obviously, but just to know I would be earning that is kinda crazy to me. I feel like I would be living quite comfortably by the time I'm 30 years old (but risk being too content too soon). I would definitely love to have at least a few years of my 20s to spend with that kind of money before I have a family to spend it all on. I haven't grown up very financially stable so it would be so nice to just spend some money…get a nice car, buy a new guitar or two, eat some good food, and just be financially comfortable. I have always felt like I deserved to make good money in my life, even as a kid growing up, and I just want to have it be a reality. I know that either path I take will make good money by the time I'm ~40-45 years old, but I guess I'm just sick of not making money and am getting impatient about it. However, a big idea pushing me towards a PhD is that I feel the masters path would give me a feeling of selling out if I have the capability to solve real questions in the computer science world. (pretty straight-forward - not much to elaborate on, but this is a big deal) Now onto other aspects of the decision. I originally got into computer science because of programming. I started in high school and knew very soon that it was what I wanted to do for a career. I feel like getting a masters and being a software engineer in the industry gives me much more time to program in my career. In research, I feel like I would spend more time reading, writing, trying to get grant money, etc than I would coding. A guy I work with in the lab just recently published a paper. He showed it to me and I was shocked by it. The first two pages was littered with equations and formulas. Then the next page or so was followed by more equations and formulas that he derived from the previous ones. That was his work - breaking down and creating all of these formulas for robotic arm movement. And whenever I read computer science papers, they all seem to follow this pattern. I always pictured myself coding all day long…not proving equations and things of that nature. I know that's only one part of computer science research, but that part bores me. A couple cons on each side - Phd - I don't really enjoy writing or feel like I'm that great at technical writing. Whenever I'm in groups to make something, I'm always the one who does the large majority of the work and then give it to my team members to write up a report. Presenting is different though - I don't mind presenting at all as long as I have a good grasp on what I am presenting. But writing papers seems like such a chore to me. And because of this, the "publish or perish" phrase really turns me off from research. Another bad thing - I feel like if I am doing research, most of it would be done alone. I work best in small groups. I like to have at least one person to bounce ideas off of when I am brainstorming. The idea of being a part of some small elite group to build things sounds ideal to me. So being able to work in small groups for the majority of my career is a definite plus. I don't feel like I can get this doing research. Masters - I read a lot online that most people come in as engineers and eventually move into management positions. As of now, I don't see myself wanting to be a part of management. Lets say my company wanted to make some new product or system - I would get much more pride, enjoyment, and overall satisfaction to say "I made this" rather than "I managed a group of people that made this." I want to be a big part of the development process. I want to make things. I think it would be great to be more specialized than other people. I would rather know everything about something than something about everything. I always have been that way - was a great pitcher during my baseball years, but not so good at everything else, great at certain classes in school, but not so good at others, etc. To think that my career would be the same way sounds okay to me. Getting a PhD would point me in this direction. It would be great to be some guy who is someone that people look towards and come to ask for help because of being such an important contributor to a very specific field, such as artificial neural networks or robotic haptic perception. From what I gather about the software industry, being specialized can be a very bad thing because of the speed of the new technology. I When it comes to being employed, I have pretty conservative views. I don't want to change companies every 5 years. Maybe this is something everyone wishes, but I would love to just be an important person in one company for 10+ (maybe 20-25+ if I'm lucky!) years if the working conditions were acceptable. I feel like that is more possible as a PhD though, being a professor or researcher. The more I read about people in the software industry, the more it seems like most software engineers bounce from company to company at rapid paces. Some even work like a hired gun from project to project which is NOT what I want AT ALL. But finding a place to make great and important software would be great if that actually happens in the real world. I'm a very competitive person. I thrive on competition. I don't really know why, but I have always been that way even as a kid growing up. Competition always gave me a reason to practice that little extra every night, always push my limits, etc. It seems to me like there is no competition in the research world. It seems like everyone is very relaxed as long as research is being conducted. The only competition is if someone is researching the same thing as you and its whoever can finish and publish first (but everyone seems to careful to check that circumstance). The only noticeable competition to me is just with yourself and your own discipline. I like the idea that in the industry, there is real competition between companies to put out the best product or be put out of business. I feel like this would constantly be pushing me to be better at what I do. One thing that is really pushing me towards a PhD is the lifetime of the things you make. I feel like if you make something truly innovative in the industry…just some really great new application or system…there is a shelf-life of about 5-10 years before someone just does it faster and more efficiently. But with research work, you could create an idea or algorithm that last decades. For instance, the A* search algorithm was described in 1968 and is still widely used today. That is amazing to me. In the words of Palahniuk, "The goal isn't to live forever, its to create something that will." Over anything, I just want to do something that matters. I want my work to help and progress society. Seriously, if I'm stuck programming GUIs for the next 40 years…I might shoot myself in the face. But then again, I hate the idea that less than 1% of the population will come into contact with my work and even less understand its importance. So if anything I have said is false then please inform me. If you think I come off as a masters or PhD, inform me. If you want to give me some extra insight or add on to any point I made, please do. Thank you so much to anyone for any help.

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Data Source Security Part 3

- by Steve Felts

In part one, I introduced the security features and talked about the default behavior. In part two, I defined the two major approaches to security credentials: directly using database credentials and mapping WLS user credentials to database credentials. Now it's time to get down to a couple of the security options (each of which can use database credentials or WLS credentials). Set Client Identifier on Connection When "Set Client Identifier" is enabled on the data source, a client property is associated with the connection. The underlying SQL user remains unchanged for the life of the connection but the client value can change. This information can be used for accounting, auditing, or debugging. The client property is based on either the WebLogic user mapped to a database user using the credential map 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; 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-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} or is the database user parameter directly from the getConnection() method, based on the “use database credentials” setting described earlier. To enable this feature, select “Set Client ID On Connection” in the Console. See "Enable Set Client ID On Connection for a JDBC data source" http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E24329_01/apirefs.1211/e24401/taskhelp/jdbc/jdbc_datasources/EnableCredentialMapping.html in Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help. The Set Client Identifier feature is only available for use with the Oracle thin driver and the IBM DB2 driver, based on the following interfaces. For pre-Oracle 12c, oracle.jdbc.OracleConnection.setClientIdentifier(client) is used. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/network.111/b28531/authentication.htm#i1009003 for more information about how to use this for auditing and debugging. You can get the value using getClientIdentifier() from the driver. To get back the value from the database as part of a SQL query, use a statement like the following. “select sys_context('USERENV','CLIENT_IDENTIFIER') from DUAL”. Starting in Oracle 12c, java.sql.Connection.setClientInfo(“OCSID.CLIENTID", client) is used. This is a JDBC standard API, although the property values are proprietary. A problem with setClientIdentifier usage is that there are pieces of the Oracle technology stack that set and depend on this value. If application code also sets this value, it can cause problems. This has been addressed with setClientInfo by making use of this method a privileged operation. A well-managed container can restrict the Java security policy grants to specific namespaces and code bases, and protect the container from out-of-control user code. When running with the Java security manager, permission must be granted in the Java security policy file for permission "oracle.jdbc.OracleSQLPermission" "clientInfo.OCSID.CLIENTID"; Using the name “OCSID.CLIENTID" allows for upward compatible use of “select sys_context('USERENV','CLIENT_IDENTIFIER') from DUAL” or use the JDBC standard API java.sql.getClientInfo(“OCSID.CLIENTID") to retrieve the value. This value in the Oracle USERENV context can be used to drive the Oracle Virtual Private Database (VPD) feature to create security policies to control database access at the row and column level. Essentially, Oracle Virtual Private Database adds a dynamic WHERE clause to a SQL statement that is issued against the table, view, or synonym to which an Oracle Virtual Private Database security policy was applied. See Using Oracle Virtual Private Database to Control Data Access http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/network.111/b28531/vpd.htm for more information about VPD. Using this data source feature means that no programming is needed on the WLS side to set this context; it is set and cleared by the WLS data source code. For the IBM DB2 driver, com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Connection.setDB2ClientUser(client) is used for older releases (prior to version 9.5). This specifies the current client user name for the connection. Note that the current client user name can change during a connection (unlike the user). This value is also available in the CURRENT CLIENT_USERID special register. You can select it using a statement like “select CURRENT CLIENT_USERID from SYSIBM.SYSTABLES”. When running the IBM DB2 driver with JDBC 4.0 (starting with version 9.5), java.sql.Connection.setClientInfo(“ClientUser”, client) is used. You can retrieve the value using java.sql.Connection.getClientInfo(“ClientUser”) instead of the DB2 proprietary API (even if set setDB2ClientUser()). Oracle Proxy Session Oracle proxy authentication allows one JDBC connection to act as a proxy for multiple (serial) light-weight user connections to an Oracle database with the thin driver. You can configure a WebLogic data source to allow a client to connect to a database through an application server as a proxy user. The client authenticates with the application server and the application server authenticates with the Oracle database. This allows the client's user name to be maintained on the connection with the database. Use the following steps to configure proxy authentication on a connection to an Oracle database. 1. If you have not yet done so, create the necessary database users. 2. On the Oracle database, provide CONNECT THROUGH privileges. For example: SQL> ALTER USER connectionuser GRANT CONNECT THROUGH dbuser; where “connectionuser” is the name of the application user to be authenticated and “dbuser” is an Oracle database user. 3. Create a generic or GridLink data source and set the user to the value of dbuser. 4a. To use WLS credentials, create an entry in the credential map that maps the value of wlsuser to the value of dbuser, as described earlier. 4b. To use database credentials, enable “Use Database Credentials”, as described earlier. 5. Enable Oracle Proxy Authentication, see "Configure Oracle parameters" in Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Help. 6. Log on to a WebLogic Server instance using the value of wlsuser or dbuser. 6. Get a connection using getConnection(username, password). The credentials are based on either the WebLogic user that is mapped to a database user or the database user directly, based on the “use database credentials” setting. You can see the current user and proxy user by executing: “select user, sys_context('USERENV','PROXY_USER') from DUAL". Note: getConnection fails if “Use Database Credentials” is not enabled and the value of the user/password is not valid for a WebLogic Server user. Conversely, it fails if “Use Database Credentials” is enabled and the value of the user/password is not valid for a database user. A proxy session is opened on the connection based on the user each time a connection request is made on the pool. The proxy session is closed when the connection is returned to the pool. Opening or closing a proxy session has the following impact on JDBC objects. - Closes any existing statements (including result sets) from the original connection. - Clears the WebLogic Server statement cache. - Clears the client identifier, if set. -The WebLogic Server test statement for a connection is recreated for every proxy session. These behaviors may impact applications that share a connection across instances and expect some state to be associated with the connection. Oracle proxy session is also implicitly enabled when use-database-credentials is enabled and getConnection(user, password) is called,starting in WLS Release 10.3.6. Remember that this only works when using the Oracle thin driver. To summarize, the definition of oracle-proxy-session is as follows. - If proxy authentication is enabled and identity based pooling is also enabled, it is an error. - If a user is specified on getConnection() and identity-based-connection-pooling-enabled is false, then oracle-proxy-session is treated as true implicitly (it can also be explicitly true). - If a user is specified on getConnection() and identity-based-connection-pooling-enabled is true, then oracle-proxy-session is treated as false.

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WPF TabControl - how to preserve control state within tab items (MVVM pattern)

- by Tim Coulter

I am a newcomer to WPF, attempting to build a project that follows the recommendations of Josh Smith's excellent article describing The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern. Using Josh's sample code as a base, I have created a simple application that contains a number of "workspaces", each represented by a tab in a TabControl. In my application, a workspace is a document editor that allows a hierarchical document to be manipulated via a TreeView control. Although I have succeeded in opening multiple workspaces and viewing their document content in the bound TreeView control, I find that the TreeView "forgets" its state when switching between tabs. For example, if the TreeView in Tab1 is partially expanded, it will be shown as fully collapsed after switching to Tab2 and returning to Tab1. This behaviour appears to apply to all aspects of control state for all controls. After some experimentation, I have realized that I can preserve state within a TabItem by explicitly binding each control state property to a dedicated property on the underlying ViewModel. However, this seems like a lot of additional work, when I simply want all my controls to remember their state when switching between workspaces. I assume I am missing something simple, but I am not sure where to look for the answer. Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks, Tim Update: As requested, I will attempt to post some code that demonstrates this problem. However, since the data that underlies the TreeView is complex, I will post a simplified example that exhibits the same symtoms. Here is the XAML from the main window: <TabControl IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Docs}"> <TabControl.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <ContentPresenter Content="{Binding Path=Name}" /> </DataTemplate> </TabControl.ItemTemplate> <TabControl.ContentTemplate> <DataTemplate> <view:DocumentView /> </DataTemplate> </TabControl.ContentTemplate> </TabControl> The above XAML correctly binds to an ObservableCollection of DocumentViewModel, whereby each member is presented via a DocumentView. For the simplicity of this example, I have removed the TreeView (mentioned above) from the DocumentView and replaced it with a TabControl containing 3 fixed tabs: <TabControl> <TabItem Header="A" /> <TabItem Header="B" /> <TabItem Header="C" /> </TabControl> In this scenario, there is no binding between the DocumentView and the DocumentViewModel. When the code is run, the inner TabControl is unable to remember its selection when the outer TabControl is switched. However, if I explicitly bind the inner TabControl's SelectedIndex property ... <TabControl SelectedIndex="{Binding Path=SelectedDocumentIndex}"> <TabItem Header="A" /> <TabItem Header="B" /> <TabItem Header="C" /> </TabControl> ... to a corresponding dummy property on the DocumentViewModel ... public int SelecteDocumentIndex { get; set; } ... the inner tab is able to remember its selection. I understand that I can effectively solve my problem by applying this technique to every visual property of every control, but I am hoping there is a more elegant solution.

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How to read from path in wpf comboboxitem and write into path of binding

- by Chrik

Hi, I tried to make up an example to show my problem. My combobox has a list of objects as itemssource. In my example it's a list of Persons. In the combobox i want to show the first name and the last name of the person. But i want to save the last name of the person in the "owner" property of the house-object. My guess was that i bind the SelectedValue to my property and the SelectedValuePath to the name of the property in the comboboxitem. I already googled and tried a view other versions but nothing worked. If i use SelectedItem instead of SelectedValue with the same binding at least the value of the "tostring" function get's written in the property. Sadly that solution doesn't fit in the Rest of my Program because i don't want to override "ToString". The Xaml: <Window x:Class="MultiColumnCombobox.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300" x:Name="window"> <Grid> <ComboBox Height="23" Margin="72,12,86,0" Name="ComboBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" SelectedValue="{Binding CurrentHouse.Owner, ElementName=window, Mode=TwoWay}" SelectedValuePath="LastName" ItemsSource="{Binding PersonList, ElementName=window, Mode=Default}"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <WrapPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=FirstName}" Padding="10,0,0,0" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=LastName}" Padding="10,0,0,0" /> </WrapPanel> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> </ComboBox> <Button Height="23" Click="PrintButton_Click" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,0,0,9" Name="PrintButton" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="75">Print</Button> </Grid> The C# using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Windows; using System; namespace MultiColumnCombobox { public partial class Window1 : Window { private List _PersonList = new List(); public List PersonList { get { return _PersonList; } set { _PersonList = value; } } private House _CurrentHouse = new House { Owner = "Green", Number = "11" }; public House CurrentHouse { get { return _CurrentHouse; } } public Window1() { InitializeComponent(); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "Peter", LastName = "Smith"}); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "John", LastName = "Meyer"}); PersonList.Add(new Person {FirstName = "Fritz", LastName = "Green"}); } private void PrintButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show(CurrentHouse.Owner + ":" + CurrentHouse.Number); } } public class House { public string Owner { get; set; } public string Number { get; set; } } public class Person { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string LastName { get; set; } } } Maybe someone has an idea, Christian

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Paying great programmers more than average programmers

- by Kelly French

It's fairly well recognized that some programmers are up to 10 times more productive than others. Joel mentions this topic on his blog. There is a whole blog devoted to the idea of the "10x productive programmer". In years since the original study, the general finding that "There are order-of-magnitude differences among programmers" has been confirmed by many other studies of professional programmers (Curtis 1981, Mills 1983, DeMarco and Lister 1985, Curtis et al. 1986, Card 1987, Boehm and Papaccio 1988, Valett and McGarry 1989, Boehm et al 2000). Fred Brooks mentions the wide range in the quality of designers in his "No Silver Bullet" article, The differences are not minor--they are rather like the differences between Salieri and Mozart. Study after study shows that the very best designers produce structures that are faster, smaller, simpler, cleaner, and produced with less effort. The differences between the great and the average approach an order of magnitude. The study that Brooks cites is: H. Sackman, W.J. Erikson, and E.E. Grant, "Exploratory Experimental Studies Comparing Online and Offline Programming Performance," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 11, No. 1 (January 1968), pp. 3-11. The way programmers are paid by employers these days makes it almost impossible to pay the great programmers a large multiple of what the entry-level salary is. When the starting salary for a just-graduated entry-level programmer, we'll call him Asok (From Dilbert), is $40K, even if the top programmer, we'll call him Linus, makes $120K that is only a multiple of 3. I'd be willing to be that Linus does much more than 3 times what Asok does, so why wouldn't we expect him to get paid more as well? Here is a quote from Stroustrup: "The companies are complaining because they are hurting. They can't produce quality products as cheaply, as reliably, and as quickly as they would like. They correctly see a shortage of good developers as a part of the problem. What they generally don't see is that inserting a good developer into a culture designed to constrain semi-skilled programmers from doing harm is pointless because the rules/culture will constrain the new developer from doing anything significantly new and better." This leads to two questions. I'm excluding self-employed programmers and contractors. If you disagree that's fine but please include your rationale. It might be that the self-employed or contract programmers are where you find the top-10 earners, but please provide a explanation/story/rationale along with any anecdotes. [EDIT] I thought up some other areas in which talent/ability affects pay. Financial traders (commodities, stock, derivatives, etc.) designers (fashion, interior decorators, architects, etc.) professionals (doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc.) sales Questions: Why aren't the top 1% of programmers paid like A-list movie stars? What would the industry be like if we did pay the "Smart and gets things done" programmers 6, 8, or 10 times what an intern makes? [Footnote: I posted this question after submitting it to the Stackoverflow podcast. It was included in episode 77 and I've written more about it as a Codewright's Tale post 'Of Rockstars and Bricklayers'] Epilogue: It's probably unfair to exclude contractors and the self-employed. One aspect of the highest earners in other fields is that they are free-agents. The competition for their skills is what drives up their earning power. This means they can not be interchangeable or otherwise treated as a plug-and-play resource. I liked the example in one answer of a major league baseball team trying to field two first-basemen. Also, something that Joel mentioned in the Stackoverflow podcast (#77). There are natural dynamics to shrink any extreme performance/pay ranges between the highs and lows. One is the peer pressure of organizations to pay within a given range, another is the likelyhood that the high performer will realize their undercompensation and seek greener pastures.

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Mule xml to soap problem

- by kevfuzz

Hi, I'm not sure if there many Mule users on here but I'm hoping someone might be able to help me! I'm having a problem calling a webservice from Mule using Axis. I've created a fairly simple example where I have xml in a file being read by Mule, it's then transformed into a Document and sent to the webservice. The relevant code in the mule config looks like this: <inbound> <file:inbound-endpoint path="./files/initial" transformer-refs="FileToString xmlToDom" connector-ref="fileConnector" /> </inbound> <outbound> <pass-through-router> <axis:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX" synchronous="true" style="DOCUMENT" use="LITERAL" /> </pass-through-router> </outbound> However the call for the webservice fails as the above config is generating a SOAP message with an tag just after the tag and closes it just before the tag. The generated SOAP message looks like this: POST /holidayService?method=echoXXXX HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: text/xml X-MULE_ENDPOINT: http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX SOAPAction: http://localhost:8081/holidayService?method=echoXXXX directory: D:\bea\weblogic92\samples\domains\wl_server\files\processed filename: HolidayRequest.xml method: echoXXXX originalFilename: HolidayRequest.xml style: document use: literal User-Agent: Jakarta Commons-HttpClient/3.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:8081 Content-Length: 1183 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <soapenv:Header> <mule:header soapenv:actor="http://www.muleumo.org/providers/soap/1.0" soapenv:mustUnderstand="0" xmlns:mule="http://www.muleumo.org/providers/soap/1.0"> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_ID>D:\bea\weblogic92\samples\domains\wl_server\files\processed\HolidayRequest.xml</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_ID> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_GROUP_SIZE>-1</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_GROUP_SIZE> <mule:MULE_CORRELATION_SEQUENCE>-1</mule:MULE_CORRELATION_SEQUENCE> </mule:header> </soapenv:Header> <soapenv:Body> <value0 xsi:type="ns1:DocumentImpl" xmlns="" xmlns:ns1="http://dom.internal.xerces.apache.org.sun.com"> <sch:HolidayRequest xmlns:sch="http://mycompany.com/hr/schemas"> <sch:Holiday> <sch:StartDate>2009-08-13</sch:StartDate> <sch:EndDate>1988-12-12</sch:EndDate> </sch:Holiday> <sch:Employee> <sch:Number>3434</sch:Number> <sch:FirstName>John</sch:FirstName> <sch:LastName>Smith</sch:LastName> </sch:Employee> </sch:HolidayRequest> </value0> </soapenv:Body> </soapenv:Envelope> The webservice works fine in SOAPUI without the tag and from what I've read on the Mule website I don't know why it's being inserted. Any help would be much appreciated, Kevin.

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.NET Declarative Security: Why is SecurityAction.Deny impossible to work with?

- by rally25rs

I've been messing with this for about a day and a half now sifting through .NET reflector and MSDN docs, and can't figure anything out... As it stands in the .NET framework, you can demand that the current Principal belong to a role to be able to execute a method by marking a method like this: [PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Role = "CanEdit")] public void Save() { ... } I am working with an existing security model that already has a "ReadOnly" role defined, so I need to do exactly the opposite of above... block the Save() method if a user is in the "ReadOnly" role. No problem, right? just flip the SecurityAction to .Deny: [PrincipalPermission(SecurityAction.Deny, Role = "ReadOnly")] public void Save() { ... } Well, it turns out that this does nothing at all. The method still runs fine. It seems that the PrincipalPermissionAttribute defines: public override IPermission CreatePermission() But when the attribute is set to SecurityAction.Deny, this method is never called, so no IPermission object is ever created. Does anyone know of a way to get .Deny to work? I've been trying to make a custom secutiry attribute, but even that doesn't work. I tried to get tricky and do: public class MyPermissionAttribute : CodeAccessSecurityAttribute { private SecurityAction securityAction; public MyPermissionAttribute(SecurityAction action) : base(SecurityAction.Demand) { if (action != SecurityAction.Demand && action != SecurityAction.Deny) throw new ArgumentException("Unsupported SecurityAction. Only Demand and Deny are supported."); this.securityAction = action; } public override IPermission CreatePermission() { // do something based on the SecurityAction... } } Notice my attribute constructor always passes SecurityAction.Demand, which is the one action that would work previously. However, even in this case, the CreatePermission() method is still only called when the attribute is set to .Demand, and not .Deny! Maybe the runtime is actually checking the attribute instead of the SecurityAction passed to the CodeAccessSecurityAttribute constructor? I'm not sure what else to try here... anyone have any ideas? You wouldn't think it would be that hard to deny method access based on a role, instead of only demanding it. It really disturbed me that the default PrincipalPermission appears from within an IDE like it would be just fine doing a .Deny, and there is like a 1-liner in the MSDN docs that hint that it won't work. You would think the PrincipalPermissionAttribute constructor would throw an exception immediately if anything other that .Demand is specified, since that could create a big security hole! I never would have realized that .Deny does nothing at all if I hadn't been unit testing! Again, all this stems from having to deal with an existing security model that has a "ReadOnly" role that needs to be denied access, instead of doing it the other way around, where I cna just grant access to a role. Thanks for any help! Quick followup: I can actually make my custom attribute work by doing this: public class MyPermissionAttribute : CodeAccessSecurityAttribute { public SecurityAction SecurityAction { get; set; } public MyPermissionAttribute(SecurityAction action) : base(action) { } public override IPermission CreatePermission() { switch(this.SecurityAction) { ... } // check Demand or Deny } } And decorating the method: [MyPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, SecurityAction = SecurityAction.Deny, Role = "ReadOnly")] public void Save() { ... } But that is terribly ugly, since I'm specifying both Demand and Deny in the same attribute. But it does work... Another interesting note: My custom class extends CodeAccessSecurityAttribute, which in turn only extends SecurityAttribute. If I cnage my custom class to directly extend SecurityAttribute, then nothing at all works. So it seems the runtime is definately looking for only CodeAccessSecurityAttribute instances in the metadata, and does something funny with the SecurityAction specified, even if a custom constructor overrides it.

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JavaScript and XML Dom - Nested Loop

- by BSteck

So I'm a beginner in XML DOM and JavaScript but I've run into an issue. I'm using the script to display my XML data in a table on an existing site. The problem comes in nesting a loop in my JavaScript code. Here is my XML: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <book_list> <author> <first_name>Mary</first_name> <last_name>Abbott Hess</last_name> <books> <title>The Healthy Gourmet Cookbook</title> </books> </author> <author> <first_name>Beverly</first_name> <last_name>Bare Bueher</last_name> <books> <title>Cary Grant: A Bio-Bibliography</title> <title>Japanese Films</title> </books> </author> <author> <first_name>James P.</first_name> <last_name>Bateman</last_name> <books> <title>Illinois Land Use Law</title> </books> </author> </book_list> I then use this JavaScript code to read and display the data: > <script type="text/javascript"> if > (window.XMLHttpRequest) { > xhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } else > // Internet Explorer 5/6 { > xhttp=new > ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); > } xhttp.open("GET","books.xml",false); > xhttp.send(""); > xmlDoc=xhttp.responseXML; > > document.write("<table>"); var > x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("author"); > for (i=0;i<x.length;i++) { > document.write("<tr><td>"); > document.write(x[i].getElementsByTagName("first_name")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); > document.write(" "); > document.write(x[i].getElementsByTagName("last_name")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); > document.write("</td><td>"); > document.write(x[i].getElementsByTagName("title")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue); > document.write("</td></tr>"); } > document.write("</table>"); </script> The code works well except it only returns the first title element of each author. I somewhat understand why it's doing that, but I don't know how to nest another loop so when the script runs it displays all the titles for an author, not just the first. Whenever I try to nest a loop it breaks the entire script.

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Screen Scraping HTML with C#

- by WildBill

I have been given the task at work of screen scraping one of our legacy web apps to extract certain data from the code. The data is formatted and "should" be displayed exactly the same every time. I am just not sure how to go about doing this. It's a full html file with header and footer navigations but in the middle of all this is the data I need. I need to extract the Company Name value, Contact Name, Telephone, email address, etc. Here is an example of what the code looks like: ...html above here <br /><br /> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="12" border="0"> <tr> <td valign="top" align="center">  <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td class="black"> <table cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0" border="0" width="370"> <tr> <th>ABC INDUSTRIES</th> </tr> <tr> <td class="search"> <table cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td> <table cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td align="center" colspan="2"><hr></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" nowrap><b><font color="FF0000">Contact Person <img src="/images/icon_contact.gif" align="absmiddle"> :</font></b></td> <td align="left" width="100%"> Joe Smith</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" nowrap><b><font color="FF0000">Phone Number <img src="/images/icon_phone.gif" align="absmiddle"> :</font></b></td> <td align="left" width="100%"> 555-555-5555</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" nowrap><b><font color="FF0000">E-mail Address <img src="/images/icon_email.gif" align="absmiddle"> :</font></b></td> <td align="left" width="100%"> <a HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a></td> </tr> more... There is more code on the screen in a different table structure that I also need to pull.

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RegEx to ignore / skip everything in html tags

- by Scott Sumpter

Looking for a way to combine two Regular Expressions. One to catch the urls and the other to ensure is skips text within html tags. See sample text below functions. Need to pass a block of news text and format text by wrapping urls and email addresses in html tags so users don't have to. The below code works great until there are already html tags within the text. In that case it doubles the html tags. There are plenty of examples to strip html, but I want to just ignore it since the url is already linkified. Also - if there is an easier was to accomplish this, with or without Regex, please let me know. none of my attempts to combine Regexs have worked. coding in ASP.NET VB but will take any workable example/direction. Thanks! ===== Functions ============= Public Shared Function InsertHyperlinks(ByVal inText As String) As String Dim strBuf As String Dim objMatches As Object Dim iStart, iEnd As Integer strBuf = "" iStart = 1 iEnd = 1 Dim strRegUrlEmail As String = "\b(www|http|\S+@)\S+\b" 'RegEx to find urls and email addresses Dim objRegExp As New Regex(strRegUrlEmail, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase) 'Match URLs and emails Dim MatchList As MatchCollection = objRegExp.Matches(inText) If MatchList.Count <> 0 Then objMatches = objRegExp.Matches(inText) For Each Match In MatchList iEnd = Match.Index strBuf = strBuf & Mid(inText, iStart, iEnd - iStart + 1) If InStr(1, Match.Value, "@") Then strBuf = strBuf & HrefGet(Match.Value, "EMAIL", "_BLANK") Else strBuf = strBuf & HrefGet(Match.Value, "WEB", "_BLANK") End If iStart = iEnd + Match.Length + 1 Next strBuf = strBuf & Mid(inText, iStart) InsertHyperlinks = strBuf Else 'No hyperlinks to replace InsertHyperlinks = inText End If End Function Shared Function HrefGet(ByVal url As String, ByVal urlType As String, ByVal Target As String) As String Dim strBuf As String strBuf = "<a href=""" If UCase(urlType) = "WEB" Then If LCase(Left(url, 3)) = "www" Then strBuf = "<a href=""http://" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" Else strBuf = "<a href=""" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" End If ElseIf UCase(urlType) = "EMAIL" Then strBuf = "<a href=""mailto:" & url & """ Target=""" & _ Target & """>" & url & "</a>" End If HrefGet = strBuf End Function ===== Sample Text ============= This would be the inText parameter. Midway through the ride, we see a Skip this too. But sometimes we go here [insert normal www dot link dot com]. If you'd like to join us contact Bill Smith at [email protected]. Thanks! sorry stack overflow won't allow multiple hyperlinks to be added. ===== End Sample Text =============

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Mouseover triggered on absolute positioned div

- by Tauren

Objective Have a small magnifying glass icon that appears in the top right corner of a table cell when the table cell is hovered over. Mousing over the magnifying glass icon and clicking it will open a dialog window to show detailed information about the item in that particular table cell. I want to reuse the same icon for hundreds of table cells without recreating it each time. Partial Solution Have a single <span> that is absolutely positioned and hidden. When a _previewable table cell is hovered, the <span> is moved to the correct location and shown. This <span> is also moved in the DOM to be a child of the _previewable table cell. This enables a click handler attached to the <span> to find the _previewable parent, and get information from it's jquery data() object that is used to populate the contents of the dialog. Here is a very simplified version of my HTML: <body> <span id="options"> <a class="ui-state-default ui-corner-all"> <span class="ui-icon ui-icon-search"></span> Preview </a> </span> <table> <tr> <td class="_previewable"> <img scr="user_1.png"/> <span>Bob Smith</span> </td> </tr> </table> </body> And this CSS: #options { position: absolute; display: none; } With this jQuery code: var $options = $('#options'); $options.click(function() { $item = $(this).parents("._previewable"); // Show popup based on data in $item.data("id"); Layout.renderPopup($item.data("id"),$item.data("popup")); }); $('._previewable').live('mouseover mouseout',function(event) { if (event.type == 'mouseover') { var $target = $(this); var $parent = $target.offsetParent()[0]; var left = $parent.scrollLeft + $target.position().left + $target.outerWidth() - $options.outerWidth() + 1; var top = $parent.scrollTop + $target.position().top + 2; $options.appendTo($target); $options.css({ "left": left + "px", "top": top + "px" }).show(); } else { // On mouseout, $options continues to be a child of $(this) $options.hide(); } }); Problem This solution works perfectly until the contents of my table are reloaded or changed via AJAX. Because the <span> was moved from the <body> to be a child of the cell, it gets thrown out and replaced during the AJAX call. So my first thought is to move the <span> back to the body on mouseout of the table cell, like this: else { // On mouseout, $options is moved back to be a child of body $options.appendTo("body"); $options.hide(); } However, with this, the <span> disappears as soon as it is mouseover. The mouseout event seems to be called on _previewable when the mouse moves into the <span>, even though the <span> is a child of _previewable and fully displayed within the boundaries of the _previewable table cell. At this point, I've only tested this in Chrome. Questions Why would mouseout be called on _previewable, when the mouse is still within the boundaries of _previewable? Is it because the <span> is absolutely positioned? How can I make this work, without recreating the <span> and it's click handler on each AJAX table referesh?

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Why is my GreaseMonkey function unexpectedly being called multiple times?

- by Ryan Fisher

I am missing something, I'm not sure why the function 'addIcon()' is being called multiple times. Given: <div class="ticketpostcontainer">Some text</div> <div class="ticketpostcontainer">Some text</div> <div class="ticketpostcontainer">Some text</div> Using the utility function waitForKeyElements, the result is that each div element receives my "collapse icon" three times: // ==UserScript== // @name Collapse Kayako Response // @grant Sandbox // @namespace http://my.chiromatrixbase.com/fisher.chiromatrix.com/collaps_div.js // @include http://imatrixsupport.com/* // @require http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js // ==/UserScript== /*jslint plusplus: true, undef: true, sloppy: true, vars: true, white: true, indent: 2, maxerr: 30 */ //Enable or disable GreaseMonkey function, GM_log var GM_Debug = 1; if (!GM_Debug) { var GM_log = function () {}; } //If FireBig is active, send GM log events to FB. if (unsafeWindow.console && GM_Debug) { var GM_log = unsafeWindow.console.log; } GM_log("Running collapse kayako response script"); //Don't run on frames or iframes. if (window.top !== window.self) { return; } waitForKeyElements(".ticketpostcontainer", addIcon); function addIcon() { var i, toCollapse = document.getElementsByClassName('ticketpostcontainer'), j = toCollapse.length; GM_log("Number of elements to collapse: " + toCollapse.length); for (i = 0; i < j; i++) { var curElement = toCollapse[i]; var p = document.createElement('p'); var a = document.createElement('a'); var span = document.createElement('span'); styleLink(a); styleParagraph(p); styleSpan(span); p.appendChild(a); p.appendChild(span); a.appendChild(document.createTextNode('-')); span.appendChild(document.createTextNode(' Some text')); a.addEventListener("click", toggle, false); curElement.parentNode.insertBefore(p, curElement); } function toggle(e) { if (this.firstChild.nodeValue === '-') { this.parentNode.nextSibling.style.display = 'none'; this.firstChild.nodeValue = '+'; this.nextSibling.style.display = 'inline'; } else { this.parentNode.nextSibling.style.display = 'block'; this.firstChild.nodeValue = '-'; this.nextSibling.style.display = 'none'; } e.preventDefault(); } function styleLink(a) { a.href = '#'; a.style.fontWeight = 'bold'; a.style.background = '#F6F1E7'; a.style.border = '1px solid #cccccc'; a.style.color = '#B24C58'; a.style.textDecoration = 'none'; a.style.width = '15px'; a.style.height = '15px'; a.style.textAlign = 'center'; a.style.fontSize = '100%'; a.style.margin = '0 5px 5px 8px'; a.style.cssFloat = 'left'; a.style.display = 'block'; a.style.lineHeight = '13px'; } function styleParagraph(p) { p.style.margin = '0 0 0 0'; p.style.lineHeight = '16px'; p.style.clear = 'both'; p.style.height = '15px'; } function styleSpan(span) { span.style.display = 'none'; } }

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PHP - Code Sample - Polymorphism Implementation - How to allow for expansion?

- by darga33

I've read numerous SO posts about Polymorphism, and also the other really good one at http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/understanding-and-applying-polymorphism-in-php/ Good stuff!!! I'm trying to figure out how a seasoned PHP developer that follows all the best practices would accomplish the following. Please be as specific and detailed as possible. I'm sure your answer is going to help a lot of people!!! :-) While learning Polymorphism, I came across a little stumbling block. Inside of the PDFFormatter class, I had to use (instanceof) in order to figure out if some code should be included in the returned data. I am trying to be able to pass in two different kinds of profiles to the formatter. (needs to be able to handle multiple kinds of formatters but display the data specific to the Profile class that is being passed to it). It doesn't look bad now, but imagine 10 more kinds of Profiles!! How would you do this? The best answer would also include the changes you would make. Thanks sooooooo much in advance!!!!! Please PHP only! Thx!!! File 1. FormatterInterface.php interface FormatterInterface { public function format(Profile $Profile); } File 2. PDFFormatter.php class PDFFormatter implements FormatterInterface { public function format(Profile $Profile) { $format = "PDF Format<br /><br />"; $format .= "This is a profile formatted as a PDF.<br />"; $format .= 'Name: ' . $Profile->name . '<br />'; if ($Profile instanceof StudentProfile) { $format .= "Graduation Date: " . $Profile->graduationDate . "<br />"; } $format .= "<br />End of PDF file"; return $format; } } File 3. Profile.php class Profile { public $name; public function __construct($name) { $this->name = $name; } public function format(FormatterInterface $Formatter) { return $Formatter->format($this); } } File 4. StudentProfile.php class StudentProfile extends Profile { public $graduationDate; public function __construct($name, $graduationDate) { $this->name = $name; $this->graduationDate = $graduationDate; } } File 5. index.php //Assuming all files are included...... $StudentProfile = new StudentProfile('Michael Conner', 55, 'Unknown, FL', 'Graduate', '1975', 'Business Management'); $Profile = new Profile('Brandy Smith', 44, 'Houston, TX'); $PDFFormatter = new PDFFormatter(); echo '<hr />'; echo $StudentProfile->format($PDFFormatter); echo '<hr />'; echo $Profile->format($PDFFormatter);

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SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience

- by pinaldave

I recently attended most prestigious SQL Server event SQLPASS between Nov 8-11, 2010 at Seattle. I have only one expression for the event - Best Summit Ever This year the summit was at its best. Instead of writing about my usual routine or the event, I am going to write about the interesting things I did and how I felt about it! Best Summit Ever Trip to Seattle! This was my second trip to Seattle this year and the journey is always long. Here is the travel stats on how long it takes to get to Seattle: 24 hours official air time 36 hours total travel time (connection waits and airport commute) Every time I travel to USA I gain a day and when I travel back to home, I lose a day. However, the total traveling time is around 3 days. The journey is long and very exhausting. However, it is all worth it when you’re attending an event like SQLPASS. Here are few things I carry when I travel for a long journey: Dry Snack packs – I like to have some good Indian Dry Snacks along with me in my backpack so I can have my own snack when I want Amazon Kindle – Loaded with 80+ books A physical book – This is usually a very easy to read book I do not watch movies on the plane and usually spend my time reading something quick and easy. If I can go to sleep, I go for it. I prefer to not to spend time in conversation with the guy sitting next to me because usually I end up listening to their biography, which I cannot blog about. Sheraton Seattle SQLPASS In any case, I love to go to Seattle as the city is great and has everything a brilliant metropolis has to offer. The new Light Train is extremely convenient, and I can take it directly from the airport to the city center. My hotel, the Sheraton, was only few meters (in the USA people count in blocks – 3 blocks) away from the train station. This time I saved USD 40 each round trip due to the Light Train. Sessions I attended! Well, I really wanted to attend most of the sessions but there was great dilemma of which ones to choose. There were many, many sessions to be attended and at any given time there was more than one good session being presented. I had decided to attend sessions in area performance tuning and I attended quite a few sessions this year, compared to what I was able to do last year. Here are few names of the speakers whose sessions I attended (please note, following great speakers are not listed in any order. I loved them and I enjoyed their sessions): Conor Cunningham Rushabh Mehta Buck Woody Brent Ozar Jonathan Kehayias Chris Leonard Bob Ward Grant Fritchey I had great fun attending their sessions. The sessions were meaningful and enlightening. It is hard to rate any session but I have found that the insights learned in Conor Cunningham’s sessions are the highlight of the PASS Summit. Rushabh Mehta at Keynote SQLPASS Bucky Woody and Brent Ozar I always like the sessions where the speaker is much closer to the audience and has real world experience. I think speakers who have worked in the real world deliver the best content and most useful information. Sessions I did not like! Indeed there were few sessions I did not like it and I am not going to name them here. However, there were strong reasons I did not like their sessions, and here is why: Sessions were all theory and had no real world connections. All technical questions ended with confusing answers (lots of “I will get back to you on it,” “it depends,” “let us take this offline” and many more…) “I am God” kind of attitude in the speakers For example, I attended a session of one very well known speaker who is a specialist for one particular area. I was bit late for the session and was surprised to see that in a room that could hold 350 people there were only 30 attendees. After sitting there for 15 minutes, I realized why lots of people left. Very soon I found I preferred to stare out the window instead of listening to that particular speaker. One on One Talk! Many times people ask me what I really like about PASS. I always say the experience of meeting SQL legends and spending time with them one on one and LEARNING! Here is the quick list of the people I met during this event and spent more than 30 minutes with each of them talking about various subjects: Pinal Dave and Brad Shulz Pinal Dave and Rushabh Mehta Michael Coles and Pinal Dave Rushabh Mehta – It is always pleasure to meet with him. He is a man with lots of energy and a passion for community. He recently told me that he really wanted to turn PASS into resource for learning for every SQL Server Developer and Administrator in the world. I had great in-depth discussion regarding how a single person can contribute to a community. Michael Coles – I consider him my best friend. It is always fun to meet him. He is funny and very knowledgeable. I think there are very few people who are as expert as he is in encryption and spatial databases. Worth meeting him every single time. Glenn Berry – A real friend of everybody. He is very a simple person and very true to his heart. I think there is not a single person in whole community who does not like him. He is a friends of all and everybody likes him very much. I once again had time to sit with him and learn so much from him. As he is known as Dr. DMV, I can be his nurse in the area of DMV. Brad Schulz – I always wanted to meet him but never got chance until today. I had great time meeting him in person and we have spent considerable amount of time together discussing various T-SQL tricks and tips. I do not know where he comes up with all the different ideas but I enjoy reading his blog and sharing his wisdom with me. Jonathan Kehayias – He is drill sergeant in US army. If you get the impression that he is a giant with very strong personality – you are wrong. He is very kind and soft spoken DBA with strong performance tuning skills. I asked him how he has kept his two jobs separate and I got very good answer – just work hard and have passion for what you do. I attended his sessions and his presentation style is very unique. I feel like he is speaking in a language I understand. Louis Davidson – I had never had a chance to sit with him and talk about technology before. He has so much wisdom and he is very kind. During the dinner, I had talked with him for long time and without hesitation he started to draw a schema for me on the menu. It was a wonderful experience to learn from a master at the dinner table. He explained to me the real and practical differences between third normal form and forth normal form. Honestly I did not know earlier, but now I do. Erland Sommarskog – This man needs no introduction, he is very well known and very clear in conveying his ideas. I learned a lot from him during the course of year. Every time I meet him, I learn something new and this time was no exception. Joe Webb – Joey is all about community and people, we had interesting conversation about community, MVP and how one can be helpful to community without losing passion for long time. It is always pleasant to talk to him and of course, I had fun time. Ross Mistry – I call him my brother many times because he indeed looks like my cousin. He provided me lots of insight of how one can write book and how he keeps his books simple to appeal to all the readers. A wonderful person and great friend. Ola Hallgren - I did not know he was coming to the summit. I had great time meeting him and had a wonderful conversation with him regarding his scripts and future community activities. Blythe Morrow – She used to be integrated part of SQL Server Community and PASS HQ. It was wonderful to meet her again and re-connect. She is wonderful person and I had a great time talking to her. Solid Quality Mentors – It is difficult to decide who to mention here. Instead of writing all the names, I am going to include a photo of our meeting. I had great fun meeting various members of our global branches. This year I was sitting with my Spanish speaking friends and had great fun as Javier Loria from Solid Quality translated lots of things for me. Party, Party and Parties Every evening there were various parties. I did attend almost all of them. Every party had different theme but the goal of all the parties the same – networking. Here are the few parties where I had lots of fun: Dell Reception Party Exhibitor Party Solid Quality Fun Party Red Gate Friends Party MVP Dinner Microsoft Party MVP Dinner Quest Party Gameworks PASS Party Volunteer Party at Garage Solid Quality Mentors (10 Members out of 120) They were all great networking opportunities and lots of fun. I really had great time meeting people at the various parties. There were few people everywhere – well, I will say I am among them – who hopped parties. NDA – Not Decided Agenda During the event there were few meetings marked “NDA.” Someone asked me “why are these things NDA?” My response was simple: because they are not sure themselves. NDA stands for Not Decided Agenda. Toys, Giveaways and Luggage I admit, I was like child in Gameworks and was playing to win soft toys. I was doing it for my daughter. I must thank all of the people who gave me their cards to try my luck. I won 4 soft-toys for my daughter and it was fun. Also, thanks to Angel who did a final toy swap with me to get the desired toy for my daughter. I also collected ducks from Idera, as my daughter really loves them. Solid Quality Booth Each of the exhibitors was giving away something and I got so much stuff that my luggage got quite a bit bigger when I returned. Best Exhibitor Idera had SQLDoctor (a real magician and fun guy) to promote their new tool SQLDoctor. I really had a great time participating in the magic myself. At one point, the magician made my watch disappear. I have seen better magic before, but this time it caught me unexpectedly and I was taken by surprise. I won many ducks again. The Common Question I heard the following common questions: I have seen you somewhere – who are you? – I am Pinal Dave. I did not know that Pinal is your first name and Dave is your last name, how do you pronounce your last name again? – Da-way How old are you? – I am as old as I can be. Are you an Indian because you look like one? – I did not answer this one. Where are you from? This question was usually asked after looking at my badge which says India. So did you really fly from India? – Yes, because I have seasickness so I do not prefer the sea journey. How long was the journey? – 24/36/12 (air travel time/total travel time/time zone difference) Why do you write on SQLAuthority.com? – Because I want to. I remember your daughter looks like you. – Is this even a question? Of course, she is daddy’s little girl. There were so many other questions, I will have to write another blog post about it. SQLPASS Again, Best Summit Ever! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQLPASS

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Configure Forms based authentication in SharePoint 2010

- by sreejukg

Configuring form authentication is a straight forward task in SharePoint. Mostly public facing websites built on SharePoint requires form based authentication. Recently, one of the WCM implementation where I was included in the project team required registration system. Any internet user can register to the site and the site offering them some membership specific functionalities once the user logged in. Since the registration open for all, I don’t want to store all those users in Active Directory. I have decided to use Forms based authentication for those users. This is a typical scenario of form authentication in SharePoint implementation. To implement form authentication you require the following A data store where you are storing the users – technically this can be active directory, SQL server database, LDAP etc. Form authentication will redirect the user to the login page, if the request is not authenticated. In the login page, there will be controls that validate the user inputs against the configured data store. In this article, I am going to use SQL server database with ASP.Net membership API’s to configure form based authentication in SharePoint 2010. This article assumes that you have SQL membership database available. I already configured the membership and roles database using aspnet_regsql command. If you want to know how to configure membership database using aspnet_regsql command, read the below blog post. http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2011/06/16/usage-of-aspnet-regsql-exe-in-asp-net-4.aspx The snapshot of the database after implementing membership and role manager is as follows. I have used the database name “aspnetdb_claim”. Make sure you have created the database and make sure your database contains tables and stored procedures for membership. Create a web application with claims based authentication. This article assumes you already created a web application using claims based authentication. If you want to enable forms based authentication in SharePoint 2010, you must enable claims based authentication. Read this post for creating a web application using claims based authentication. http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2011/06/15/create-a-web-application-in-sharepoint-2010-using-claims-based-authentication.aspx You make sure, you have selected enable form authentication, and then selected Membership provider and Role manager name. To make sure you are done with the configuration, navigate to central administration website, from central administration, navigate to the Web Applications page, select the web application and click on icon, you will see the authentication providers for the current web application. Go to the section Claims authentication types, and make sure you have enabled forms based authentication. As mentioned in the snapshot, I have named the membership provider as SPFormAuthMembership and role manager as SPFormAuthRoleManager. You can choose your own names as you need. Modify the configuration files(Web.Config) to enable form authentication There are three applications that needs to be configured to support form authentication. The following are those applications. Central Administration If you want to assign permissions to web application using the credentials from form authentication, you need to update Central Administration configuration. If you do not want to access form authentication credentials from Central Administration, just leave this step. STS service application Security Token service is the service application that issues security token when users are logging in. You need to modify the configuration of STS application to make sure users are able to login. To find the STS application, follow the following steps Go to the IIS Manager Expand the sites Node, you will see SharePoint Web Services Expand SharePoint Web Services, you can see SecurityTokenServiceApplication Right click SecuritytokenServiceApplication and click explore, it will open the corresponding file system. By default, the path for STS is C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\WebServices\SecurityToken You need to modify the configuration file available in the mentioned location. The web application that needs to be enabled with form authentication. You need to modify the configuration of your web application to make sure your web application identifies users from the form authentication. Based on the above, I am going to modify the web configuration. At end of each step, I have mentioned the expected output. I recommend you to go step by step and after each step, make sure the configuration changes are working as expected. If you do everything all together, and test your application at the end, you may face difficulties in troubleshooting the configuration errors. Modifications for Central Administration Web.Config Open the web.config for the Central administration in a text editor. I always prefer Visual Studio, for editing web.config. In most cases, the path of the web.config for the central administration website is as follows C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<port number> Make sure you keep a backup copy of the web.config, before editing it. Let me summarize what we are going to do with Central Administration web.config. First I am going to add a connection string that points to the form authentication database, that I created as mentioned in previous steps. Then I need to add a membership provider and a role manager with the corresponding connectionstring. Then I need to update the peoplepickerwildcards section to make sure the users are appearing in search results. By default there is no connection string available in the web.config of Central Administration. Add a connection string just after the configsections element. The below is the connection string I have used all over the article. <add name="FormAuthConnString" connectionString="Initial Catalog=yourdatabasename;data source=databaseservername;Integrated Security=SSPI;" /> Once you added the connection string, the web.config look similar to Now add membership provider to the code. In web.config for CA, there will be <membership> tag, search for it. You will find membership and role manager under the <system.web> element. Under the membership providers section add the below code… <add name="SPFormAuthMembership" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" applicationName="FormAuthApplication" connectionStringName="FormAuthConnString" /> After adding memberhip element, see the snapshot of the web.config. Now you need to add role manager element to the web.config. Insider providers element under rolemanager, add the below code. <add name="SPFormAuthRoleManager" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" applicationName="FormAuthApplication" connectionStringName="FormAuthConnString" /> After adding, your role manager will look similar to the following. As a last step, you need to update the people picker wildcard element in web.config, so that the users from your membership provider are available for browsing in Central Administration. Search for PeoplePickerWildcards in the web.config, add the following inside the <PeoplePickerWildcards> tag. <add key="SPFormAuthMembership" value="%" /> After adding this element, your web.config will look like After completing these steps, you can browse the users available in the SQL server database from central administration website. Go to the site collection administrator’s page from central administration. Select the site collection you have created for form authentication. Click on the people picker icon, choose Forms Auth and click on the search icon, you will see the users listed from the SQL server database. Once you complete these steps, make sure the users are available for browsing from central administration website. If you are unable to find the users, there must be some errors in the configuration, check windows event logs to find related errors and fix them. Change the web.config for STS application Open the web.config for STS application in text editor. By default, STS web.config does not have system.Web or connectionstrings section. Just after the System.Webserver element, add the following code. <connectionStrings> <add name="FormAuthConnString" connectionString="Initial Catalog=aspnetdb_claim;data source=sp2010_db;Integrated Security=SSPI;" /> </connectionStrings> <system.web> <roleManager enabled="true" cacheRolesInCookie="false" cookieName=".ASPXROLES" cookieTimeout="30" cookiePath="/" cookieRequireSSL="false" cookieSlidingExpiration="true" cookieProtection="All" createPersistentCookie="false" maxCachedResults="25"> <providers> <add name="SPFormAuthRoleManager" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" applicationName="FormAuthApplication" connectionStringName="FormAuthConnString" /> </providers> </roleManager> <membership userIsOnlineTimeWindow="15" hashAlgorithmType=""> <providers> <add name="SPFormAuthMembership" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" applicationName="FormAuthApplication" connectionStringName="FormAuthConnString" /> </providers> </membership> </system.web> See the snapshot of the web.config after adding the required elements. After adding this, you should be able to login using the credentials from SQL server. Try assigning a user as primary/secondary administrator for your site collection from Central Administration and login to your site using form authentication. If you made everything correct, you should be able to login. This means you have successfully completed configuration of STS Configuration of Web Application for Form Authentication As a last step, you need to modify the web.config of the form authentication web application. Once you have done this, you should be able to grant permissions to users stored in the membership database. Open the Web.config of the web application you created for form authentication. You can find the web.config for the application under the path C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<port number> Basically you need to add connection string, membership provider, role manager and update the people picker wild card configuration. Add the connection string (same as the one you added to the web.config in Central Administration). See the screenshot after the connection string has added. Search for <membership> in the web.config, you will find this inside system.web element. There will be other providers already available there. You add your form authentication membership provider (similar to the one added to Central Administration web.config) to the provider element under membership. Find the snapshot of membership configuration as follows. Search for <roleManager> element in web.config, add the new provider name under providers section of the roleManager element. See the snapshot of web.config after new provider added. Now you need to configure the peoplepickerwildcard configuration in web.config. As I specified earlier, this is to make sure, you can locate the users by entering a part of their username. Add the following line under the <PeoplePickerWildcards> element in web.config. See the screenshot of the peoplePickerWildcards element after the element has been added. Now you have completed all the setup for form authentication. Navigate to the web application. From the site actions -> site settings -> go to peope and groups Click on new -> add users, it will popup the people picker dialog. Click on the icon, select Form Auth, enter a username in the search textbox, and click on search icon. See the screenshot of admin search when I tried searching the users If it displays the user, it means you are done with the configuration. If you add users to the form authentication database, the users will be able to access SharePoint portal as normal.

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SQL Developer Q&A from ODTUG Tips & Tricks Webcast

- by thatjeffsmith

Another great webcast yesterday – if you’re a paying member of ODTUG you can watch the show for yourself in their archives. If not, you can get my slide deck off of SlideShare. About 150 of you brave souls sat through an entire hour of me talking and then 10 more minutes of Q&A. We went through everything rapid-fire style, so I thought I would post the questions and my refined answers here for your perusal. In the order in which I received them: You showed the preference to choose between resultsets in same tab or ain a new tab. I understand that we can not have it both using different hotkeys? For example: F5 run and resultset to same tab, ctrl-f5 same but to new tab? Sometimes you want the one other times the other. The questioner is asking about this preference, Tools Preferences Database Worksheet ‘Show query results in new tabs.’ This is an all or nothing proposition. But, there’s another, perhaps better way: the document PINs. If you have a result set you don’t want to lose, ‘pin it.’ Pin multiple result sets or plans for review and comparisons. You mentioned that sometimes it’s hard to remember where a certain preference is. I agree. So enhancement request: add a search-box to the preferences window. Maybe like in, for example, UltraEdit. It shows you all preferences containing your search criteria. Actually, we do have a search mechanism type the search string, we auto-filter the preferences Is there a version of SQL Developer that will connect to an 8i database (Yes, I realize how old that database version is!) Sorry, no. We also don’t have a version that will run on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups…probably. How do we access your blog? Carefully, and with much trepidation. When you’re ready, go to http://www.thatjeffsmith.com Is there a way to get good formatting with predefined settings? I believe the questioner is referring to the script output a la SQL*Plus formatting commands. Yes, there is. You can build your formatting commands into your login.sql script, and those will be applied for your script execution sessions. Example here. Why this version 4.0 doesn’t support external plugins? It does, it just requires the plugin developer to re-factor it for OSGi. This came about when we updated the JDeveloper framework to the later 11g/12c stuff. Any change in hookup with SVN? The only change with Subversion is that internally we’re using 1.7 stuff now. You can use SQLDev to work with a 1.8 SVN server, but if you get a working copy with a 1.8 client SQLDev won’t be able to do anything with it… Command line utilities ? improvements Yes! The long answer is here. Is that a Hint or a Comment?? /*CSV*/ It’s a comment – the database won’t recognize it, but SQLDev does when it goes through our statement pre-processor. We’ll redirect the output through our CSV formatter before displaying the results in the Script Output panel. That’s why this will ONLY work in SQL Developer. Are you selecting “”Run Script”" to get that CSV or HTML output, rather than “”Run Statement”"? Yes, the formatter hints like the CSV one mentioned above only make sense in a script output panel vs a grid. How do you save relational models once they’re defined? I’ve had trouble with setting one up, “”saving”" it, then the design work I did is longer there when loading it later. File – Data Modeler – Save. If you’re running the Modeler inside of SQL Developer, the menu’ing interface can get a bit tricky. That’s why I recommend using the stand along if you’re doing anything with a model that takes more than 5 minutes. See how the Data Modeler menus are folded up under the SQL Dev menus? Can u unplug and plug into another container in a database with only sqldeveloper? Yes, you can ‘Detach’ a multitentant 12c Database ‘pluggable’ and plug it into another instance. You have the option to copy or move the files. This isn’t a trivial operation, pay attention Can you run APEX code directly on the adopter? No, at least not as I understand your question. Give me an example and I can give you a better example. Is there a way that when u click on a particular table it wouldn’t show the table with the info but just to see the columns underneath clicking on the node? Yes, another one of my tips! Disable Tools Preferences Datbase ObjectViewer ‘Open Object on Single Click.’ Is there a patch to allow a double click on a procedure on an open package body to take you to that procedure in the editor? This has been fixed for EA3 – to be released soon. Can you open the spec with the body? You can open the spec or the body, and then also open the other. But you can’t open both with a single click. So if you want you can set it to CSV but can you also see it as a regular result set in rows and then click in the results to export to excel? If you run your query as a statement with Ctrl-Enter, you can send the data to Excel via the Export dialog. Will it do intellisense like using the alias and pop up the column, object names? Yes! You can select more than one column… Can a DBA turn off items from a high level for users so the only thing they can perform would be selects? A DBA should turn things ON, not OFF. Create a user with only CONNECT and required SELECT privs and you’re good to go, regardless of which application they are using. I use PL/SQL Developer from allround automations and was SQL Developer illiterate and now I like this for myself as a DBA. Now I get to train developers on this tool since they have been asking how to use this tool. Thank you. No, THANK YOU! Can you run multi queries in the worksheet after you added it to the worksheet? Yes, highlight what you want to run, and hit Ctrl-Enter. Can you export the result sets to excel, etc. Yes. In version 4.0 and going forward, I recommend you use the XLSX option for exports. It will run faster and consume much, much less memory. Will this be available after the webinar? If you are a ODTUG member, check out the webinar recordings in the archives. That’s worth the $99 right there. Ask your boss if they have $99 in their training budget for you. If not, maybe time to look for another job? Can you run command lines from this tool? Like executes without issuing a command line prompt? Ok, I’m stumped on this one. Not sure what you’re asking. You can setup external tools under the Tools menu, and from there you could probably rig what you’re looking for, but I’m not sure what you’re looking for… This maybe?Where and when to put the program Is there any way to save a copy database command set (certain tables/views etc) in a script? Yes! Create a cart with the objects you want to be used in the Copy. Then use the new command-line interface to kick off SQL Developer to do the copy of those said objects. How can we export the preference and then import them into different or same version of SQL Developer ? Today, there’s no interface for this. But you could copy the files around manually…Kris Rice has a cool idea where you can set your preferences to be saved to your local drop box folder and then you can use SQL Developer from anywhere with the same preferences What happens to SQL*Plus commands like COL & BREAK Nothing. Those are not currently supported. Is there a place where all “”hotkey”" functionality is listed? thanks Yes. Tools – Preferences – Shortcut Keys. And you can change them! Any tips for the DBA side of things? will the SQL generated for objects have more information (e.g. user privileges) in v4? You can get this now. In Tools – Preferences – Database – Utilities – Export, check ‘Grants.’ Voila! You now have the code necessary to recreate your object privileges Is there a limit on the number of rows that could be imported / exported from/to excel ? The only hard-coded limit lies in Excel. For best performance, use v4 and XLSX formats for Exports. Is there a way to see/watch active sessions to see current SQL and the explain plan being used, etc. Kind of like that frog product. Cough, yes. Tools – Monitor Sessions. Click on session, see SQL and plan. The plan was added in v4. If you’re not in version 4, use the Reports – Active Sessions to get the plans. In the DBA section is there a way to manage say tablespaces to add data files, shrink, edit profiles, etc. Yes, we support all of that. View – DBA. Connect, go to the Storage node. Are you (Jeff) available for a live presentation at our Oracle User Group here in Indiana? Maybe. Email me and we’ll see, [email protected] Where do I go to download sql developer 4.0? The Internet of course! Can you directly edit query results? Nope. But what I think you’re asking is, can I edit the data in the tables that are reflected in my query results? You can change the query results by changing your query of course. Or this. Can you show html example? Sure. I’d embed the HTML here, but it’s a lot of code, try it for yourself! How can I quickly close many SQL worksheet windows, but not all? Window – Documents. Multi-select, hit the ‘Close Document(s)’ button. What does the vertical red line denote? That’s the margin. Tells you when you’ve typed too far and it’s time for a carriage return. Did DBA/Database Status/Instance Viewer make it officially into 4.0? It was sort-of included in the first EA. I have NO idea what you’re talking about, WINK-WINK. No, it’s not in v4.0. Is there a “”handy”" way to debug trigger code? Yes, open your trigger. Hit the debug button. Works great as long as it’s a DML trigger. Will you make your presentation file available for us ( in PPT and/or PDF format ) ? It’s on SlideShare. How do you get SqlDeveloper to escape ‘ correctly when you use the wizard to export data as insert statements? If it’s not doing that, it’s a bug. I’ll take a look at that scenario ASAP.

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Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

- by raul.goycoolea

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry. 1.0. Introduction Figure 1: Business Scenario Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards. The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems. 2.0. An Overview of Product Management in Telecom Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements. In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization. Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different. Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation. 3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of: · Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems · Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system · Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation · Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies · Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling Figure 4: Next generation needs PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch. 4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused. 4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management · Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules · PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective) · Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition · Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis) · Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional · New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification. · Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain 4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems 4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution. Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published. Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance. 4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems. For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance. 5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were: Figure 8: Triple Play Plan · Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets) · Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs. · No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue. · Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues. · Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch. · Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling. 5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution. 6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation Figure 10: Product Management Transformation PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services. 7.0 Conclusion On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch. References: 1. Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”. 2. John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing. 3. D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B. 4. Oracle Product Hub for Communications: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html

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