How-To Tutorials

Executing commands before and after Puppet runs If you need to have a command executed before each Puppet run, you can do this using the prerun_command configuration setting. Similarly, you can use postrun_command to execute a command after the run has completed. This mechanism gives you a powerful hook to integrate Puppet with other software, or even trigger events on other machines. The prerun and postrun commands must succeed (that is, return a zero exit status), or Puppet will report an error. This enables you to have any command failures reported using Puppet's reporting mechanism, for example. How to do it... Set prerun_command or postrun_command in puppet.conf to the commands you want to run: prerun_command = /usr/local/bin/before-puppet-run.sh postrun_command = /usr/local/bin/after-puppet-run.sh There's more You can use prerun and postrun commands to integrate Puppet with Ubuntu's etckeeper system. Etckeeper is a version control system for tracking changes to files in the /etc directory. To do this, define these commands in puppet.conf: prerun_command=/etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-pre postrun_command=/etc/puppet/etckeeper-commit-post Using public modules "Plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize / Only be sure always to call it please 'research' "—Tom Lehrer, 'Lobachevsky' If in doubt, steal. In many cases when you write a Puppet module to manage some software or service, you don't have to start from scratch. Community-contributed modules are available at the Puppet Forge site for many popular applications. Sometimes, a community module will be exactly what you need and you can download and start using it straight away. In other cases, you will need to make some modifications to suit your particular needs and environment. If you are new to Puppet, it can be a great help to have some existing code to start with. On the other hand, community modules are often written to be as general and portable as possible, and the extra code required can make them harder to understand. In general I would not recommend treating Puppet Forge as a source of 'drop-in' modules which you can deploy without reading or understanding the code. This introduces an external dependency to your Puppet infrastructure, and doesn't help advance your understanding and experience of Puppet. Rather, I would use it as a source of inspiration, help, and examples. A module taken from Puppet Forge should be a jumping-off point for you to develop and improve your own modules. Be aware that a given module may not work on your Linux distribution. Check the README file which comes with the module to see if your operating system is supported. Getting ready The easiest way to use Puppet Forge modules is to install the puppet-module tool: # gem install puppet-module Fetching: puppet-module-0.3.2.gem (100%) ****************************************************************************** Thank you for installing puppet-module from Puppet Labs! * Usage instructions: read "README.markdown" or run `puppet-module usage` * Changelog: read "CHANGES.markdown" or run `puppet-module changelog` * Puppet Forge: visit http://forge.puppetlabs.com/ ****************************************************************************** Successfully installed puppet-module-0.3.2 1 gem installed Installing ri documentation for puppet-module-0.3.2... Installing RDoc documentation for puppet-module-0.3.2... Run puppet-module to see the available commands: # puppet-module Tasks: puppet-module build [PATH_TO_MODULE] # Build a module for release puppet-module changelog # Display the changelog for this tool puppet-module changes [PATH_TO_MODULE] # Show modified files in an installed m... puppet-module clean # Clears module cache for all repositories puppet-module generate USERNAME-MODNAME # Generate boilerplate for a new module puppet-module help [TASK] # Describe available tasks or one speci... puppet-module install MODULE_NAME_OR_FILE [OPTIONS] # Install a module (eg, 'user-modname')... puppet-module repository # Show currently configured repository puppet-module search TERM # Search the module repository for a mo... puppet-module usage # Display detailed usage documentation ... puppet-module version # Show the version information for this... Options: -c, [--config=CONFIG] # Configuration file # Default: /etc/puppet/puppet.conf How to do it In this example, we'll use puppet-module to find and install a module to manage the Tomcat application server. Search for a suitable module as follows: # puppet-module search tomcat ===================================== Searching http://forge.puppetlabs.com ------------------------------------- 2 found. -------- camptocamp/tomcat (0.0.1) jeffmccune/tomcat (1.0.1) In this example we'll install the Jeff McCune version: # cd /etc/puppet/modules # puppet-module install jeffmccune/tomcat Installed "jeffmccune-tomcat-1.0.1" into directory: jeffmccune-tomcat The module is now ready to use in your manifests: looking at the source code will show you how to do this. How it works... The puppet-module tool simply automates the process of searching and downloading modules from the Puppet Forge site. You can browse the site to see what's available at: forge.puppetlabs.com. There's more Not all publically available modules are on Puppet Forge. Some other great places to look are on GitHub: github.com/camptocamp, github.com/example42 and Dean Wilson maintains an excellent repository of Puppet patterns, tips, and recipes, at the Puppet Cookbook website: puppetcookbook.com.

(For more resources on Microsoft Sharepoint, see here.) Creating an InfoPath Form for a SharePoint List You can replace the default SharePoint list forms with an InfoPath form on any SharePoint list. This gives you much more flexibility and control over how you edit and display the data. Getting ready This recipe works for: SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Edition Office 365 (SharePoint Online) You will need a SharePoint List where you want to create an InfoPath form. You will need the Design or Full Control permission level to run this recipe. You will need InfoPath Designer 2010 installed on your client machine. This recipe uses a SharePoint 2010 Team Site with a contacts list added for illustration. How to do it... Open Internet Explorer and navigate to your SharePoint 2010 Team Site. Select the Contacts list from the Quick Launch menu. Select the List tab of the List Tools ribbon. Select the Customize Form icon. InfoPath Form Designer 2010 will open displaying an auto-generated InfoPath form for the contacts list. (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) Select the File tab in the ribbon to access the backstage view. Select the Quick Publish button. The InfoPath form is now published and replaces the default form on the SharePoint list. Click on the OK button in the Publish dialog displayed. How it works... When you create a SharePoint list, SharePoint automatically creates default edit, display, and new forms for you. While these forms are functional, they are somewhat limited in the presentation and customization options that they provide. If you have SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition installed, you replace these forms with an InfoPath 2010 form. InfoPath forms offer you many more options for creating and controlling how you edit and display your list data. This recipe demonstrates the mechanics of replacing the forms; once you have done this a whole range of new customization options is available to you. Every time you want to edit the form, just repeat this procedure. One gotcha that you may run into is if you have added a taxonomy field (that is, one that shows a term set) to your list. Unfortunately these fields are not supported in the current InfoPath release, and you will receive an error when you try to edit the list form. It's a big omission from the current version of SharePoint, and not one that there is an obvious workaround for. There's more... Having run this recipe, you may be left thinking "so what?" However, once you have created an InfoPath form for your list, you have all the power of the InfoPath form designer at your disposal. You can now remove columns, add graphics, text, and business rules to the form to fit your needs. Techniques for performing these customizations are described in the following sections. Removing columns It's quite common to have columns in a list that you don't want the user to fill in. When you have an InfoPath attached to the list, simply open the form, delete the field that you don't want the users to edit, and republish. If you have used the table-editing tools in Microsoft Word, you will find the InfoPath experience very familiar. The following screenshot shows the Attachments row being deleted from the form: It's important to realize that you are only removing columns from the form, not from the underlying list itself. Also, if you add a new column to your list after you have customized the form, SharePoint won't automatically add the new column to your form for you. It will prompt you that there are new columns available the next time you open the InfoPath form designer. Click on Yes to update the fields list. You can then select the new fields that you require and drag-and-drop them into the form. Adding images, explanatory text, and tooltips Normal SharePoint list forms are a bit dull. Now that you have an InfoPath form, you can start to brighten things up. You can change colors, fonts, add images, text, and tooltips. To add an image, use the Picture button on the Insert ribbon. Then simply browse to the picture that you want to add and republish the form. Adding text to your form can help guide your users when they are filling it in. You can add the text directly to the form or you can add it to the controls ScreenTip. The ScreenTip text will only be shown when the user's mouse hovers over the control in the browser. This helps your users without cluttering up your form. Adding rules to validate data InfoPath forms allow you to add rules. Rules can be added to the form to validate data, apply custom formatting, or perform custom actions. You can use actions to set field values, switch views, submit form data, and so on. InfoPath form rules are the way to implement and enforce custom business logic in your forms, so I advise you to invest some time learning how to build them up and exploring what they can do. The following screenshot shows how to apply InfoPath built in e-mail validation rule to the e-mail textbox field. This rule uses a regular expression to ensure that the value entered is in a valid e-mail format, and shows a validation error if it is not. InfoPath Designer versus InfoPath Filler You may notice two Microsoft Office InfoPath programs on your computer, Microsoft InfoPath Designer 2010 and Microsoft InfoPath Filler 2010. When creating forms for use in SharePoint, InfoPath Designer 2010 is the application you need to use. InfoPath is a standalone forms technology, while InfoPath Filler 2010 exists to allow users to fill in InfoPath forms without the use of SharePoint. That isn't something we cover in this book, though it's useful to know that you can use this if you need to.

(For more resources on Microsoft, see here.) Understanding BizTalk operational architecture We have already explored the core conceptual architecture of BizTalk Server 2010, but now we will delve more deeply into how this architecture fits into the real world of Windows Servers and applications. At its core, BizTalk is a .NET application built on top of SQL Server. This already tells us that we have two definite dependencies: SQL Server and Windows Server. We also have a core dependency on Active Directory to provide a service account and user access and control; that said, in smaller environments, BizTalk can use local groups, but this does not scale well. The core set of servers involved in a BizTalk environment are shown in the following diagram: These three servers are the core moving parts in any BizTalk environment. SQL Server hosts the message box and all the other databases. BizTalk provides most of the processing and Active Directory provides authentication. This book does not cover Active Directory as that is already expected to be running in your enterprise, but the other two will be explored in detail. Administering BizTalk Server Most administration and operation tasks for BizTalk Server are performed in the BizTalk Administration console; an MMC Snap-In designed to provide access to all the settings in a BizTalk group through a single interface. MMC provides a common user interface approach for Windows administration tasks and the use of an MMC Snap-In makes BizTalk very familiar to most administrators. Like most MMC Snap-Ins (IIS, Active Directory, and so on), there are three panes in the BizTalk Administration console Snap-In from left to right: navigation, information, and actions. As you click on different nodes in the left navigation pane, different context comes up in the center and right panes. The right Actions pane changes further when different objects are selected in the center information pane. This context allows us to change specific settings more easily depending on where we have set our focus in the console. The root node in the navigation pane displays a Console Root folder with the BizTalk Server Administration and Event Viewer (Local) nodes beneath it. By default, the first node will have the BizTalk group of the local machine listed within, but by right-clicking the BizTalk Server Administration node, we can connect to other BizTalk groups. This allows us to remotely administer multiple BizTalk groups from a single workstation. It also allows us to perform most administration tasks without logging into the BizTalk Servers directly. When connecting to a BizTalk group, we actually provide the connection information for the management database, which is the brain of BizTalk. Within the BizTalk group, there are three primary areas of the console that we use to manage our solutions; each is represented by a node. They are introduced as follows and can be seen in the previous screenshot: Applications: This node houses all the applications deployed to a BizTalk Server group. It is from here that we can configure and control specific applications in BizTalk. An application in BizTalk is the logical grouping for a set of related artifacts that normally form a solution. Within each application, the artifacts are categorized in the nodes, as shown in the following screenshot: These nodes largely correspond to concepts that we covered in the previous chapters. When our BizTalk application deploys locally from Visual Studio, all the assemblies should deploy to the same Application, and thus be part of the same "solution". This view will list all artifacts from any assembly deployed to this application. Policies are BRE rule sets; this is their formal name. Send Port Groups are simple grouping mechanisms for the Send Ports. Role Links tie parties to ports and orchestrations. Parties: These are mechanisms for working with trade partners and are particularly suited to solutions that require the same general processing for messages, but may need to send the results or intermediary requests to different end points. Parties are heavily utilized in B2B scenarios to create easily extensible solutions. A party can represent a trade partner or another system or division within the enterprise and are a key factor to EDI. Platform Settings: This is the place where the settings for a BizTalk group and all its subordinate objects reside. Hosts, host instances, servers, message boxes, and adapters are all configured here. As the name implies, this is where we work with settings that affect the core BizTalk platform. Scalability in BizTalk Server According to Wikipedia, "scalability is the ability of a system, network, or process to handle growing amounts of work in a graceful manner, or its ability to be enlarged to accommodate that growth". There are generally two types of scalabilities in the computer world: scale up, which means moving to a larger and more powerful server, and scaling out; which means adding more servers. For most software, scaling up is the simpler or even the only path. BizTalk is fundamentally designed to scale out with no changes needed to be made for the software running a solution. As we move further into the era of multicore processors, we are actually blurring this distinction and shifting more to the scale out model even when we choose to scale up. Only software and platforms that are made to be parallel can take full advantage of the multicore architectures now prominent in the industry. Scaling SQL Server There are two specific areas where BizTalk can scale out. The first and generally most important is the SQL Server area. SQL Server is frequently a bottleneck for BizTalk solutions. Often, this confuses administrators, even ones who know SQL Server, because they see low utilization on BizTalk Servers and don't see high utilization on SQL Servers. Most often, this is because SQL Server tends to be a disk bound application; meaning that the real bottlenecks tend to be the disk queues of SQL operations waiting to take place. BizTalk Server has been carefully designed to fully exploit SQL Server in an extremely optimized manner, and subsequently exploit the BizTalk databases, specifically the message box, which should not be on a shared SQL instance used by other applications. In fact, the message box should have its own instance separated even from the other BizTalk databases. While we're on the subject, now is probably a good time to raise a very important caveat about the message box. During configuration of BizTalk, the Max DOP setting on your SQL Server will be changed to one (1). This is because the message box is a highly tuned database that works very differently from most databases. The job of most databases is to hold data that will be returned as record sets. The Maximum Degree of Parallelism (Max DOP) setting, controls how SQL Server will try to run queries in parallel to each other to speed up their results. It is an instance-wide setting in SQL Server and defaults to zero (0), which allows SQL Server to use all available processors. For nearly all databases, the default Max DOP setting allows SQL Server to perform the query and return the data faster by breaking the query up amongst the processors on the server. This is sort of a divide and conquer approach if you will. This optimization in SQL Server will actually harm the performance of the message box database. The message box is structured in such a way that setting the Max DOP to any value other than one will cause the message box operations to slow down. This is because the operations performed on the message box are generally single record (and small record at that) operations. The overhead to parallelize them turns out to be more than beneficial from executing them in parallel. This will cause BizTalk to slow down if the SQL instance hosting the message box has the Max DOP set to any value besides one. Having said all this, the other databases that make up BizTalk actually benefit from not setting the Max DOP to one. This is a great demonstration of why you may want to consider multiple SQL Servers or at least multiple instances for your BizTalk installation. Generally, SQL Server should be configured into two instances: one for the message box and one for all other databases. These can all be on the same physical server, but they should be separated from other databases and from each other. Newer versions of SQL Server do allow tighter resource control over databases, but this is still good advice for SQL 2008 R2. Within these databases, it is also a good idea to separate indexes from data storage to improve performance. Adding more SQL Servers, or even just instances, to your BizTalk installation is a way to scale out the SQL Tier of your environment, but BizTalk also provides another way to scale out SQL Server by creating multiple message boxes. The idea is that one message box functions as the master message box, managing subscriptions and the other functions as runtime message boxes for delivering matched subscriptions (that is, starting orchestrations and send ports). This allows the master message box to focus only on subscription matching and thus it performs even better. It is suggested that if you create separate message boxes, so that you have at least three messages boxes in total, then one should master and the other two should be publishing, due to the extra overhead involved in using multiple message boxes. The intention is that these message boxes can each exist on different servers or at least on different SQL instances. This is a very sophisticated technique and approach to addressing scalability, but like many tasks in BizTalk, this turns out to be surprisingly easy to accomplish. Simply right-click the Message Boxes node in the BizTalk Administration console (under Platform Settings), select New, and then select Message Box…. This will bring up a configuration dialog allowing you to specify the server and database name for this new message box. After you have created your new message boxes, you can go back to the master message box and disable new message publication, which will instruct the master message box to only perform routing and subscription matching. This entire operation can be performed while the platform is running. If you ever need to remove a message box, you simply disable new message publication and let it continue running, then delete that message box. Please note that you cannot delete the master message box without designating a new one. Scaling BizTalk Server After sorting out any SQL Server issues and scaling challenges, the next place to consider is the BizTalk tier. There are two ways to scale out the BizTalk tier: one is to add more hosts and host instances to the group, the other is to add more servers. Both turn out to be quite easy in BizTalk. Adding more hosts and host instances To add more hosts, you simply right-click the Hosts node in Platform Settings and select New | Host… from the context menu. The dialog that will appear is shown in the following screenshot: In this dialog, you can specify the name and the Windows group that the host users will need to be a part of. You can also choose to mark a host as 32 bit in case you're working with components that do not support 64 bit runtime. Allowing different Windows groups for hosts, enables us to strictly control security permissions. If we have a location that receives (or sends) messages to a non-secure endpoint, we can isolate the execution of that port or location by using a less privileged account; this will help enforce security within our application. Once you create the host, you perform a similar operation to create a new host instance for that host. If you now left-click the Host instances node, you will notice that the Actions pane, on the far right, provides an alternative to right-clicking for a context menu. Clicking New here is the same as right-clicking and selecting New | Host Instance from the context menu. Again, this is common in all MMC Snap-Ins. From this dialog we configure the settings for a specific host instance shown as follows: These settings consist of Host name:, which would be the host we created before, and the server within the group on which to configure this host instance. We must also provide Logon: credentials for the Windows service that will be automatically created on this server for us. We can optionally decide to make sure this host instance is not capable of starting. This can be useful if we're setting up new hosts and instances on many servers, but are not yet ready to start them. We will see this presented more thoroughly later in this , in the section, Presenting the best practices for BizTalk configuration. Adding more servers to the group This step is a little more complicated, but only a little. All you have to do is install BizTalk on the new server and then run the BizTalk Server Configuration tool on the new server. When the wizard opens, click on Advanced Configuration and under Enterprise SSO, select Join and Existing SSO System, and under Group, select Join an existing BizTalk Group. Once this is done, the last task is to create host instances on the new server for all existing hosts; the same process we just did. As soon as we start the new host instances through the BizTalk Administration console, the new server will immediately begin processing the transactions. Adding new servers to the BizTalk group turns out to be very simple and enables us to quickly stand up with more capacity as needed. As more servers are added to the group, they simply continue to pull work items off the queues independently. The more servers in the group, the more work it is able to perform. There is no practical limit to the number of servers that can be added to a BizTalk enterprise installation.

(For more resources on animation, see here.) Understanding AML The best way to describe AML is from the iClone Wiki, which this author originally set up for, and under the direction and guidance of the team at Reallusion: The DramaScript Markup Language (AML) is a general-purpose specification for creating performance interaction between characters and props. It is classified as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) because it allows its users to write individual DramaScripts for either characters or props in iClone4 to interact. Its primary purpose is to create script animations to allow characters and props to interact with each other smoothly. AML Script Editor can be used when modifying DramaScripts. At the time of writing, version 1.0 of AML Script Editor was having issues on Windows 7 systems with the latest version of Direct X. Where to find and store Motion Files for the Characters? C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersDocumentsReallusionTemplateiClone 4 TemplateiClone TemplateMotion What's the difference between Prop's Animation Clips and Character's Animation Clips? For Prop's Animation Clips, there are two ways to produce the motion clips. One is using the collect clip method in iClone and the other method is to use 3Ds Max and export it through our Plug-in converter. 3Ds Max can produce both the prop and the animation, but when you produce the motion clips for the props, the animation is embedded within the prop itself. For the creation of the character's motion, the character and the character's motion are always exported separately. The following table is also from iCloneWiki:   Character iProps Where is AML Stored? Persona AML is embedded within the iProp. Where to access the motion files. Animation > Motion files in iClone Template. in the iProp's right-click menu under Perform How to export the AML scripts? Export Persona from the right-click menu. Export DramaScript from the right-click menu. How to generate motion files? In the timeline or Motion Editor in iClone3 Pro or above 3DS Max 8.0 or above In the timeline or Motion Editor in iClone3 Pro or above 3DS Max 8.0 or above Exploring personas to animate a character A Persona is an editable AML file that is based on the XML specification. A Persona can hold many different motions such as waving, walking, and so forth. These actions are Perform actions that are available from the right-click Perform menu when a Persona has been loaded into a character. Default characters such as Dylan and Jana already have a Persona loaded into them which will differ from character to character. The motions the Persona invokes can also be used as regular motions and are accessed by the Animation tab, Motion button interface when a character is selected. Personas can be exported, saved, then imported into another character with the right-click menu under the Persona menu choice. Personas can be edited with an XML editor such as the free XML Notepad from Microsoft. XML Notepad was originally released in 2006 then updated in 2007. There may be other updated versions available. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=7973 The following image shows the right-click menu with the Perform sub-menu highlighted. Notice the three actions available: Hey You, Listen Music, Puzzle, and there are additional commands under the Move sub-menu to Walk Forward or Run Forward.   Some Personas will have more commands available than others. It depends on what the Persona author had in mind. Remember that all of these motions are available in the motion library also. To demonstrate a different Persona we will use the Dylan character to load with a different Persona. Time for action – loading a Persona Since Personas can have different motions available, we will add a different Persona to the Dylan character to demonstrate this: Start a new blank project. Make sure the time scrubber is at the start of the Timeline. Load the Dylan character into the workspace. Right-click on Dylan and hold your mouse cursor over the Persona menu item until the sub-menu appears. With the Dylan character selected, click on the Actor tab. Select the Persona button. Double-click on the Benny Persona in the Content Manager on the left side menu to load the Benny Persona into Dylan. There will be no visible change when the Persona is loaded. The following image shows the choices available when the Benny Persona is loaded versus the few choices that were available with the Dylan Persona:   Select the Perform motion Angry. Select the Can't Help It choice when the previous action has stopped running. Select the Talk 01 choice when the Can't Help It motion stops running. Move the time scrubber to the beginning and playback the scene. The following is an image depicting the three motions strung together in the Perform timeline. Notice the linear designation. Remember our curves? We can change from linear to ease out or any of the available curve choices. In most cases, the curves are slight differences from the default linear curve:   What just happened? We loaded a character, explored its built in motion based on the characters default Persona file. We then loaded a different Persona to see the difference some Personas have. After loading the Benny Persona file we then proceeded to add three distinct motions with the simple right click menu system by adding a new perform action when the previous actions stopped playing. Have a go hero – experimenting with perform motions Experiment by loading the various Personas into different characters and see how they react. Use different curve settings and blending with the handles. This exercise is for you to become acquainted with the various Personas and their effect on characters. Female-based Personas will have female characteristics just as male-based Personas will have a male-oriented body language. Mixing these up can produce some unique results. Using AML templates In the Content Manager, you may have noticed a folder named AML Templates. These are helper props that contain AML scripting to help perform a task or function such as sitting down. The AML can be built into props but the helpers can work with regular props such as furniture, downloaded from the web or created in another 3D application. Implementing character interaction The following image shows the AML templates available from the Character_Interaction sub- folder located in the Props folder:   Time for action – placing and using character interaction dummies Once again we will use a new blank project for this action section: Create a new blank project. Load the Jana character into the workspace. Load the Dylan character into the workspace. Load the Hello_Dummy prop located in the Character_Interaction sub-folder of the AML Templates folder. Place the characters near each other, in facing the same general direction. Place the Hello_Dummy prop, as in the following image: Click on the Jana character, then right-click on the Hello prop and select the Operate menu then Hello from the sub-menu: Select the character you wish to interact with the prop, then use the Hello template perform action to have this character initiate the motion. What just happened? We used the Hello AML template to initiate a waving from the Jana character without having to key frame the event. The last character selected will be the character whose action is triggered by the AML templates.

(For more resources on topic_name, see here.) We will cover the following topics in this article: The Layout Editor presentation Designing a Layout Export options The Layout Editor First, you have to choose a predefined layout from the Create Report Interface. As you can see in the following screenshot, this interface displays a list of predefined layouts: 3180EN_05_01 image 01 You can add your own predefined layouts to this list and make them available for your later use or even for all the users. After choosing a layout from the Basic Templates or the Shared Templates group, the Layout Editor Interface is displayed. Designing a Layout In the Layout Editor Interface, as shown in the following screenshot, you have tools to perform activities such as: Insert a component: Select the desired component from the Components pane on the left or from the Insert tab of the toolbar and drag-and-drop it into the design area Set component properties: Set the component properties from the Properties pane on the left or from the component-specific tab of the toolbar (only the most commonly used components) Insert a data element: Drag the element from the Data Source pane to the design area Drop Value Here Drop Label Here Drop Series Here 3180EN_05_02 image 02(within bullets) As shown in the preceding screenshot, a precise dropping area is marked. For example, in a chart you have the following marked areas: Set page layout options: In order to set the page layout options, use the Page Layout tab and the Properties pane Save the Layout: Use the activity icons from the toolbar on the right side In the following sections, a few elements will be inserted to complete our report design. You will also see the steps that you need to follow when inserting and setting the properties of these components. Text elements In order to make changes in the settings of Text elements, follow the steps given here: Click on the Insert tab and choose the Text Item component from the toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot: 3180EN_05_03 image 03 Click on the Text tab and set a font color for your text using the Font Color icon from the toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot: 3180EN_05_04 image 04 Set the text margins using the Properties panel, as shown in the following screenshot: 3180EN_05_05 image 05 In this way, we obtain the desired report title, as you can see in the following screenshot: 3180EN_05_06 image 06 In order to insert data elements in our report's components, we will use the following Data Model: 3180EN_05_07 image 07 Charts In order to create Charts, follow the steps given here: Click on the Insert tab and choose the Chart component from the toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot. Select the newly inserted chart and go to the Chart tab on the toolbar to set the chart type (Vertical Bar in this example) and the chart style (Project in this example). Drag the LOAN_PERIOD and the PRICE fields from the Data Source (from the left pane) over the Drop Value Here area of the design view. Drop the TITLE field from the Data Source over the Drop Label Here area: 3180EN_05_08 image 08 Data tables In order to create Data tables , follow the steps given here: Click on the Insert tab and choose the Data Table component from the toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot. Drag the fields LOAN_DATE, LOAN_PERIOD, TITLE, and YEAR from the Data Source over the area marked as Drop a Data Item Here. Select the LOAN_DATE column and in the Properties pane set the Formatting Mask to yyyy-mm-dd. For each column of the table, enter a suitable value for Width, in the Properties pane. For example, the fi rst column has a width of 1.00 inch: 3180EN_05_09 image 09

(For more resources on Oracle 11g, see here.) The Data Model Editor's interface deals with all the components and functionalities needed for the data model to achieve the structure you need. However, the main component is the Data Set. In order to create a data model structure in BIP, you can choose from a variety of data set types, such as: SQL Query MDX Query Oracle BI Analysis View Object Web Service LDAP Query XML file Microsoft Excel file Oracle BI Discoverer HTTP Taking advantage of this variety requires multiple Data Sources of different types to be defined in the BIP. In this article, we will see: How data sources are configured How the data is retrieved from different data sets How data set type characteristics and the links between elements influence the data model structure Administration Let's first see, how you can verify or configure your data sources. You must choose the Administration link found in the upper-right corner of any of the BIP interface pages, as shown in the following screenshot:     The connection to your database can be choosen from the following connection types: Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) Available Data Sources To get to your data source, BIP offers two possibilities: YOu can use a connection. In order to use a connection, these are the available connection types: JDBC JNDI LDAP OLAP You can also use a file. In the following sections, the Data Source types&mdashJDBC, JNDI, OLAP Connections, and File&mdashwill be explained in detail. JDBC Connection Let's take the first example. To configure a Data Source to use JDBC, from the Administration page, choose JDBC Connection from the Data Sources types list, as shown in the following screenshot:     You can see the requested parameters for configuring a JDBC connection in the following screenshot: Data Source Name: Enter a name of your choice. Driver Type: Choose a type from the list. The relating parameters are: Database Driver Class: A driver, matching your database type. Connection String: Information containing the computer name on which your database server is running, for example, port, database name, and so on. Username: Enter a database username. Password: Provide the database user's password. The Use System User option allows you to use the operating system's credentials as your credentials. For example, in this case, your MS SQL Database Server uses Windows authentication as the only authentication method. When you have a system administrator in-charge of these configurations, all you have to do is to find which are the available Data Sources and eventually you can check if the connection works. Click on the Test Connection button at the bottom of the page to test the connection:     JNDI Connection JNDI Connection pool is in fact another way to access your JDBC Data Sources. Using a connection pool increases efficiency by maintaining a cache of physical connections that can be reused, allowing multiple clients to share a small number of physical connections. In order to configure a Data Source to use JNDI, from the Administration page, choose JNDI Connection from the Data Sources types list. The following screen will appear:     As you can see in the preceding screenshot, on the Add Data Source page you must enter the following parameters: Data Source Name: Enter a name of your choice JNDI Name: This is the JNDI location for the pool set up in your application server, for example, jdbc/BIP10gSource The users having roles included in Allowed Roles list only will be able to create reports using this Data Source. OLAP Connection Use the OLAP Connection to connect to OLAP databases. BI Publisher supports the following OLAP types: Oracle Hyperion Essbase Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services SAP BW In order to configure a connection to an OLAP database, from the Administration page, choose OLAP Connection from the Data Sources types list. The following screen will appear:     On the Add Data Source page, the following parameters must be entered: Data Source Name: Enter a name of your choice OLAP Type: Choose a type from the list Connection String: Depending on the supported OLAP databases, the connection string format is as follows: Oracle Hyperion Essbase Format: [server name] Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Format: Data Source=[server];Provider=msolap;Initial Catalog=[catalog] Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Format: Data Source=[server];Provider=msolap.3;Initial Catalog=[catalog] SAP BW Format: ASHOST=[server] SYSNR=[system number] CLIENT=[client] LANG=[language] Username and Password: Used for OLAP database authentication File Another example of a data source type is File. In order to gain access to XML or Excel files, you need a File Data Source. In order to set up this kind of Data Source, only one step is required&mdashenter the path to the Directory in which your files reside. You can see in the following screenshot that demo files Data Source points to the default BIP files directory. The file needs to be accessible from the BI Server (not on your local machine):    

  (For more resources on Moodle, see here.) There are a number of additional plugin types; namely, Enrolments, Authentication, Message outputs, Licences, and Web services. Plugins—an overview Moodle plugins are modules that provide some specific, usually ring-fenced, functionality. You can access the plugins area via the Plugins menu that is shown in the following screenshot:   Plugins overview displays a list of all installed plugins. The information shown for each plugin includes the Plugin name, an internal Identifier, its Source (Standard or Extension), its Version (in date format), its Availability (enabled or disabled), a link to the plugin Settings, and an option to Uninstall the plugin. The table is useful to get a quick overview of what has been installed on your system and what functionality is available. Some areas contain a significant number of plugins, for instance, Authentication and Portfolios. Other categories only contain one or two plugins. The expectation is that more plugins will be developed in the future, either as part of the Moodle's core or by third-party developers. This guarantees the extensibility of Moodle without the need to change the system itself. Be careful when modifying settings in any of the plugins. Inappropriate values can cause problems throughout the system. The last plugin type in the preceding screenshot is labeled Local plugins. This is the recommended place for any local customizations. These customizations can be changes to existing functionality or the introduction of new features. For more information about local plugins, check out the readme.txt file in the local directory in your dirroot. Module plugins Moodle distinguishes between three types of module plugins that are used in the courses—the front page (which is treated as a course), the My Moodle page, and the user profile pages: Activities modules (which also covers resources) Blocks Filters   Activities modules Navigating to Plugins | Activity modules | Manage activities displays the following screen: The table displays the following information: Column Description Activity module Icon and name of the activity/resource as they appear in courses and elsewhere. Activities The number of times the activity module is used in Moodle. When you click on the number, a table, which displays the courses in which the activity module has been used, is shown. Version Version of the activity module (format YYYYMMDDHH). Hide/Show The opened eye indicates that the activity module is available for use, while the closed eye indicates that it is hidden (unavailable). Delete Performs delete action. All activities, except the Forum activity, can be deleted. Settings Link to activity module settings (not available for all items). Clicking on the Show/Hide icon toggles its state; if it is hidden it will be changed to be shown and vice versa. If an activity module is hidden, it will not appear in the Add an activity or Add a resource drop-down menu in any Moodle course. Hidden activities and resources that are already present in courses are hidden but are still in the system. It means that, once the activity module is visible again, the items will also re-appear in courses. You can delete any Moodle Activity module (except the Forum activity). If you delete an activity or resource that has been used anywhere in Moodle, all the already-created activity modules will also be deleted and so will any associated user data! Deleting an activity module cannot be undone; it has to be installed from scratch. It is highly recommended not to delete any activity modules unless you are 100 percent sure that you will never need them again! If you wish to prevent usage of an activity or resource type, it is better to hide it instead of deleting it. The Feedback activity has been around for some time as a third-party add-on. It is hidden by default because it has been newly introduced in the core of Moodle 2, due to its popularity. You might probably want to make this available for your teachers. The settings are different for each activity module. For example, the settings for the Assignment module only contain three parameters, whereas the settings for the Quiz module allow the modification of a wide range of parameters. The settings for Moodle Activity modules are not covered here, as they are mostly self-explanatory and also dealt with in great detail in the Moodle Docs of the respective modules. It is further expected that the activity modules will undergo a major overhaul in the 2.x versions to come, making any current explanations obsolete. Configuration of blocks Navigating to Plugins | Blocks | Manage blocks displays a table, as shown in the screenshot that follows. It displays the same type of information as for Activity modules. Some blocks allow multiple instances, that is, the block can be used more than once on a page. For example, you can only have one calendar, whereas you can have as many Remote RSS Feeds as you wish. You cannot control this behavior, as it is controlled by the block itself. You can delete any Moodle block. If you delete a block that is used anywhere in Moodle, all the already-created content will also be deleted. Deleting a block cannot be undone; it has to be installed from scratch. Do not delete or hide the Settings block, as you will not be able to access any system settings anymore! Also, do not delete or hide the Navigation block, as users will not be able to access a variety of pages. Most blocks are shown by default (except the Feedback and Global search blocks). Some blocks require additional settings to be set elsewhere for the block to function. For example, RSS feeds and tags have to be enabled in Advanced features, the Feedback activity module has to be shown, or global search has to be enabled (via Development | Experimental | Experimental settings).   The parameters of all standard Moodle blocks are explained in the respective Moodle Docs pages. Configuration of filters Filters scan any text that has been entered via the Moodle HTML editor and automatically transform it into different, often more complex, forms. For example, entries or concepts in glossaries are automatically hyperlinked in text, URLs pointing to MP3 or other audio files become embedded, flash-based controls (that offer pause and rewind functionality) appear, uploaded videos are given play controls, and so on. Moodle ships with 12 filters, which are accessed via Plugins | Filters | Manage filters:   By default, all filters are disabled. You can enable them by changing the Active? status to On or Off, but available. If the status is set to On, it means that the filter is activated throughout the system, but can be de-activated locally. If the status is set to Off, but available, it means that the filter is not activated, but can be enabled locally. In the preceding screenshot, the Multimedia plugins and Display emoticons as images (smileys) filters have been turned On and will be used throughout the system, as they are very popular. The TeX notation and Glossary auto-linking filters are available, but have to be activated locally. The former is only of use to the users who deal with mathematical or scientific notation and will trigger the Insert equation button in the Moodle editor. The Glossary auto-linking filter might be used in some courses. It can then be switched off temporarily at activity module level when learners have to appear for an exam. Additionally, you can change the order in which the filters are applied to text, using the up and down arrows. The filtering mechanism operates on a first-come, firstserved basis, that is, if a filter detects a text element that has to be transformed, it will do so before the next filter is applied. Each filter can be configured to be applied to Content and headings or Content only, that is, filters will be ignored in names of activity modules. The settings of some filters are described in detail in the Moodle Docs. As with activities and blocks, it is recommended to hide filters if you don't require them on your site. In addition to the filter-specific settings, Moodle provides a number of settings that are shared among all filters. These settings are accessed via the Filters | Common filters menu and are shown in the following screenshot: Setting Description Text cache lifetime It is the time for which Moodle keeps text to be filtered in a dedicated cache. Filter uploaded files By default, only text entered via the Moodle editor is filtered. If you wish to include uploaded files, you can choose any one from the HTML files only and All files options. Filter match once per page Enable this setting if the filter should stop analyzing text after it finds a match, that is, only the first occurrence will be transformed. Filter match once per text Enable this setting if the filter should only generate a single link for the first matching text instance found in each item of text on a page. This setting is ignored if the Filter match once per page parameter is enabled.  

(For more resources on Moodle, see here.) Introducing the SIMILE timeline widget The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed various visualization and data manipulation tools as part of the SIMILE project. One of these is a free/open source timeline JavaScript widget, which takes time-based data as input and creates an interactive timeline that scrolls from left to right and contains popup panes and links. A timeline for the life and career of Monet is as follows: You can view more examples on the web site, http://simile-widgets.org/timeline/. In order to use the timeline widget we need these components: The Moodle timeline filter, containing the SIMILE timeline Javascript libraries A timeline data file, in XML or JSON (Javascript Object Notation) format Photographs to show in the popup panes A web page to host the timeline We will deal with installing the filter later, but first we must decide on the subject for our timeline. If you visit the home of SIMILE, http://simile-widgets.org/timeline/, you will be able to explore timelines for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the life of Claude Monet, and other examples. Timelines can be granular to the minute or hour, as in the case of the assassination. Or they can be spread over centuries or millennia—this is currently the limit for the widget. A suitable subject for our young audience would be significant or important inventions. This can encompass subjects as diverse as printing, paper, penicillin, steam, and the computer. And these inventions originate in different parts of the world, which adds an extra dimension to the subject. Now that we have our subject, a search on Google reveals some useful links, including a list of the top 10 inventions, http://listverse.com/2007/09/13/top-10-greatestinventions/. We may or may not agree with a list like this, but it acts as a useful starting point and aide memoire. There are pictures here, and more information and images on other websites including Wikipedia. To progress from ideas to our timeline, we need to create an XML data file. One of the easier tools to help us produce the XML is a syntax highlighting text editor, which we will install now. If you already have a text editor on your computer that you think is suitable, skip this section. Installing a text editor We have our subject, so the next step is to install some editing software to help us create our XML timeline file. Though most operating systems including Windows contain simple text editors, it will be helpful to install an editor that features syntax highlighting for various computer languages including XML. Some general-purpose text editors are: Notepad2 for Windows, a simple open-source editor, distributed under a BSD license (http://opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php). It is a small download, less than 300 kilobytes, from http://flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html. Notepad++ for Windows, distributed under a GPL license. Download it from http://notepad-plus-plus.org. TextWrangler for Mac OS X, distributed under a Freeware license (not open-source), http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/. Most flavors of Linux and Unix include the vi or vim text editor. Or use Emacs or your favorite editor. We will carry on and install Notepad2 for the examples in this article. Time for action – installing Notepad2 To install Notepad2 on Windows, visit the website http://flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html in your browser and follow these steps: Under the Downloads section, find the link to the notepad2.zip file. Download it to your computer. Open the file notepad2.zip with the Unzip program available on your computer (the one built-in to Windows XP or later. Or Winzip, 7zip, or similar). Extract all the files in notepad2.zip to a directory on your hard drive, for example, C:apps2Notepad2. In your new directory, click on the file Notepad2.exe with your right mouse button. Choose Create Shortcut from the context menu that appears. Name the shortcut Notedpad2, and copy it to the clipboard. Now in Windows Explorer on Windows 7, go to the directory C:Users{USER}SendTo (or on Windows XP, go to the directory C:Documents and Settings{USER}SendTo). In each case {USER} is your username. Paste a copy of the shortcut in the directory. (Note, you will probably see a shortcut for Notepad, the basic editor included in Windows in this directory. You may want to delete it to avoid confusion.) Go to your Desktop and paste the shortcut there as well. Whew! Notepad2 is a little fiddly to set up, but don't worry, its easy to use. What just happened? We downloaded and installed a text editor for Windows called Notepad2. This has a feature called syntax highlighting, which as we will see helps us to write the XML file for our timeline widget. Note that the shortcuts we created are useful in different contexts. The SendTo shortcut is useful when we wish to edit a file—simply select it in Windows Explorer, right-click, and choose SendTo | Notepad2 in the context menu. The Desktop shortcut is useful for creating new files. We also found that there are many alternatives for Windows, Mac OS X, and other operating systems. These included Notepad++ for Windows, TextWrangler for Mac OS X, and vi/vim and Emacs for Linux. We have added a shortcut for the editor to the SendTo menu in Windows, as shown below: Now that we have a text editor we can create the timeline XML.

  (For more resources on HTML5, see here.) In the course of building pages using just HTML5 layout elements, in this article, we will explore all four advantages of relying on HTML5 as listed above. Dreamweaver CS5 and HTML5 Before diving in to create HTML5 pages from scratch, let's survey how we are going to get our money's worth out of Dreamweaver in the process. All recent versions of Dreamweaver (CS3, CS4, and CS5) with the HTML5 Pack installed can assist our work in creating HTML5 pages from scratch in three ways. First, with the HTML5 Pack installed, code hints that automatically prompts us in completing HTML5 coding are updated in Code view for HTML5 elements. Those code hints will help us avoid mistakes in spelling elements or constructing the (minimalist) coding syntax that we will need to place HTML5 elements. Second, we will avail ourselves of Split view, so that we will see our layout congealing in Design view as we sketch out what code we need to create in Split view. Third, we will take advantage of what is arguably the single most valuable panel in Dreamweaver—the CSS Styles panel. We will be defining CSS Style rules to associate with each of the HTML5 layout elements we use. Without styles, HTML5 layout elements are nothing, so the interplay between the HTML5 elements we create and formatting we do with the CSS Styles panel will drive our page design process. Moreover, here it is important to review, or at least reinforce two foundational techniques in building any professional-quality website in Dreamweaver: Do nothing without first defining a Dreamweaver site. Secondly, and not quite so essential but still pretty foundational, we always work with external style sheets. This allows the styles we define to be applied globally, across an entire website, and makes updating sites possible. As we begin to coordinate styling in the CSS Styles panel and constructing pages with HTML5 elements, I will be reminding you and when necessary walking you through the steps required to make sure all styles are saved to an external style sheet. With this as a preview, and cautionary reminder, let's dive in to creating pages with HTML5 layout elements. Building an HTML5 page from the top As opposed to laying out pages with tables (grids of rows and columns), or non-standardized Div tags (layout blocks you name and define yourself), we will use HTML5's new, standardized layout elements. The most basic of these are self-explanatory <header>, <nav>, <article> and <section>, <aside>, and <footer> tags. In addition, as alluded to in the introduction to this article, we will use additional elements to help make content more accessible to search engines. For example, within articles, we will use new HTML5 elements that make it easy for people looking for online content (or those making such online content accessible through various forms of search engines) to find things such as the publication date of content, or the date of an upcoming event. HTML5 structural elements In order to alert browsers that we are presenting HTML5 content, we need to indicate at the top of our HTML5 code that this is an HTML5 page. As for those browsers that respond, "huh, what's that?", we will address that challenge shortly. However, first use the following steps to create a new HTML5 page from scratch: With your Dreamweaver site defined, choose File | New. In the New Document dialog, choose Blank Page from the category list on the left of the dialog. Choose HTML in the Page Type column. Choose None in the Layout column. In the Layout CSS popup if you already have a CSS file you use with HTML layouts, you can choose Link to Existing File, and select your existing HTML5-related CSS file as the styles file for your page. From the DocType popup choose HTML5 as shown in the following screenshot: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) Click on Create to generate the blank page. A blank page appears in Design view of the Document window. In Split view, we can see some basic code has been generated: <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>Untitled Document</title> </head> <body> </body> </html> Let's briefly walk through this to situate ourselves. The <!DOCTYPE HTML> and <html> tags are sort of evolutionary holdovers from previous versions of HTML, and not actually required for HTML5 browsers. This code though, might be useful when taking into account non-HTML5 browsers, as we will examine shortly. The <head> and </head> tags d emarcate head content that is not displayed on the page, but serves as instructions to browsers. In this case, the content inside identifies that the current, most widely applicable character set, UTF-8, is implemented. This character set allows the display of characters from a wide range of languages. All the content we create for the page will be placed within the <body> and </body> tags. For this reason, our first step in creating our CSS styles for this page, will be to define a couple of basic attributes for the </body> tag. Finally, save this page as an HTML file. Choose File | Save. In the Save As dialog, make sure the folder selected in the Where popup is your Dreamweaver site folder (or a subfolder within that). Give the file a name, like html5_test, and click on Save. While we are at it, enter a descriptive title in the Title box of the Document toolbar. Resave periodically. Creating a CSS file H and-in-hand with our HTML5 fi le, we will create and use a CSS fi le to organize and manage all the styling in the page. Therefore, let's create that CSS fi le now, and as we do, add a line that will make our HTML5 page compatible with all current browsers, and most older ones. To do that, follow these steps: Choose File | New, and in the New Document dialog, choose the Blank Page category on the left, and CSS from the Page Type category. Click on Create to generate, and open a new CSS file. The file opens in Code view. We will be editing it in the CSS Styles panel, so except as a learning experience we won't need to view this page again. However, we do need to save it. Choose File | Save, and give the file a name like html5_layout.css. Make sure the site folder is selected in the Where pop up, and click on Save as shown in the following screenshot: In the tab bar at the top of the document window, toggle back to the HTML file you created, as shown in the following screenshot: View the CSS STYLES panel if it is not visible (choose Window | CSS Styles), and click on the Attach Style Sheet icon as shown in the following screenshot: The Attach External Style Sheet dialog appears. Use the Browse button to navigate to the CSS fi le you just created, and click on OK to attach the style sheet. The CSS fi le appears in the CSS Files panel (use the All tab in the CSS Styles panel as the norm, unless you are doing particular styles detective work that requires the Current tab). You will also see the link to the CSS file in Code view if you look. Next, we will add a single attribute that enables most browsers to interpret the HTML5 elements, even if they are not HTML5 compliant. To do that, follow these steps: Click on the New CSS Rule icon at the bottom of the CSS Styles panel, it is just to the right of the Attach Style Sheet icon identified in the preceding screenshot. The New CSS Rule dialog opens. In the New CSS Rule dialog, choose Compound from the first popup. We are creating a rule that will apply to more than one HTML5 layout element. These are HTML5 tags that we want to prevent from collapsing when viewed in non-HTML5 browsers. In the Choose or Enter a Name for Your Selector field, enter header. We actually want to apply the rule we are working on to additional HTML5 elements, but we will add those shortly. In the Rule Definition section of the dialog, make sure your attached CSS fi le is selected (it will be by default). Click on OK. In the CSS Rule Definition for header dialog, select the Block category, and choose block from the display popup as shown in the following screenshot, then click on OK. The Header style appears in the CSS Styles panel when you expand the CSS Styles file linked to the page. You can see that the display property for the header style has a block attribute associated with it in the CSS styles panel. We want to expand the list of HTML5 elements to which this display:block attribute is assigned. The long, slow way to do that is to duplicate steps we have traversed so far for each additional element. To do that the quick, easy way, click once in the header row, in the top half of the CSS Styles panel, and edit the list of elements to include address, article, footer, nav, section. Use commas (",") to separate the additional elements as you type them in. These are HTML5 tags that we want to prevent from collapsing when viewed in non-HTML5 browsers. The CSS Styles panel should now look like the following screenshot: With the preceding set of steps, we have told most non-HTML5 browsers to keep our basic HTML5 building-block elements on their own distinct horizontal row, so they don't smush into each other. Our basic model and scenario here is creating pages that are intended only for HTML5 browsers (like iPhones or iPads). Using HTML5 to make content accessible Having set up our HTML5 document with basic web page coding, we are now ready to create and format the HTML5 layout elements that will define how the page looks. But wait… as the TV pitchmen say… there's more! Before diving into the page design dimension of HTML layout elements, it will be helpful to quickly survey another reason to use HTML layout elements to organize content: accessibility. As alluded to in the introduction to this article, there are advantages beyond design considerations for relying on HTML5 layout elements to organize page content. These advantages revolve around the way HTML5 layout elements package content for metadata compilers (such as search engines). This emerging connection can make content organized into HTML5 layout elements more searchable, easier to organize and access. Moreover, this will be even more the case in the future as search engines and other web content organizing tools integrate HTML5 layout elements. We will take a rather simple, but interesting example of how this works right now. If you have ever copied and pasted the content between apps on an iPhone (for example, the address of a web page into an app that helps you find public transportation options or content from an article or posting that you read online in an e-mail), then you maybe familiar with the routine where you hold your finger down on the screen and are prompted with a Copy prompt. The next step is to use the somewhat awkward process of using one's fingers to define the content to copy to the clipboard, as shown in the following screenshot:   On the other hand, when content is organized into articles (or sections), a touch on the iPhone screen instantly selects an article or article section for copying, as shown in the following screenshot:   Now, in terms of added value to a website, the convenience associated with iPhone users easily selecting articles or article sections probably isn't going to turn the world upside down, although visitors are likely to note positively the convenience they experience selecting articles from your page to share. However, the fact that the iPhone browser recognizes sections (and articles, and other HTML5 layout elements) also gives a sense of the potential for the associations between content and HTML5 layout elements to make content more accessible. We can expect, for example, that in the not-so-far-off-future, people will be able to tune their search engine queries for "articles" about this or that topic. HTML5 layout and search engines: By relying on HTML5 layout elements to organize page content, you are building (in advance) support for search tools and other ways that HTML5 will facilitate finding content. HTML5 layout strategy Having surveyed the emerging value of organizing content into HTML5 layout elements, we turn to the more dramatically impactful aspect of using HTML5 layout elements: design. However, keep in mind; design and content are linked in HTML5. Unlike previous generations of web page markup language, HTML5 organizes content both to facilitate displaying that content, and to facilitate accessing that content. A basic HTML5 page layout is illustrated in the following screenshot, with self-explanatory placeholder text: The visible borders in the preceding screenshot, by the way, are a product of Dreamweaver CS5's CSS Layout Outlines (if they are not functioning, choose View | Visual Aids | CSS Layout Outlines). Again, before diving into an exploration of the specific elements in HTML5 layouts, and how they are implemented, keep in mind they both define design components of the page, and organize content. Using code hints Dreamweaver, with the HTML5 Pack, is HTML5-friendly, but not exactly HTML5-compatible. By this, I mean that it is necessary to resort to Code view to apply HTML5 elements. However, within that, you get help. As noted earlier, Dreamweaver CS5 helps create the coding for HTML5 code hints. As you begin typing HTML5 elements in Code view, beginning with "<", Dreamweaver prompts you with a set of tags that begin with the letter you type. So, for example, typing <he produces the following code hints, from which you can click on <<>header and press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to place the code. You can use control spacebar on Mac or PC to bring up the full code hinting list. To close (define the end of) an HTML5 layout element, simply type </. When you do that, Dreamweaver auto-enters the close coding for the open element, as shown in the following screenshot:   As we walk through the coding involved in defining different HTML5 layout elements in the remainder of this article, you can enter the necessary code in Split view, utilizing code hints, and seeing the results in the Design half of Split view.  

Specifying the required fields in a form This recipe uses a login form as an example to explain how to create required fields in a form. How to do it... Initialize the global QuickTips instance: Ext.QuickTips.init(); Create the login form: var loginForm = { xtype: 'form', id: 'login-form', bodyStyle: 'padding:15px; background:transparent', border: false, url:'login.php', items: [{ xtype: 'box', autoEl: { tag: 'div', html: '<div class="app-msg"> <img src="img/magic-wand.png" class="app-img" /> Log in to The Magic Forum</div>'} }, { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-user', fieldLabel: 'Username', allowBlank: false }, { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-pwd', fieldLabel: 'Password', inputType: 'password',allowBlank: false }], buttons: [{ text: 'Login', handler: function() { Ext.getCmp('login-form').getForm().submit(); } }, { text: 'Cancel', handler: function() { win.hide(); } }]} Create the window that will host the login form: Ext.onReady(function() { win = new Ext.Window({ layout: 'form', width: 340, autoHeight: true, closeAction: 'hide', items: [loginForm] }); win.show();}); How it works... Initializing the QuickTips singleton allows the form's validation errors to be shown as tool tips. When the form is created, each required field needs to have the allowblank configuration option set to false: { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-user', fieldLabel: 'Username', allowBlank: false},{ xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-pwd', fieldLabel: 'Password', inputType: 'password', allowBlank: false} Setting allowBlank to false activates a validation rule that requires the length of the field's value to be greater than zero. There's more... Use the blankText configuration option to change the error text when the blank validation fails. For example, the username field definition in the previous code snippet can be changed as shown here: { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-user', fieldLabel: 'Username', allowBlank: false, blankText:'Enter your username'} The resulting error is shown in the following figure: Validation rules can be combined and even customized. Other recipes in this article explain how to range-check a field's length, as well as how to specify the valid format of the field's value. See also... The next recipe titled Setting the minimum and maximum length allowed for a field's value explains how to restrict the number of characters entered in a field The Changing the location where validation errors are displayed recipe, covered later in this article, shows how to relocate a field's error icon Refer to the Deferring field validation until form submission recipe, covered later in this article, to learn how to validate all fields at once upon form submission, instead of using the default automatic field validation The Creating validation functions for URLs, email addresses, and other types of data recipe, covered later in this article, explains the validation functions available in Ext JS The Confirming passwords and validating dates using relational field validation recipe, covered later in this article, explains how to perform validation when the value of one field depends on the value of another field The Rounding up your validation strategy with server-side validation of form fields recipe, covered later in this article, explains how to perform server-side validation Setting the minimum and maximum length allowed for a field's value This recipe shows how to set the minimum and maximum number of characters allowed for a text field. The way to specify a custom error message for this type of validation is also explained. The login form built in this recipe has username and password fields of a login form whose lengths are restricted: How to do it... The first thing is to initialize the QuickTips singleton: Ext.QuickTips.init(); Create the login form: var loginForm = { xtype: 'form', id: 'login-form', bodyStyle: 'padding:15px;background:transparent', border: false, url:'login.php', items: [ { xtype: 'box', autoEl: { tag: 'div', html: '<div class="app-msg"> <img src="img/magic-wand.png" class="app-img" /> Log in to The Magic Forum</div>' } }, { xtype: 'textfield',id: 'login-user', fieldLabel: 'Username', allowBlank: false,minLength: 3,maxLength: 32 }, { xtype: 'textfield',id: 'login-pwd', fieldLabel: 'Password',inputType: 'password', allowBlank: false,minLength: 6,maxLength: 32, minLengthText: 'Password must be at least 6 characters long.' } ], buttons: [{ text: 'Login', handler: function() { Ext.getCmp('login-form').getForm().submit(); } }, { text: 'Cancel', handler: function() { win.hide(); } }]} Create the window that will host the login form: Ext.onReady(function() { win = new Ext.Window({ layout: 'form', width: 340, autoHeight: true, closeAction: 'hide', items: [loginForm] }); win.show();}); How it works... After initializing the QuickTips singleton, which allows the form's validation errors to be shown as tool tips, the form is built. The form is an instance of Ext.form.FormPanel. The username and password fields have their lengths restricted by the way of the minLength and maxLength configuration options: { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-user', fieldLabel: 'Username',allowBlank: false, minLength: 3, maxLength: 32},{ xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-pwd',fieldLabel: 'Password', inputType: 'password',allowBlank: false, minLength: 6, maxLength: 32,minLengthText: 'Password must be at least 6 characters long.'} Notice how the minLengthText option is used to customize the error message that is displayed when the minimum length validation fails: { xtype: 'textfield', id: 'login-pwd', fieldLabel: 'Password', inputType: 'password', allowBlank: false, minLength: 6, maxLength: 32, minLengthText: 'Password must be at least 6 characters long.'} As a last step, the window that will host the form is created and displayed. There's more... You can also use the maxLengthText configuration option to specify the error message when the maximum length validation fails. See also... The previous recipe, Specifying the required fields in a form, explains how to make some form fields required The next recipe, Changing the location where validation errors are displayed, shows how to relocate a field's error icon Refer to the Deferring field validation until form submission recipe (covered later in this article) to learn how to validate all fields at once upon form submission, instead of using the default automatic field validation Refer to the Creating validation functions for URLs, email addresses, and other types of data recipe (covered later in this article) for an explanation of the validation functions available in Ext JS The Confirming passwords and validating dates using relational field validation recipe (covered later in this article) explains how to perform validation when the value of one field depends on the value of another field The Rounding up your validation strategy with server-side validation of form fields recipe (covered later in this article) explains how to perform server-side validation

(Read more interesting articles on IBM Cognos here.) Showing images dynamically (Traffic Light report) Let us suppose that we have a report which shows month-on-month difference in sales quantity Getting ready Please note that you will need administrator rights on the Cognos server to complete this recipe. If the server is installed on your personal machine, you will have these rights by default. For this recipe, we need to first create three icons or images for red, yellow, and green. They should be already available on the Cognos server under <Cognos Installation>webcontentsamplesimages folder. If not, then create them using any image editor software or use the images supplied with this book. Once you have the three images which you need to conditionally show on the report, place them on the Cognos server under <Cognos Installation>webcontentsamplesimages folder. (If the folder is not there, create one). Change the IIS security to allow 'Anonymous Read and Browse' accesses. Now open the report that shows the month-on-month running differences. Insert a new 'image' from the insertable objects pane on the list report, as a new column. Now go to Condition Explorer and create a new string variable. Define the expression as: if ([Query1].[Running Difference] > 0)then ('green')else if ([Query1].[Running Difference] < 0)then ('red')else ('yellow') Call the variable Traffic and define three possible values for the same (red, yellow, and green). Now go back to the report page. Select the image. Open its URL Source Variable dialog. Choose the variable Traffic and click OK. From Condition Explorer, choose 'red' condition. Now click on the image again. It will allow you to define the image URL for this condition. Set the URL to: ../samples/images/Red.jpg Similarly, define the URL for 'yellow' and 'green' conditions as ../samples/images/yellow.jpg and ../samples/images/green.jpg respectively. Run the report to test it. How it works... Cognos Report Studio allows you to put the images in the report by specifying the URL of the image. The images can be anywhere on the intranet or internet. They will be displayed properly as long as the URL is accessible from Cognos application server and gateway. In this recipe, we are using a report which already calculates the Running Difference. Hence, we just had to define conditional variable to trap different possible conditions. The Image component allows us to define the URL for different conditions by attaching it to the Traffic variable in step 8. There's more... In this case, though the URL of the image changes dynamically, it is not truly 100% dynamic. There are three static URLs already defined in the report and one is picked up depending on the condition. We can also use a data item or report expression as source of the URL value. In that case, it will be totally dynamic, and based on the values coming from database; Cognos will work out the URL of the image and display it correctly. This is useful when the image filenames and locations are stored in the database. For example, Product Catalogue kind of reports. More info This recipe works fine in HTML, PDF, and Excel formats.We have used relative URLs for the images, so that report can be easily deployed to other environments where Cognos installation might be in a different location. However, we need to ensure that the images are copied in all environments in the folder mentioned in step 2. Handling missing image issue In the previous recipe, we saw how to add images to the report. You will be using that technique in many cases, some involving hundreds of images (For example, Product Catalogue).There will often be a case in which database has a URL or image name, whereas the corresponding image is either missing or inaccessible. In such a case, the web browser shows an error symbol. This looks quite ugly and needs to be handled properly. In this recipe, we will see how to handle this problem gracefully. Getting ready We will use the report prepared in previous recipe. We need to delete the Green.jpg file (or rename it to something else) from the server, in order to create the missing image scenario. How to do it... In the previous recipe, we added an image object and defined its conditional URLs . We need to replace that image with an HTML Item. For that, unlock the report objects and delete the image component. Add an HTML Item in the same column. Select this HTML item and from the Properties pane, set its HTML Source Variable to 'Traffic'. (Please note that we already have this conditional variable in the last recipe). Now define the HTML for different conditions. Start with 'red'. Choose 'red' from conditional explorer and define the HTML as: For 'yellow', define the HTML as: <img src="../samples/images/yellow.jpg" alt="No Change" onError="img2txt(this)"/> For 'green', define HTML as: <img src="../samples/images/green.jpg" alt="Upsell" onError="img2txt(this)"/> Now go back to the No Variable state by double clicking on the green bar, and add another HTML item on the report. Put it just before the list. Define this HTML as: <script>function img2txt(img) {txt = img.alt;img.parentNode.innerHTML=txt;}</script> Now run the report to test it. As you can see, if the image is missing, the report will now handle it gracefully and show some text instead of an error image. How it works... Here we are using our custom code to display the image, instead of using CRS's in-built Image component.We have pulled an HTML item onto the report and defined it to display different images depending on the condition using the <img border="0" /> tag. This tag allows us to define an alternative text and onError event as well. We are using the onError event to call our custom made JavaScript function called img2txt .This function replaces the HTML item with a text which was originally defined as 'alternative text'. Hence, if green.jpg is missing, this function will replace it with a text item Upsell. There's more... As we are using HTML code and JavaScript in this technique, it works in HTML format only. This technique will be useful for a lot of graphical reports (dashboards, scorecards, online product catalogues, and so on). Dynamic links to external website (Google Map example) In this recipe, we will introduce you to the 'Hyperlink' component. A report shows retailers information by products. It shows various fields like Retailer name, Contact information, City, and Postal zone. Business wants to have a link to Google maps that will show retailer's place on the map using the Postal zone information. As the addresses might change in the backend, the technique needs to be dynamic to pick up the latest postal zone. Getting ready Create a simple list report that shows Retailers information by Product lines. How to do it... From the 'Insertable Objects' toolbox, drag a hyperlink object onto the report as a new column. Change its Text property to Map. Set the URL Source Type to Report Expression and define the report expression as follows: 'http://maps.google.com/maps?q=' + [Query1].[City] Run the report to test it. As you can see, there is a link for each retailer record. If you Shift+click on the link, it will open the Google map for corresponding postal zone in a new window. How it works... Here we are using the 'Hyperlink' component of CRS. We can define the URL as any static link. However, for our requirements, we have defined a report expression. This allows us to provide a dynamic link which picks up the latest postal zone from the database. We are passing the postal zone to Google Maps as part of a URL. The hyperlink component works in HTML as well as Excel and PDF formats of report. This object currently does not have the property to define whether the link target should open in a new window or the same window. Just clicking on the link, opens the target in same window; whereas Shift+click opens in a new window. There's more... You can use this technique to call any external website that accepts parameters within a URL. You can pass multiple parameters too.   Alternating drill link In this recipe, we will learn about a limitation of drill link and overcoming it using Render Variable. There is a crosstab report which shows sales quantity by month and order method. We need to provide drill-through facility from the intersection. However, the drill-through target needs to be different, depending on the order method. If order method is e-mail, the drill-through from intersection should go to a report called 'Alternating Drill Link—Drill Report 2'. For all other order methods, it should go to 'Alternating Drill Link—Drill Report 1'. Getting ready Create a crosstab report to serve as the main report. Drag Month (shipment) on rows, Order method on columns and Sales Quantity on the intersection. Create two list reports to serve as drill reports. In the sample provided with this book, we have used two list reports for this. One accepts the Order method and Month. The other accepts only month and is designed to work for the order method 'E-mail'. How to do it... Create a drill through to first drill the report from the crosstab intersection. Now make sure that the report objects are unlocked. Select the intersection text item (which now looks like hyperlink as there is already a drill-through defined). Hold the Ctrl key down and drag the text to its right within a cell. This should create a copy of the text item within that cell and will look like the following: Now select this copy of the text item. Hit the drill-through button to open definitions. Delete the existing drill-through to first report. Create a new drill to a second report. So, now we have two text items in the cell, each going to different drill reports. Create a string type of Conditional Variable. Define it as: if ([Query1].[Order method] = 'E-mail') then ('E-mail')else ('Other')Call it OrderMethod and define the two values to be E-mail and Other. Now go back to the report page. Select the first text item from intersection. Open its Render Variable property . Choose the OrderMethod variable and select to Render for: Other. Similarly, define Render Variable for the second text item, but choose to Render for: E-mail. Run the report to test it. You will see that clicking on the intersection numbers opens first drill report for any order method other than E-mail. Whereas for the numbers under E-mail, the second drill report opens.

  Nagios also offers a tool for sending passive check results for hosts and services over a network. It is called NSCA (Nagios Service Check Acceptor). It can be used to send results from one Nagios instance to another. It can also be used by third-party applications running on different machines to send passive check results to a central Nagios server. This mechanism includes password protection, along with encryption, to prevent injection of false results in to Nagios. In this way, NSCA communication sent over the Internet is more secure. What are Passive Checks? Previous parts of this book often mentioned Nagios performing checks on various software and machines. In such cases, Nagios decides when a check is to be performed, runs the check and stores the result. These types of checks are called Active Checks. Nagios also offers another way to work with the statuses of hosts and services. It is possible to configure Nagios so that it will receive status information sent over a command pipe. In such a case, checks are done by other programs, and their results are sent to Nagios. Nagios will still handle all notifications, event handlers, and dependencies between hosts and services. Active checks are most common in the Nagios world. They have a lot of advantages and some disadvantages. One of the problems is that such checks can take only a couple of seconds to complete—a typical timeout for an active check to complete is 10 or 30 seconds. In many cases, the time taken is not enough, as some checks need to be performed over a longer period of time to have satisfactory results. A good example might be running a check that takes several hours to complete—in this case, it does not make sense to raise the global service_check_timeout option, but rather to schedule these checks outside of Nagios and only report the results back to it. There are also different types of checks including external applications or devices that want to report information directly to Nagios. This can be done to gather all critical errors to a single, central place. These types of checks are called Passive Checks. For example, when a web application cannot connect to the database, it will let Nagios know about it immediately. It can also send reports after a database recovery, or periodically, even if connectivity to the database has been consistently available, so that Nagios has an up-to-date status. This can be done in addition to active checks, to identify critical problems earlier. Another example is where an application already processes information such as network bandwidth utilization. In such a case, adding a module that reports current utilization along with the OK/WARNING/CRITICAL state to Nagios seems much easier than using active checks for the same job. Often, there are situations where active checks obviously fit better. In other cases, passive checks are the way to go. In general, if a check can be done quickly and does not require long running processes, it should definitely be done as an active service. If the situation involves reporting problems from other applications or machines, it is definitely a use case for a passive check. In cases where the checks require the deployment of long-running processes or monitoring information constantly, this should be done as a passive service. Another difference is that active checks require much less effort to be set up when compared to passive checks. In the first case, Nagios takes care of the scheduling, and the command only needs to perform the actual checks and mark the results as OK/WARNING/CRITICAL based on how a check command is configured. Passive checks require all the logic related to what should be reported and when it should be checked to be put in an external application. This usually calls for some effort. The following diagram shows how both active and passive checks are performed by Nagios. It shows what is performed by Nagios in both cases and what needs to be done by the check command or an external application for passive checks. Nagios also offers a way of combining the benefits of both active and passive checks. Often, you have situations where other applications can report if a certain service is working properly or not. But if the monitoring application is not running or some other issue prevents it from reporting, Nagios can use active checks to keep the service status up–to-date. A good example would be a server that is a part of an application, processing job queues using a database. It can report each problem when accessing the database. We want Nagios to monitor this database, and as the application is already using it, we can add a module that reports this to Nagios. The application can also periodically let Nagios know if it succeeded in using the database without problems. However, if there are no jobs to process and the application is not using it, Nagios will not have up-to-date information about the database. Configuring Passive Checks The first thing that needs to be done in order to use passive checks for your Nagios setup is to make sure that you have the following options in your main Nagios configuration file: accept_passive_service_checks=1accept_passive_host_checks=1 It would also be good to enable the logging of incoming passive checks—this makes determining the problem of not processing a passive check much easier. The following directive allows it: log_passive_checks=1 Setting up hosts or services for passive checking requires an object to be defined and set up so as not to perform active checks. The object needs to have the passive_checks_enabled option set to 1 for Nagios to accept passive check results over the command pipe. The following is an example of the required configuration for a host that accepts passive checks and has active checks disabled: define host{use generic-hosthost_name linuxbox01address 10.0.2.1active_checks_enabled 0passive_checks_enabled 1 } Configuring services is exactly the same as with hosts. For example, to set up a very similar service, all we need to do is to use the same parameters as those for the hosts: define service{use ping-templatehost_name linuxbox01service_description PINGactive_checks_enabled 0passive_checks_enabled 1} In this case, Nagios will never perform any active checks on its own and will only rely on the results that are passed to it. We can also configure Nagios so that if no new information has been provided within a certain period of time, it will use active checks to get the current status of the host or service. If up-to-date information has been provided by a passive check during this period, then it will not perform active checks. In order to do this, we need to enable active checks by setting the active_checks_enabled option to 1 without specifying the normal_check_interval directive. For Nagios to perform active checks when there is no up-to-date result from passive checks, you need to set the check_freshness directive to 1 and set freshness_threshold to the time period after which a check should be performed. The time performed is specified in seconds. The first parameter tells Nagios that it should check whether the results from the checks are up-to-date. The next parameter specifies the number of seconds after which Nagios should consider the results to be out of date. Attributes can be used for both hosts and services. A sample definition for a host that runs an active check if there has been no result provided within the last two hours: define host{use generic-hosthost_name linuxbox02address 10.0.2.2check_command check-host-alivecheck_freshness 1freshness_threshold 7200active_checks_enabled 1passive_checks_enabled 1} The following is an illustration showing when Nagios would invoke active checks: Each time there is at least one passive check result that is still valid (i.e., was received within the past two hours), Nagios will not perform any active checks. However, two hours after the last passive or active check result was received, Nagios would perform an active check to keep the results up-to-date. Passive Checks—Hosts Nagios allows applications and event handlers to send out passive check results for host objects. In order to use them, the host needs to be configured to accept passive checks results. In order to be able to submit passive check results, we need to configure Nagios to allow the sending of passive check results, and set the host objects to accept them. Submitting passive host check results to Nagios requires sending a command to the Nagios external command pipe. This way, the other applications on your Nagios server can report the status of the hosts. The command to submit passive checks is PROCESS_HOST_CHECK_RESULT (visit http://www.nagios.org/developerinfo/externalcommands/commandinfo.php?command_id=115). This command accepts the host name, status code, and the textual output from a check. The host status code should be 0 for an UP state, 1 for DOWN and 2 for an UNREACHABLE state. The following is a sample script that will accept the host name, status code, and output from a check and will submit these to Nagios: #!/bin/shNOW='date +%s'HOST=$1STATUS=$2OUTPUT=$3echo "[$NOW] PROCESS_HOST_CHECK_RESULT;$HOST;$STATUS;$OUTPUT" >/var/nagios/rw/nagios.cmdexit 0 As an example of the use of this script, the command that is sent to Nagios for host01, status code 2 (UNREACHABLE) and output router 192.168.1.2 down would be as follows: [1206096000] PROCESS_HOST_CHECK_RESULT;host01;2;router192.168.1.2 down When submitting results, it is worth noting that Nagios might take some time to process them, depending on the intervals between Nagios' checks of the external command pipe. Unlike active checks, Nagios will not take network topology into consideration by default. This is very important in situations where a host behind a router is reported to be down because the router is actually down. By default, Nagios handles results from active and passive checks differently. When Nagios plans and receives results from active checks, it takes the actual network topology into consideration and performs a translation of the states based on this. This means that if Nagios receives a result indicating that a host is DOWN, it assumes that all child hosts are in an UNREACHABLE state. When a passive result check comes in to Nagios, Nagios expects that the result already has a network topology included. When a host is reported to be DOWN as a passive check result, Nagios does not perform a translation from DOWN to UNREACHABLE. Even if its parent host is currently DOWN, the child host state is also stored as DOWN. The following illustration shows how results from active and passive checks are treated differently by Nagios:     In both the cases, a check result stating that the host is down is received by Nagios. When it comes in as a passive check, no state translation is done and Nagios stores the host and all child nodes being down. When it is an active check result, Nagios takes the fact that switch1 is down into account and maps the child node's result into an UNREACHABLE state. How Nagios process handles passive check results can be defined in the main Nagios configuration file. In order to make Nagios treat passive host check results in the same way as active check results, we need to enable the following option: translate_passive_host_checks=1 By default, Nagios treats host results from passive checks as hard results. This is because, very often, passive checks are used to report host and service statuses from other Nagios instances. In such cases, only reports regarding hard state changes are propagated across Nagios servers. If you want Nagios to treat all passive check results for hosts as if they were soft results, you need to enable the following option in the main Nagios configuration file: passive_host_checks_are_soft=1 Passive Checks—Services Passive service checks are very similar to passive host checks. In both the cases, the idea is that Nagios receives information about host statuses over the external commands pipe. As with passive checks of hosts, all that is needed is to enable the global Nagios option to accept passive check results, and also enable this option for each service that should allow the passing of passive check results. The results are passed to Nagios in the same way as they are passed for hosts. A command to submit passive checks is PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT (visit http://www.nagios.org/developerinfo/externalcommands/commandinfo.php?command_id=114). This command accepts the host name, service description, status code, and the textual output from a check. Service status codes are the same as those for active checks—0 for OK, 1 for WARNING, 2 for CRITICAL, and 3 for an UNKNOWN state. The following is a sample script that will accept the host name, status code, and output from a check and will submit these to Nagios: #!/bin/shCLOCK='date +%s'HOST=$1SVC=$2STATUS=$3OUTPUT=$4echo "[$CLOCK] PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;$HOST;$SVC;$STATUS; $OUTPUT" >/var/nagios/rw/nagios.cmdexit 0 As an example of the use of this script, the command that is sent to Nagios for host01, service PING, status code 0 (OK) and output RTT=57 ms is as follows: [1206096000] PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;host01;PING;0;RTT=57 ms A very common scenario for using passive checks is a check that takes a very long time to complete. As with submitting host check results, it is worth mentioning that Nagios will take some time to process passive check results as they are polled periodically from the external commands pipe. A major difference between hosts and services is that service checks differentiate between soft and hard states. When new information regarding a service gets passed to Nagios via the external commands pipe, Nagios treats it the same way as if it had been received by an active check. If a service is set up with a max_check_attempts directive of 5, then the same number of passive check results would need to be passed in order for Nagios to treat the new status as a hard state change. Passive service checks are often used to report the results of long lasting tests asynchronously. A good example of such a test is checking whether there are bad blocks on a disk. This requires trying to read the entire disk directly from the block device (such as /dev/sda1) and checking if the attempt has failed. This can't be done as an active check as reading the device takes a lot of time to complete—larger disks might require several hours to complete. For this reason, the only way to perform such a check is to schedule them from the system—for example, using the cron daemon (visit http://man.linuxquestions.org/index.php?query=cron). The script should then post results to the Nagios daemon. The following is a script that runs the dd system command (visit http://man.linuxquestions.org/index.php?query=dd) to read an entire block device. Based on whether the read was successful or not, the appropriate status code, along with plugin output, is sent out. #!/bin/sh SVC=$1 DEVICE=$2 TMPFILE=/tmp/ddlog.$$ NOW='date +%s' PREFIX="['date +%s'] [$NOW] PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;localhost;$SVC" # try to read the device dd if=$DEVICE of=/dev/null >$TMPFILE 2>&1 CODE=$? RESULT='grep copied <$TMPFILE' rm $TMPFILE if [ $CODE == 0 ] ; then echo "$PREFIX;0;$RESULT" else echo "$PREFIX;2;Error while checking device $DEVICE" fi exit 0

The Top Menu is a horizontal menu; the other menus are vertical. Each menu is coupled with a so-called module, which is administered in the module manager. Menus By clicking on this menu item, you get an overview of the available menus. You can also access the content of these menus by means of the menu bar—Menus | Main Menu, Top Menu, or by clicking the respective menu link in the overview. This Menu Manager serves as an overview and shows you the number of Published and Unpublished menu items, the number of menu items that are in the Trash can, and the respective menu ID. In this section you can, for instance, copy a menu or create a new one. Customizing an Existing Menu Experiment a little with the menus to get a feel for things. The following edit steps are same for all the menus. Go to the menu item Menus | Main Menu. You will see a listing of the menu items that turn up in the mainmenu. Several functions can be executed in the table with a simple mouse click. By clicking on the checkmark, you can enable or disable a menu link. You can change the order of the items by clicking on the triangles or by typing numbers into the fields under Order. If you use the numbers method, you have to click on the disk symbol in the header in order to make the change effective. In the Access Level column, via mouse click you can decide whether the menu is available to all users (Public), only to registered users (Registered), or only to a particular circle of users (Special). The menu items are then displayed or hidden, independent of the user's rights. Menus Icon If you click on this icon, you are taken to the menu overview screen. Default Icon The menu item that is marked as default here with a star is displayed as the start page when someone calls up the URL of your website. At the moment this is the menu item Home, but you can designate any element that you want as the start page. Just mark the checkbox and click on the Default icon. Publish/Unpublish Icon The status of a content element can either be published (activated) or unpublished (deactivated). You can toggle this status individually by clicking the green checkmark and/or the red cross, or marking the checkbox and subsequently clicking on the appropriate icon. If you follow the later method, you can toggle several menu items at the same time. Move Icon This entails the moving of menu entries. Let's move the text More about Joomla! into the top menu. Select the respective menu elements or even several menu elements and click the Move icon. This opens a form, listing the available menus. On the right you will see the elements that you want to move: Select the menu into which you would like to move the marked menu items. Here, we have moved More about Joomla! from Main Menu into the Top Menu. You can admire the results in the front end. Copy Icon You can also copy menu items. To do that, select one or more menu items and click on the Copy icon. Just as with moving, a form with the available menus opens. Select the menu into which you want to copy the marked menu entries. Trash Icon In order to protect you from inadvertently deleting items, when editing them you cannot delete them immediately; you can only throw them in the trash. To throw them into trash can, select one or several menu elements and click on the Trash icon. The marked menu items are then dumped into the trash can. You can display the content of the trash can by clicking on Menus | Menu Trash. Edit Icon (Edit Menu Items) Here you can modify an existing menu, for instance the Web Links. After clicking on the name Web Links you will see the edit form for menu elements: The form is divided into three parts.    Menu Item Type    Menu Item Details    Parameters Menu Item Type Every menu item is of a particular type. We will get into greater details when we create new menus. For instance, a menu item can refer to an installed Joomla! component, a content element, a link to an external website, or many other things. You can see what the type of the link is in this section; in our case it is a link to the Joomla! weblinks component, and you can also see a button with the label Change Type. If you click on that button, you get the following screen: This manager is new in Joomla! version 1.5 and really handy. In version 1.0.x there was no option to change the type of a menu item. You had to delete the old menu item and create a new one. Now you can change the display to a single category or to a link-suggestion menu item, with which you invite other users to suggest links. Now close this; we will get back to it when we create a new menu. Menu Item Details It contains the following options: ID: Everything in an administration requires an ID number and so does our menu item. In this case the menu item has the ID number 48. Joomla! assigns this number for internal administration purposes at the time the item is created. This number cannot be changed. Title: This is the name of the menu and it will be displayed that way on your website. Alias: This is the name of the search-engine friendly URL after the domain name. When this is enabled, the URL for this menu will look as follows: http://localhost/joomla150/web-links Link: This is the request for a component, in other words also the part of the URL after the domain name with which you call up your website. In this case it is  index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=categories Display in: With this you can change the place where the item is displayed; in other words you can move it to another menu. The options field presents you with a list of the available menus. Parent Item: Of course menus can also contain nested, tree-like items. Top means that the item is at the uppermost level. The rest of the items represent existing menu items. If, for instance, you classify and save Web Links under The News, the display on the item list and the display on your website are changed. The following figures show the change. The menu item Web Links has now moved into The News on your website. So you have to first click on The News in order to see the Web Links item. Your website can easily and effectively be structured like a database tree in this manner. Published: With this you can publish a menu item. Order: From the options list, you can select after which link you want to position this link. Access Level: You can restrict users that can see this list. On Click, Open in: A very handy option that influences the behavior of the link. The page is either opened in the existing window or in a new browser window after clicking. You can also define whether the new window will be displayed with or without browser navigation. Parameters The possible parameters of a menu item depend on the type of the item. A simple link, of course, has fewer parameters than a configurable list or for example the front page link. In this case we have a link to the categories. The number and type of parameters depend on the type of the menu item. You can open and collapse the parameter fields by clicking on the header. If the parameter fields are open, the arrow next to header points down. Parameters–Basic The basic parameters are the same for all menu links. Image: Here you can specify an image that must be in the root directory of the media manager (/images/stories/). Depending on the template, this picture is displayed on the left, next to the menu item. Image Align: You can decide if the image should be on the left or right. Show a Feed Link: It is possible to create an RSS feed for every list display in Joomla! 1.5. This could be desirable or undesirable depending on the content of the list. In this case, with list displays, RSS feed links that contain the list items are enabled in the browser.

Even though ORM framework such as Hibernate hides away most of the complexities related to heterogeneous database systems, the framework has their own infrastructure management requirements including session and transaction management. Such requirements can be managed well using another framework that uses dependency injection to provide and manage the requirements of Hibernate. Spring Framework is one of such most commonly used frameworks. It provides first class integration with Hibernate through its HibernateTemplate. It is analogous to the JdbcTemplate that is used to integrate with JDBC API. In this discussion, the focus will be on using HibernateTemplate to integrate Hibernate with Spring Framework. The first section will introduce you to the HibernateTemplate and details the requirements for using it. In the second section, I will detail the steps for using Hibernate with Spring Framework. In the last section, a real world application will be developed using the steps detailed in the last section. This is the outline for this discussion. HibernateTemplate Spring Framework provides different approaches to integrate with Hibernate. However, the commonly used approach is using HibernateTemplate. There are two main reasons. They are: Hiding away the session and transaction management details Providing template based approach The former takes care of infrastructure management while the later provides a consistent way to implement data access layer. Hiding away the session and transaction management detailsHibernateTemplate class hides away the complexity of managing session and transaction while accessing data using Hibernate. One only has to instantiate the HibernateTemplate by passing an instance of SessionFactory. From thereon, the session and transaction related details will be taken care of by Spring Framework. This helps by eliminating the need for infrastructure code that may become cluttered as the complexity of the application increases. Providing template based approachHibernateTemplate, like JdbcTemplate, provides a template based approach to data access. Due to this, one need to follow the approach dictated by the template and thus consistency is maintained in the coding when compared to the traditional way of data access. When you are using HibernateTemplate, you will be working with callbacks. Callbacks are the only mechanism in templating approach to instruct the template to execute a particular task. The advantage of having a callback is that there only one entry point into the data access layer. And this entry point is defined by the template, in this case HibernateTemplate, thus providing a consistent approach. In nutshell, the template based approach provides consistency and makes the code maintainable. Now that we have discussed the advantages/reasons to use HibernateTemplate, let us proceed towards the functionalities provided by it. The API provided by it can be categorized into the following: Convenience/Helper Methods Template methods The former relates to the data retrieval and manipulation API of Hibernate and the latter relates to the session and transaction management API. Convenience/Helper MethodsHibernate has API that simplifies CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete) operations. The helper methods of HibernateTemplate provide a wrapper around these so that the Template methods can take care of session and transaction management. As a developer, you will directly make calls to the helper methods without explicitly opening and closing the session. The helper methods include find(), saveOrUpdate(), delete() etc. You can get a complete list from the following link: http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.6/api/org/springframework/orm/hibernate3/HibernateTemplate.html Template methodsTemplate or callback methods are central to HibernateTemplate as they streamline the way operations on data is performed. There are four main template methods. They are: Execute ExecuteWithNativeSession ExecuteWithNewSession ExecuteFind Of these, Execute is most commonly used one. To use any of these methods, one just needs to create an instance of HibernateTemplate by passing an instance of SessionFactory to the constructor of HibernateTemplate. All the forms of Execute method take instance of HibernateCallback class and execute the data access logic contained in the instance of the class extending HibernateCallback. That brings us to the end of this section. However, before moving onto the steps for using HibernateTemplate, it is important to keep in mind the versions of Spring Framework and Hibernate that you will require in the steps to be described in next section. The version of Spring Framework is 2.x and that of Hibernate is 3.x. The important point to remember is that 2.x versions of Spring Framework support Hibernate 3.x versions only. So the libraries that you require for Hibernate 3.x will be required to make the examples detailed in this discussion to work. Same goes for Spring 2.x dependencies.

Master Pages Earlier you were introduced to a feature called Master Pages, but what exactly are they? The idea behind them is the one that's been around since the early days of development. The idea that you can inherit the layout of one page for use in another is the one that has kept many developers scrambling with Includes and User Controls. This is where Master Pages come into play. They allow you to lay out a page once and use it over and over. By doing this, you can save yourself countless hours of time, as well as being able to maintain the look and feel of your site from a single place. By implementing a Master Page and using ContentPlaceHolders, your page is able to keep its continuity throughout. You'll see on the Master Page (SimpleCMS.master) that it looks similar to a standard .aspx page from ASP.NET, but with some slight differences. The <@...> declaration has had the page identifier changed for a Master declaration. Here is a standard web page declaration: <%@ Page Language="VB" MasterPageFile="~/SimpleCMS.master"AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="Default.aspx.vb"Inherits="_Default" Title="Untitled Page" %> Here is the declaration for a Master Page: <%@ Master Language="VB" CodeFile="SimpleCMS.master.vb"Inherits="SimpleCMS" %> This tells the underlying ASP.NET framework how to handle this special page. If you look at the code for the page, you will also see that it inherits from System.Web.UI.MasterPage instead of the standard System.Web.UI.Page. They function similarly but, as we will cover in more detail later, they have a few distinct differences. Now, back to the Master Page. Let's take a closer look at the two existing ContentPlaceHolders. The first one you see on the page is the one with the ID of "Head". This is a default item that is added automatically to a new Master Page and its location is also standard. The system is setting up your page so that any "child" page later on will be able to put things such as Javascript and style tags into this location. It's within the HTML <head> tag, and is handled by the client's browser specially. The control's tag contains a minimal amount of properties-in reality only four, along with a basic set of events you can tie to. The reason for this is actually pretty straightforward - it doesn't need anything more. The ContentPlaceHolder controls aren't really meant to do much, from a programming standpoint. They are meant to be placeholders where other code is injected, from the child pages, and this injected code is where all the "real work" is meant to take place. With that in mind, the system acts more as a pass-through to allow the ContentPlaceHolders to have as little impact on the rest of the site as possible. Now, back to the existing page, you will see the second preloaded ContentPlaceHolder (ContentPlaceHolder1). Again, this one will be automatically added to the new Master Page when it's initially added. Its position is really more of just being "thrown on the page" when you start out. The idea is that you will position this one, as well as any others you add to the page, in such a way as to complement the design of your site. You will typically have one for every zone or region of your layout, to allow you to update the contents within. For simplicity sake, we'll keep with the one zone approach to the site, and will only use the two existing preloaded ContentPlaceHolders for now at least. The positioning of ContentPlaceHolder1 in the current layout is one where it encapsulates the main "body" for the site. All the child pages will render their content up into this section. With that, you will notice the fact that the areas outside this control are really important to the way the site will not only look but also act. Setting up your site headers (images, menus, and so on) will be of the utmost importance. Also, things such as footers, borders, and all the other pieces you will interact with on each page are typically laid out on your Master Page. In the existing example, you will also see the LoginStatus1 control placed directly on the Master Page. This is a great way to share that control and any code/events you may have tied to it, on every page, without having to duplicate your code. There are a few things to keep in mind when putting things together on your Master Page. The biggest of which is that your child/content page will inherit aspects of your Master Page. Styles, attributes, and layout are just a few of the pieces you need to keep in mind. Think of the end resulting page as more of a merger of the Master Page and child/content page. With that in mind, you can begin to understand that when you add something such as a width to the Master Page, which would be consumed by the children, the Child Page will be bound by that. For example, when many people set up their Master Page, they will often use a <table> as their defining container. This is a great way to do this and, in fact, is exactly what's done in the example we are working with. Look at the HTML for the Master Page. You will see that the whole page, in essence, is wrapped in a <table> tag and the ContentPlaceHolder is within a <td>. If you were to happen to apply a style attribute to that table and set its width, the children that fill the ContentPlaceHolder are going to be restricted to working within the confines of that predetermined size. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It will make it easier to work with the child pages in that you don't have to worry about defining their sizes-it's already done for you, and at the same time, it lets you handle all the children from this one location. It can also restrict you for those exact same reasons. You may want a more dynamic approach, and hard setting these attributes on the Master Page may not be what you are after. These are factors you need to think about before you get too far into the designing of your site. Now that you've got a basic understanding of what Master Pages are and how they can function on a simple scale, let's take a look at the way they are used from the child/content page. Look at the Default.aspx (HTML view). You will notice that this page looks distinctly different from a standard (with no Master Page) page. Here you have what a page looks like when you first add it, with no Master Page: <%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false"CodeFile="Default2.aspx.vb" Inherits="Default2" %><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html ><head runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title></head><body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> </div> </form></body></html> Compare this to a new Web Form when you select a Master Page. <%@ Page Language="VB" MasterPageFile="~/SimpleCMS.master" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="Default2.aspx.vb" Inherits="Default2" title="Untitled Page" %><asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="head" Runat="Server"></asp:Content><asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentPlaceHolder1" Runat="Server"></asp:Content> You will see right away that all the common HTML tags are missing from the page with a Master Page selected. That's because all of these common pieces are being handled in the Master Page and will be rendered from the Master Page. You will also notice that the page with a Master Page also has an additional default attribute added to its page declaration. The title attribute is added so that, when merged and rendered with the Master Page, the page will get the proper title displayed. In addition to the declaration tag differences and the lack of the common HTML tags being absent, the two ContentPlaceHolder tags we defined on the Master Page are automatically referenced through the use of a Content control. These Content controls tie directly to the ContentPlaceHolder tags on the Master Page through the ContentPlaceHolderID attribute. This tells the system where to put the pieces when rendering. The basic idea is that anything between the opening and closing tags of the Content control will be rendered out to the page when being called from a browser. Themes Themes are an extension of another idea, like Master Pages, that has kept developers working long hours. How do you quickly change the look and feel of your site for different users or usages? This is where Themes come in. Themes can be thought of as a container where you store your style sheets, images, and anything else that you may want to interchange in the visual pieces of your site. Themes are folders where you put all of these pieces to group them together. While one user may be visiting your site and seeing it one way, another user can be viewing the exact same site, but get a completely different experience. Let's start off by enabling our site to include the use of Themes. To do this, right-click on the project in the Solutions Explorer, select Add ASP.NET Folder, and then choose Theme from the submenu: The folder will default to Theme1 as its name. I'd suggest that you name this something friendlier though. For now, we will call the Theme as "SimpleCMSTheme". However, later on you may want to add another Theme and give your folders descriptive names, which will really help you keep your work organized. You will see that a Theme is really nothing more than a folder for organizing all the pieces. Let's take a look at what options are available to us. Right-click on the SimpleCMSTheme folder we just created, select Add New Item, and you should see a list similar to this one: Your items may vary depending on your installation, but the key items here are Skin File and Style Sheet. You may already be familiar with stylesheets if you've done any web design work, but let's do a little refresher just in case. Stylesheets, among other uses, are a way to organize all the attributes for your HTML tags. This is really the key feature of stylesheets. You will often see them referenced and called CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets that I'll explain in more detail shortly, but it's also the file extension used when adding a stylesheet to your application. Let's go ahead and add Style Sheet to our site just like the example above. For our example, we'll use the default name StyleSheet.css that the system selects. The system will preload your new stylesheet with one element-the body{} element. Let's go ahead and add a simple attribute to this element. Put your cursor between the open "{" and close "}" brackets and press Ctrl+space and you should get the IntelliSense menu. This is a list of the attributes that the system acknowledges for addition to your element tag. For our testing, let's select the background-color attribute and give it a value of Blue. It should look like this when you are completed: body {background-color: Blue;} Go ahead, save your stylesheet, run the site, and see what happens. If you didn't notice any difference, that's because even though we've now created a Theme for the site and added an attribute to the body element, we've never actually told the site to use this new Theme. Open your web.config and find the <pages…> element. It should be located in the <configuration><system.web>  section, as shown next: Go ahead, select the <pages> element, and put your cursor right after the "s". Press the spacebar and the IntelliSense menu should show up like this: You will see a long list of available items, but the item we are interested in for now is the theme. Select this and you will be prompted to enter a value. Put in the name of the Theme we created earlier. <pages theme="SimpleCMSTheme"> We've now assigned this Theme to our site with one simple line of text. Save your changes and let's run the site again and see what happens. The body element we added to our stylesheet is now read by the system and applied appropriately. View the source on your page and look at how this code was applied. The following line is now part of your rendered code: <link href="App_Themes/SimpleCMSTheme/StyleSheet.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> Now that we've seen how to apply a Theme and how to use a stylesheet within it, let's look at one of the other key features of the Theme, the Skin file. A Skin file can be thought of as pre-setting a set of parameters for your controls in your site. This will let you configure multiple attributes, in order to give a certain look and feel to a control so that you can quickly reuse it at any time. Let's jump right in and take a look at how it works, to give you a better understanding. Right-click on the SimpleCMSTheme folder we created and select the Skin File option. Go ahead and use the defaulted name of SkinFile.skin for this example. You should get an example like this: <%--Default skin template. The following skins are provided as examples only.1. Named control skin. The SkinId should be uniquely defined becauseduplicate SkinId's per control type are not allowed in the same theme.<asp:GridView runat="server" SkinId="gridviewSkin" BackColor="White" > <AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="Blue" /></asp:GridView>2. Default skin. The SkinId is not defined. Only one defaultcontrol skin per control type is allowed in the same theme.<asp:Image runat="server" ImageUrl="~/images/image1.jpg" />--%> We now have the default Skin file for our site. Microsoft even provided a great sample here for us. What you see in the example could be translated to say that any GridView added to the site, with either no SkinID specified or with a SkinID of gridviewSkin, will use this skin. In doing so, these GridViews will all use a BackColor of White and AlternatingRowsStyle BackColor of Blue. By putting this in a Skin file as part of our Theme, we could apply these attributes, along with many others, to all like controls at one time. This can really save you a lot of development time. As we go through designing the rest of the CMS site, we will continue to revisit these Theme principles and expand the contents of them, so it is good to keep their functionality in mind as we go along.