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In this article, we will discuss the following topics: Need for Java Business Integration (JBI) Enterprise Service Bus Normalized Message Router Service Engines in NetBeans Need for Java Business Integration (JBI) To have a good understanding of Service Engines (a specific type of JBI component), we need to first understand the reason for Java Business Integration. In the business world, not all systems talk the same language. They use different protocols and different forms of communications. Legacy systems in particular can use proprietary protocols for external communication. The advent and acceptance of XML has been greatly beneficial in allowing systems to be easily integrated, but XML itself is not the complete solution. When some systems were first developed, they were not envisioned to be able to communicate with many other systems; they were developed with closed interfaces using closed protocols. This, of course, is fine for the system developer, but makes system integration very difficult. This closed and proprietary nature of enterprise systems makes integration between enterprise applications very difficult. To allow enterprise systems to effectively communicate between each other, system integrators would use vendor-supplied APIs and data formats or agree on common exchange mechanisms between their systems. This is fine for small short term integration, but quickly becomes unproductive as the number of enterprise applications to integrate gets larger. The following figure shows the problems with traditional integration. As we can see in the figure, each third party system that we want to integrate with uses a different protocol. As a system integrator, we potentially have to learn new technologies and new APIs for each system we wish to integrate with. If there are only two or three systems to integrate with, this is not really too much of a problem. However, the more systems we wish to integrate with, the more proprietary code we have to learn and integration with other systems quickly becomes a large problem. To try and overcome these problems, the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) server was introduced. This concept has an integration server acting as a central hub. The EAI server traditionally has proprietary links to third party systems, so the application integrator only has to learn one API (the EAI server vendors). With this architecture however, there are still several drawbacks. The central hub can quickly become a bottleneck, and because of the hub-and-spoke architecture, any problems at the hub are rapidly manifested at all the clients. Enterprise Service Bus To help solve this problem, leading companies in the integration community (led by Sun Microsystems) proposed the Java Business Integration Specification Request (JSR 208) (Full details of the JSR can be found at http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=208). JSR 208 proposed a standard framework for business integration by providing a standard set of service provider interfaces (SPIs) to help alleviate the problems experienced with Enterprise Application Integration. The standard framework described in JSR 208 allows pluggable components to be added into a standard architecture and provides a standard common mechanism for each of these components to communicate with each other based upon WSDL. The pluggable nature of the framework described by JSR 208 is depicted in the following figure. It shows us the concept of an Enterprise Service Bus and introduces us to the Service Engine (SE) component: JSR 208 describes a service engine as a component, which provides business logic and transformation services to other components, as well as consuming such services. SEs can integrate Java-based applications (and other resources), or applications with available Java APIs. Service Engine is a component which provides (and consumes) business logic and transformation services to other components. There are various Service Engines available, such as the BPEL service engine for orchestrating business processes, or the Java EE service engine for consuming Java EE Web Services. The Normalized Message Router As we can see from the previous figure, SE's don't communicate directly with each other or with the clients, instead they communicate via the NMR. This is one of the key concepts of JBI, in that it promotes loose coupling of services. So, what is NMR and what is its purpose? NMR is responsible for taking messages from clients and routing them to the appropriate Service Engines for processing. (This is not strictly true as there is another standard JBI component called the Binding Component responsible for receiving client messages. Again, this further enhances the support for loose coupling within JBI, as Service Engines are decoupled from their transport infrastructure). NMR is responsible for passing normalized (that is based upon WSDL) messages between JBI components. Messages typically consist of a payload and a message header which contains any other message data required for the Service Engine to understand and process the message (for example, security information). Again, we can see that this provides a loosely coupled model in which Service Engines have no prior knowledge of other Service Engines. This therefore allows the JBI architecture to be flexible, and allows different component vendors to develop standard based components. Normalized Message Router enables technology for allowing messages to be passed between loosely coupled services such as Service Engines. The figure below gives an overview of the message routing between a client application and two service engines, in this case the EE and SQL service engines. In this figure, a request is made from the client to the JBI Container. This request is passed via NMR to the EE Service Engine. The EE Service Engine then makes a request to the SQL Service Engine via NMR. The SQL Service Engine returns a message to the EE Service Engine again via NMR. Finally, the message is routed back to the client through NMR and JBI framework. The important concept here is that NMR is a message routing hub not only between clients and service engines, but also for intra-communication between different service engines. The entire architecture we have discussed is typically referred to as an Enterprise Service Bus. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a standard-based middleware architecture that allows pluggable components to communicate with each other via a messaging subsystem.

Creating Certificates One method could be setting up tunnels using pre-shared keys with static encryption, however, X509 certificates provide a much better level of security than pre-shared keys do. There is, however, slightly more work to be done to set up and connect two systems with certificate-based authentication. The following five steps have to be accomplished: Create a CA certificate for your CA with which we will sign and revoke client certificates.      Create a key and a certificate request for the clients.      Sign the request using the CA certificate and thereby making it valid.      Provide keys and certificates to the VPN partners.      Change the OpenVPN configuration so that OpenVPN will use the certificates and keys, and restart OpenVPN. There are a number of ways to accomplish these steps. easy-rsa is a command-line tool that comes with OpenVPN, and exists both on Linux and Windows. On Windows systems you could create certificates by clicking on the batch files in the Windows Explorer, but starting the batch files at the command-line prompt should be the better solution. On Linux you type the full path of the scripts, which share the same name as on Windows, simply without the extension .bat. Certificate Generation on Windows XP with easy-rsa Open the Windows Explorer and change to the directory C:Program Files OpenVPNeasy-rsa. The Windows version of easy-rsa consists of thirteen files. On Linux systems you will have to check your package management tools to find the right path to the easy-rsa scripts. On Debian Linux you will find them in /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa/. You find there are eight batch files, four configuration files, and a README (which is actually not really helpful). However, we must now create a directory called keys, copy the files serial.start and index.txt.start into it, and rename them to serial and index.txt respectively. The keys and certificates created by easy-rsa will be stored in this directory. These files are used as a database for certificate generation. Now we let easy-rsa prepare the standard configuration for our certificates. Double-click on the file C:Program FilesOpenVPNeasy-rsainit-config.bat or start this batch file at a command-line prompt. It simply copies the template files vars.bat.sample to vars.bat and openssl.cnf.sample to openvpn.ssl. While the file openssl is a standard OpenSSL configuration, the file vars.bat contains variables used by OpenVPN's scripts to create our certificates, and needs some editing in the next step. Setting Variables—Editing vars.bat Right-click on the vars.bat file's icon and select from the menu. In this file, several parameters are set that are used by the certificate generation scripts later. The following table gives a quick overview of the entries in the file: Entry in vars.bat Function set HOME=%ProgramFiles%OpenVPN easy-rsa The path to the directory where easy-rsa resides. set KEY_CONFIG=openssl.cnf The name of the OpenSSL configuration file. set KEY_DIR=keys The path to the directory where the newly generated keys are stored-relative to $HOME as set above. set KEY_SIZE=1024 The length of the SSL key. This parameter should be increased to 2048. set KEY_COUNTRY=US set KEY_PROVINCE=CA set KEY_CITY=SanFrancisco set KEY_ORG=FortFunston set KEY_EMAIL=mail@host.domain These five values are used as suggestions whenever you start a script and generate certificates with the easy-rsa software. Only the entry KEY_SIZE must be changed (unless you don't care much about security), but setting the last five entries to your needs might be very helpful later. Every time we generate a certificate, easy-rsa will ask (among others) for these five parameters, and give a suggestion that could be accepted simply by pressing Enter. The better the default values set here in vars.bat fit our needs, the less typing work we will have later. I leave it up to you to change these settings here. The next step is easy. Run vars.bat to set the variables. Even though you could simply double-click on its explorer icon, I recommend that you run it in a shell window. Select the entry Run from Windows' main menu, type cmd.exe, and change to the easy-rsa directory by typing cd "C:Program FilesOpenVPNeasy-rsa" and pressing Enter. By doing so, we will proceed in exactly the same way as we would do on a Linux system (except for the .bat extensions). Creating the Diffie-Hellman Key Now it is time to create the keys that will be used for encryption, authentication, and key exchange. For the latter, a Diffie-Hellman key is used by OpenVPN. The Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol enables two communication partners to exchange a secret key safely. No prior secrets or safe lines are needed; a special mathematical algorithm guarantees that only the two partners know the used shared key. If you would like to know exactly what this algebra is about, have a look at this website: http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2248. easy-rsa provides a script (batch) file that generates the key for you: C:Program FilesOpenVPNeasy-rsabuild-dh.bat. Start it by typing build-dh.bat. A Diffie-Hellman key is being generated. The batch file tells you, This is going to take a long time, which is only true if your system is really old or if you are not patient enough. However, on modern systems some minutes may be a time span horribly long! Building the Certificate Authority OK, now it's time to generate our first CA. Enter build-ca.bat. This script generates a self-signed certificate for a CA. Such a certificate can be used to create and sign client certificates and thereby authenticate other machines. Depending on the data you entered in your vars.bat file, build-ca.bat will suggest different default parameters during the process of generating this certificate. Five of the last seven lines are taken from the variables set in vars.bat. If you edited these parameters, a simple return will do here and the certificate for the CA is generated in the keys directory.

Introduction Welcome to the first in a new series of articles on Photoshop - the Photoshop Foundations series. The aim of this series is to give both beginners and more experienced users all the information they need to use Photoshop as efficiently as possible. Photoshop is a huge application, and there is usually more than one way to look at a given subject, or perform a certain action. This series aims to both, guide you through the more confusing aspects of Photoshop and show you the very best ways to use this application. In this first article we are going to look at the difference between vector and bitmap graphics, which is one of the most important principles to understand when working with graphics on a computer, inside or outside of Photoshop. Although Photoshop primarily is a bitmap image editor, it is capable of handling vector graphics to a certain extent. This can be a little confusing for people new to creating graphics on a computer, but by the end of this article you should have a clear idea of the difference between these two types of graphics. Bitmap Graphics Bitmap graphics are made up of colored pixels. Pixels are very small rectangles (usually square, although in some video applications they are wider than they are tall) of varying colors that once put together give you an image. You can see from the example below that zooming in on a bitmap image reveals the pixels that make up the image when viewed at 100%.   Bitmap graphics are usually (but not always) photographic in nature, capable of subtle graduated tones - often in the range of millions of colors per image. The problem with bitmap graphics is that they don't enlarge well as Photoshop needs to guess what color the extra pixels should be - this can result is loss of definition and a dramatic lowering in quality, depending on how much you enlarge the image. Common file formats for bitmap image data include GIF, JPEG and PNG for Internet usage and TIFF for print usage. As you can see from the example below, physically enlarging an image will degrade quality. Pixels are also used to display the image on your computer screen. Common pixel dimensions of computer displays are 1024 wide by 768 high and 1600 wide by 1200 high. The size of a bitmap graphic when viewed on your computer screen is defined by the number of pixels that make up the image - so an image that is 50 pixels wide will look very small on your screen at 100% viewing percentage, whereas an image that is 4000 pixels wide will be larger than your screen at 100% viewing percentage. The printable dimensions of an image are defined by the DPI (dots per inch) - this information is invisibly embedded in the image file. Digital cameras often embed information such as this, that may include the conditions the image was taken in, and even the camera model used. This information is not actually visible in the image, and requires software such as Photoshop to read it. You should not confuse the output DPI of your printer with this figure, which may range from 600-2400DPI - this refers to the density of the dots of ink laid down on the page by the printer. You don't have to prepare your images to 2400 DPI to get the best results - in fact doing so will significantly slow down printing as your file could potentially be huge! Often an image DPI in the range of 175-250 will give very good results on home printers. Images prepared for high quality commercial print are usually prepared at 300 DPI for up to A3 in size; whereas very large images (for instance on billboards) can be as low as 50 DPI, as they are not made to be viewed as closely as a magazine or small poster. There is no need to go above 300 DPI when creating images as you will yield virtually no improvement in output quality, only increasing the size of your file when saved. It is easy to understand the relationship between pixel dimensions and DPI - put simply, the DPI is how many pixels will be printed in an inch - so you could actually think of DPI as PPI (pixels per inch). Indeed, many experts believe this to be the true definition of DPI, and that Photoshop should refer to it as such. However, the term DPI is used throughout the professional print industry, so this is why it is referred to as DPI in Photoshop, not PPI.

Modeling Business Processes The transparency of the process flow is crucial, as this gives the process owners, process analysts, and all others involved an insight into what is going on. An understanding of the as-is process flow also ensures that we can judge the efficiency and the quality of the process. The main objective of process modeling is the definition of the as-is process flow. Process modeling needs to answer the following questions: What is the outcome of the business process? What activities are performed within the business process? What is the order of activities? Who performs the activities? Which business documents are exchanged within the process? How foolproof is the process, and how can it be extended in the future? After answering these and some other questions, we get a good insight into how the process works. We can also identify structural, organizational, and technological weak points and even bottlenecks, and identify potential improvements to the process. We will model business process to satisfy the following objectives: To specify the exact result of the business process, and to understand the business value of this result. To understand the activities of the business process. Knowing the exact tasks and activities that have to be performed is crucial to understanding the details of the process. To understand the order of activities. Activities can be performed in sequence or in parallel, which can help improve the overall time required to fulfill a business process. Activities can be short-running or long-running. To understand the responsibilities, to identify (and later supervise) who is responsible for which activities and tasks. To understand the utilization of resources consumed in the business process. Knowing who uses which resources can help improve the utilization of resources as resource requirements can be planned for and optimized. To understand the relationship between people involved in the processes, and their communication. Knowing exactly who communicates with whom is important and can help to organize and optimize communications. To understand the document flow. Business processes produce and consume documents (regardless of whether these are paper or electronic documents). Understanding where the documents are going, and where they are coming from is important. A good overview of the documents also gives us the opportunity to identify whether all of the documents are really necessary. To identify potential bottlenecks and points of improvements, which can be used later in the process optimization phase. To introduce quality standards such as ISO 9001 more successfully, and to better pass certification. To improve the understandability of quality regulations that can be supplemented with process diagrams. To use business process models as work guidelines for new employees who can introduce themselves to the business processes faster and more efficiently. To understand business processes, which will enable us to understand and describe the company as a whole. A good understanding of business processes is very important for developing IT support. Applications that provide end-to-end support for business processes, can be developed efficiently only if we understand the business processes in details. Modeling Method and Notation Efficient process modeling requires a modeling method that provides a structured and controlled approach to process modeling. Several modeling methods have been developed over the years. Examples include IDS Sheer's the ARIS methodology, CSC's Catalyst, Business Genetics, SCOR and the extensions PCOR and VCOR, POEM, and so on. The ARIS methodology has been the most popular methodology, and has been adopted by many software vendors. In the next section, we will describe the basics of the ARIS methodology, which has lately been adapted to be conformant with SOA. ARIS ARIS is both a BPM methodology, and an architectural framework for designing enterprise architectures. Enterprise architecture combines business models (process models, organizational models, and so on) with IT models (IT architecture, data model, and so on). ARIS stands for Architecture of Integrated Information Systems and comprises of two things, the methodology and framework, and the software that supports both. Here, we will give a brief introduction to ARIS methodology and framework, which dates back to 1992. The objective of ARIS is to narrow the gap between business requirements and IT. The ARIS framework is not only about process models (describing business processes), although process models are one of the most important things of ARIS. As enterprise architecture is complex, ARIS defines several views that focus on specific aspects such as business, technology, information, and so on, to reduce the complexity. The ARIS framework describes the following: Business processes Products and services related to the processes The structure of the organization Business objectives and strategies Information flows IT architecture and applications The data model Resources (people and hardware resources) Costs Skills and knowledge These views are gathered under the concept of ARIS House, which provides a structured view on all information on business processes. ARIS House offers five views: The process view (also called the control view) is the central view that shows the behavior of the processes, how the processes relate to the products and services, organization, functions, and data. The process view includes the process models in the selected notation, and other diagrams such as information flow, material flow, value chains, communication diagrams, and so on. The product and service view shows the products and services, their structures, relations, and product/service trees. The organizational view shows the organizational structure of the company, including departments, roles, and employees. It shows these in hierarchical organizational charts. The organization view also shows technical resources and communication networks. The function view defines process tasks and describes business objectives, function hierarchies, and application software. The data view shows business data and information. This view includes data models, information maps, database models, and knowledge structures. The ARIS House is illustrated in the following figure: In ARIS House, the process view is the central view of the dynamic behavior of the business processes and brings together the other four static views, the organizational view, data view, function view and product/service view. In this book, we will focus primarily on the process view. Each ARIS view is divided further into phases. The translation of business requirements into IT applications requires that we follow certain phases. Globally, three general phases are likely to be used: Requirements phase Design specification phase Implementation phase ARIS is particularly strong in the requirements phase, while other phases may differ depending on the implementation method and the architecture we use. We will talk about these later in this article. Let us now look at the other important aspect, the business process modeling notations. Modeling Notation Process modeling also requires a notation In the past, several notations were used to model processes. Flow diagrams and block diagrams were representatives of the first-generation notations. Then, more sophisticated notations were defined, such as EPC (Event Process Chain) and eEPC (Extended Event Process Chain). UML activity diagrams, XPDL, and IDEF 3 were also used, in addition to some other less-known notations. A few years ago a new notation, called Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) was developed. BPMN was developed particularly for modeling business processes in accordance with SOA. In this article, we will use BPMN for modeling processes. BPMN BPMN is the most comprehensive notation for process modeling so far. It has been developed under the hood of OMG (Object Management Group). Let us look into the brief introduction of the most important BPMN elements so that we can read the diagrams presented later in this article. The most important goals while designing BPMN have been: To develop a notation, which will be understandable at all levels: In business process modeling different people are involved, from business users, business analysts, and process owners, to the technical architects and developers. The management reviews business processes at periodic intervals. Therefore, the goal of BPMN has been to provide a graphical notation the is simple to understand, yet powerful enough to model business processes at the required level of detail. To enable automatic transformation into executable code, that is, BPEL, and vice-versa: The gap between the business process models and the information technology (application software) has been quite large in existing technologies. There is no clear definition on how one relates to the other. Therefore, BPMN has been designed specifically to provide such transformations. To model the diagrams, BPMN defines four categories of elements: Flow objects, which are activities, events, and gateways. Activities can be tasks or sub-processes. Events can be triggers or results. Three types of events are supported: start, intermediate, and end. Gateways control the divergence of sequential flows into concurrent flows, and their convergence back to sequential flow. Connecting objects are used to connect flow objects together. Connectors are sequence flows, message flows, and associations. Swim lanes are used to organize activities into visual categories in order to illustrate different responsibilities or functional capabilities. Pools and lanes can be used for swim lanes. Artifacts are used to add specific context to the business processes that are being modeled. Data objects are used to show how data is produced or required by the process. Groups are used to group together similar activities or other elements. Annotations are used to add text information to the diagram. We can also define custom artifacts. The following diagrams show the various notations used in BPMN: Activities are the basic elements of BPMN and are represented by rectangles with rounded corners. A plus sign denotes that the activity can be further decomposed: Decisions are shown as diamonds. A plus sign inside the diamond denotes a logical AND, while an x denotes a logical OR: Events are shown as double circles: Roles are shown as pools and swim-lanes within pools: A Document is shown as follows: The order of activities is indicated by an arrow: The flow of a document or information is shown with a dashed line: BPMN can be used to model parts of processes or whole processes. Processes can be modeled at different levels of fidelity. BPMN is equally suitable for internal (private) business processes, and for public (collaborative) business-to-business processes. Internal business processes focus on the point of view of a single company, and define activities that are internal to the company. Such processes might also define interactions with external partners. Public collaborative processes show the interaction between all involved businesses and organizations. Such processes models should be modeled from the general point of view, and should show interactions between the participants. Process Design The main activity in process design is the recording of the actual processes. The objective is to develop the as-is process model. To develop the as-is model, it is necessary to gather all knowledge about the process. This knowledge often exists only in the heads of the employees, who are involved in the process. Therefore, it is necessary to perform detailed interviews with all involved people. Often, process supervisors might think that they know exactly how the process is performed. However, after talking with those employees who really carry out the work, they see that the actual situation differs considerably. It is very important to gather all this information about the process, otherwise it will not be possible to develop a sound process model, that reflects the as-is state of the process. The first question related to the as-is model is the business result that the process generates. Understanding the business result is crucial, as sometimes it may not be clearly articulated. After the business result is identified, we should understand the process flow. The process flow consists of activities (or tasks) that are performed in a certain order. The process flow is modeled at various levels of abstraction. At the highest level of abstraction, the process flow shows only the most important activities (usually up to ten). Each of the top-level activities are then decomposed into detailed flows. The process complexity, and the required level of detail, are the criteria that instruct us how deep we should decompose. To understand the process behavior completely, it makes sense to decompose until atomic activities (that is, activities that cannot be further decomposed) are reached. When developing the as-is process model, one of the most important things to consider is the level of detail. In order to provide end-to-end support for business processes using SOA, detailed process modeling should be done. The difficulties often hide in the details! In the process design, we should understand the detailed structure of the business process. Therefore, we should identify at least the following: Process activities at various levels of detail Roles responsible for carrying out each process activity Events that trigger the process execution and events that interrupt the process flow Documents exchanged within the process. This includes input documents and output documents Business rules that are part of the process We should design the usual (also called optimal) process flow and identify possible exception scenarios. Exceptions interrupt the usual process flow. Therefore, we need to specify how the exceptions will be handled. The usual approach to the process design includes the following steps: Identifying the roles Identifying the activities Connecting activities to roles Defining the order of activities Adding events Adding documents We should also understand the efficiency of the business process. This includes resource utilization, the time taken by involved employees, possible bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. This is the reason why we should also identify metrics that are used to measure the efficiency of the process. While some of these metrics may be KPIs, other metrics relevant to the process should also be identified. We should identify if the process is compliant with standards or reference processes. In some industry domains, reference processes have been defined. An example is the telecommunications industry where the TMF (Telecom Management Forum) has defined NGOSS. Part of NGOSS is eTom (Enhanced Telecom Operations Map), which specifies compliant business processes for telecom companies. Other industries have also started to develop similar reference processes. We should also identify the business goals to which the process contributes to. Business goals are the same as the process results. A business process should not only have at least one result, but should also contribute to at least one (preferably more than one) business goal. Here, we can look into the company strategy to identify the business goals. We should also identify the events that can interrupt the process flow. Each process can be interrupted, and we should understand how this happens. If a process is interrupted, we might need to compensate those activities of the process that have already been successfully completed. Therefore, we should also specify the compensation logic related to different interruption events. Finally, we should also understand the current software support for the business process. This is important because existing software may hide the details of process behavior. This information can also be re-used for end-to-end process support. Once we have identified all of these artifacts, we will have gathered a good understanding of the process. Therefore, let us now look at the results of the process modeling.

Introduction WPF, an acronym for Windows Presentation Foundation is a subsystem of class libraries for WinFX and it enables the user to get a richer experience bringing together UI, Documents, media etc. A XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) file which is at the heart of a WPF project can be created in several ways that includes the Notepad text editor, the Expression Blend which requires another download from Microsoft, but may not provide a easy to use XAML file to use in VS, and the Visual Studio editions except the express edition. XAML is presently specific to windows platform and is a XML formatting language and not an application programming interface. I will be mostly showing how to get some hands-on experience with a WPF project using the Visual Studio 2005 interface and the template files that you may access with the Windows SDK installed. Creating a WPF Project From File | New | Project click open the New Project window as shown in the next figure. Click on Visual Basic and expand its contents. Under .NET 3.0 FrameWork (It is assumed that you have installed NET 3.0 Framework) choose the Windows Application (WPF). Now highlight the Windows Application (WPF) and change the name of the application to some name of your choice. For this article it is changed to AppWPF. Click on the OK button after typing a name of your choice. This creates the necessary file/folders for the application as shown in the next figure. There are two XAML files created in the project. The App.xaml and the Windows1.xaml file. Delete the Windows1.xaml and add a new item as shown with the name BasicControls.xaml. With this new item added you may need to change the App.xaml file as shown below. <Application x_Class="App" StartupUri="BasicControls.xaml"> <Application.Resources> </Application.Resources> </Application> The StartupUri has been changed from the original Windows1.xaml to BasicControls.xaml. With this change made you can now display the BasicControls.xaml file together with its design as shown in the next figure. This represents a 300 X 300 window which can be used as a container for other controls. You also notice the reference to the namespaces that are required and the XML syntax with the attribute of the project for the window. Placing Controls on the Window Placing Controls automatically creates XAML code. Placing controls on this window is as easy as dragging from the Tools and dropping on to this window. The next picture shows a button and a textbox dragged and dropped onto this window. The necessary code for these controls gets automatically added as the controls are placed. After the two controls are added, the xaml file gets changed as shown. The Button and Textbox properties are the defaults which may be modified as will be seen later in the article. <Window x_Class="BasicControls" Title="AppWPF" Height="300" Width="300" > <Grid> <Button Height="23" Margin="94,0,123,39" Name="Button1" VerticalAlignment="Bottom">Button</Button> <TextBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="43, 126, 0,115" Name="TextBox1" Width="100"></TextBox> </Grid> </Window> Adding code automatically updates the window design. Inserting a declarative code into the BasicControls.xaml file will automatically add the control defined by that code to the design window. Add this code to the xaml file after as shown in the next paragraph. As soon as you type "<", the intellisense gets fired up and you will see a drop-down list of items that you can insert as shown in the next figure. Now you click on the Textbox (or whatever else you wish to place). This adds to the xaml file. Now to the opening tag of the textbox, you add a name attribute and call it TextBox2. Intellisense is also used in adding attributes as you will get a context sensitive listing of attributes for the chosen control. Also add other attributes such as width, height, alignment etc. With the code added as shown in the next paragraph you will see that the design pane has a new textbox as shown in the next figure.   <Textbox Name="TextBox2" Height="20" Margin="89.5,96.5,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Width="50"></TextBox*gt; The property window for the TextBox2 shown can also be used to make changes. You can also move, or adjust the dimensions of the controls using the mouse. The various controls provide a very rich interface for the designer in manipulating the controls. Event Handling All 'Hello World' programs used a button click to demonstrate the workings of the code or how the events were handled. In this tutorial also you will demonstrate the click event along the same lines. In the Solution Explorer only a few items are seen but there are lot more files in the project. Click on the middle toolbar just above the project as shown in the next figure. This will allow you to see all the files / folders in the project displayed (every folder expanded out) as shown. This is vastly different from a legacy windows project. The references to the Presentation Foundation are all in the three references, PresentationCore, PresentationDesignDeveloper and PresentationDesignFramework. In order to appreciate the rich designer support you have to go to the ,Object Browser and look at the references. For example just the PresentationCore has the following namespaces shown in the next figure. The BasicControls.xaml file also has the code behind file, BasicControls.xaml.vb, as shown in the next figure. In the code page, the drop-down control displaying BasicControls presently has all the objects on this window listed in its menu. You can find the Button as well. With the button chosen you can use the second drop-down to access all the events of the Button in the second drop-down (presently showing Declarations). In this manner the button click event was chosen from the second drop-down. Here the Button1_Click has been set to display "Click is registered" in Textbox1 when the button is clicked. You can find the reference to this in the Object Browser as shown in the next figure. Object Browser is an extremely valuable resource that you should seek out to understand the underlying logic, the arguments of a function call, etc. When you build and execute the program and click on the button this is what you will see displayed. The top part is the design window and the bottom is the window when clicked. At this point you might be wondering how to improve the look and feel. Indeed the form looks drab since none of the properties have been used except for the most basic. The next figure shows how you may change the appearance by inserting the property attributes directly into the XMAL file. You will be better off using the intellisense rather than trying to guess the property based on your previous 'Windows' experience as shown in the next figure. You may also add attributes from the property window of the object which you can view when the object is highlighted (or clicked) in the design pane. The variety of attributes is just too many and when in doubt you will be able to drill down to the one you want to use in the Object Browser. The next code listing shows a few more attributes added to the Textbox1. As you might have seen in the intellisense pop-up windows, there is a large number of properties that you can tweak and events that you can trigger. Notice the [.] notation for the TextElement in the code listing, FontFamily being the child of the parent TextElement. Listing 1 <TextBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="43,126,0,115" Name="TextBox1" Width="150" TextElement.FontFamily="Times Roman" ToolTip="Xaml TextBox" FontWeight="Bold" AutoWordSelection="True" Foreground="BlueViolet" Background="Aquamarine" TextDecorations="Underline" > </TextBox> When the program is executed you will see the following displayed. Summary The article describes the steps to create a WPF project. The Design <-->Declarative Code interactivity is also described. The placing of controls and adding event handling code to the code behind page is explained with an example. While testing the "AutoWordSelection" did not function as it should by its definition. You may look up this in the 'Help'.

Introduction The major topics that we'll cover in this article are: Testing your application (in other words, uncovering problems before your users do it for you). Asking the right questions when users do discover problems. Using logging to help troubleshoot your problems. We'll also examine two important new Notes/Domino 7 features that can be critical for troubleshooting applications: Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) Agent Profiler   For more troubleshooting issues visit: TroubleshootingWiki.org Testing your Application Testing an application before you roll it out to your users may sound like an obvious thing to do. However, during the life cycle of a project, testing is often not allocated adequate time or money. Proper testing should include the following: A meaningful amount of developer testing and bug fixing: This allows you to catch most errors, which saves time and frustration for your user community. User representative testing: A user representative, who is knowledgeable about the application and how users use it, can often provide more robust testing than the developer. This also provides early feedback on features. Pilot testing: In this phase, the product is assumed to be complete, and a pilot group uses it in production mode. This allows for limited stress testing as well as more thorough testing of the feature set. In addition to feature testing, you should test the performance of the application. This is the most frequently skipped type of testing, because some consider it too complex and difficult. In fact, it can be difficult to test user load, but in general, it's not difficult to test data load. So, as part of any significant project, it is a good practice to programmatically create the projected number of documents that will exist within the application, one or two years after it has been fully deployed, and have a scheduled agent trigger the appropriate number of edits-per-hour during the early phases of feature testing. Although this will not give a perfect picture of performance, it will certainly help ascertain whether and why the time to create a new document is unacceptable (for example, because the @Db formulas are taking too long, or because the scheduled agent that runs every 15 minutes takes too long due to slow document searches). Asking the Right Questions Suppose that you've rolled out your application and people are using it. Then the support desk starts getting calls about a certain problem. Maybe your boss is getting an earful at meetings about sluggish performance or is hearing gripes about error messages whenever users try to click a button to perform some action. In this section, we will discuss a methodology to help you troubleshoot a problem when you don't necessarily have all the information at your disposal. We will include some specific questions that can be asked verbatim for virtually any application. The first key to success in troubleshooting an application problem is to narrow down where and when it happens. Let's take these two very different problems suggested above (slow performance and error messages), and pose questions that might help unravel them: Does the problem occur when you take a specific action? If so, what is that action? Your users might say, "It's slow whenever I open the application", or "I get an error when I click this particular button in this particular form". Does the problem occur for everyone who does this, or just for certain people? If just certain people, what do they have in common? This is a great way to get your users to help you help them. Let them be a part of the solution, not just "messengers of doom". For example, you might ask questions such as, "Is it slow only for people in your building or your floor? Is it slow only for people accessing the application remotely? Is it slow only for people who have your particular access (for example, SalesRep)?" Does this problem occur all the time, at random times, or only at certain times? It's helpful to check whether or not the time of day or the day of week/month is relevant. So typical questions might be similar to the following: "Do you get this error every time you click the button or just sometimes? If just sometimes, does it give you the error during the middle of the day, but not if you click it at 7 AM when you first arrive? Do you only get the error on Mondays or some other day of the week? Do you only see the error if the document is in a certain status or has certain data in it? If it just happens for a particular document, please send me a link to that document so that I can inspect it carefully to see if there is invalid or unexpected data." Logging Ideally, your questions have narrowed down the type of problem it could be. So at this point, the more technical troubleshooting can start. You will likely need to gather concrete information to confirm or refine what you're hearing from the users. For example, you could put a bit of debugging code into the button that they're clicking so that it gives more informative errors, or sends you an email (or creates a log document) whenever it's clicked or whenever an error occurs. Collecting the following pieces of information might be enough to diagnose the problem very quickly: Time/date User name Document UNID (if the button is pushed in a document) Error Status or any other likely field that might affect your code By looking for common denominators (such as the status of the documents in question, or access or roles of the users), you will likely be able to further narrow down the possibilities of why the problem is happening. This doesn't solve your problem of course, but it helps in advancing you a long way towards that goal. A trickier problem to troubleshoot might be one we mentioned earlier: slow performance. Typically, after you've determined that there is some kind of performance delay, it's a good idea to first collect some server logging data. Set the following Notes.ini variables in the Server Configuration document in your Domino Directory, on the Notes.ini tab: Log_Update=1Log_AgentManager=1 These variables instruct the server to write output to the log.nsf database in the Miscellaneous Events view. Note that they may already be set in your environment. If not, they're fairly unobtrusive, and shouldn't trouble your administration group. Set them for a 24-hour period during a normal business week, and then examine the results to see if anything pops out as being suspicious. For view indexing, you should look for lines like these in the Miscellaneous Events (Log_Update=1): 07/01/2006 09:29:57 AM Updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Finished updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Finished updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Updating views in appsZooSchedule.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:18 AM Finished updating views in appsZooSchedule.nsf And lines like these for Agent execution (Log_AgentManager=1): 06/30/2006 09:43:49 PM AMgr: Start executing agent 'UpdateTickets' in 'appsSalesPipeline.nsf ' by Executive '1'06/30/2006 09:43:52 PM AMgr: Start executing agent 'ZooUpdate' in 'appsZooSchedule.nsf ' by Executive '2'06/30/2006 09:44:44 PM AMgr: Start executing agent 'DirSynch' in 'appsTracking.nsf ' by Executive '1' Let's examine these lines to see whether or not there is anything we can glean from them. Starting with the Log_Update=1 setting, we see that it gives us the start and stop times for every database that gets indexed. We also see that the database file paths appear alphabetically. This means that, if we search for the text string updating views and pull out all these lines covering (for instance) an hour during a busy part of the day, and copy/paste these lines into a text editor so that they're all together, then we should see complete database indexing from A to Z on your server repeating every so often. In the log.nsf database, there may be many thousands of lines that have nothing to do with your investigation, so culling the important lines is imperative for you to be able to make any sense of what's going on in your environment. You will likely see dozens or even hundreds of databases referenced. If you have hundreds of active databases on your server, then culling all these lines might be impractical, even programmatically. Instead, you might focus on the largest group of databases. You will notice that the same databases are referenced every so often. This is the Update Cycle, or view indexing cycle. It's important to get a sense of how long this cycle takes, so make sure you don't miss any references to your group of databases. Imagine that SalesPipeline.nsf and Tracking.nsf were the two databases that you wanted to focus on. You might cull the lines out of the log that have updating views and which reference these two databases, and come up with something like the following: 07/01/2006 09:29:57 AM Updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Finished updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:17 AM Updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 09:30:20 AM Finished updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 10:15:55 AM Updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 10:16:33 AM Finished updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 10:16:33 AM Updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 10:16:43 AM Finished updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 11:22:31 AM Updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 11:23:33 AM Finished updating views in appsSalesPipeline.nsf07/01/2006 11:23:33 AM Updating views in appsTracking.nsf07/01/2006 11:23:44 AM Finished updating views in appsTracking.nsf This gives us some very important information: the Update task (view indexing) is taking approximately an hour to cycle through the databases on the server; that's too long. The Update task is supposed to run every 15 minutes, and ideally should only run for a few minutes each time it executes. If the cycle is an hour, then that means update is running full tilt for that hour, and as soon as it stops, it realizes that it's overdue and kicks off again. It's possible that if you examine each line in the log, you'll find that certain databases are taking the bulk of the time, in which case it might be worth examining the design of those databases. But it might be that every database seems to take a long time, which might be more indicative of a general server slowdown. In any case, we haven't solved the problem; but at least we know that the problem is probably server-wide. More complex applications, and newer applications, tend to reflect server‑performance problems more readily, but that doesn't necessarily mean they carry more responsibility for the problem. In a sense, they are the "canary in the coal mine". If you suspect the problem is confined to one database (or a few), then you can increase the logging detail by setting Log_Update=2. This will give you the start time for every view in every database that the Update task indexes. If you see particular views taking a long time, then you can examine the design of those views. If no database(s) stand out, then you might want to see if the constant indexing occurs around the clock or just during business hours. If it's around the clock, then this might point to some large quantities of data that are changing in your databases. For example, you may be programmatically synchronizing many gigabytes of data throughout the day, not realizing the cost this brings in terms of indexing. If slow indexing only occurs during business hours, then perhaps the user/data load has not been planned out well for this server. As the community of users ramps up in the morning, the server starts falling behind and never catches up until evening. There are server statistics that can help you determine whether or not this is the case. (These server statistics go beyond the scope of this book, but you can begin your investigation by searching on the various Notes/Domino forums for "server AND performance AND statistics".) As may be obvious at this point, troubleshooting can be quite time-consuming. The key is to make sure that you think through each step so that it either eliminates something important, or gives you a forward path. Otherwise, you can find yourself still gathering information weeks and months later, with users and management feeling very frustrated. Before moving on from this section, let's take a quick look at agent logging. Agent Manager can run multiple agents in different databases, as determined by settings in your server document. Typically, production servers only allow two or three concurrent agents to run during business hours, and these are marked in the log as Executive '1', Executive '2', and so on. If your server is often busy with agent execution, then you can track Executive '1' and see how many different agents it runs, and for how long. If there are big gaps between when one agent starts and when the next one does (for Executive '1'), this might raise suspicion that the first agent took that whole time to execute. To verify this, turn up the logging by setting the Notes.ini variable debug_amgr=*. (This will output a fair amount of information into your log, so it's best not to leave it on for too long, but normally one day is not a problem.) Doing this will give you a very important piece of information: the number of "ticks" it took for the agent to run. One second equals 100 ticks, so if the agent takes 246,379 ticks, this equals 2,463 seconds (about 41 minutes). As a general rule, you want scheduled agents to run in seconds, not minutes; so any agent that is taking this long will require some examination. In the next section, we will talk about some other ways you can identify problematic agents. Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM) Every once in a while, a killer feature is introduced—a feature so good, so important, so helpful, that after using it, we just shake our heads and wonder how we ever managed without it for so long. Domino Domain Monitor (DDM) is just such a feature. DDM is too large to be completely covered in this one section, so we will confine our overview to what it can do in terms of troubleshooting applications. For a more thorough explanation of DDM and all its features, see the book, Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino (www.packtpub.com/upgrading_lotus/book). In the events4.nsf database, you will find a new group of documents you can create for tracking agent or application performance. On Domino 7 servers, a new database is created automatically with the filename ddm.nsf. This stores the DDM output you will examine. For application troubleshooting, some of the most helpful areas to track using DDM are the following: Full-text index needs to be built. If you have agents that are creating a full‑text index on the fly because the database has no full‑text index built, DDM can track that potential problem for you. Especially useful is the fact that DDM compiles the frequency per database, so (for instance) you can see if it happens once per month or once per hour. Creating full‑text indexes on the fly can result in a significant demand on server resources, so having this notification is very useful. We discuss an example of this later in this section. Agent security warnings. You can manually examine the log to try to find errors about agents not being able to execute due to insufficient access. However, DDM will do this for you, making it much easier to find (and therefore fix) such problems. Resource utilization. You can track memory, CPU, and time utilization of your agents as run by Agent Manager or by the HTTP task. This means that at any time you can open the ddm.nsf database and spot the worst offenders in these categories, over your entire server/domain. We will discuss an example of CPU usage later in this section. The following illustration shows the new set of DDM views in the events4.nsf (Monitoring configuration) database: The following screenshot displays the By Probe Server view after we've made a few document edits: Notice that there are many probes included out-of-the-box (identified by the property "author = Lotus Notes Template Development") but set to disabled. In this view, there are three that have been enabled (ones with checkmarks) and were created by one of the authors of this book. If you edit the probe document highlighted above, Default Application Code/Agents Evaluated By CPU Usage (Agent Manager), the document consists of three sections. The first section is where you choose the type of probe (in this case Application Code) and the subtype (in this case Agents Evaluated By CPU Usage). The second section allows you to choose the servers to run against, and whether you want this probe to run against agents/code executed by Agent Manager or by the HTTP task (as shown in the following screenshot). This is an important distinction. For one thing, they are different tasks, and therefore one can hit a limit while the other still has room to "breathe". But perhaps more significantly, if you choose a subtype of Agents Evaluated By Memory Usage, then the algorithms used to evaluate whether or not an agent is using too much memory are very different. Agents run by the HTTP task will be judged much more harshly than those run by the Agent Manager task. This is because with the HTTP task, it is possible to run the same agent with up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent executions. But with Agent Manager, you are effectively limited to ten concurrent instances, and none within the same database. The third section allows you to set your threshold for when DDM should report the activity: You can select up to four levels of warning: Fatal, Failure, Warning (High), and Warning (Low). Note that you do not have the ability to change the severity labels (which appear as icons in the view). Unless you change the database design of ddm.nsf, the icons displayed in the view and documents are non-configurable. Experiment with these settings until you find the approach that is most useful for your corporation. Typically, customers start by overwhelming themselves with information, and then fine-tuning the probes so that much less information is reported. In this example, only two statuses are enabled: one for six seconds, with a label of Warning (High), and one for 60 seconds, with a label of Failure. Here is a screenshot of the DDM database: Notice that there are two Application Code results, one with a status of Failure (because that agent ran for more than 60 seconds), and one with a status of Warning (High) (because that agent ran for more than six seconds but less than 60 seconds). These are the parameters set in the Probe document shown previously, which can easily be changed by editing that Probe document. If you want these labels to be different, you must enable different rows in the Probe document. If you open one of these documents, there are three sections. The top section gives header information about this event, such as the server name, the database and agent name, and so on. The second section includes the following table, with a tab for the most recent infraction and a tab for previous infractions. This allows you to see how often the problem is occurring, and with what severity. The third section provides some possible solutions, and (if applicable) automation. For example, in our example, you might want to "profile" your agent. (We will profile one of our agents in the final section of this article.) DDM can capture full-text operations against a database that is not full‑text indexed. It tracks the number of times this happens, so you can decide whether to full‑text index the database, change the agent, or neither. For a more complete list of the errors and problems that DDM can help resolve, check the Domino 7 online help or the product documentation (www.lotus.com). Agent Profiler If any of the troubleshooting tips or techniques we've discussed in this article causes you to look at an agent and think, "I wonder what makes this agent so slow", then the Agent Profiler should be the next tool to consider. Agent Profiler is another new feature introduced in Notes/Domino 7. It gives you a breakdown of many methods/properties in your LotusScript agent, telling you how often each one was executed and how long they took to execute. In Notes/Domino 7, the second (security) tab of Agent properties now includes a checkbox labeled Profile this agent. You can select this option if you want an agent to be profiled. The next time the agent runs, a profile document in the database is created and filled with the information from that execution. This document is then updated every time the agent runs. You can view these results from the Agent View by highlighting your agent and selecting Agent | View Profile Results. The following is a profile for an agent that performed slow mail searches: Although this doesn't completely measure (and certainly does not completely troubleshoot) your agents, it is an important step forward in troubleshooting code. Imagine the alternative: dozens of print statements, and then hours of collating results! Summary In closing, we hope that this article has opened your eyes to new possibilities in troubleshooting, both in terms of techniques and new Notes/Domino 7 features. Every environment has applications that users wish ran faster, but with a bit of care, you can troubleshoot your performance problems and find resolutions. After you have your servers running Notes/Domino 7, you can use DDM and Agent Profiler (both exceptionally easy to use) to help nail down poorly performing code in your applications. These tools really open a window on what had previously been a room full of mysterious behavior. Full-text indexing on the fly, code that uses too much memory, and long running agents are all quickly identified by Domino Domain Monitoring (DDM). Try it!

The report also states that blogs are profitable, it says: The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. It is interesting to note that the majority of bloggers now display advertising. One of the most encouraging statistics is that the proportion of people blogging about their jobs and on behalf of their business is now so high: About half of bloggers are professional bloggers — blogging is not necessarily their full-time job, but they blog about their industry or profession in an unofficial capacity. 12% of bloggers blog in an official capacity for their company. The amount of cross-over between the groups is also interesting. It shows that personal and business blogging can be successfully combined: More than half of professional and corporate bloggers are also personal bloggers. This could be on a separate blog, or they may blog about personal interests within their professional blog. Corporate bloggers: 69% are also personal bloggers 65% are professional bloggers Professional bloggers: 59% are also personal bloggers 17% are corporate bloggers It’s very encouraging to see the positive benefits being enjoyed by business and professional bloggers, with the majority of those surveyed reporting a positive impact as a result of their blog. Half of them say they are better known in their industry and a quarter see their blog as a useful résumé enhancement. Impact of blogging on professional life: Business bloggers also report that blogging has brought many unique opportunities that wouldn’t have otherwise been available. Taking part in an event, contributing to a print publication or even appearing on radio or TV are the kinds of things they are involved in, thanks to their blog. Have you been invited to any of the following as the result of your blog? Blogging is a time consuming activity. This is confirmed by the report which shows that a quarter of bloggers spend over 10 hours per week on their blog and nearly half spend 5 hours or more. Time spent blogging each week: As I mention in WordPress For Business Bloggers, many bloggers take on help to run their blog. This is particularly true for corporate or business bloggers, of whom nearly 20% have paid staff working for them. Blogs with higher Technorati authority are updated more frequently than those with less authority, as the report states: The Technorati Top 100 are prolific, with 43% posting ten times per day or more often. Only 8% post once a day or less frequently, compared to 13% of the next 500 bloggers, and 22% of the next 5000 bloggers. I highlight the importance of using tags in WordPress For Business Bloggers, and this is borne out by the data. Technorati top 100 bloggers are twice as likely to tag their posts. Percentage of bloggers who use tags: Promoting a blog well is key to its success and the report shows us the top traffic-building strategies used. These are particularly important for business bloggers, so all the techniques highlighted in the chart below are covered in WordPress For Business Bloggers, you’ll find many of them in Chapter 7, Supercharged Promotion: The vast majority of bloggers are tracking their site visitors and monthly page views, with Google Analytics being used by two thirds of them. Using Google Analytics with WordPress is covered in detail in the book, WordPress For Business Bloggers. Direct revenue generation is becoming an important aspect of blogging, with the majority of bloggers now displaying ads, affiliate marketing or other form of revenue generation (this subject is covered in detail in Chapter 10 of WordPress For Business Bloggers): The report data seems to suggest that the medium of blogging is gaining credibility and being taken more seriously as a source of information. 37% of bloggers have been quoted in the traditional media as a result of one of their posts. This is encouraging for business bloggers who use their blog as a PR tool. All in all, the State of the Blogosphere 2008 report makes encouraging reading for business bloggers as well as anyone who is thinking about starting a blog for their business. A blog can be a tremendously powerful tool for any business and using a top quality platform like WordPress makes running a blog extremely easy.  

In this article, we recommend that you use the JBoss AS (version 4.2), which is a free J2EE Application Server that can be downloaded from http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/downloads/ (complete documentation can be downloaded from http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/docs/). JBoss AS plug-in and the Eclipse WTP JBoss AS plug-in can be treated as an elegant method of connecting a J2EE Application Server to the Eclipse IDE. It's important to know that JBoss AS plug-in does this by using the WTP support, which is a project included by default in the Eclipse IDE. WTP is a major project that extends the Eclipse platform with a strong support for Web and J2EE applications. In this case, WTP will sustain important operations, like starting the server in run/debug mode, stopping the server, and delegating WTP projects to their runtimes. For now, keep in mind that Eclipse supports a set of WTP servers and for every WTP server you may have one WTP runtime. Now, we will see how to install and configure the JBoss 4.2.2 runtime and server. Adding a WTP runtime in Eclipse In case of JBoss Tools, the main scope of Server Runtimes is to point to a server installation somewhere on your machine. By runtimes, we can use different configurations of the same server installed in different physical locations. Now, we will create a JBoss AS Runtime (you can extrapolate the steps shown below for any supported server): From the Window menu, select Preferences. In the Preferences window, expand the Server node and select the Runtime Environments child-node. On the right side of the window, you can see a list of currently installed runtimes, as shown in the following screenshot, where you can see that an Apache Tomcat runtime is reported (this is just an example, the Apache Tomcat runtime is not a default one). Now, if you want to install a new runtime, you should click the Add button from the top-right corner. This will bring in front the New Server Runtime Environment window as you can see in the following screenshot. Because we want to add a JBoss 4.2.2 runtime, we will select the JBoss 4.2 Runtime option (for other adapters proceed accordingly). After that, click Next for setting the runtime parameters. In the runtimes list, we have runtimes provided by WTP and runtimes provided by JBoss Tools (see the section marked in red on the previous screenshot). Because this article is about JBoss Tools, we will further discuss only the runtimes from this category. Here, we have five types of runtimes with the mention that the JBoss Deploy-Only Runtime type is for developers who start/stop/debug applications outside Eclipse. In this step, you will configure the JBoss runtime by indicating the runtime's name (in the Name field), the runtime's home directory (in the Home Directory field), the Java Runtime Environment associated with this runtime (in the JRE field), and the configuration type (in the Configuration field).In the following screenshot, we have done all these settings for our JBoss 4.2 Runtime. The official documentation of JBoss AS 4.2.2 recommends using JDK version 5. If you don't have this version in the JRE list, you can add it like this: Display the Preferences window by clicking the JRE button. In this window, click the Add button to display the Add JRE window. Continue by selecting the Standard VM option and click on the Next button. On the next page, use the Browse button to navigate to the JRE 5 home directory. Click on the Finish button and you should see a new entry in the Installed JREs field of the Preferences window (as shown in the following screenshot). Just check the checkbox of this new entry and click OK. Now, JRE 5 should be available in the JRE list of the New Server Runtime Environment window. After this, just click on the Finish button and the new runtime will be added, as shown in the following screenshot: From this window, you can also edit or remove a runtime by using the Edit and Remove buttons. These are automatically activated when you select a runtime from the list. As a final step, it is recommended to restart the Eclipse IDE.

Introduction Mark Twain once said, "There are only two certainties in life-death and taxes." Even in web security there are two certainties: It's not "if you are attacked", but "when and how" your site will be taken advantage of. There are several types of attacks that your Joomla! site may be vulnerable to such as CSRF, Buffer Overflows, Blind SQL Injection, Denial of Service, and others that are yet to be found. The top issues in PHP-based websites are: Incorrect or invalid (intentional or unintentional) input Access control vulnerabilities Session hijacks and attempts on session IDs SQL Injection and Blind SQL Injection Incorrect or ignored PHP configuration settings Divulging too much in error messages and poor error handling Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Cross Site Request Forgery, that is CSRF (one-click attack) SQL Injections SQL databases are the heart of Joomla! CMS. The database holds the content, the users' IDs, the settings, and more. To gain access to this valuable resource is the ultimate prize of the hacker. Accessing this can gain him/her an administrative access that can gather private information such as usernames and passwords, and can allow any number of bad things to happen. When you make a request of a page on Joomla!, it forms a "query" or a question for the database. The database is unsuspecting that you may be asking a malformed question and will attempt to process whatever the query is. Often, the developers do not construct their code to watch for this type of an attack. In fact, in the month of February 2008, twenty-one new SQL Injection vulnerabilities were discovered in the Joomla! land. The following are some examples presented for your edification. Using any of these for any purpose is solely your responsibility and not mine: Example 1 index.php?option=com_****&Itemid=name&cmd=section&section=-  000/**/union+select/**/000,111,222,      concat(username,0x3a,password),0,     concat(username,0x3a,password)/**/from/**/jos_users/* Example 2 index.php?option=com_****&task=****&Itemid=name&catid=97&aid=- 9988%2F%2A%2A%2Funion%2F%2A%2A%2Fselect/**/ concat(username,0x3a,password),0x3a,password, 0x3a,username,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0/**/ from/**/jos_users/* Both of these will reveal, under the right set of circumstances, the usernames and passwords in your system. There is a measure of protection in Joomla! 1.0.13, with an encryption scheme that will render the passwords useless. However, it does not make sense to allow extensions that are vulnerable to remain. Yielding ANY kind of information like this is unacceptable. The following screenshot displays the results of the second example running on a test system with the vulnerable extension. The two pieces of information are the username that is listed as Author, and the Hex string (partially blurred) that is the hashed password: You can see that not all MD5 hashes can be broken easily. Though it won't be shown here, there is a website available where you enter your hash and it attempts to crack it. It supports several popular hashes. When I entered this hash (of a password) into the tool, I found the password to be Anthony. It's worth noting that this hash and its password are a result of a website getting broken into, prompting the user to search for the "hash" left behind, thus yielding the password. The important news, however, is that if you are using Joomla! 1.0.13 or greater, the password's hash is now calculated with a "salt", making it nearly impossible to break. However, the standard MD5 could still be broken with enough effort in many cases. For more information about salting and MD5 see:http://www.php.net/md5. For an interesting read on salting, you may wish to read this link:www.governmentsecurity.org/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t19179.htm SQL Injection is a query put to an SQL database where data input was expected AND the application does not correctly filter the input. It allows hijacking of database information such as usernames and passwords, as we saw in the earlier example. Most of these attacks are based on two things. First, the developers have coding errors in their code, or they potentially reused the code from another application, thus spreading the error. The other issue is the inadequate validation of input. In essence, it means trusting the users to put in the RIGHT stuff, and not put in queries meant to harm the system. User input is rarely to be trusted for this reason. It should always be checked for proper format, length, and range. There are many ways to test for vulnerability to an SQL Injection, but one of the most common ones is as follows: In some cases, this may be enough to trigger a database to divulge details. This very simplistic example would not work in the login box that is shown. However, if it were presented to a vulnerable extension in a manner such as the following it might work: <FORM action=http://www.vulnerablesite.com/Search.php method=post><input type=hidden name=A value="me' or 1=1--"></FORM> This "posting" method (presented as a very generic exploit and not meant to work per se in Joomla!) will attempt to break into the database by putting forward queries that would not necessarily be noticed. But why 1=1- - ? According to PHP.NET, "It is a common technique to force the SQL parser to ignore the rest of the query written by the developer with-- which is the comment sign in SQL." You might be thinking, "So what if my passwords are hashed? They can get them but they cannot break them!" This is true, but if they wanted it badly, nothing keeps them from doing something such as this: INSERT INTO jos_mydb_users  ('email','password','login_id','full_name')  VALUES ('johndoe@email.com','default','Jdoe','John Doe');--'; This code has a potential if inserted into a query such as this: http://www.yourdomain/vulnerable_extension//index.php?option=com_vulext INSERT INTO jos_mydb_users ('email','password','login_id','full_name') VALUES ('johndoe@email.com','default','Jdoe','John Doe');--'; Again, this is a completely bogus example and is not likely to work. But if you can get an SQL DB to divulge its information, you can get it to "accept" (insert) information it should not as well. 

Despite the way it sounds, managing users isn't an all-involving activity—at least it shouldn't be. Most system administrators tend to follow the "install-it-forget-it" methodology to running their servers. You can do so with Openfire as well, but with a user-centeric service such as an IM server, keeping track of things isn't a bad idea. Openfire makes your job easier with its web-based admin interface. There are several things that you can setup via the web interface that'll help you manage the users. You can install some plugins that'll help you run and manage the server more effectively, such as the plugin for importing/exporting users, and dual-benefit plugins such as the search plugin, which help users find other users in the network, and also let you check up on users using the IM service. In this article, we will cover: Searching for users Getting email alerts via IM Broadcasting messages to all users Managing user clients Importing/exporting users Searching for Users with the SearchPlugin Irrespective of whether you have pre-populated user rosters, letting users find other users on the network is always a good idea. The Search Plugin works both ways—it helps your users find each other, and also helps you, the administrator, to find users and modify their settings if required. To install the plugin, head over to the Plugins tab (refer to the following screenshot). The Search plugin is automatically installed along with Openfire, and will be listed as a plugin that is already installed. It's still a good idea to restart the plugin just to make sure that everything's ok. Locate and click the icon in the Restart column that corresponds to the Search plugin. This should restart the plugin. The Search plugin has various configurable options, but by default the pluginis deployed with all of its features enabled. So your users can immediately start searching for users. To tweak the Search plugin options, head over to the Server | Server Settings |Search Service Properties in the Openfire admin interface. From this page, you can enable or disable the service. Once enabled, users will be able to search for other users on the network from their clients. Not all clients have the Search feature but Spark, Exodus, Psi, and some others do. Even if you disable this plugin, you, the admin, will still be able to search for users from the Openfire admin interface as described in the following section. In addition to enabling the Search option, you'll have to name it. The plugin is offered as a network "service" to the users. The Openfire server offers other services and also includes the group chat feature which we will discuss in the Appendix. Calling the search service by its default name, search.< your-domain-name > is a goodidea. You should only change it if you have another service on your network with the same name. Finally, you'll have to select the fields users can search on. The three options available are Username, Name, and Email (refer to the previous screenshot). You can enable any of these options, or all the three for a better success rate. Once you're done with setting up the options, click the Save Properties button to apply them. To use the plugin, your users will have to use their clients to query the Openfire server and then select the search service from the ones listed. This will present them with a search interface through which they'll be able to search for their peers(refer to the following screenshot) using one or more of the three options (Username,Name, Email), depending on what you have enabled. Searching for Users from Within The Admin Interface So we've let our users look for their peers, but how do you, the Openfire admin, look for users? You too can use your client, but it's better to do it from the interface since you can tweak the user's settings from there as well. To search for users from within the admin interface, head over to the Users/Groups tab. You'll notice an AdvancedUser Search option in the sidebar. When you click on this option, you'll be presented with a single text field withthree checkboxes (refer to the previous screenshot). In the textfield, enter the user'sName, Username, and Email that you want to find. The plugin can also handle the * wildcard character so that you can search using a part of the user's details as well.For example, if you want to find a user "James", but don't know if his last name isspelled "Allen" or "Allan", try entering "James A*" in the search field and make sure that the Name checkbox is selected. Another example would be "* Smith", which looks for all the users with the last name "Smith". The search box is case-sensitive. So why were you looking for "James Allan", the guy with two first names? It was because his last name is in fact "Allen" and he wants to get it corrected. So you find his record with the plugin and click on his username. This brings up a summary of his properties including his status, the groups he belongs to, when he was registeredon the network, and so on. Find and click the Edit Properties button below the details, make the required changes, and click the Save Properties > button. Get Email Alerts via IM Instant Messaging is an alternate line of enterprise communication, along with electronic ones such as email and traditional ones such as the telephone. Some critical tasks require instant notification and nothing beats IM when it comes to time-critical alerts. For example, most critical server software applications, especially the ones facing outwards on to the Internet, are configured to send an email to the admin in case of an emergency—for example, a break-in attempt, abnormal shutdown, hardware failure, and so on. You can configure Openfire to route these messages to you as an IM, if you're online. If you're a startup that only advertises a single info@coolstartup.com email address which is read by all seven employees of the company, you can configure Openfire to send IMs to all of you when the VCs come calling! Setting this up isn't an issue if you have the necessary settings handy. The email alert service connects to the email server using IMAP and requires the following options: Mail Host: The host running the email service. Example: imap.example.com Mail Port: The port through which Openfire listens for new email. SSL can also be used if it is enabled on your mail server. Example: 993. Server Username: The username of the account you want to monitor.Example: info@cool-startup.com. Server Password: The accounts password. Folder: The folder in which Openfire must look for new messages. Typically this will be the "Inbox" but if your server filters email that meet a preset criteria into a particular folder, you need to specify it here. Check Frequency: How frequently Openfire should check the account for new email. The default value is 300000 ms which is equal to 5 minutes. JID of users to notify: This is where you specify the Openfire Jabber IDs(userids) of the users you want to notify when a new email pops up. If you need to alert multiple users, separate their JID's with commas. But first head over to the Plugins tab and install the Email Listener plugin from the list of available plugins. Once you have done this, head back to the Server tab and choose the Email Listener option in the sidebar and enter the settings in the form that pops up (refer to the following screenshot). Click the Test Settings button to allow Openfire to try to connect to the server using the settings provided. If the test is successful, finish off the setup procedure by clicking the Save button to save your settings. If the test fails, check the settings and make sure that the email server is up and running. You can test and hook them with your Gmail account as well. That's it. Now close that email client you have running in the background, and let Openfire play secretary, while you write your world domination application! Broadcasting Messages Since Openfire is a communication tool, it reserves the coolest tricks in the bag for that purpose. The primary purpose of Openfire remains one-to-one personal interactions and many-to-many group discussion, but it can also be used as a one-to-many broadcasting tool. This might sound familiar to you. But don't sweat, I'm not repeating myself. The one-to-many broadcasting we cover in this section is different from the Send Message tool. The Send Message tool from the web-based Openfire administration console is available only to the Openfire administrator. But the plugin we cover in this section has a much broader perspective. For one, the Broadcast plugin can be used by non-admin users, though of course, you can limit access. Secondly, the Broadcast plugin can be used to send messages to a select group of users which can grow to include everyone in the organization using Openfire. One use of the broadcast plugin is for sending important reminders. Here are some examples: The Chief Accounts Officer broadcasts a message to everyone in the organization reminding them to file their returns by a certain date. The CEO broadcasts a message explaining the company's plans to merge with or acquire another company, or just to share a motivational message. You, the Openfire administrator, use the plugin to announce system outages. The Sales Department Head is upset because sales targets haven't been met and calls for a group meeting at 10:00 a.m. on the day after tomorrow and in forms everyone in the Sales department via the plugin. The intern in the advertisement department sends a list of his accounts to everyone in the department before returning to college and saves everyone a lot of running around, thanks to the plugin. Setting up the Plugin To reap the benefits of the Broadcast plugin, begin by installing it from under theAvailable Plugins list on the Plugins tab. This plugin has a few configuration options which should be set carefully—using a misconfigured broadcast plugin, the new guy in the purchase department could send a message of "Have you seen my stapler?" to everyone in the organization, including the CEO! The broadcast plugin is configured via the Openfire system properties. Remember these? They are listed under the Server tab's System Properties option in the sidebar. You'll have to manually specify the settings using properties (refer to the following screenshot): plugin.broadcast.serviceName— This is the name of the broadcast service. By default, the service is called "broadcast", but you can call it something else, such as "shout", or "notify". plugin.broadcast.groupMembersAllowed— This property accepts two values—true and false. If you select the "true" option, all group members will be allowed to broadcast messages to all users in the group they belong to. If set to "false", only group admins can send messages to all members of their groups. The default value is "true". plugin.broadcast.disableGroupPermissions— Like the previous property, this property also accepts either true or false values. By selecting the "true" option, you will allow any user in the network to broadcast messages to any group and vice versa, the "false" option restricts the broadcasting option to group members and admins. The default value of this group is "false". As you can imagine, if you set this value to "true" and allow anyone to send broadcast messages to a group, you effectively override the restrictive value of the previous setting. plugin.broadcast.allowedUsers—Do not forget to set this property! If it is not set, anyone on the network can send a message to everyone else on the network. There are a only a few people you'd want to have the ability to broadcast a message to everyone in the organization. This list of users who can talk to everyone should be specified with this property by a string of comma-separated JIDs. In most cases, the default options of these properties should suffice. If you don't change any variables, your service will be called "broadcast" and will allow group members to broadcast messages to their own groups and not to anyone else. You should also add the JIDs of executive members of the company (CEO, MD, etc.) to the list of users allowed to send messages to everyone in the organization. Using The Plugin Once you have configured the plugin, you'll have to instruct users on how to use the plugin according to the configuration. To send a message using the broadcast plugin, users must add a user with the JID in the following format @. (refer to the following screenshot). If the CEO wants to send a message to everyone, he has to send it to a user called all@broadcast.serverfoo, assuming that you kept the default settings, and that your Openfire server is called serverfoo. Similarly, when members of the sales department want to communicate with their departmental collegues, they have to send the message to sales@broadcast.serverfoo. Managing User Clients There's no dearth of IM clients. It's said that if you have ten users on your network, you'll have at least fifteen different clients. Managing user's clients is like bringing order to chaos. In this regard you'll find that Openfire is biased towards its own IMclient, Spark. But as it has all the features you'd expect from an IM client and runs on multiple platforms as well, one really can't complain. So what can you control using the client control features? Here's a snapshot: Don't like users transferring files? Turn it off, irrespective of the IM client. Don't like users experimenting with clients? Restrict their options Don't want to manually install Spark on each and every user's desktop? Put it on the network, and send them an email with a link, along with installation and sign-in instructions. Do users keep forgetting the intranet website address? Add it as a bookmark in their clients. Don't let users bug you all the time asking for the always-on "hang-out"conference room. Add it as a bookmark to their client! Don't these features sound as if they can take some of the work off your shoulders? Sure, but you'll only truly realize how cool and useful they are when you implement them! So what are you waiting for? Head over to the Plugins tab and install the Client Control plugin. When it is installed, head over to the Server | ClientManagement tab. Here you'll notice several options. The first option under client management, Client Features, lets you enable or disable certain client features (refer to the following screenshot). These are: Broadcasting: If you don't want your users to broadcast messages, disable this feature. This applies only to Spark. File Transfer: Disabling this feature will stop your users from sharing files.This applies to all IM clients. Avatar/VCard: You can turn off indiscriminate changes to a user's avatar or virtual visiting card by disabling this experimental feature which only applies to Spark. Group Chat: Don't want users to join group chat rooms? Then disable this feature which will prevent all the users from joining discussion groups, irrespective of the IM client they are using. By default, all of these features are enabled. When you've made changes as per your requirements, remember to save the settings using the Save Settings button. Next, head over to the Permitted Clients option (refer to the following screenshot) to restrict the clients that users can employ. By default, Openfire allows all XMPPclients to connect to the server. If you want to run a tight ship, you can decide to limit the number of clients allowed by selecting the Specify Clients option button. From the nine clients listed for the three platforms supported by Openfire (Windows,Linux, and Mac), choose the clients you trust by selecting the checkbox next to them.If your client isn't listed, use the Add Other Client text box to add that client. When you've made your choices, click on the Save Settings button to save and implement the client control settings. The manually-added clients are automatically added to the list of allowed clients. If you don't trust them, why add them? The remove link next to these clients will remove them from the list of clients you trust.

Application Design Standards The Dynamics AX design standards consist of the following considerations: Code placement Performance optimization Using field groups in tables Auto property settings Code Placement Code placement is important as it affects the following: Performance Customization Reusability Maintainability (upgrade, extensibility, etc.) The general guidelines are that the code should be placed in such a way that various calls to other layers are minimized, the operation is performed at the layer where it is least expensive, and the same code need not be written at several places (e.g. if business logic is written on a form then it needs to be written in the enterprise portal for the web client also). So we should not only think about the tier of placement in the three-tier architecture, but also about the best AOT (Application Object Tree) element type for a piece of code. Once these have been designed we need to think about the type of method or objects in the classes, etc. Three-Tier Architecture Considerations The three tiers in this architecture are dedicated for the following three types of jobs: Client—The Presentation layer—This is where the forms are stored. Place client‑specific classes and methods here. Object server—The Business application logic layer—Transaction-oriented database update jobs should be run here, close to the database. Database server—The Database layer—Utilize the power of the database server by using aggregate functions, joins, and other calculating features of the database management system. Dynamics AX has a property, RunOn, for every AOT element, which indicates the layer where it should be executed i.e. Client, AOS, or Database server. This RunOn property may have one of three values i.e. Client, Called from, and Server. Client: The object will live on the client. Called from: The object will live at the tier where the object is created using the 'new' constructor. Server: The object will live on the server. Now we will discuss how to decide the RunOn property value. Classes The value of the RunOn property for a class will decide the location of the object created from that class. The value of RunOn property for a class will be same as the parent class if the parent class has a RunOn property other than Called from i.e. the RunOn property cannot be changed for a class if the parent class has as its value either Client or Server. If the parent class has Called from as its RunOn property value, it can be changed to Client or Server and if it is not changed it will retain the inherited value i.e. Called from. The Called from value of the RunOn property means the object will live at the tier where the code creating it (by calling the new constructor) is running. Methods Now we will discuss the execution place for various types of methods. Class static methods and table methods (except for the database methods) can have their default behavior. The execution place for a method can be changed to Server or Client by adding the Client or Server modifier keywords in the method declaration as shown below:   server static boolean mymethod(): to make server the execution place.   client static boolean mymethod(): to make client the execution place.   client server static boolean mymethod(): to make called from the execution place. The following table summarizes the execution place of various types of methods: AOT elements Default behavior Can be changed Class static methods Runs by default at the same place where the associated class runs i.e. if the associated class has the RunOn property value as server then the class static method will also be executed at the server. Yes Class instance methods Runs where the object of the class lives. The class objects live as described in the class RunOn property. No Table static methods Table static methods have the RunOn property as Called from and hence by default they run where they are called. Yes Table instance methods Table instance methods have the RunOn property as Called from and hence by default they run where they are called. The standard methods Insert/doInsert, Update/doUpdate, and Delete/doDelete run on the Server where the data source is located. No GUI Objects and Reports GUI objects always live on Client. GUI objects include the FormRun, FormDataSource, all FormControls, DialogBox, and OperationProgress objects. Reports always live on Called from, which means the object will live at the tier where the code creating it (by calling the new constructor) is running. Temporary Tables Temporary tables instantiate and live at the tier where data is first inserted and it does not matter where they are declared. Since the placement of temporary tables is very critical for performance, temporary tables should live at the tier where they are used. If a table is utilized in more than one tier then it should live on the tier where the greatest number of inserts and updates are performed. Queries QueryRun has Called from as the default value of the RunOn property. The QueryRun should always be supplied from the same tier from where it was originally run. If you want to create a new QueryRun in place of an old one, it should be created on the same tier where the old QueryRun was executed. AOT Element Type Consideration The following guidelines must be followed to decide the type of code container: AOT element Considerations Class Write code in class when either: Code is related to many tables. Code is not related to any table. Create class instance method when: Working on the instance variable of the class. Overriding is potentially useful. Create class static method when: Access to the class instance method is not required. Overriding is not needed. The functionality of the method is related to the class it is defined on. The method needs to be executed on a different tier than the method's tier. Table Write code in table method when: It is strictly related to a table. Create table instance method when: It is supposed to handle one record at a time. Create table static method when: It is supposed to handle none, some, or all the records at a time. Global class Write code in global class when: Code cannot be placed more logically in another class (or table). Code is general purpose, tool extending, and application neutral. Forms and reports Coding on forms or reports should be avoided as far as possible i.e. except for the calls to classes and table methods that handle complex layout and business logic. The edit and display methods must be avoided if they are placed in a table. If code cannot be placed anywhere else, i.e. the presentation tier is most suitable, then the following guidelines should be observed: Place the code at the data source or data source field level and not at the control level. Call classes from buttons on forms by using menu items. For example, rather than writing a code on the form or report, code could be written in a class and the class could be called from the menu item. Maps Write code in maps when a limited number of connected fields needs to be grouped. Views Do not place much code in views. Performance Optimization The performance optimization guidelines can be categorized into the following three categories: Database design AOS performance optimization General programming Database Design The database design principles are based on the following considerations: Minimizing the database calls by caching Minimizing database transactions Wise index designing Using the select statement in an optimum way Performing transactions in the shortest time possible Caching Database access should be avoided whenever it is not absolutely necessary as retrieving database records from memory is far cheaper and faster. Recording database records in memory is known as caching. The following are the possible type of caching on the server: Record caching Entire table caching Result-set caching Record Caching Record caching is a type of performance enhancement technique in which one or a group of records is retrieved from the memory rather than the database. Retrieving a record from memory rather than database significantly improves the data access. Record caching can be enabled only when the following conditions are satisfied: The CacheLookup property in the table should be enabled by selecting the values notITTS, Found, or FoundAndEmpty. The table has a unique index; either use the primary index or the first unique index. The index based on RecId (known as RecId index) does not qualify as a caching index. The retrieved records can be placed in cache if the following conditions are met: The table is cached i.e. the above conditions are met. The select statement used to read the record uses an equal operator (= =) on the caching key. All the fields in the record are retrieved. A record is looked for when the following conditions are met: The table is cached. The select statement used to read the record uses an equal operator (= =) on caching key. The select statement is either inside or outside TTS, but the value of the caching property for the table is not NotITTS and the select is not forupdate. The following table summarizes the different types of caching mechanism: CacheLookup property Explanation None No data will be cached or retrieved from the cache. This value of CacheLookup property is used when: Tables are frequently updated e.g. transaction tables. It is very critical to read fresh data. NotITTS All select queries that retrieved at least one result will be cached. Found All successful select queries based on caching key are cached for this type of caching. All select queries are returned from cache if the record exists there. A select forupdate in TTS will always read from the database and replace the record in cache. This value of the CacheLookup property is typically used for static tables like ZipCodes where the record usually exists. FoundAndEmpty All select queriesbased on caching keys are cached, even those select queries, which do not return data. All caching keys selects are returned from caching if the record exists or is marked as non-existing, and if it is neither marked as non-existing nor retrieving any result it will check the database and update the cache accordingly. A select forupdate in TTS will always read from the database and replace the record in cache. This value of the CacheLookup property is typically used for tables where registering non-existing keys is also important e.g. discount table. EntireTable A copy of table is created as temporary table. All selects against the table will be performed on the copy. Joins that include the table will only be performed against the copy when all tables participating in the join are EntireTable cached. Otherwise a database join is performed. Operations that change data (insert, update, and delete) are performed against the database as well as against the copy. The reread method will retrieve the data from database and update the copy data as well. The Microsoft Dynamics AX Object Server thin client will regard an EntireTable cached table as FoundAndEmpty cached as well, and will therefore build a recordCache locally when accessing the table. This value of the CacheLookup property is typically used for tables that are not supposed to be modified frequently.   Result-set Caching The RecordViewCache is useful for caching tables that are not of static nature, or contain so many records that the other caching methods would be impractical. This type of caching can be available through the RecordViewCache class. The RecordViewCache is instantiated using X++ select with a where clause that defines the result set. Technically the RecordViewCache can be instantiated using X++ select but it will create a copy of table in memory, which may be an inefficient use of memory. The following rules apply to the instantiating X++ select: It may not be a join. It must be noFetch. The table may not be temporary. When running a Dynamics AX Object Server thin client, instantiation must be on the server. The limitations of the result-set caching are as follows: The RecordViewCache is not shared between Dynamics AX clients. The RecordViewCache is deactivated as soon as the RecordViewCache object goes out of scope or is destroyed. In some cases result-set caching may be dangerous and hence only careful use is recommended. The following facts about result-set caching will be helpful in deciding the use of result-set caching. The database is simultaneously updated with the RecordViewCache. Updating the key of a row that did not qualify the result set at the time of instantiation will not result in the row being included in the cache. Inserts are always included in the RecordViewCaches for that table. It is definitely an advantage; however, care should be taken when inserting a large number of rows in a table and at the same time having a RecordViewCache on the same table as it will prolong the cache update time. A delete will remove the row from RecordViewCaches on that table but not the table. A Delete_from will invalidate RecordViewCaches on that table. As mentioned above the RecordViewCache can go out of synchronization and hence we may need to re-synchronize it again. X++ has a method reread, which retrieves the data from database and updates the cached copy.

Twitter in MediaWiki Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) is a micro-blogging service that allows users to convey the world (or at least the small portion of it on Twitter) what they are doing, in messages of 140 characters or less. It is possible to embed these messages in external websites, which is what we will be doing for JazzMeet. We can use the updates to inform our wiki's visitors of the latest JazzMeet being held across the world, and they can send a response to the JazzMeet Twitter account. Shorter Links Because Twitter only allows posts of up to 140 characters, many Twitter usersmake use of URL-shortening services such as Tiny URL (http://tinyurl.com), and notlong (http://notlong.com) to turn long web addresses into short, more manageable URLs. Tiny URL assigns a random URL such as http://tinyurl.com/3ut9p4, while notlong allows you to pick a free sub-domain to redirect to your chosen address, such as http://asgkasdgadg.notlong.com. Twitter automatically shortens web addresses in your posts. Creating a Twitter Account Creating a Twitter account is quite easy. Just fill in the username, password, and email address fields, and submit the registration form, once you have read and accepted the terms and conditions. If your chosen username is free, your account is created instantly. Once your account has been created, you can change the settings such as your display name and your profile's background image, to help blur the distinction between your website and your Twitter profile. Colors can be specified as "hex" values under the Design tab of your Twitter account's settings section. The following color codes change the link colors to our JazzMeet's palette of browns and reds: As you can see in the screenshot, JazzMeet's Twitter profile now looks a little more like the JazzMeet wiki. By doing this, the visitors catching up with JazzMeet's events on Twitter will not be confused by a sudden change in color scheme:   Embedding Twitter Feeds in MediaWiki Twitter provides a few ways to embed your latest posts in to your own website(s); simply log in and go to http://www.twitter.com/badges. Flash: With this option you can show just your posts, or your posts and your friends' most recent posts on Twitter. HTML and JavaScript: You can configure the code to show between 1 and 20 of your most recent Twitter posts. As JazzMeet isn't really the sort of wiki the visitors would expect to find on Flash, we will be using the HTML and JavaScript version. You are provided with the necessary code to embed in your website or wiki. We will add it to the JazzMeet skin template, as we want it to be displayed on every page of our wiki, just beneath our sponsor links. Refer to the following code: <div id="twitter_div"><h2 class="twitter-title">Twitter Updates</h2><ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul></div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/jazzmeet.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=5"></script> The JavaScript given at the bottom of the code can be moved just above the </body> tag of your wiki's skin template. This will help your wiki to load other important elements of your wiki before the Twitter status. You will need to replace "jazzmeet" in the code with your own Twitter username, otherwise you will receive JazzMeet's Twitter updates, and not your own. It is important to leave the unordered list of ID twitter_update_list as it is, as this is the element the JavaScript code looks for to insert a list item containing each of your twitter messages in the page. Styling Twitter's HTML We need to style the Twitter HTML by adding some CSS to change the colors and style of the Twitter status code: #twitter_div {background: #FFF;border: 3px #BEB798 solid;color: #BEB798;margin: 0;padding: 5px;width: 165px;}#twitter_div a {color: #8D1425 !important;}ul#twitter_update_list {list-style-type: none;margin: 0;padding: 0;}#twitter_update_list li {color: #38230C;display: block;}h2.twitter-title {color: #BEB798;font-size: 100%;} There are only a few CSS IDs and classes that need to be taken care of. They are as follows: #twitter_div is the element that contains the Twitter feeds. #twitter_update_list is the ID applied to the unordered list. Styling this affects how your Twitter feeds are displayed. .twitter-title is the class applied to the Twitter feed's heading (which you can remove, if necessary). Our wiki's skin for JazzMeet now has JazzMeet's Twitter feed embedded in the righthand column, allowing visitors to keep up-to-date with the latest JazzMeet news. Inserting Twitter as Page Content Media Wiki does not allow JavaScript to be embedded in a page via the "edit" function, so you won't be able to insert a Twitter status feed directly in a page unless it is in the template itself. Even if you inserted the relevant JavaScript links into your MediaWiki skin template, they are relevant only for one Twitter profile ("jazzmeet", in our case).  

E-mail, Calendar, and Contacts SBS 2008 includes Exchange 2007, which provides E-mail, Calendar, and Contact functionality. This is available through Outlook, over the Web via Outlook Web Access and on mobile devices. If the user makes a change to one, it will be replicated to Exchange and then to the other locations. How to access from the other locations will be covered later in this article. I'm going to presume that you understand how to send and read email and create and use contacts, but I will share some useful scenarios that many small businesses benefit from, but don't always understand are present in SBS 2008. Some of these will rely on Office 2007 with Outlook, while others can be seen via the web-based interface too. The scenarios are: Viewing your calendar and other people's calendars Scheduling a meeting for multiple people and ensuring their diaries are all free for the time period Telling people when you are going to be away or unavailable Finding emails that have been filed Recovering emails that have been deleted and removed from the deleted items folder All of the actions in this section are carried out on a user's computer, logged in as that user. Only where SBS 2008 is explicitly mentioned, is there an action that is carried out on the server. Outlook 2003 and 2007 connection configuration To configure Microsoft Outlook 2007, you should simply have to open Outlook as it should auto-configure itself. Outlook 2003 will require configuring, but I'm only going cover the important sections here. For full instructions, click on the link How do I use Outlook Anywhere, on the Remote Web Workplace main screen. The links on Remote Web Workplace point to addresses that begin with https://sites/..., which is not accessible from outside the SBS 2008 network. This should be changed to https://remote.yourdomain.co.uk/... as described later in this article. If this has not been done and a user needs access to the information, then they can edit the address in their browser replacing the first part of the URL as described above. If you need to manually configure Outlook, you will need to select the server as an Exchange server. The name of the Microsoft Exchange Server is the name of your SBS 2008 server. In the following screenshot, the name of my SBS 2008 server is davidoverserver and this is entered into the Microsoft Exchange Server section, along with the User Name of the user I am logged in as on their computer. You can either click on Next to finish the settings, or if this is a laptop or a machine that may access SBS 2008 from a remote location, click on More Settings. Click on the Connection tab and then put a check mark in the Connect to my Exchange mailbox using HTTP check box. Finally, click the button Exchange Proxy Settings. Once the proxy settings are open, you will need to type in the remote access URL for your server and also check the Mutually authenticate the session when connecting with SSL, and then enter the name of your remote access server, preceded by msstd:. Clicking on OK will enable you to finish the configuration. Once these changes have been enabled, Outlook will connect to the network without any further action—provided you have an Internet connection, and should work offline until it gets an Internet connection. Calendar management SBS 2008 provides each user a calendar that they can use to manage their diary and which they can choose to share with colleagues if they desire. The level of details shared can be from very basic free and busy time slots through to enabling someone else to have the ability to see and change the diary. This availability of information does concern some users, which is why they can also mark any appointment as private and no details will be shared with others, even if the calendar has been fully shared. Outlook on the desktop enables access to both your and other's calendars, while Outlook and Windows Mobile devices offer much less, if any, access to other people's calendars. I will only describe each task from Outlook in this section, and will provide more information on using Outlook Web Access later in this article. Viewing Calendars Start Outlook from the Start menu. Once Outlook has loaded, click on the Calendar button or go to the Go menu and select Calendar from the menu. You will see your calendar displayed, normally in the Day format with today showing. In the example below, you can see the padlock for the private appointment that others can't see, two normal appointments, and the tentative appointment that is not confirmed at 17:00. To open another person's calendar, click the Open a Shared Calendar link on the lefthand side and then type in the name of the person whose calendar you want to see. If you have permission to view their calendar, you will see both calendars side by side as follows: If you do not have permission and you are running Outlook 2007, you will be prompted to send an email requesting permission. The email will look like this: If the person receiving this email has Outlook 2007, they simply click on Accept to enable you to view the calendar. If you or they have an earlier version of Outlook, then the person whose calendar you want to view will need to carry this task out by hand. To do this, get that individual to open Outlook and then their Calendar and right-click on Calendar under My Calendars and then select Properties from the menu. When the properties appear, go to the Permissions tab and either add the user and assign specific permission, or to make life easier, simply set the default access to reviewer. You can now view both your and other's calendars to identify opportunities to meet. You can open more than one other person's calendar, but things can get confusing with so many open. With Office 2007, you can overlay the calendars by clicking the arrow next to someone's name. For all versions of Outlook, you close a calendar by removing the check mark next to their name in the lefthand navigation pane.

Various links that enable table operations have been put together on one sub-page of the Table view: Operations. Here is an overview of this sub-page: Table Maintenance During the lifetime of a table, it repeatedly gets modified, and so grows and shrinks. Outages may occur on the server, leaving some tables in a damaged state. Using the Operations sub-page, we can perform various operations, but not every operation is available for every table type: Check table: Scans all rows to verify that deleted links are correct. Also, a checksum is calculated to verify the integrity of the keys; we should get an 'OK' message if everything is all right. Analyze table: Analyzes and stores the key distribution; this will be used on subsequent JOIN operations to determine the order in which the tables should be joined. Repair table: Repairs any corrupted data for tables in the MyISAM and ARCHIVE engines. Note that the table might be so corrupted that we cannot even go into Table view for it! In such a case, refer to the Multi-Table Operations section for the procedure to repair it. Optimize table: This is useful when the table contains overheads. After massive deletions of rows or length changes for VARCHAR fields, lost bytes remain in the table. PhpMyAdmin warns us in various places (for example, in the Structure view) if it feels the table should be optimized. This operation is a kind of defragmentation for the table. In MySQL 4.x, this operation works only on tables in the MyISAM, Berkeley (BDB), and InnoDB engines. In MySQL 5.x, it works only on tables in the MyISAM, InnoDB, andARCHIVE engines. Flush table: This must be done when there have been lots of connection errors and the MySQL server blocks further connections. Flushing will clear some internal caches and allow normal operations to resume. Defragment table: Random insertions or deletions in an InnoDB table fragment its index. The table should be periodically defragmented for faster data retrieval. The operations are based on the underlying MySQL queries available—phpMyAdmin is only calling those queries. Changing Table Attributes Table attributes are the various properties of a table. This section discusses the settings for some of them. Table Type The first attribute we can change is called Table storage engine: This controls the whole behavior of the table: its location (on-disk or in-memory), the index structure, and whether it supports transactions and foreign keys. The drop-down list may vary depending on the table types supported by our MySQL server. Changing the table type may be a long operation if the number of rows is large. Table Comments This allows us to enter comments for the table. These comments will be shown at appropriate places (for example, in the left panel, next to the table name in the Table view and in the export file). Here is what the left panel looks like when the $cfg['ShowTooltip'] parameter is set to its default value of TRUE: The default value of $cfg['ShowTooltipAliasDB'] and $cfg['ShowTooltipAliasTB'] (FALSE) produces the behavior we have seen earlier: the true database and table names are displayed in the left panel and in the Database view for the Structure sub-page. Comments appear when the mouse pointer is moved over a table name. If one of these parameters is set toTRUE, the corresponding item (database names for DB and table names for TB) will be shown as the tooltip instead of the names. This time, the mouse-over shows the true name for the item. This is convenient when the real table names are not meaningful. There is another possibility for $cfg['ShowTooltipAliasTB']: the 'nested' value. Here is what happens if we use this feature: The true table name is displayed in the left panel. The table comment (for example project__) is interpreted as the project name and is displayed as such. Table Order When we Browse a table or execute a statement such as SELECT * from book, without specifying a sort order, MySQL uses the order in which the rows are physically stored. This table order can be changed with the Alter table order by dialog. We can choose any field, and the table will be reordered once on this field. We choose author_id in the example, and after we click Go, the table gets sorted on this field. Reordering is convenient if we know that we will be retrieving rows in this order most of the time. Moreover, if later we use an ORDER BY clause and the table is already physically sorted on this field, the performance should be higher. This default ordering will last as long as there are no changes in the table (no insertions, deletions, or updates). This is why phpMyAdmin shows the (singly) warning. After the sort has been done on author_id, books for author 1 will be displayed first, followed by the books for author 2, and so on. (We are talking about a default browsing of the table without explicit sorting.) We can also specify the sort order: Ascending or Descending. If we insert another row, describing a new book from author 1, and then click Browse, the book will not be displayed along with the other books for this author because the sort was done before the insertion. Table Options Other attributes that influence the table's behavior may be specified using the Table options dialog: The options are: pack_keys:Setting this attribute results in a smaller index; this can be read faster but takes more time to update. Available for the MyISAM storage engine. checksum: This makes MySQL compute a checksum for each row. This results in slower updates, but easier finding of corrupted tables. Available for MyISAM only. delay_key_write: This instructs MySQL not to write the index updates immediately but to queue them for later, which improves performance. Available for MyISAM only. auto-increment: This changes the auto-increment value. It is shown only if the table's primary key has the auto-increment attribute. Renaming, Moving, and Copying Tables The Rename operation is the easiest to understand: the table simply changes its name and stays in the same database. The Move operation (shown in the following screen) can manipulate a table in two ways: change its name and also the database in which it is stored Moving a table is not directly supported by MySQL, so phpMyAdmin has to create the table in the target database, copy the data, and then finally drop the source table. The Copy operation leaves the original table intact and copies its structure or data (or both) to another table, possibly in another database. Here, the book-copy table will be an exact copy of the book source table. After the copy, we will stay in the Table view for the book table unless we selected Switch to copied table. The Structure only copy is done to create a test table with the same structure. Appending Data to a Table The Copy dialog may also be used to append (add) data from one table to another. Both tables must have the same structure. This operation is achieved by entering the table to which we want to copy the data of the current table and choosing Data only. For example, we would want to append data when book data comes from various sources (various publishers), is stored in more than one table, and we want to aggregate all the data to one place. For MyISAM, a similar result can be obtained by using the MERGE storage engine (which is a collection of identical MyISAM tables), but if the table is InnoDB, we need to rely on phpMyAdmin's Copy feature. Multi-Table Operations In the Database view, there is a checkbox next to each table name and a drop-down menu under the table list. This enables us to quickly choose some tables and perform an operation on all those tables at once. Here we select the book-copy and the book tables, and choose the Check operation for these tables. We could also quickly select or deselect all the checkboxes with Check All/Uncheck All. Repairing an "in use" Table The multi-table mode is the only method (unless we know the exact SQL query to type) for repairing a corrupted table. Such tables may be shown with the in use flag in the database list. Users seeking help in the support forums for phpMyAdmin often receive this tip from experienced phpMyAdmin users. Database Operations The Operations tab in the Database view gives access to a panel that enables us to perform operations on a database taken as a whole. Renaming a Database Starting with phpMyAdmin 2.6.0, a Rename database dialog is available. Although this operation is not directly supported by MySQL, phpMyAdmin does it indirectly by creating a new database, renaming each table (thus sending it to the new database), and dropping the original database. Copying a Database Since phpMyAdmin 2.6.1, it is possible to do a complete copy of a database, even if MySQL itself does not support this operation natively. Summary In this article, we covered the operations we can perform on whole tables or databases. We also took a look at table maintenance operations for table repair and optimization, changing various table attributes, table movements, including renaming and moving to another database, and multi-table operations.

The reader should note that the solution is only intended to explain how Python and STAF may be used. No claim is made that the solution presented here is the best one in any way, just that is one more option that the reader may consider in future developments. The Problem Let's imagine that we have a computer network in which a machine periodically generates some kind of file with information that is of interest to other machines in that network. For example, let's say that this file is a new software build of a product that must transferred to a group of remote machines, in which its functionality has to be tested to make sure it can be delivered to the client. The Python-only solution Sequential A simple solution to make the software build available to all the testing machines could be to copy it to a specific directory whenever a new file is available. For additional security, let's suppose that we're required to verify that the md5 sum for both original and destination files is equal to ensure that build file was copied correctly. If it is considered that /tmp is a good destination directory, then the following script will do the job: 1 #!/usr/bin/python 2 """ 3 Copy a given file to a list of destination machines sequentially 4 """ 5 6 import os, argparse 7 import subprocess 8 import logging 9 10 def main(args): 11 logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(message)s") 12 13 # Calculate md5 sum before copyin the file 14 orig_md5 = run_command("md5sum %s" % args.file).split()[0] 15 16 # Copy the file to every requested machine and verify 17 # that md5 sum of the destination file is equal 18 # to the md5 sum of the original file 19 for machine in args.machines: 20 run_command("scp %s %s:/tmp/" % (args.file, machine)) 21 dest_md5 = run_command("ssh %s md5sum /tmp/%s" 22 % (machine, os.path.basename(args.file))).split()[0] 23 assert orig_md5 == dest_md5 24 25 def run_command(command_str): 26 """ 27 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 28 """ 29 logging.info(command_str) 30 return subprocess.Popen(command_str, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, 31 shell=True).communicate()[0] 32 33 if __name__ == "__main__": 34 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__) 35 parser.add_argument("file", 36 help="File to copy") 37 parser.add_argument(metavar="machine", dest="machines", nargs="+", 38 help="List of machines to which file must be copied") 39 40 args = parser.parse_args() 41 args.file = os.path.realpath(args.file) 42 main(args) Here it is assumed that ssh keys have been exchanged between origin and destination machines for automatic authentication without human intervention. The script makes use of the Popen class in the subprocess python standard library. This powerful library provides the capability to launch new operating system processes and capture not only the result code, but also the standard output and error streams. However, it should be taken into account that the Popen class cannot be used to invoke commands on a remote machine by itself. However, as it can be seen in the code, ssh and related commands may be used to launch processes on remote machines when configured properly. For example, if the file of interest was STAF325-src.tar.gz (STAF 3.2.5 source) and the remote machines were 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2, then the file would be copied using the copy.py script in the following way: $ ./copy.py STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.{1,2}md5sum STAF325-src.tar.gzscp STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.1:/tmp/ssh 192.168.1.1 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gzscp STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.2:/tmp/ssh 192.168.1.2 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gz Parallel What would happen if the files were copied in parallel? For this example, it might not make much sense given that probably the network is at bottleneck and there isn't any increase in performance. However, in the case of the md5sum operation, it's a waste of time waiting for the operation to complete on one machine while the other is essentially idle waiting for the next command. Clearly, it would be more interesting to make both machines do the job in parallel to take advantage of CPU cycles. A parallel implementation similar to the sequential one is displayed below: 1 #!/usr/bin/python 2 """ 3 Copy a given file to a list of destination machines in parallel 4 """ 5 6 import os, argparse 7 import subprocess 8 import logging 9 import threading 10 11 def main(args): 12 logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(threadName)s: %(message)s") 13 orig_md5 = run_command("md5sum %s" % args.file).split()[0] 14 15 # Create one thread for machine 16 threads = [ WorkingThread(machine, args.file, orig_md5) 17 for machine in args.machines] 18 19 # Run all threads 20 for thread in threads: 21 thread.start() 22 23 # Wait for all threads to finish 24 for thread in threads: 25 thread.join() 26 27 class WorkingThread(threading.Thread): 28 """ 29 Thread that performs the copy operation for one machine 30 """ 31 def __init__(self, machine, orig_file, orig_md5): 32 threading.Thread.__init__(self) 33 34 self.machine = machine 35 self.file = orig_file 36 self.orig_md5 = orig_md5 37 38 def run(self): 39 # Copy file to remote machine 40 run_command("scp %s %s:/tmp/" % (self.file, self.machine)) 41 42 # Calculate md5 sum of the file copied at the remote machine 43 dest_md5 = run_command("ssh %s md5sum /tmp/%s" 44 % (self.machine, os.path.basename(self.file))).split()[0] 45 assert self.orig_md5 == dest_md5 46 47 def run_command(command_str): 48 """ 49 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 50 """ 51 logging.info(command_str) 52 return subprocess.Popen(command_str, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, 53 shell=True).communicate()[0] 54 55 if __name__ == "__main__": 56 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__) 57 parser.add_argument("file", 58 help="File to copy") 59 parser.add_argument(metavar="machine", dest="machines", nargs="+", 60 help="List of machines to which file must be copied") 61 62 args = parser.parse_args() 63 args.file = os.path.realpath(args.file) 64 main(args) Here the same assumptions as in the sequential case are made. In this solution the work that was done inside the for loop is now implemented in the run method of a class that is inherited from threading.Thread class, which is a class that provides an easy way to create working threads such as the ones in the example. In this case, the output of the command, using the same arguments as in the previous example, is: $ ./copy_parallel.py STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.{1,2}MainThread: md5sum STAF325-src.tar.gzThread-1: scp STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.1:/tmp/Thread-2: scp STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.2:/tmp/Thread-2: ssh 192.168.1.2 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gzThread-1: ssh 192.168.1.1 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gz As it can be seen in the logs, md5sum command execution isn't necessarily executed in the same order as threads were created. This solution isn't much more complex than the sequential one, but it finishes earlier. Hence, in the case in which a CPU intensive task must be performed in every machine, the parallel solution will be more convenient since the small increment in coding complex will pay off in execution performance. The Python+STAF solution Sequential The solutions to the problem presented in the previous section are perfectly fine. However, some developers may find it cumbersome to write scripts from scratch using Popen class and desire to work with a platform with feature such as launching process on remote machines already implemented. That's were STAF (Software Testing Automation Framework) might be helpful. STAF is a framework that provides the ability to automate jobs specially, but not uniquely, for testing environments. STAF is implemented as a process which runs on every machine that provides services that may be used by clients to accomplish different tasks. For more information regarding STAF, please refer to the project homepage. The Python+STAF sequential version of the program that has been used as example throughout this article is below: 1 #!/usr/bin/python 2 """ 3 Copy a given file to a list of destination machines sequentially 4 """ 5 6 import os, argparse 7 import subprocess 8 import logging 9 import PySTAF 10 11 def main(args): 12 logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(message)s") 13 handle = PySTAF.STAFHandle(__file__) 14 15 # Calculate md5 sum before copyin the file 16 orig_md5 = run_process_command(handle, "local", "md5sum %s" % args.file).split()[0] 17 18 # Copy the file to every requested machine and verify 19 # that md5 sum of the destination file is equal 20 # to the md5 sum of the original file 21 for machine in args.machines: 22 copy_file(handle, args.file, machine) 23 dest_md5 = run_process_command(handle, machine, "md5sum /tmp/%s" 24 % os.path.basename(args.file)).split()[0] 25 assert orig_md5 == dest_md5 26 27 handle.unregister() 28 29 def run_process_command(handle, location, command_str): 30 """ 31 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 32 """ 33 logging.info(command_str) 34 35 result = handle.submit(location, "PROCESS", "START SHELL COMMAND %s WAIT RETURNSTDOUT" 36 % PySTAF.STAFWrapData(command_str)) 37 assert result.rc == PySTAF.STAFResult.Ok 38 39 mc = PySTAF.unmarshall(result.result) 40 return mc.getRootObject()['fileList'][0]['data'] 41 42 def copy_file(handle, filename, destination): 43 """ 44 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 45 """ 46 logging.info("copying %s to %s" % (filename, destination)) 47 48 result = handle.submit("local", "FS", "COPY FILE %s TODIRECTORY /tmp TOMACHINE %s" 49 % (PySTAF.STAFWrapData(filename), 50 PySTAF.STAFWrapData(destination))) 51 assert result.rc == PySTAF.STAFResult.Ok 52 53 if __name__ == "__main__": 54 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__) 55 parser.add_argument("file", 56 help="File to copy") 57 parser.add_argument(metavar="machine", dest="machines", nargs="+", 58 help="List of machines to which file must be copied") 59 60 args = parser.parse_args() 61 args.file = os.path.realpath(args.file) 62 main(args) The code makes use of PySTAF, a python library, which is shipped with the STAF software that provides the ability to interact with the framework as a client. The typical usage of the library may summarized as follows: Register a handle in STAF (line 13): The communication with the server process is managed using handles. A client must have a handle to be able to send requests to local and/or remote machines. Submit requests (lines 35 and 48): Once the handle is available at the client, the client can use it to submit requests to any location and service. The two basic services that are used in this example are PROCESS, which is used to launch processes on a machine the same way ssh was used in the python-only version of the example; and FS, which is used to copy files between different machines as scp was used in the python-only solution. Check result code (lines 37 and 51): After a request has been submitted, result code should be checked to make sure that there wasn't any communication or syntax problem. Unmarshall results (lines 39-40): When the standard output is captured, it must be unmarshalled before using it in python since responses are encoded in a language independent format. Unregister handle (line 27): When STAF isn't needed anymore, it's advisable to unregister the handle to free resources allocated to the client in the server. Compared with the python-only solution, the advantages of STAF aren't appreciable at first sight. The handler syntax isn't easier than creating Popen objects and we have to deal with marshalling when we previously were just parsing text. However, as a framework, if has to be taken into account that it is has a learning curve and has much more functionality to offer than this one that makes it worthwhile. Please bear with me until section 5, in which the STAX solution we'll be shown, with an example with a completely different approach to the problem. Using the script in this section, the output would be pretty much the same as the previous sequential example: $ ./staf_copy.py STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.{1,2}md5sum STAF325-src.tar.gzcopying STAF325-src.tar.gz to 192.168.1.1md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gzcopying STAF325-src.tar.gz to 192.168.1.2md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gz As in the previous section, the sequential solution suffers the same problems when CPU intensive tasks are to be performed. Hence, the same comments apply. Parallel When using STAF, the parallel solution requires the same changes that were explained before. That is, create a new class that inherits from threading.Thread and implement the working threads. The code below shows how this might be implemented: 1 #!/usr/bin/python 2 """ 3 Copy a given file to a list of destination machines in parallel 4 """ 5 6 import os, argparse 7 import subprocess 8 import logging 9 import threading 10 import PySTAF 11 12 def main(args): 13 logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO, format="%(threadName)s %(message)s") 14 handle = PySTAF.STAFHandle(__file__) 15 orig_md5 = run_process_command(handle, "local", "md5sum %s" % args.file).split()[0] 16 17 # Create one thread for machine 18 threads = [ WorkingThread(machine, args.file, orig_md5) 19 for machine in args.machines] 20 21 # Run all threads 22 for thread in threads: 23 thread.start() 24 25 # Wait for all threads to finish 26 for thread in threads: 27 thread.join() 28 29 handle.unregister() 30 31 class WorkingThread(threading.Thread): 32 """ 33 Thread that performs the copy operation for one machine 34 """ 35 def __init__(self, machine, orig_file, orig_md5): 36 threading.Thread.__init__(self) 37 38 self.machine = machine 39 self.file = orig_file 40 self.orig_md5 = orig_md5 41 self.handle = PySTAF.STAFHandle("%s:%s" % (__file__, self.getName())) 42 43 def run(self): 44 # Copy file to remote machine 45 copy_file(self.handle, self.file, self.machine) 46 47 # Calculate md5 sum of the file copied at the remote machine 48 dest_md5 = run_process_command(self.handle, self.machine, "md5sum /tmp/%s" 49 % os.path.basename(self.file)).split()[0] 50 assert self.orig_md5 == dest_md5 51 self.handle.unregister() 52 53 def run_process_command(handle, location, command_str): 54 """ 55 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 56 """ 57 logging.info(command_str) 58 59 result = handle.submit(location, "PROCESS", "START SHELL COMMAND %s WAIT RETURNSTDOUT" 60 % PySTAF.STAFWrapData(command_str)) 61 assert result.rc == PySTAF.STAFResult.Ok 62 63 mc = PySTAF.unmarshall(result.result) 64 return mc.getRootObject()['fileList'][0]['data'] 65 66 def copy_file(handle, filename, destination): 67 """ 68 Run a given command and another process and return stdout 69 """ 70 logging.info("copying %s to %s" % (filename, destination)) 71 72 result = handle.submit("local", "FS", "COPY FILE %s TODIRECTORY /tmp TOMACHINE %s" 73 % (PySTAF.STAFWrapData(filename), 74 PySTAF.STAFWrapData(destination))) 75 assert result.rc == PySTAF.STAFResult.Ok 76 77 if __name__ == "__main__": 78 parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__) 79 parser.add_argument("file", 80 help="File to copy") 81 parser.add_argument(metavar="machine", dest="machines", nargs="+", 82 help="List of machines to which file must be copied") 83 84 args = parser.parse_args() 85 args.file = os.path.realpath(args.file) 86 main(args) As it happened before, this solution is faster since it takes advantage of having multiple CPUs working on md5sum calculation instead of just one at a time. The output we get invoking the script could be: $ ./staf_copy_parallel.py STAF325-src.tar.gz 192.168.1.{1,2}MainThread md5sum STAF325-src.tar.gzThread-1 copying STAF325-src.tar.gz to 192.168.1.1Thread-2 copying STAF325-src.tar.gz to 192.168.1.2Thread-2 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gzThread-1 md5sum /tmp/STAF325-src.tar.gz This time it can be seen that md5sum calculation mustn't necessarily start in the same order as file copy operation. Once again, this solution is slightly more complex, but the gain in performance makes it convenient when dealing with tasks with high computational cost.