How-To Tutorials

In addition to infrastructure-related updates such as the aforementioned platform modernization, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualization support, and additional options for fail over clustering, BizTalk Server also includes new core functionality. You will find better EDI and AS2 capabilities for B2B situations and a new platform for mobile development of RFID solutions. One of the benefits of the new WCF SQL Server Adapter that I mentioned earlier was the capability to use this adapter outside of a BizTalk Server solution. Let's take a brief look at three options for using this adapter by itself and without BizTalk as a client or service. Called directly via WCF service reference If your service resides on a machine where the WCF SQL Server Adapter (and thus, the sqlBinding) is installed, then you may actually add a reference directly to the adapter endpoint. I have a command-line application, which serves as my service client. If we right-click this application, and have the WCF LOB Adapter SDK installed, then Add Adapter Service Reference appears as an option. Choosing this option opens our now-beloved wizard for browsing adapter metadata. As before, we add the necessary connection string details and browse the BatchMaster table and opt for the Select operation. Unlike the version of this wizard that opens for BizTalk Server projects, notice the Advanced options button at the bottom. This button opens a property window that lets us select a variety of options such as asynchronous messaging support and suppression of an accompanying configuration file. After the wizard is closed, we end up with a new endpoint and binding in our existing configuration file, and a .NET class containing the data and service contracts necessary to consume the service. We should now call this service as if we were calling any typical WCF service. Because the auto-generated namespace for the data type definition is a bit long, I first added an alias to that namespace. Next, I have a routine, which builds up the query message, executes the service, and prints a subset of the response. using DirectReference = schemas.microsoft.com.Sql._2008._05.Types.Tables.dbo; … private static void CallReferencedSqlAdapterService() { Console.WriteLine("Calling referenced adapter service");TableOp_dbo_BatchMasterClient client = new TableOp_dbo_BatchMasterClient("SqlAdapterBinding_TableOp_dbo_BatchMaster"); try{string columnString = "*";string queryString = "WHERE BatchID = 1";DirectReference.BatchMaster[] batchResult =client.Select(columnString, queryString);Console.WriteLine("Batch results ...");Console.WriteLine("Batch ID: " + batchResult[0].BatchID.ToString());Console.WriteLine("Product: " + batchResult[0].ProductName);Console.WriteLine("Manufacturing Stage: " + batchResult[0].ManufStage);client.Close(); Console.ReadLine(); } catch (System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException){client.Abort(); } catch (System.TimeoutException) { client.Abort(); } catch (System.Exception) { client.Abort(); throw; } } Once this quick block of code is executed, I can confirm that my database is accessed and my expected result set returned.

What Needs Backing Up in TYPO3? We need to back up: The TYPO3 files A copy of the database These two things make up our TYPO3 installation. We need the database as it contains the website's content and records of the website's users. We need the TYPO3 files as they contain the website's settings in the configuration files, copies of the website's design, and copies of data that has been cached by TYPO3. Backing Up the TYPO3 Files Depending on the operating system we are using, there are a number of different ways in which we can back up the files from TYPO3. In this article, we will look into backing up the files on Windows and on Linux. This is because Windows is the most used operating system, and Linux is the most popular hosting environment for websites. Backing Up Our Files on Windows In Windows, we can easily create a compressed file containing all the TYPO3 files (known as a ZIP file), using the Windows Compressed Folder tool, or a program such as WinZip. Provided we've used the default installation path, TYPO3 will be located in the folder C:Program FilesTypo3_4.0.2Apache and the folder that we want to compress is typo3_src. We could just back up the fileadmin, typo3conf, and uploads folders. This way, should we lose our entire website, we can simply restore the whole thing instead of having to restore TYPO3 and then our extra TYPO3 files. Now that we have a backup, we should copy it to a separate location (preferably on an external disk, or on another computer) for safe keeping. Backing Up Our Files on Linux or Linux Hosting We can create a complete backup of our home directory on a Linux hosting environment. This home directory contains all of our files on the hosting account. Alternatively, we can run a simple command to compress a particular folder. If we have a web hosting account that provides us with access to the cPanel hosting control panel, we can use that to generate a backup of our entire website (except for the database—which is done separately via cPanel). To access the backup utilities, we need to log in to cPanel, which is located at www.ourdomain.com/cpanel, and then enter our hosting account's username and password. In cPanel, we have the backup option on the main screen, as shown in the following screenshot: The Backups section has a number of options, but the one that we want is the Download a home directory Backup. This will generate a backup of all the files of our website and allow us to download it. In the previous screenshot, there is a warning message. This is because my web server does not have the option to back up the entire server, just an individualuser's webspace. The backup tool then takes a moment or two of processing, and then prompts us to download the backup file. Command-Line Backup To create a backup via the command line, we need to have SSH access to the server that is hosting our website. SSH is a protocol that allows us to remotely administer another machine using the command line. We can use a program such as Putty to connect to the server. We can download Putty from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/. Putty only needs to be downloaded, after which it can be run straight away, and does not require to be installed. When we open the program, we are presented with a screen similar to the one shown in the following screenshot. We enter the server's address (i.e. the web address) into the Host Name box and then click on Open. Putty will then try to connect to the server, and will prompt us to enter our username and password, as shown in the following screenshot: Once we are connected, we can type two commands to back up our site. The first is to navigate to the folder that contains our TYPO3 installation. This depends entirely on the server's setup and your username, but is generally /home/the first 8 characters of your web address/public_html (you should contact your web host for more information or if you need help). Once we are in the correct folder, we can use the tar command to compress our TYPO3 folder to a single file named TYPO3. cd /home/michaelp/public_html/tar cvzf file.tar.gz typo3 Now that we have our backup created, we can download it from www.ourwebaddress.com/file.tar.gz (where we will be prompted to save the file). We should then delete this from our server once we have downloaded it.

Without LINQ, we would have to go through the values one-by-one and then find the required details. However, using LINQ we can directly query collections and filter the required values without using any looping. LINQ provides powerful filtering, ordering, and grouping capabilities that requires minimum coding. For example, if we want to find out the types stored in an assembly and then filter the required details, we can use LINQ to query the assembly details using System.Reflection classes. The System.Reflection namespace contains types that retrieve information about assemblies, modules, members, parameters, and other entities as collections are managed code, by examining their metadata. Also, files under a directory are a collection of objects that can be queried using LINQ. We shall see some of the examples for querying some collections. Array of Integers The following example shows an integer array that contains a set of integers. We can apply the LINQ queries on the array to fetch the required values.     int[] integers = { 1, 6, 2, 27, 10, 33, 12, 8, 14, 5 };       IEnumerable<int> twoDigits =       from numbers in integers       where numbers >= 10       select numbers;       Console.WriteLine("Integers > 10:");       foreach (var number in twoDigits)       {          Console.WriteLine(number);       } The integers variable contains an array of integers with different values. The variable twoDigits, which is of type IEnumerable, holds the query. To get the actual result, the query has to be executed. The actual query execution happens when the query variable is iterated through the foreach loop by calling GetEnumerator() to enumerate the result. Any variable of type IEnumerable<T>, can be enumerated using the foreach construct. Types that support IEnumerable<T> or a derived interface such as the generic IQueryable<T>, are called queryable types. All collections such as list, dictionary and other classes are queryable. There are some non-generic IEnumerable collections like ArrayList that can also be queried using LINQ. For that, we have to explicitly declare the type of the range variable to the specific type of the objects in the collection, as it is explained in the examples later in this article. The twoDigits variable will hold the query to fetch the values that are greater than or equal to 10. This is used for fetching the numbers one-by-one from the array. The foreach loop will execute the query and then loop through the values retrieved from the integer array, and write it to the console. This is an easy way of getting the required values from the collection. If we want only the first four values from a collection, we can apply the Take() query operator on the collection object. Following is an example which takes the  first four integers from the collection. The four integers in the resultant collection are displayed using the foreach method.    IEnumerable<int> firstFourNumbers = integers.Take(4);   Console.WriteLine("First 4 numbers:");   foreach (var num in firstFourNumbers)   {      Console.WriteLine(num);   } The opposite of Take() operator is Skip() operator, which is used to skip the number of items in the collection and retrieve the rest. The following example skips the first four items in the list and retrieves the remaining.    IEnumerable<int> skipFirstFourNumbers = integers.Skip(4);   Console.WriteLine("Skip first 4 numbers:");   foreach (var num in skipFirstFourNumbers)   {      Console.WriteLine(num);   } This example shows the way to take or skip the specified number of items from the collection. So what if we want to skip or take the items until we find a match in the list? We have operators to get this. They are TakeWhile() and SkipWhile(). For example, the following code shows how to get the list of numbers from the integers collection until 50 is found. TakeWhile() uses an expression to include the elements in the collection as long as the condition is true and it ignores the other elements in the list. This expression represents the condition to test the elements in the collection for the match.    int[] integers = { 1, 9, 5, 3, 7, 2, 11, 23, 50, 41, 6, 8 };   IEnmerable<int> takeWhileNumber = integers.TakeWhile(num =>      num.CompareTo(50) != 0);   Console.WriteLine("Take while number equals 50");   foreach (int num in takeWhileNumber)      {         Console.WriteLine(num.ToString());      } Similarly, we can skip the items in the collection using SkipWhile(). It uses an expression to bypass the elements in the collection as long as the condition is true. This expression is used to evaluate the condition for each element in the list. The output of the expression is boolean. If the expression returns false, the remaining elements in the collections are returned and the expression will not be executed for the other elements. The first occurrence of the return value as false will stop the expression for the other elements and returns the remaining elements. These operators will provide better results if used against ordered lists as the expression is ignored for the other elements once the first match is found.    IEnumerable<int> skipWhileNumber = integers.SkipWhile(num =>      num.CompareTo(50) != 0);   Console.WriteLine("Skip while number equals 50");   foreach (int num in skipWhileNumber)   {      Console.WriteLine(num.ToString());   } Collection of Objects In this section we will see how we can query a custom built objects collection. Let us take the Icecream object, and build the collection, then we can query the collection. This Icecream class in the following code contains different properties such as Name, Ingredients, TotalFat, and Cholesterol.     public class Icecream    {        public string Name { get; set; }        public string Ingredients { get; set; }        public string TotalFat { get; set; }        public string Cholesterol { get; set; }        public string TotalCarbohydrates { get; set; }        public string Protein { get; set; }        public double Price { get; set; }     } Now build the Icecreams list collection using the class defined perviously.     List<Icecream> icecreamsList = new List<Icecream>        {            new Icecream {Name="Chocolate Fudge Icecream", Ingredients="cream,                milk, mono and diglycerides...", Cholesterol="50mg",                Protein="4g", TotalCarbohydrates="35g", TotalFat="20g",                Price=10.5        },        new Icecream {Name="Vanilla Icecream", Ingredients="vanilla extract,            guar gum, cream...", Cholesterol="65mg", Protein="4g",            TotalCarbohydrates="26g", TotalFat="16g", Price=9.80 },            new Icecream {Name="Banana Split Icecream", Ingredients="Banana, guar            gum, cream...", Cholesterol="58mg", Protein="6g",            TotalCarbohydrates="24g", TotalFat="13g", Price=7.5 }        }; We have icecreamsList collection which contains three objects with values of the Icecream type. Now let us say we have to retrieve all the ice-creams that cost less. We can use a looping method, where we have to look at the price value of each object in the list one-by-one and then retrieve the objects that have less value for the Price property. Using LINQ, we can avoid looping through all the objects and its properties to find the required ones. We can use LINQ queries to find this out easily. Following is a query that fetches the ice-creams with low prices from the collection. The query uses the where condition, to do this. This is similar to relational database queries. The query gets executed when the variable of type IEnumerable is enumerated when referred to in the foreach loop.     List<Icecream> Icecreams = CreateIcecreamsList();    IEnumerable<Icecream> IcecreamsWithLessPrice =    from ice in Icecreams    where ice.Price < 10    select ice;    Console.WriteLine("Ice Creams with price less than 10:");    foreach (Icecream ice in IcecreamsWithLessPrice)    {        Console.WriteLine("{0} is {1}", ice.Name, ice.Price);     } As we used List<Icecream> objects, we can also use ArrayList to hold the objects, and a LINQ query can be used to retrieve the specific objects from the collection according to our need. For example, following is the code to add the same Icecreams objects to the ArrayList, as we did in the previous example.     ArrayList arrListIcecreams = new ArrayList();    arrListIcecreams.Add( new Icecream {Name="Chocolate Fudge Icecream",        Ingredients="cream, milk, mono and diglycerides...",        Cholesterol="50mg", Protein="4g", TotalCarbohydrates="35g",        TotalFat="20g", Price=10.5 });    arrListIcecreams.Add( new Icecream {Name="Vanilla Icecream",        Ingredients="vanilla extract, guar gum, cream...",        Cholesterol="65mg", Protein="4g", TotalCarbohydrates="26g",        TotalFat="16g", Price=9.80 });    arrListIcecreams.Add( new Icecream {Name="Banana Split Icecream",        Ingredients="Banana, guar gum, cream...", Cholesterol="58mg",        Protein="6g", TotalCarbohydrates="24g", TotalFat="13g", Price=7.5    }); Following is the query to fetch low priced ice-creams from the list.     var queryIcecreanList = from Icecream icecream in arrListIcecreams    where icecream.Price < 10    select icecream; Use the foreach loop, shown as follows, to display the price of the objects retrieved using the above query.     foreach (Icecream ice in queryIcecreanList)    Console.WriteLine("Icecream Price : " + ice.Price);

In this article, authors Elliot Smith and Rob Nichols explain the setup of a new Rails application and how to integrate it with other data sources. Specifically, this article focuses on turning the abstract data structure for Intranet into a Rails application. This requires a variety of concepts and tools, namely: The structure of a Rails application. Initializing an application using the rails command. Associating Rails with a database. The built-in utility scripts included with each application. Using migrations to maintain a database. Building models and validating them. Using the Rails console to manually test models. Automated testing of models using Test::Unit. Hosting a project in a Subversion repository. Importing data into the application using scripts. In this article, we'll focus on the first 3 concepts. The World According to Rails To understand how Rails applications work, it helps to get under its skin: find out what motivated its development, and the philosophy behind it. The first thing to grasp is that Rails is often referred to as opinionated software (see http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/08/30/ruby-rails-davidheinemeier-hansson.html). It encapsulates an approach to web application development centered on good practice, emphasizing automation of common tasks and minimization of effort. Rails helps developers make good choices, and even removes the need to make choices where they are just distractions. How is this possible? It boils down to a couple of things: Use of a default design for applications-By making it easy to build applications using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, Rails encourages separation of an application's database layer, its control logic, and the user interface. Rails' implementation of the MVC pattern is the key to understanding the framework as a whole. Use of conventions instead of explicit configuration-By encouraging use of a standard directory layout and file naming conventions, Rails reduces the need to configure relationships between the elements of the MVC pattern. Code generators are used to great effect in Rails, making it easy to follow the conventions. We'll see each of these features in more detail in the next two sections. Model-View-Controller Architecture The original aim of the MVC pattern was to provide architecture to bridge the gap between human and computer models of data. Over time, MVC has evolved into an architecture which decouples components of an application, so that one component (e.g. the control logic) can be changed with minimal impact on the other components (e.g. the interface). Explaining MVC makes more sense in the context of "traditional" web applications. When using languages such as PHP or ASP, it is tempting to mix application logic with database-access code and HTML generation. (Ruby, itself, can also be used in this way to write CGI scripts.) To highlight how a traditional web application works, here's a pseudo-code example:     # define a file to save email addresses into    email_addresses_file = 'emails.txt'    # get the email_address variable from the querystring    email_address = querystring['email_address']    # CONTROLLER: switch action of the script based on whether    # email address has been supplied    if '' == email_address        # VIEW: generate HTML form to accept user input which        # posts back to this script        content = "<form method='post' action='" + self + "'>        <p>Email address: <input type='text' name='email_address'/></p>        <p><input type='submit' value='Save'/></p>        </form>"    else        # VIEW: generate HTML to confirm data submission        content = "<p>Your email address is " + email_address + "</p>"        # MODEL: persist data        if not file_exists(email_addresses_file)            create_file(email_addresses_file)        end if        write_to_file(email_addresses_file, email_address)    end if    print "<html><head><title>Email manager</title></head>    <body>" + content + "</body></html>" The highlighted comments indicate how the code can be mapped to elements of the MVC architecture: Model components handle an application's state. Typically, the model does this by putting data into some kind of a long-term storage (e.g. database, filesystem). Models also encapsulate business logic, such as data validation rules. Rails uses ActiveRecord as its model layer, enabling data handling in a variety of relational database back-ends.In the example script, the model role is performed by the section of code which saves the email address into a text file. View components generate the user interface (e.g. HTML, XML). Rails uses ActionView (part of the ActionPack library) to manage generation of views.The example script has sections of code to create an appropriate view, generating either an HTML form for the user to enter their email address, or a confirmation message acknowledging their input. The Controller orchestrates between the user and the model, retrieving data from the user's request and manipulating the model in response (e.g. creating objects, populating them with data, saving them to a database). In the case of Rails, ActionController (another part of the ActionPack library) is used to implement controllers. These controllers handle all requests from the user, talk to the model, and generate appropriate views.In the example script, the code which retrieves the submitted email address, is performing the controller role. A conditional statement is used to generate an appropriate response, dependent on whether an email address was supplied or not. In a traditional web application, the three broad classes of behavior described above are frequently mixed together. In a Rails application, these behaviors are separated out, so that a single layer of the application (the model, view, or controller) can be altered with minimal impact on the other layers. This gives a Rails application the right mix of modularity, fl exibility, and power. Next, we'll see another piece of what makes Rails so powerful: the idea of using conventions to create associations between models, views, and controllers. Once you can see how this works, the Rails implementation of MVC makes more sense: we'll return to that topic in the section Rails and MVC.

Generic Virtualization Framework The most straightforward mail handling in qmail is used for what are known as the local domains: those listed in the file. The users for these domains are all the same, and are typically the users defined in control/locals/etc/passwd, though they can be defined in users/assign as well (discussed in the Non-Virtual Non-System Users section). Qmail, however, has another sense in which an email can be local, which is to assign a domain to a user (or, more accurately, to a prefix). This feature is configured with the control/virtualdomains file. Power of the virtualdomains File The virtualdomains file is one of the most powerful, useful, and stunningly simple mechanisms for configuring qmail. Virtual domains and even virtual users can be created, independently of one another, and assigned to controlling users. Virtual domains are fully independent, and as they are assigned to users (or, more accurately, prefixes) they can be in different UNIX protection domains if desired. This file can also define virtual users and similarly assign them to controlling users. This file thus makes it both possible and easy to intercept specific addresses and do something special with them. Perhaps surprisingly for the power this file wields, the control/virtualdomains file is only slightly more complicated than similar control files, such as control/locals. Rather than a list of domains, the virtualdomains file is a list of patterns and their associated prefixes. The entries are of the form: matching-pattern: prefix Only one prefix is associated with each pattern. The matching pattern can be one of the following three things: a domain (that follows the same wildcarding semantics used in the control/rcpthosts file), an email address, or an empty string. The empty string is considered to match anything. An email address matches any message addressed to that email address, and a domain matches any message addressed to a user in that domain. If there are multiple possible matches, the longest match is used. Emails that match patterns listed in the control/virtualdomains file are considered to be local emails, similar to those addressed to domains in the control/locals file. Messages that match patterns in the virtualdomains file must first undergo a simple modification before delivery. While messages are prepared for delivery, if they have an envelope destination address that matches a pattern in the virtualdomains file, that destination address is prepended with the matching pattern's associated prefix. This turns the original local part of the address into an extension of the prepended user. In this way, a domain can be mapped to a user, giving that user full control over the mailboxes (or users) within that domain. The virtualdomains file can also be used to define exceptions to the matching rules, if the prefix is blank. It is important to note that the control/virtualdomains file is considered after the control/locals file, which means that if an email is addressed to a domain listed in locals, the virtualdomains file will not apply. Also, virtualdomains rewriting occurs before the mail is given to qmail-lspawn for delivery. This sounds complex, but is easy to understand with an example. Basic Virtual Domains An example virtualdomains file that demonstrates most of the file's features is as follows: example.com:foo.example.com:foo-bartwo.example.com:bazwaldo@domain.com:quxdomain.com::garply Presuming that the users mentioned i.e. foo, baz, qux, and garply are the only local users on this system; these lines cause the following results:      The first line matches any address ending in @example.com, such as user@example.com. Such a destination address will be rewritten as foo-user@example.com, ensuring that the email's delivery will be controlled by the local user named foo.      Messages addressed to user@something.example.com do not match the first line but do match the second line, and so will be delivered as if they had been addressed to foo-bar-user@something.example.com.      Because the virtualdomains file is used in a longest match wins manner, the third line (not the second) will match messages addressed to user@two.example.com. This destination will be rewritten asbaz-user@two.example.com and baz will control the delivery of such messages.      The fourth line specifies that email addressed to waldo@domain.com will be instead delivered as if it had been addressed to qux-waldo@domain.com. The qux user will control that delivery.      The fifth line specifies that any domain.com email—other than waldo@domain.com—should be treated as if had been listed in the domain.comcontrol/locals file.      Finally, the sixth line specifies that all other email will be rewritten and delivered to the local garply user. For example, email addressed to someone@somewhere.org will be rewritten as garply-someone@somewhere.org and delivery will be attempted locally. In this example, the foo user is essentially in charge of the entirety of the example.com domains. Users that are specific to example.com are defined by creating appropriately named .qmail files in foo's home directory. For example, to establish the standard postmaster@example.com address, foo would create a file named .qmail-postmaster in its home directory, containing the instructions for delivering postmaster's email. The foo user could also establish a address by creating a file named foo@example.com.qmail-foo in his or her home directory. In this way, once the example.com mapping has been established, the foo user can set up and maintain the users in the example.com domain without ever requiring further permission from or contact with the system administrator. It is worth pointing out that precisely who controls what can get more complex if real usernames have extension separator characters (a hyphen, by default) in them. For example, if the address postmaster@example.com is rewritten to be foo-postmaster@example.com, it is typically delivered according to the instructions in ~foo/.qmail-postmaster or, if that file does not exist, ~foo/.qmail-default. However, if there is a user named foo-postmaster, that user will receive email addressed to postmaster@example.com. If a .qmail file (such as ~foo/.qmail-postmaster) cannot be located for a given extension address (such as foo-postmaster@example.com), the alias user's directory is checked for .qmail files. Specifically, .qmail-foo-postmaster, .qmail-foo-default, and .qmail-default. If none of these files exist, the message is considered undeliverable and is bounced. Note that during delivery of such an email, the standard environment variables are defined per the rewritten destination rather than per the original address. For example, if a message addressed to postmaster@example.com is delivered using the example configuration, the affected environment variables will be defined as follows (assuming foo's home directory is /home/foo):   Environment Variable Content for Virtual Domain Delivery Content for Normal Delivery RECIPIENT foo-postmaster@example.com postmaster@example.com USER foo-postmaster postmaster LOCAL foo postmaster HOME /home/foo /home/postmaster HOST example.com example.com HOST2 example example HOST3 example example HOST4 example example EXT postmaster      

Introduction PAM is a very powerful and flexible framework. Applications that require authentication must be aware of PAM. But most basic applications and utilities in the UNIX and Linux world have been migrated. If you are an application programmer and your application requires authentication, you might wish to dig into the possibilities of PAM. You can find modules for almost any situation, or maybe a combination of modules can solve your problem. But still you might end up in the situation where you cannot find a suitable module. In this article, you will learn how to develop your own modules. PAM-aware Applications The PAM runtime library has a well-defined API (Application Programming Interface). The PAM API is to a large extent the same on every UNIX and Linux operating system. Only a small number of differences exist, but any programmer can make a portable work-around. The differences are primarily related to the conversation function discussed later in this article. Linux-PAM provides one as a library function while other PAM implementations require the programmer to develop a conversation function. The pamtester utility provides a conversation function, which might be applicable to other applications. The example application presented here is very simple. It can store and retrieve data (strings) in a simple (GNU DBM) database. In order to gain access, authentication through the PAM system is required. The idea is that the system administrator can control the access as he or she wishes by configuring PAM in a suitable fashion. This application is called vault. The figure below outlines how a typical application uses PAM for authentication. Most of the usage is straightforward; the application calls a set of well-defined functions, which creates, operates on, and destroys data structures related to PAM. But PAM applies a little trick: the modules can call back to the application in order to retrieve user-related data. In order to call PAM functions in your applications you must include the pam_appl.h header file. The sample application includes two: #include <security/pam_appl.h>#include <security/pam_misc.h> The second header file is special to Linux-PAM and it is related to a text-based conversation function and a few other utility functions. Opening and Closing a PAM Session Any PAM session begins with creating and initializing a data structure. The data structure (C-type) is called pam_handle_t. During the application run time, it is required to hold one variable of this data structure. It contains all relevant data about the PAM session. The creation of the data structure is equivalent to opening a PAM session. The data structure is initialized by the function pam_start. Four parameters must be supplied when calling the pam_start function. In the sample application the call to pam_start is: retval = pam_start(“vault”, user, &conv, &pamh); The first parameter is the service name. It is a simple text string, and if the application programmer permits it, the service name can be set by the user instead of hard-coding the service name in the application. In the sample application the service name is set to vault precisely at the call, and at this point the PAM runtime will try to find the configuration file associated with the service (/etc/pam.d/vault in this example) or the appropriate lines in the /etc/pam.conf file. The second parameter is the user name. The standard C runtime library provides the getlogin function, which returns the user’s login name as a text string. The third parameter is a pointer to the conversation function, which is, the function that takes care of the callbacks from the modules. We will return to the conversation function shortly. The fourth and last parameter is a pointer to the PAM handling data structure (actually, a pointer to a pointer). The call to pam_start returns an integer. If the return value is PAM_SUCCESS, the initializing of the PAM handler was as it should have been. Linux-PAM provides—as defined in the pam_appl.h header file—a conversation function, while other PAM implementations require the application programmer to develop conversation functions. When the application does not need the PAM handling data structure, it can destroy it by calling the pam_end function. This is typically just before the application is to stop executing. In the sample application, the call to pam_end at the end of the main program is as follows: pam_end(pamh, retval); The argument retval is carried along from the last call to the PAM runtime, and depending on the return value of the previous call, PAM might have to shut down a PAM session differently. Authenticating the User When an application has initialized the PAM handling data structure, the next step is to authenticate the user. Since the service name and the user name are set by the call to pam_start, the authentication can be done by a simple call to the function pam_authenticate. The call is typically as simple as: retval = pam_authenticate(pamh, 0); The first parameter is the PAM handling data structure while the second parameter is optional flags. 0 (Zero) means silence authentication but others flags might be valid depending on the PAM implementation. The return value (stored in the variable retval above), is set to PAM_SUCCESS if the user is authenticated. If the user is it not known to PAM, the return value is PAM_UNKNOWN_USER, while a general authentication failure will lead to PAM_AUTH_ERR. In the case of Linux-PAM, the only flag is PAM_DISALLOW_NULL_AUTHTOK which will lead the return value PAM_AUTH_ERR if the user is not known to PAM. In order to authenticate a user for a particular service, the auth management group cannot be empty, that is the auth stack must have at least one module. If there are no modules the return value will be PAM_AUTHINFO_UNAVAIL.   Account Health Check It is one thing to authenticate the user, but it is another thing to say whether the user is allowed to use the account. A number of issues influence the health of an account. For example, an account can be expired or the user may not currently be allowed to log in. The PAM function pam_acct_mgmt is used to check the health of the requested account. The simple call to the function is as follows: retval = pam_acct_mgmt(pamh, 0); The second parameter can be set to PAM_SILENT, which suppresses any messages from the PAM runtime, or to PAM_DISALLOW_NULL_AUTHTOK in order to require an authentication token. The flag has the same effect as for the pam_authenticate function. Manipulating the PAM Handling Data Structure In the sample application, the user name is set at the time of the call to the pam_start function, but this might not be always possible, so you need a function to set any piece of data. PAM data should not be accessed directly, so PAM provides methods for storing and retrieving the data items. The function's name is pam_set_item. Many types of items are used by PAM; the table overleaf summarizes the most important types. A complete list can be found in the Linux-PAM documentation and the Open Group's single-sign on service (see http://www.opengroup.org/pubs/catalog/p702.htm for details).

Categories, Products, and Attributes Products are the items that are sold. In Magento, Categories organize your Products, and Attributes describe them. Think of a Category as the place where a Product lives, and an Attribute is anything that describes a Product. Each one of your Products can belong to one or more Categories. Also, each Product can be described by any number of Attributes. Is it a Category or an Attribute? Some things are clearly Categories. For example, if you have an electronics store, MP3 players would make a good Category. If you're selling jewellery, earrings would make a good Category. Other things are clearly Attributes. Color, description, picture, and SKU number are almost always Attributes. Sometimes, the same thing can be used for a Category or an Attribute. For example, suppose your site sells shoes. If you made size an Attribute, then after your shoppers have located a specific shoe, they can select the size they want. However, if you also made size a Category, the shoppers could begin their shopping by selecting their size. Then they could browse through the styles available in their size. So should size be an Attribute, a Category, or both? The answer depends upon what kind of shopping experience you want to create for your customers. Examples The hierarchy of Categories, Products, and Attributes looks like this: Category 1 Product 1 Attribute 1 Attribute 2 Product 2 Attribute 1 Attribute 2 Category 2 Product 3 Attribute 1 Attribute 3 Product 4 Attribute 1 Attribute 3 We are building a site that sells gourmet coffee, so we might organize our store like this: Single Origin Hawaiian Kona Grind (whole bean, drip, French press) Roast (light, medium, dark) Blue Mountain Grind Roast Blends Breakfast Blend Grind Caffeine (regular, decaffeinated) Afternoon Cruise Grind Caffeine In Magento, you can give your shoppers the ability to search your store. So if the shoppers know that they want Blue Mountain coffee, they can use the Search function to find it in our store. However, customers who don't know exactly what they want will browse the store. They will often begin browsing by selecting a category. With the organization that we just saw, when customers browse our store, they will start by selecting Single Origin or Blends. Then the shoppers will select the product they want: Hawaiian Kona, Blue Mountain, Breakfast Blend, or Afternoon Cruise. After our shoppers decide upon a Product, they select Attributes for that product. In our store, shoppers can select Grind for any of the products. For Single Origin, they can also select Roast. For blends, they can select Caffeine. This gives you a clue about how Magento handles attributes. To each Product, you can apply as many, or as few, attributes as you want. Now that we have definitions for Category, Product, and Attribute, let's look at each of them in detail. Then, we can start adding products. Categories Product Categories are important because they are the primary tool that your shoppers use to navigate your store. Product Categories organize your store for your shoppers. Categories can be organized into Parent Categories and Subcategories. To get to a Subcategory, you drill down through its Parent Category. Categories and the Navigation Menu If a Category is an Anchor Category, then it appears on the Navigation Menu. The term "Anchor" makes the category sound as if it must be a top-level category. This is not true. You can designate any category as an Anchor Category. Doing so puts that category into the Navigation Menu. When a shopper selects a normal Category from the Navigation Menu, its landing page and any subcategories are displayed. When a shopper selects an Anchor Category from the menu, Magento does not display the normal list of subcategories. Instead, it displays the Attributes of all the Products in that category and its subcategories. Instead of moving down into subcategories, the shopper uses the Attributes to filter all the Products in that Anchor Category and the Categories below it. The Navigation Menu will not display if: You don't create any Categories, or You create Categories, but you don't make any of them Anchors, or Your Anchor Categories are not subcategories under the Default Category. The Navigation Menu will display only if: You have created at least one Category You have made at least one Category an Anchor You have made the Anchor Category a Subcategory under Default. When you first create your Magento site and add Products, you won't see those Products on your site until you've met all of the previous conditions. For this reason I recommend that you create at least one Anchor Category before you start adding Products to your store. As you add each Product, add it to an Anchor Category. Then, the Product will display in your store, and you can preview it. If the Anchor Category is not the one that you want for that Product, you can change the Product's Category later Before we add Products to our coffee store, we will create two Anchor Categories: Single Origin and Blends. As we add Products, we will assign them to a Category so that we can preview them in our storefront. Making best use of Categories There are three things that Categories can accomplish. They can: Help the shoppers, who know exactly what they want, to find the product that they are looking for. Help the shoppers, who almost know what they want, to find a product that matches their desires. Entice the shoppers, who have almost no idea of what they want, to explore your store. We would like to organize our store so that our Categories accomplish all these goals. However, these goals are often mutually exclusive. For example, suppose you create an electronics store. In addition to many other products, your store sells MP3 players, including Apple iPods. A Category called iPods would help the shoppers who know that they want an iPod, as they can quickly find one. However, the iPods Category doesn't do much to help shoppers who know that they want an MP3 player, but don't know what kind. On the Web, you usually search something when you know what you want. But when you're not sure about what you want, you usually browse. In an online store, you usually begin browsing by selecting a Category. When you are creating Categories for your online store, try to make them helpful for shoppers who almost know what they want. However, what if a high percentage of your shoppers are looking for a narrow category of products? Consider creating a top-level Category to make those products easily accessible. Again, suppose you have an electronics store that sells a wide variety of items. If a high percentage of your customers want iPods, it might be worthwhile to create a Category just for those few products. The logs from the Search function on your site are one way you can determine whether your shoppers are interested in a narrow Category of a Product. Are 30 percent of the searches on your site for left-handed fishing reels? If so, you might want to create a top-level Category just for those Products. Attributes An Attribute is a characteristic of a Product. Name, price, SKU, size, color, and manufacturer are all examples of Attributes. System versus Simple Attributes Notice that the first few examples (name, price, and SKU) are all required for a Product to function in Magento. Magento adds these Attributes to every product, and requires you to assign a value for each of them. These are called System Attributes. The other three examples (size, color, and manufacturer) are optional Attributes. They are created by the store owner. They are called Simple Attributes. When we discuss creating and assigning Attributes, we are almost always discussing Simple Attributes. Attribute Sets Notice that the Single Origin coffees have two Attributes: Grind and Roast. Also notice that the blends have the Attributes of Grind and Caffeine. Single Origin Hawaiian Kona Grind (whole bean, drip, French press) Roast (light, medium, dark) Blue Mountain Grind Roast Blends Breakfast Blend Grind Caffeine (regular, decaffeinated) Afternoon Cruise Grind Caffeine In this example, the store owner created three Attributes: Grind, Roast, and Caffeine. Next, the store owner grouped the Attributes into two Attribute Sets: one set contains Grind and Roast, and the other set contains Grind and Caffeine. Then, an Attribute set was applied to each Product. Attributes are not applied directly to Products. They are first grouped into Attribute Sets, and then a set can be applied to a Product. This means that you will need to create a set for each different combination of Attributes in your store. You can name these Sets after the Attributes they contain, such as Grind-Roast. Or, you can name them after the type of Product which will use those Attributes, such as Single Origin Attributes. If each Product in a group will use the same Attribute as every other Product in that group, then you can name the set after that group. For example, at this time, all Single Origin coffees have the same Attributes: Grind and Roast. If they will all have these two Attributes and you will always add and remove Attributes to them as a group, then you could name the set Single Origin Attributes. If the Products in a group will likely use different Attributes, then name the set after the Attributes. For example, if you expect that some Single Origin coffees will use the Attributes Grind and Roast, while others will use just Roast, then it would not make sense to create a set called Single Origin Attributes. Instead, create a set called Grind-Roast, and another called Roast. Three types of Products In Magento, you can create three different types of Products: Simple, Configurable, and Grouped. The following is a very brief definition for each type of Product. Simple Product A Simple Product is a single Product, with Attributes that the store owner chooses. As the saying goes, "What you see is what you get." The customer does not get to choose anything about the Product. In our coffee store, a good example for a Simple Product might be a drip coffee maker. It comes in only one color. And while the customer can buy drip coffee makers of various sizes (4 cups, 8 cups, 12 cups, and so on), each of those is a separate Product. A bad example of a Simple Product would be a type of coffee. For example, we might want to allow the customer to choose the type of roast for our Hawaiian Kona coffee: light, medium, or dark. Because we want the customer to choose a value for an Attribute, that would not be a good Simple Product. Configurable Product A Configurable Product is a single Product, with at least one Attribute that the customer gets to choose. There is a saying that goes, "Have it your way." The customer gets to choose something about the Product. A good example of a Configurable Product would be a type of coffee that comes in several different roasts: light, medium, and dark. Because we want the customer to choose the roast(s) he wants, that would be a good Configurable Product. Grouped Product A Grouped Product is several Simple Products that are displayed on the same page. You can force the customer to buy the group, or allow the customer to buy each Product separately. The previous definitions are adequate for now. However, when you start creating Products, you will need to know more about each type of Product.

Confidentiality and integrity are two critical components of web services. While confidentiality can be ensured by means of encryption, the encrypted data can still be overwritten and the integrity of the message can be compromised. So it becomes is equally important to protect the integrity of the message; digital signatures helps us in doing just that. Overview of Digital Signatures In the web services scenario, XML messages are exchanged between the client application and the web services. Certain messages contain critical business information, and therefore the integrity of the message should be ensured. Ensuring the integrity of the message is not a new concept, it has been there for a long time. The concept is to make sure that the data was not tampered while in transit between the sender and the receiver. Consider, for example, that Alice and Bob are exchanging emails that are critical to business. Alice wants to make sure that Bob receives the correct email that she sent and no one else tampered with or modified the email in between. In order to ensure the integrity of the message, Alice digitally signs the message using her private key, and when Bob receives the message, he will check to make sure that the signature is still valid before he can trust or read the email. What is this digital signature? And how does it prove that no one else tampered with the data? When a message is digitally signed, it basically follows these steps: Create a digest value of the message(a unique string value for the message using a SHA1 or MD5 algorithm). Encrypt the digest value using the private key—known only to the sender. Exchange the message along with the encrypted digest value. MD5 and SHA1 are message digest algorithms to calculate the digest value. The digest or hash value is nothing but a non-reversible unique string for any given data, i.e. the digest value will change even if a space is added or removed. SHA1 produces a 160 bit digest value, while MD5 produces a 128 bit value. When Bob receives the message, his first task is to validate the signature. Validation of signature goes through a sequence of steps: Create a digest value of the message again using the same algorithm. Encrypt the digest value using the public key of Alice(obtained out of band or part of message, etc.) Validate to make sure that the digest value encrypted using the public key matches the one that was sent by Alice. Since the public key is known or exchanged along with the message, Bob can check the validity of the certificate itself. Digital certificates are issued by a trusted party such as Verisign. When a certificate is compromised, you can cancel the certificate, which will invalidate the public key. Once the signature is verified, Bob can trust that the message was not tampered with by anyone else. He can also validate the certificate to make sure that it is not expired or revoked, and also to ensure that no one actually tampered with the private key  of Alice. Digital Signatures in Web Services In the last section, we learnt about digital signatures. Since web services are all about interoperability, digital-signature-related information is represented in an industry standard format called XML Signature (standardized by W3C). The following are the key data elements that are represented in an interoperable manner by XML Signature: What data (what part of SOAP message) is digitally signed? What hash algorithm (MD5 or SHA1) is used to create the digest value? What signature algorithm is used? Information about the certificate or key. In the next section, we will describe how the Oracle Web Services Manager can help generate and verify signatures in web services. Signature Generation Using Oracle WSM Oracle Web Services Manager can centrally manage the security policy, including digital signature generation. One of the greatest advantages in using Oracle WSM to digitally sign messages is that the policy information and the digital certificate information are centrally stored and managed. An organization can have many web services, and some of them might exchange certain business critical information and require that the messages be digitally signed. Oracle WSM will play a key role when different web services have different requirements to sign the message, or when it is required to take certain actions before or after signing the message. Oracle WSM can be used to configure the signature at each web service level and that reduces the burden of deploying certificates across multiple systems. In this section, we will discuss more about how to digitally sign the response message of the web service using Oracle WSM. Sign Message Policy Step As a quick refresher, in Oracle WSM, each web service is registered within a gateway or an agent and a policy is attached to each web service. The policy steps are divided mainly into request pipeline template and response pipeline template, where different policies can be applied for request or response message processing. In this section, I will describe how to configure the policy for a response pipeline template to digitally sign the response message. It is assumed that the web service is registered within a gateway and a detailed example will be described later in this article . In the response pipeline, we can add a policy step called Sign Message to digitally sign the message. In order to digitally sign a message, the key components that are required are: Private key store Private key password The part of SOAP message that is being signed The signature algorithm being used The following screenshot describes the Sign Message policy step with certain values populated.   In the previous screenshot, the values that are populated are: Keystore location—The location where the private key file is located. Keystore type—Whether or not it is PKCS12 or JKS. Keystore password—The password to the keystore. Signer's private-key alias—The alias to gain access to the private key from the keystore. Signer's private-key password—The password to access the private key. Signed Content—Whether the BODY or envelope of the SOAP message should be signed. The above information is a part of a policy that is attached to the time service which will sign the response message. As per the information that is shown in the screenshot, the BODY of the SOAP message response will be digitally signed us in the SHA1 as the digest algorithm, and PKCS12 key store. Once the message is signed, the SOAP message will look like: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><soap:Envelope soap_encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" > <soap:Header> <wsse:Security soap_mustUnderstand="1"> <wsse:BinarySecurityToken ValueType="http://docs. oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss- x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open. org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message- security-1.0#Base64Binary" wsu_Id="_ VLL9yEsi09I9f5ihwae2lQ22" >SecurityTOkenoKE2ZA==< /wsse:BinarySecurityToken> <dsig:Signature > <dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:CanonicalizationMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/ xml-exc-c14n#"/> <dsig:SignatureMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/ xmldsig#rsa-sha1"/> <dsig:Reference URI="#ishUwYWW2AAthrx hlpv1CA22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue>ynuqANuYM3qzdTnGOLT7SMxWHY=</dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> <dsig:Reference URI="#UljvWiL8yjedImz 6zy0pHQ22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue>9ZebvrbVYLiPv1BaVLDaLJVhwo=</dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> </dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:SignatureValue>QqmUUZDLNeLpAEFXndiBLk</dsig:SignatureValue> <dsig:KeyInfo> <wsse:SecurityTokenReference wsu_Id="_7vjdWs1ABULkiLeE7Y4lAg22" > <wsse:Reference URI="#_VLL9yEsi09I9f5ihwae2lQ22"/> </wsse:SecurityTokenReference> </dsig:KeyInfo> </dsig:Signature> <wsu:Timestamp wsu_Id="UljvWiL8yjedImz6zy0pHQ22"> <wsu:Created>2007-11-16T15:13:48Z</wsu:Created> </wsu:Timestamp> </wsse:Security> </soap:Header> <soap:Body wsu_Id="ishUwYWW2AAthrxhlpv1CA22" > <n:getTimeResponse > <Result xsi_type="xsd:string">10:13 AM</Result> </n:getTimeResponse> </soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

This section uses the space you have already created as a part of your Intranet sample application. As a part of sample application, you will manage content in the Intranet | Marketing Communications space. As you have secured this space earlier, only the administrator (admin) and users belonging to the Marketing group (Peter Marketing and Harish Marketing) can add content in this space. You can log in as Peter Marketing to manage content in this space. Create Content The web client provides two different interfaces for adding content: one to create inline editable content such as HTML, Text, and XML and the other to add binary content such Microsoft office files and scanned images. You need to have the Administrator, Contributor, Collaborator, Coordinator role on a space to create content within that space. Creating Text Documents—HTML, Text, and XML To create an HTML file in a space, follow the steps given below: Ensure that you are in the Intranet | Marketing Communications | Switch to open source ECM | 02_Drafts space. On the header, click Create | Create Content. The first pane of the Create Content wizard appears as shown in the screenshot on the next page. In this wizard, and in any Alfresco wizard, you can track your progress through the wizard from the list of steps at the left of the pane. Provide the name of the HTML file, select HTML as Content Type, and click the Next button. The Enter Content pane of the wizard appears as shown in the next screenshot. Note that Enter Content is now highlighted in the list of steps at the left of the pane. You can see that there is a comprehensive set of tools to help you format your HTML document. Enter some text, using some of the formatting features. If you know HTML, you can also use an HTML editor by clicking on the HTML icon given. The HTML source editor is displayed. Once you have updated the HTML content, click on the update button to return to the Enter Content pane in the wizard, with the contents updated. After the content is entered and edited in the Enter Content pane, click Finish. You will see the Modify Content Properties screen to update metadata associated with the content as shown in the screenshot below: If you are satisfied with the properties, click the OK button to return to the 02_Drafts space, with your newly created file inserted. You can launch the newly created HTML file by clicking on it. Your browser launches most of the common files such as HTML, text, and PDF. If the browser could not recognize the file, you will be prompted with the Windows dialog box containing the list of applications, from which you must choose an application. This is the normal behavior if you try to launch a file on any Internet page. Uploading Binary Files—Word, PDF, Flash, Image, and Media Using the web client, you can upload content from your hard drive. Choose a file from your hard disk that is not an HTML or text file. I chose Alfresco_CIGNEX.doc from my hard disk for the sample application. Ensure that you are in the Intranet | Marketing Communications | Switch to open source ECM | 02_Drafts space. To upload a binary file in a space, follow the steps given below: In the space header, click the Add Content link. The Add Content dialog appears. To specify the file that you want to upload, click Browse. In the File Upload dialog box, browse to the file that you want to upload. Click Open. Alfresco inserts the full path name of the selected file in the Location text box. Click the Upload button to upload the file from your hard disk to the Alfresco repository. A message informs you that your upload was successful as shown in the following screenshot. Click OK to confirm. The Modify Content Properties dialog appears. Verify the pre-populated properties and add information in the text boxes. Click OK to save and return to the 02_Drafts space. The file that you uploaded appears in the Content Items pane. Alfresco extracts the file size from the properties of the disk file, and includes the value in the size row. Now that you have two files, you can edit them as you like. Edit Content Using the web client you can edit the files that you have added previously. Note that you need to have edit permissions on the content to edit them Inline Editing of HTML, Text, and XML HTML files and plain text files can be created and edited inline. Each file type is edited in its own WYSIWYG editor. If you have edit access to a file, you will notice a small pencil (edit) icon as shown in the screenshot below. Clicking on the pencil icon will open the file in its editor.

Reviewing Jayaram's other OLAP related articles may greatly help in understanding this article. Creating a New Cube The folder structure for the project developed in Part 1 is shown in the next figure. The Northwind.ds data source and the Northwind.dsv data source view were configured in Part 1. There are no pre-existing cubes in Nwind2008. Right click the Cubes folder and from the drop-down menu you can create a new Cube. Click on New Cube... menu item. This opens the Cube Wizard welcome window as shown. Click on the Next button. This opens the Select Creation Method page of the wizard as shown. There are three options and the default is used for this article. Click on the Next button. This opens the Select Measure Groups tables. At least one table must be chosen to continue. There is even the option of asking for a suggestion. Click on the Suggest button at the top. The program goes through the motions and comes up with two tables as candidates for Measures group, the Products table and the Order Details table. You will see check marks appearing for these two tables. Accept the suggested tables for measures and click on the Next button. This opens the Select Measures window where you can choose measures that you want to include in the Cube as shown. Uncheck the ID related items in the Products table and click on the Next button. This brings up the Select New Dimensions window as shown in the next figure. Here also one could choose the needed items. For this article the default is accepted. Click on the Next button. This takes you to the Completing the Wizard window which shows your Cube contents in a tree view as shown. Now click on the Finish button. This creates the Cube as shown in the Solution Explorer. Now you will see additional tabs open up for the Northwind.cube as shown. Using these tabs you can look at more details. These are outside the scope of this article. Also separate windows gets displayed for Cube's Measures and Dimensions as shown. Also, the Data Source View of the Cube with the relationships between the Dimensions and Measures gets displayed as shown.    

In principle the simplest approach that actually always works is the following: Load the Joomla! 1.5 beta.zip file onto your local PC and unpack it in a temporary directory. Load the just unpacked files by means of FTP onto your rented server. The files must be installed in the publicly accessible directory. These directories are usually named htdocs, public_html, or simply html. You can specify a subdirectory within the directory into which you install your Joomla!. Many web hosts allow you to link your rented domain name to a directory. This name is necessary to call your website from a browser. You have to find out what your database is called. Usually one or several databases are included in your web-hosting package. Sometimes the user name, database name, and password are fixed; sometimes you have to set them up. There is usually a browser-based configuration interface at your disposal. You can see an example of such an interface in the following figure. You will need these access data for Joomla!'s web installer. You can get going after you have loaded these data onto your server and are in possession of your access data. Joomla! Installation To install Joomla!, you need the source code. Download the Joomla_1.5.0-Beta-Full_Package.zip package and save it on your system. Selecting a Directory for Installation You have to decide whether Joomla! needs to be installed directly into a document directory or a subdirectory. This is important, since many users prefer a short URL to their homepage. An Example If Joomla! is unzipped directly in /htdocs, the web page starts when the domain name http://www.myhomepage.com is accessed from its local computer http://localhost/ and/or from the server on the Internet. If subdirectories are created under /htdocs/, for example, /htdocs/Joomla150/ and we unzip the package there, we have to enter http://localhost/Joomla150/ in the browser. This isn't a problem locally, but doesn't look good on a production Internet page. Some HTML files and subdirectories, however, are already in /htdocs in the local XAMPP Lite environment under Windows, which, for example, displays the start page of XAMPP Lite. In a local Linux environment, a starting page dependent on the distribution and the web server settings is also displayed. Directory I recommend that you create a subdirectory under the document directory named Joomla150 in Windows by using Windows Explorer. (With Linux, use the Shell, KDE Konqueror, or Midnight Commander.) [home]/htdocs/Joomla150/ The directory tree in Windows Explorer should look like this: An empty index appears in the XAMPP Lite version when the URL http://localhost/Joomla150 is entered in the browser: With Linux or with another configuration it can happen that you get a message saying that you don't have access to this directory. This depends on the configuration of the web server. For security reasons, the automatic directory display is often deactivated in Apache's configuration. A potential hacker could draw many interesting conclusions about the directory structure and the files on your homepage and target your computer for an attack. For security reasons, you are usually not allowed to access the appropriate configuration file of the Apache web server. Should you be able to, you should leave the content directories deactivated and/or only activated for those directories that contain files for downloading.        

Note that all VirtueMart customers must be registered with Joomla!. However, not all Joomla! users need to be the VirtueMart customers. Within the first few sections of this article, you will have a clear concept about user management in Joomla! and VirtueMart. Customer management Customer management in VirtueMart includes registering customers to the VirtueMart shop, assigning them to user groups for appropriate permission levels, managing fields in the registration form, viewing and editing customer information, and managing the user groups. Let's dive in to these activities in the following sections. Registration/Authentication of customers Joomla! has a very strong user registration and authentication system. One core component in Joomla! is com_users, which manages user registration and authentication in Joomla!. However, VirtueMart needs some extra information for customers. VirtueMart collects this information through its own customer registration process, and stores the information in separate tables in the database. The extra information required by VirtueMart is stored in a table named jos_vm_user_info, which is related to the jos_users table by the user id field. Usually, when a user registers to the Joomla! site, they also register with VirtueMart. This depends on some global settings. In the following sections, we are going to learn how to enable the user registration and authentication for VirtueMart. Revisiting registration settings We configure the registration settings from VirtueMart's administration panel Admin | Configuration | Global screen. There is a section titled User Registration Settings, which defines how the user registration will be handled: Ensure that your VirtueMart shop has been configured as shown in the screenshot above. The first field to configure is the User Registration Type. Selecting Normal Account Creation in this field creates both a Joomla! and VirtueMart account during user registration. For our example shop, we will be using this setting. Joomla!'s new user activation should be disabled when we are using VirtueMart. That means the Joomla! New account activation necessary? field should read No. Enabling VirtueMart login module There is a default module in Joomla! which is used for user registrations and login. When we are using this default Login Form (mod_login module), it does not collect information required by VirtueMart, and does not create customers in VirtueMart. By default, when published, the mod_login module looks like the following screenshot: As you see, registered users can log in to Joomla! through this form, recover their forgotten password by clicking on the Forgot your password? link, and create a new user account by clicking on the Create an account link. When a user clicks on the Create an account link, they get the form as shown in the following screenshot: We see that normal registration in Joomla! only requires four pieces of information: Name, Username, Email, and Password. It does not collect information needed in VirtueMart, such as billing and shipping address, to be a customer. Therefore, we need to disable the mod_login module and enable the mod_virtuemart_login module. We have already learned how to enable and disable a module in Joomla!. We have also learned how to install modules. By default, the mod_virtuemart_login module's title is VirtueMart Login. You may prefer to show this title as Login only. In that case, click on the VirtueMart Login link in the Module Name column. This brings the Module:[Edit] screen: In the Title field, type Login (or any other text you want to show as the title of this module). Make sure the module is enabled and position is set to left or right. Click  on the Save icon to save your settings. Now, browse to your site's front-page  (for example, http://localhost/bdosn/), and you will see the login form as shown in the following screenshot: As you can see, this module has the same functionalities as we saw in the mod_login module of Joomla!. Let us test the account creation in this module. Click on the Register link. It brings the following screen: The registration form has three main sections: Customer Information, Bill To Information, and Send Registration. At the end, there is the Send Registration button for submitting the form data. In the Customer Information section, type your email address, the desired username, and password. Confirm the password by typing it again in the Confirm password field. In the Bill To Information section, type the address details where bills are to be sent. In the entire form, required fields are marked with an asterisk (*). You must provide information for these required fields. In the Send Registration section, you need to agree to the Terms of Service. Click on the Terms of Service link to read it. Then, check the I agree to the Terms of Service checkbox and click on the Send Registration button to submit the form data: If you have provided all of the required information and submitted a unique  email address, the registration will be successful. On successful completion of registration, you get the following screen notification, and will be logged in to  the shop automatically: If you scroll down to the Login module, you will see that you are logged in and greeted by the store. You also see the User Menu in this screen: Both the User Menu and the Login modules contain a Logout button. Click on either of these buttons to log out from the Joomla! site. In fact, links in the User Menu module are for Joomla! only. Let us try the link Your Details. Click on the Your Details link, and you will see the information shown in the following screenshot: As you see in the screenshot above, you can change your full name, email, password, frontend language, and time zone. You cannot view any information regarding billing address, or other information of the customer. In fact, this information is for regular Joomla! users. We can only get full customer information by clicking on the Account Maintenance link in the Login module. Let us try it. Click on the Account Maintenance link, and it shows the following screenshot: The Account Maintenance screen has three sections: Account Information, Shipping Information, and Order Information. Click on the Account Information link to see what happens. It shows the following screen: This shows Customer Information and Bill To Information, which have been entered during user registration. The last section on this screen is the Bank Information, from where the customer can add bank account information. This section looks like the following screenshot: As you can see, from the Bank Account Info section, the customers can enter their bank account information including the account holder's name, account number, bank's sorting code number, bank's name, account type, and IBAN (International Bank Account Number). Entering this information is important when you are using  a Bank Account Debit payment method. Now, let us go back to the Account Maintenance screen and see the other sections. Click on the Shipping Information link, and you get the following screen: There is one default shipping address, which is the same as the billing address. The customers can create additional shipping addresses. For creating a new shipping address, click on the Add Address link. It shows the following screen:

Signature Verification by Oracle WSM Oracle Web Services Manager can actually validate the signature in the incoming i.e. request SOAP message. By using Oracle WSM to validate the signature, organizations can actually centralize the policy enforcement and also the public key management. As organizations deploy more web services that are accessed by other divisions and business partners, managing the signature verification process might become tedious, as with each new consumer, the certificate information should be maintained. Oracle WSM can address such issues by centralizing those operations. This section  will describe how to configure Oracle WSM policy to validate the signature of the SOAP request message. In order to view the policy, you can click on Policy Management and then Manage Policies. This will bring you to the screen with the gateway information and a hyperlink for policies (see the following screen capture).   You can then click on Policies to see all the policies and you will see theVerifyAndSign policy too that is created by default. A default policy is attached to the service. We can now click Edit to edit the  policy. When you click Edit, you will see the policy steps as shown in the  following screenshot. In this section, we want to configure the Request pipeline to validate the signature of the incoming SOAP message. In order to validate the signature, click Add Step Below to add the Verify Signature policy step as shown in the following screenshot. Once you click OK, the verify signature policy step is added, but that policy step should be configured. If you click on the Configure button on the verify signature policy step, it will take you to the screen where you can configure the verify signature policy information as shown in the following screen capture. In the previous screenshot, I configured Verify Signature policy steps with: Location of the key store Key store type as PKCS12 Password of the key store Public key alias in the key store Set Remove Signatures to true to remove the digital signature after the signature validation Enforce Signing is set to true to make sure that the incoming requests are signed In order to generate a PKCS12 key store from certifcate that is installed already in Microsoft certifcate services, you should frst export the certifcate (with or without private key) and then import that certifcate in FireFox (Advanced option) and then export back to PKCS12. Once the verify signature policy has been configured and saved (Commit Policy), the policy would enforce that any request for the time service with the particular service ID be digitally signed. Signature Generation by Oracle WSM In the last section, we discussed how to digitally sign a web service request by Microsoft .NET application and how to validate the signature by Oracle WSM. In this section, we will discuss how to digitally sign the web service response message. In the earlier section, we discussed how to register the service and how to attach the verify signature policy step to the request pipeline. In order to digitally sign the response message, the response pipeline of the policy should be modified to include the sign message policy step. The policy with the request pipeline that is already configured to verify signature would look like: Now we have to add the step in the Response pipeline to actually sign the response message. In order to add the policy step, click on Add Step Below and then select the Sign Message policy step. Once the Sign Message policy step is added, it can then be configured, as shown in the following screenshot, to include the appropriate key store location for the public key to digitally sign the message. In the previous figure, the location of the key store that has the private key, along with the Keystore password, alias and part of message to be signed are specified. Once the policy is created, it would look like: In the previous screenshot, the Response pipeline has two log steps—one to log the message before digitally signing and one to log the message after digitally signing the message. In this sample, we are using the same WSEQuickStartServer certificate to sign the message. Once the policy is saved, the response message will be digitally signed. The client application (Microsoft .NET) can be configured to validate the signature.

The Joomla! Template When you install Joomla!, it comes with one or two built-in templates. In my version 1.0.8 installation, MadeYourWeb by Mark Hinse and rhuk_solarflare_ii by rhuk, are the two available. If you have a different version, you may have different templates available to you. We'll use the rhuk_solarflare_ii template to review the basic parts of a Joomla! template that you'll need to think about as you create your visual design. First, let's look at the following figure to see how our basic template affects the Joomla! PHP output: What Your XHTML does to the template layout. You'll recall that the PHP code for the footer, sitename, pathway, and MainBody are not module position slots. These functions load in the required information that helps Joomla! to run, display standard footer information, and load the actual site content from the Joomla! MySQL databases. Top, left, and right are module position slots, which can be assigned site modules. Site modules are what contain navigation links, form elements, and Joomla! status information that will be displayed to your visitors such as: Who's Online or Who's Logged In. You can assign site modules to any of the module position slots and even load multiple site modules into these position slots by assigning an ascending numerical order to them. You do this in the Module Manager [Site] by going to Modules | Site Modules in the administration panel. Site Modules panel in Joomla!'s admin panel. As shown in the following figure, you can assign up to 50 module position slots to place in your template layout. Go to Site | Template Manager | Module Positions to view the standard module positions Joomla! provides. Module Positions panel in Joomla's admin panel. Now that we have a deeper understanding of how the template, module position slots, and site modules work, let's take a look at how these three elements come together through the rhuk_solar_flare_ii template. The module position slot name is on the left, the content module name is on the right, and the assigned order, if any, is underneath. Example of modules assigned to Module Positions Using this example, you can now start thinking of how you're going to construct your template design. Let's move on to creating your design. Considerations to be Made First off, let's get to the most important consideration What modules will be used in your site? Thus, what modules do you need to design for? Go through your Joomla! installation and review all the modules your site will be using. There's the obvious top menu, main menu, and user menus, but will you be displaying the login form or a poll? If so, do you want to change their display? Will your site be displaying banners? Will your site require any special or add-on modules or components such as an image gallery or shopping cart? Make a list of each module or special component that your site will be displaying and take special note of their elements: Do they have headers or special text areas? Would you like anything to be highlighted with a background image? Do the modules have items that should be standard buttons or icons? All these things should be included in your list. When you begin work on your design in Photoshop, you'll want to compare your mock-up against your module checklist and make sure you've designed for all your modules. Refining the Wheel The next consideration is whether you are going to work from an existing template or from scratch? The more you work with Joomla! and learn all its quirks, the more you'll see that sometimes starting from scratch is best. However, while being a CSS and XHTML “wiz” is awesome, you don't always need to reinvent the wheel! Take a look at what happens to the standard rhuk template when all we do is change the color scheme and fonts. rhuk_solarflare_ii template with CSS changes to color and fonts Now, check out what happens in the following figure when we change the graphics. rhuk_solarflare_ii template with image changes And last, see what happens in the following figure when we use the Module Manager to swap module placements around. rhuk_solarflare_ii template with module swaps By thinking of this design in terms of leveraging the existing rhuk_solarflar_ii template, we effectively created a whole new template and module layout which is completely unique. And we only had to minimally edit the CSS to get it to work. Everything else was done in the Joomla! admin panel without touching any code. If you're going to work from an existing template, it's best to review that template's HTML output (right-click or Alt-click and chose View Source) and pull the image names from each page that you'll be replacing with your own images. It's also helpful to go through that template's image directory and just note each image: which ones you're going to change, leave alone, re-size, and so on as you work with your design mock-up. Make sure to note the specific file names that are going to be overwritten in your module check list so that you have them handy when it is time to export your image slices. So, when is it best to start from scratch? It's up to your site's specific needs. For instance, the Joomla! in-built templates comes with use tables to hold their layout structure together. If you want an all semantic, valid XHTML markup with CSS layout, you'll need to create it yourself from scratch. Whichever road you take, as you continue to design and build Joomla! templates, you'll find over time that you have your own “master” template—files you've generated or got to know so well—you understand how all their parts work together. You'll see how applying any new modules or components will affect the files and how they should be incorporated. It will become easy for you to work with this favorite or “master” template and easily massage it into any new creation you can imagine.  

Using Asterisk as a PSTN Gateway Step 1: Add the gateway address in the trusted table using SerMyAdmin: If desired or convenient, you can instead use the MySQL command line interface to achieve the same result. #mysql –u openser –p-- enter your mysql password --mysql> use openser;mysql> INSERT INTO trusted ( src_ip, proto, from_pattern )VALUES ( '10.1.30.22', 'any', '^sip:.*$'); The records above tell the OpenSER script to allow requests coming from the IP address 10.1.30.22 with any transport protocol, matching the regular expression ^sip:.*$. You can use the following command if you don't want to reload OpenSER. #openserctl fifo trusted_reload Step 2: Include your served domains in the domain table (if you have not done before). openserctl domain add sermyadmin.org You can also use SerMyAdmin to do this. Step 3: Include the user into the groups (local, ld, and int): #openserctl acl grant 1000@sermyadmin.org local#openserctl acl grant 1000@sermyadmin.org ld#openserctl acl grant 1000@sermyadmin.org int#openserctl acl grant 1001@sermyadmin.org local To use SerMyAdmin, just go to the screen below: Step 4: Configuring Asterisk as a gateway. Two very popular gateways for OpenSER are Asterisk and Cisco AS5300. Gateways from other manufacturers can be used too; check their documentation for instructions. Let's see how to configure a Cisco 2601 with two FXO interfaces and an Asterisk with an E1 PSTN card. WarningIt is important to prevent the direct sending of SIP packets to gateways. The SIP proxy should be in front of the gateway and a firewall should prevent users from sending SIP requests directly to the gateway. Step 5: Setting up the Asterisk Server or the Cisco Gateway. We will assume that the PSTN side of the Asterisk gateway is already configured. Now let's change the SIP configuration (sip.conf) of our gateway and its dial plan (extensions.conf). We will configure Asterisk to send to the proxy each call coming from the PSTN and vice versa. We are using the guest feature of the SIP channel on the Asterisk Server. Prior knowledge of Asterisk is required here. Below is the simplest configuration allowing Asterisk to communicate with OpenSER. Please, adapt this script to your topology. WarningAllow SIP packets to your asterisk server, coming only from your SIP server. Do not allow SIP packets coming from other destinations. You can use IP Tables to do this, consult a Linux security specialist, if you arein doubt. Asterisk Gateway (sip.conf) [general]context=sipincoming#calls incoming from the SIP proxy to be terminated in the PSTN lines[sipproxy]#calls incoming from the PSTN to be forwarded to clients behind the SIP#proxytype=peerhost=10.1.30.22Asterisk (extensions.conf)[general][globals][sipincoming]exten=>_[0-9].,1,Dial(Zap/g1/${EXTEN:1})exten=>_[0-9].,2,hangup()[sipoutgoing]# If you have a digital interface use the lines belowexten=_[0-9].,1,Answer()exten=_[0-9].,2,dial(SIP/${EXTEN}@sipproxy)exten=_[0-9].,3,Hangup()#If you have analog FXO interfaces use the lines below.exten=s,1,Answer()exten=s,2,dial(SIP/${EXTEN}@sipproxy)exten=s,3,Hangup() Cisco 2601 Gateway The following explanation could help, but prior knowledge of Cisco gateways is required to complete this configuration. The call routing on Cisco gateways is done by the instruction dial peer. Any call with the number called starting with 9 followed by any number (9T) is forwarded to the PSTN on the ports 1/0 or 1/1 as instructed by the dial peer voice 1 and 2 POTS lines (plain old telephone system). Called numbers starting from 1 to 9 with any number of digits following will be directed to the SIP proxy in the IP address 10.1.3.22 as instructed in the 'dial-peer voice 123 voip' line. voice class codec 1codec preference 2 g711ulaw!interface Ethernet0/0ip address 10.1.30.38 255.255.0.0half-duplex!ip classlessip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.1.0.1no ip http serverip pim bidir-enable!voice-port 1/0!voice-port 1/1!mgcp profile default!! The dial-peer pots commands will handle the calls coming from SIP !dial-peers. Any call matching 9 followed by any number of digits will be !forwarded to the PSTN with the 9 striped.dial-peer voice 1 potsdestination-pattern 9Tport 1/0!dial-peer voice 2 potsdestination-pattern 9T port1/1!!The dial-peer voip commands will handle the calls coming from the pots !dial peers (PSTN). You can prefix a number (80 in this example) and send the DID number ahead.!dial-peer voice 123 voip destination-pattern ....T prefix80 forward all session protocol sipv2 session target ipv4:10.1.30.22 dtmf-relay sip-notify Step 6: Test the configuration making and receiving calls. Summary In this article, we have seen how to configure and use the Cisco 2601 gateway and the Asterisk gateway for OpenSER to send calls to the PSTN.