How-To Tutorials

User manager In Joomla!, there is one User Manager component from where you can manage the users of that site. However, for the VirtueMart component, there is another  user manager which should be used for the VirtueMart shop. To be clear about  the differences of these two user managers, let us look into both. Joomla! user manager Let us first try Joomla!'s user manager. Go to the Joomla! control panel and click on the User Manager icon or click on Site | User Manager. This brings the User Manager screen of Joomla!: We see that the users registered to the Joomla! site are listed in this screen. This screen shows the username, full name, enabled status, group that the user is assigned to, email of the user, date and time when they last visited, and user ID. From this screen, you may guess that any user can be enabled or disabled by clicking on the icon in the Enabled column. Enabled user accounts show a green tick mark in the Enabled column. For viewing the details of any user, click on that user's name in the Name column. That brings up the User:[Edit] screen: As you see, the User Details section shows some important information about the user including Name, Username, E-mail, Group, and so on. You can edit and change these settings including the password. In the Group selection box, you must select one level. The deepest level gets the highest permission in the system. From this section, you can also block a user and decide whether they will receive system  emails or not. In the Parameters section, you can choose the Front-end Language and Time Zone for that user. If you have created contact items using Joomla!'s Contacts component, you may assign one contact to this user in the Contact Information section. VirtueMart user manager Let us now look into VirtueMart's user manager. From the Joomla! control panel, select Components | VirtueMart to reach the VirtueMart Administration Panel. To view the list of the user's registered to the VirtueMart store, click on Admin | Users. This brings the User List screen: As you can see, the User List screen shows the list of users registered to the shop. The screen shows their username, full name, group the user is assigned to, and their shopper group. In the Group column, note that there are two groups mentioned. One group is without brackets and another is inside brackets. The group name mentioned inside brackets is Joomla!'s standard user groups, whereas the one without brackets is VirtueMart's user group. We are going to learn about these user groups in the  next section. For viewing the details of a user, click on the user's name in Username column. That brings the Add/Update User Information screen: The screen has three tabs: General User Information, Shopper Information, and Order List. The General User Information tab contains the same information which was shown in Joomla!'s user manager's User: [Edit] screen. The Shopper Information tab contains shop related information for the user: The Shopper Information section contains: a vendor to which the user is registered the user group the user belongs to a customer number/ID the shopper group Other sections in this tab are: Shipping Addresses, Bill To Information, Bank Account, and any other section you have added to the user registration or account maintenance form. These sections contain fields which are either available on the registration or account maintenance form. If the user has placed some orders, the Order List tab will list the orders placed by that user. If no order has been placed,  the Order List tab will not be visible. Which user manager should we use? As we can see, there is a difference between Joomla!'s user manager and VirtueMart's user manager. VirtueMart's user manager shows some additional information fields, which are necessary for the operation of the shop. Therefore, whenever you are managing users for your shop, use the user manager in the VirtueMart component, not Joomla!'s user manager. Otherwise, all customer information will not be added or updated. This may create some problems in operating the VirtueMart store. User Groups Do you want to decide who can do what in your shop? There is a very good way for doing that in Joomla! and VirtueMart. Both Joomla! and VirtueMart have some predefined user groups. In both cases, you can create additional groups and assign permission levels to these groups. When users register to your site, you assign them to one of the user groups. Joomla! user groups Let us first look into Joomla! user groups. Predefined groups in Joomla! are  described below: User Group Permissions Public Frontend Registered Users in this group can login to the Joomla! site and view the contents, sections, categories, and the items which are marked only for registered users. This group has no access to content management. Author Users in this group get all the permissions the Registered group has. In addition to that, users in this group can submit articles for publishing, and can edit their own articles. Editor Users of this group have all the above permissions, and also can edit articles submitted by other users. However, they cannot publish the contents. Publisher Users in this group can login to the system and submit, edit, and publish their own content as well as contents submitted by other users. Public Backend Manager Users in this group can login to the administration panel and manage content items including articles, sections, categories, links, and so on. They cannot manage users, install modules or components, manage templates and languages, and access global configurations. Users in this group can access some of the components for which the administrator has given permission. Administrator In addition to content management, users in this group can add a user to Super Administrator group, edit a user, access the global configuration settings, access the mail function, and manage/install templates and language files. Super Administrator Users in this group can access all administration functions. For every site, at least one should be in this group to perform global configurations. You cannot delete a user in this group or move him/her to another group. As you can see, most of the users registering to your site should be assigned to the Registered group. By default, Joomla! assigns all newly registered users to the Registered group. You need to add some users to the Editor or Publisher group if they need to add or publish content to the site. The persons who are managing the shop should be assigned to other Public Backend groups such as Manager, Administrator or Super Administrator. VirtueMart user groups Let us now look into the user groups in VirtueMart. To see the user groups, go to VirtueMart's administration panel and click on Admin | User Groups. This shows the User Group List screen: By default, you will see four user groups: admin, storeadmin, shopper, and demo. These groups are used for assigning permissions to users. Also, note the values in the User Group Level column. The higher the value in this field, the lower the permissions assumed for the group. The admin group has a level value of 0, which means it has all of the permissions, and of course, more than the next group storeadmin. Similarly, storeadmin group has more permissions than the shopper group. These predefined groups are key groups in VirtueMart, and you cannot modify or delete these groups. These groups have the following permissions: Group Permissions admin This group has permissions to use all of the modules except checkout and shop. The admin group does not need these because admin users usually do not shop in their store. storeadmin This group has fewer permissions than admin group. Users in this group can access all the modules except the admin, vendor, shop, and checkout modules. They cannot set the global configurations for the store, but can add and edit payment methods, products, categories, and so on. shopper This group has the least permission among the three key groups. By default, users registered to the shop are assigned to this group. Users in this group can fully access the account module, and can use some functions of the shop, coupon, and checkout modules. demo This is a demo group created by default so that administrators can test and play with it. For most of the shops, these four predefined groups will be enough to implement appropriate permissions. However, in some cases you may need to create a new user group and assign separate permissions to that group. For example, you may want to employ some people as store managers who will add products to the catalog and manage the orders. They cannot add or edit payment methods, shipping methods, or other settings, except product and orders. If you add these people to the storeadmin group then they get more permissions than required. In such situations, a good solution is to create a new group, add selected user accounts to that group, and assign permissions to that group. Creating a new user group For creating a new user group, click on the New button in the toolbar on the User Group List screen. This brings Add/Edit a User Group screen: In the Add/Edit a User Group screen, enter the group's name and group level. You must type a higher value than existing groups (for example, 1000). Click on the Save icon to save the user group. You will now see the newly created user group in the User Group List screen.

What is an RSS Feed? First of all, let us understand what a web feed is. Basically, it is a data format that provides frequently updated content to users. Content distributors syndicate the web feed, allowing users to subscribe, by using feed aggregator. RSS feeds contain data in an XML format. RSS is the term used for describing Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary, depending upon the different versions. RDF (Resource Description Framework), a family of W3C specification, is a data model format for modelling various information such as title, author, modified date, content etc through variety of syntax format. RDF is basically designed to be read by computers for exchanging information. Since, RSS is an XML format for data representation, different authorities defined different formats of RSS across different versions like 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0 and 2.0. The following table shows when and by whom were the different RSS versions proposed. RSS Version Year Developer's Name RSS 0.90 1999 Netscape introduced RSS 0.90. RSS 0.91 1999 Netscape proposed the simpler format of RSS 0.91. 1999 UserLand Software proposed the RSS specification. RSS 1.0 2000 O'Reilly released RSS 1.0. RSS 2.0 2000 UserLand Software proposed the further RSS specification in this version and it is the most popular RSS format being used these days. Meanwhile, Harvard Law school is responsible for the further development of the RSS specification. There had been a competition like scenario for developing the different versions of RSS between UserLand, Netscape and O'Reilly before the official RSS 2.0 specification was released. For a detailed history of these different versions of RSS you can check http://www.rss-specifications.com/history-rss.htm The current version RSS is 2.0 and it is the common format for publishing RSS feeds these days. Like RSS, there is another format that uses the XML language for publishing web feeds. It is known as ATOM feed, and is most commonly used in Wiki and blogging software. Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATOM for detail. The following is the RSS icon that denotes links with RSS feeds. If you're using Mozilla's Firefox web browser then you're likely to see the above image in the address bar of the browser for subscribing to an RSS feed link available in any given page. Web browsers like Firefox and Safari discover available RSS feeds in web pages by looking at the Internet media type application/rss+xml. The following tag specifies that this web page is linked with the RSS feed URL: http://www.example.com/rss.xml<link href="http://www.example.com/rss.xml" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Sitewide RSS Feed" /> Example of RSS 2.0 format First of all, let’s look at a simple example of the RSS format. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel> <title>Title of the feed</title> <link>http://www.examples.com</link> <description>Description of feed</description> <item> <title>News1 heading</title> <link>http://www.example.com/news-1</link> <description>detail of news1 </description> </item> <item> <title>News2 heading</title> <link>http://www.example.com/news-2</link> <description>detail of news2 </description> </item></channel></rss> The first line is the XML declaration that indicates its version is 1.0. The character encoding is UTF-8. UTF-8 characters support many European and Asian characters so it is widely used as character encoding in web. The next line is the rss declaration, which declares that it is a RSS document of version 2.0 The next line contains the <channel> element which is used for describing the detail of the RSS feed. The <channel> element must have three required elements <title>, <link> and <description>. The title tag contains the title of that particular feed. Similarly, the link element contains the hyperlink of the channel and the description tag describes or carries the main information of the channel. This tag usually contains the information in detail. Furthermore, each <channel> element may have one or more <item> elements which contain the story of the feed. Each <item> element must have the three elements <title>, <link> and <description> whose use is similar to those of channel elements, but they describe the details of each individual items. Finally, the last two lines are the closing tags for the <channel> and <rss> elements. Creating RSS Web Widget The RSS widget we're going to build is a simple one which displays the headlines from the RSS feed, along with the title of the RSS feed. This is another widget which uses some JavaScript, PHP CSS and HTML. The content of the widget is displayed within an Iframe so when you set up the widget, you've to adjust the height and width. To parse the RSS feed in XML format, I've used the popular PHP RSS Parser – Magpie RSS. The homepage of Magpie RSS is located at http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/. Introduction to Magpie RSS Before writing the code, let's understand what the benefits of using the Magpie framework are, and how it works. It is easy to use. While other RSS parsers are normally limited for parsing certain RSS versions, this parser parses most RSS formats i.e. RSS 0.90 to 2.0, as well as ATOM feed. Magpie RSS supports Integrated Object Cache which means that the second request to parse the same RSS feed is fast— it will be fetched from the cache. Now, let's quickly understand how Magpie RSS is used to parse the RSS feed. I'm going to pick the example from their homepage for demonstration. require_once 'rss_fetch.inc';$url = 'http://www.getacoder.com/rss.xml';$rss = fetch_rss($url);echo "Site: ", $rss->channel['title'], "<br>";foreach ($rss->items as $item ) { $title = $item[title]; $url = $item[link]; echo "<a href=$url>$title</a></li><br>";} If you're more interested in trying other PHP RSS parsers then you might like to check out SimplePie RSS Parser (http://simplepie.org/) and LastRSS (http://lastrss.oslab.net/). You can see in the first line how the rss_fetch.inc file is included in the working file. After that, the URL of the RSS feed from getacoder.com is assigned to the $url variable. The fetch_rss() function of Magpie is used for fetching data and converting this data into RSS Objects. In the next line, the title of RSS feed is displayed using the code $rss->channel['title']. The other lines are used for displaying each of the RSS feed's items. Each feed item is stored within an $rss->items array, and the foreach() loop is used to loop through each element of the array. Writing Code for our RSS Widget As I've already discussed, this widget is going to use Iframe for displaying the content of the widget, so let's look at the JavaScript code for embedding Iframe within the HTML code. var widget_string = '<iframe src="http://www.yourserver.com/rsswidget/rss_parse_handler.php?rss_url=';widget_string += encodeURIComponent(rss_widget_url);widget_string += '&maxlinks='+rss_widget_max_links;widget_string += '" height="'+rss_widget_height+'" width="'+rss_widget_width+'"';widget_string += ' style="border:1px solid #FF0000;"';widget_string +=' scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>';document.write(widget_string); In the above code, the widget string variable contains the string for displaying the widget. The source of Iframe is assigned to rss_parse_handler.php. The URL of the RSS feed, and the headlines from the feed are passed to rss_parse_handler.php via the GET method, using rss_url and maxlinks parameters respectively. The values to these parameters are assigned from the Javascript variables rss_widget_url and rss_widget_max_links. The width and height of the Iframe are also assigned from JavaScript variables, namely rss_widget_width and rss_widget_height. The red border on the widget is displayed by assigning 1px solid #FF0000 to the border attribute using the inline styling of CSS. Since, Inline CSS is used, the frameborder property is set to 0 (i.e. the border of the frame is zero). Displaying borders from the CSS has some benefit over employing the frameborder property. While using CSS code, 1px dashed #FF0000 (border-width border-style border-color) means you can display a dashed border (you can't using frameborder), and you can use the border-right, border-left, border-top, border-bottom attributes of CSS to display borders at specified positions of the object. The scrolling property is set to no here, which means that the scroll bar will not be displayed in the widget if the widget content overflows. If you want to show a scroll bar, then you can set this property to yes. The values of JavaScript variables like rss_widget_url, rss_widget_max_links etc come from the page where we'll be using this widget. You'll see how the values of these variables will be assigned from the section at the end where we'll look at how to use this RSS widget.  

Installing the EnterpriseDB Download PostgrePlus Advanced Server 8.3 ( pgplus-advsvr-windows-83012b.exe (120MB) ) from the following site: http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/download.do. After downloading the program double click the executable file. You may need to choose a language from a list of languages. Here English has been chosen. The welcome window gets displayed as shown. Click Next. Choose the option you need. Read notes on this page to make the choice. Here, the Oracle compatibility has been chosen. Click Next or, choose a different location by browsing. Here the default location is accepted. Click Next. The window that shows up displays all the various features that are available. Pick and choose the features. Here all features are chosen. Click Next. The next window shows the links from where the JDBC drivers for connecting to Oracle and MySQL are available displayed. Click Next . In the window that shows up you need to choose the password for the Operating System UserID and Password. Read the cautionary remarks on this page. Choose Next. At this point your anti-virus program may require you to permit to run the program. McAfee is the anti-virus program on this computer. In the window that gets displayed you may need to choose the administrator's log in credentials. You may also Browse and select the Data Destination Directory. Herein the default is accepted. Click Next. In the windows that gets displayed you may choose the type of environment for which the server will be used as well as the work load for which you may be using the server. The dynamic tuning options available are: Server Utilization Development: This is a development machine and many other applications will be running on it. Stress testing should not be performed with this configuration. EnterpriseDB will use a minimal amount of memory. Mixed: Several applications will be running on this machine. Choose this option for web/application servers. Dedicated: This machine is dedicated to run EnterpriseDB and will use available memory to optimize performance. The Workload Profile Transaction Processing: The running application is a transaction intensive applications. General Purpose: The database will be used for transaction processing as well as complex queries and reporting. Reporting: The database will be used for reporting applications. For this tutorial, the Mixed option for Server Utilization and General Purpose for Workload Profile were chosen. Click on Next. The Summary page gets displayed showing all the options chosen. Click on the Install button. The window with a progress bar gets displayed. You may get a warning from the anti-virus program on your computer to allow the file to be executed. Click OK to allow install.

Using Multiple Templates Most advanced sites built today employ multiple page templates. In this section, we will look at the most common scenarios and how to address them with a PHPTemplate theme. While there are many good reasons for running multiple page templates, you should not create additional templates solely for the purpose of disabling regions to hide blocks. While the approach will work, it will result in a performance hit for the site, as the system will still produce the blocks, only to then wind up not displaying them for the pages. The better practice is to control your block visibility. Using a Separate Admin Theme With the arrival of Drupal 5, one of the most common Drupal user requests was satisfied; that is, the ability to easily designate a separate admin theme. In Drupal, designating a separate theme for your admin interface remains a simple matter that you can handle directly from within the admin system. To designate a separate theme for your admin section, follow these steps: Log in and access your site's admin system. Go to Administer | Site configuration | Administration theme. Select the theme you desire from the drop-down box listing all the installed themes. Click Save configuration, and your selected theme should appear immediately. Multiple Page or Section Templates In contrast to the complete ease of setting up a separate administration theme is the comparative difficulty of setting up multiple templates for different pages or sections. The bad news is that there is no admin system shortcut—you must manually create the various templates and customize them to suit your needs. The good news is that creating and implementing additional templates is not difficult and it is possible to attain a high degree of granularity with the techniques described below. Indeed, should you be so inclined, you could literally define a distinct template for each individual page of your site. Drupal employs an order of precedence based on a naming convention (or "suggestions" as they are now being called on the Drupal site). You can unlock the granularity of the system through proper application of the naming convention. It is possible, for example, to associate templates with every element on the path, or with specific users, or with a particular functionality—all through the simple process of creating a new template and naming it appropriately. The system will search for alternative templates, preferring the specific to the general, and failing to find a more specific template, will apply the default page.tpl.php. Consider the following example of the order of precedence and the naming convention in action. The custom templates above could be used to override the default page.tpl.php and theme either an entire node (page-node.tpl.php), or simply the node with an ID of 1 (page-node-1.tpl.php),or the node in edit mode (page-node-edit.tpl.php), depending on the name given the template. In the example above, the page-node templates would be applied to the node in full page view. In contrast, should you wish to theme the node in its entirety, you would need to intercept and override the default node.tpl.php. The fundamental methodology of the system is to use the first template file it finds and ignore other, more general templates (if any). This basic principle, combined with proper naming of the templates, gives you control over the template used in various situations. The default suggestions provided by the Drupal system should be sufficient for the vast majority of theme developers. However, if you find that you need additional suggestions beyond those provided by the system, it is possible to extend your site and add new suggestions. See http://drupal.org/node/223440 for a discussion of this advanced Drupal theming technique. Let's take a series of four examples to show how this feature can be used to provide solutions to common problems: Create a unique homepage template. Use a different template for a group of pages. Assign a specific template to a specific page. Designate a specific template for a specific user. Create a Unique Homepage Template Let's assume that you wish to set up a unique template for the homepage of a site. Employing separate templates for the homepage and the interior pages is one of the most common requests web developers hear. With Drupal, you can, without having to create a new template, achieve some variety within a theme by controlling the visibility of blocks on the homepage. If that simple technique does not give you enough flexibility, you will need to consider using a dedicated template that is purpose-built for your homepage content. The easiest way to set up a distinct front page template is to copy the existing page.tpl.php file, rename it, and make your changes to the new file. Alternatively, you can create a new file from scratch. In either situation, your front-page-specific template must be named page-front.tpl.php. The system will automatically display your new file for the site's homepage, and use the default page.tpl.php for the rest of the site. Note that page-front.tpl.php is whatever page you specify as the site's front page via the site configuration settings. To override the default homepage setting visit Administer | Site configuration | Site information, then enter the URL you desire into the field labeled Default home page. Use a Different Template for a Group of Pages Next, let's associate a template with a group of pages. You can provide a template to be used by any distinct group of pages, using as your guide the path for the pages. For example, to theme all the user pages you would create the template page-user.tpl.php. To theme according to the type of content, you can associate your page template with a specific node, for example, all blog entry pages can be controlled by the filepage-blog-tpl.php. The table below presents a list of suggestions you can employ to theme various pages associated with the default functionalities in the Drupal system. Suggestion Affected Page page-user.tpl.php user pages page-blog.tpl.php blog pages (but not the individual node pages) page-forum.tpl.php forum pages (but not the individual node pages) page-book.tpl.php book pages (but not the individual node pages) page-contact.tpl.php contact form (but not the form content)   Assign a Specific Template to a Specific Page Taking this to its extreme, you can associate a specific template with a specific page. By way of example, assume we wish to provide a unique template for a specific content item. Let's assume our example page is located at http://www.demosite.com/node/2/edit. The path of this specific page gives you a number of options. We could theme this page with any of the following templates (in addition to the default page.tpl.php): page-node.tpl.php page-node-2.tpl.php page-node-edit.tpl.php A Note on Templates and URLsDrupal bases the template order of precedence on the default path generated by the system. If the site is using a module like pathauto, which alters the path that appears to site visitors, remember that your templates will still be displayed based on the original paths. The exception here being page-front.tpl.php, which will be applied to whatever page you specify as the site's front page via the site configuration settings (Administer | Site configuration| Site information). Designate a Specific Template for a Specific User Assume that you want to add a personalized theme for the user with the ID of 1(the Drupal equivalent of a Super Administrator). To do this, copy the existing page.tpl.php file, rename it to reflect its association with the specific user, and make any changes to the new file. To associate the new template file with the user, name the file: page-user-1.tpl. Now, when user 1 logs into the site, they will be presented with this template. Only user 1 will see this template and only when he or she is logged in and visiting the account page. The official Drupal site includes a collection of snippets relating to the creation of custom templates for user profile pages. The discussion is instructive and worth review, though you should always be a bit cautious with user-submitted code snippets as they are not official releases from the Drupal Association. See, http://drupal.org/node/35728 Dynamically Theming Page Elements In addition to being able to style particular pages or groups of pages, Drupal and PHPTemplate make it possible to provide specific styling for different page elements. Associating Elements with the Front Page Drupal provides $is_front as a means of determining whether the page currently displayed is the front page. $is_front is set to true if Drupal is rendering the front page; otherwise it is set to false. We can use $is_front in our page.tpl.php file to help toggle display of items we want to associate with the front page. To display an element on only the front page, make it conditional on the state of $is_front. For example, to display the site mission on only the front page of the site, wrap $mission (in your page.tpl.php file) as follows: <?php if ($is_front): ?> <div id="mission"> <?php print $mission; ?> </div><?php endif; ?> To set up an alternative condition, so that one element will appear on the front page but a different element will appear on other pages, modify the statement like this: <?php if ($is_front): ?> //whatever you want to display on front page<?php else: ?> //what is displayed when not on the front page<?php endif; ?> $is_front is one of the default baseline variables available to all templates.

Lets get started right away. Developing the Login Management Module Even though Login and session handling are separate functionalities from User management, they depend on the same table—user. Also, the functionalities are more alike than different. Hence, instead of creating a new Controller, we will be using the UserController itself as the Controller for the Login module. Keeping this point in mind, let us look at the steps involved in developing the Login Management, which are: Creating the Login page Implementing the Authentication Method Setting up the Session Applying Authorization Leaving aside the first step, all other steps mainly focus on the Controller. Here we go. Creating the Login Page We need a login page with text boxes for user name and password in which users can put their credentials and submit to the login authenticator (fancy name for the action method that will contain the logic to authenticate the user). That's what we are going to create now. The convention for any website is to show the login page when the user enters the URL without any specific page in mind. RoR also follows this convention. For example, if you enter the URL as http://localhost:3000/user, it displays the list of users. The reason is that the index action method of the UserController class calls the list method whenever the aforementioned URL is used. From this, we can understand two things—first, the default action method is index, and second, the first page to be shown is changeable if we change the index method. What we need is to show the login page whenever a user enters the URLhttp://localhost:3000/user. So let's change the index method. Open theuser_controller.rb file from the app/views/user folder and remove all the statements from the body of the index method so that it looks like as follows: def indexend Next, let us create an index.rhtml file, which will be shown when the index method is called. This file will be the login page. In the app/views/user folder, create an index.rhtml file. It will be as follows <%= form_tag :action=> 'authenticate'%><table ><tr align="center" class="tablebody"><td>User name:</td><td><%= text_field("user", "user_name",:size=>"15" ) %></td></tr><tr align="center" class="tablebody"><td>Password:</td><td><%= password_field("user","password",:size=>"17" ) %></td></tr><tr align="center" class="tablebody"><td></td><td><input type="submit" value=" LOGIN " /></td></tr></table> It uses two new form helpers—text_field and password_field. The text_field creates a text field with the name passed as the parameter, and the password_field creates a password field again with the name passed as the parameter. We have passed the authenticate method as the action parameter so that the form is submitted to the authenticate method. That completes the login page creation. Next, we will work on the authenticate method. Implementing the Authenticate method Implementing the Authenticate method Authenticating a user essentially means checking whether the user name and password given by the user corresponds to the one in database or not. In our case, the user gives us the user name and password through the login page. What we will be doing is checking whether the user is in database and does the password that we got corresponds to the password stored in the database for the user? Here, we will be working on two levels: Model Controller We can put the data access part in the action method that being the Controller itself. But it will create problems in the future if we want to add something extra to the user name/password checking code. That's why we are going to put (or delegate) the data access part into Model. Model We will be modifying the User class by adding a method that will check whether the user name and password provided by the user is correct or not. The name of the method is login. It is as follows: def self.login(name,password)find(:first,:conditions => ["user_name = ? and password =?",name, password])end It is defined as a singleton method of the User class by using the self keyword. The singleton methods are special class-level methods. The conditions parameter of the find method takes an array of condition and the corresponding values. The find method generates an SQL statement from the passed parameters. Here, the find method finds the first record that matches the provided user_name and password. Now, let us create the method that the Controller will call to check the validity of the user. Let us name it check_login. The definition is as follows: def check_loginUser.login(self.user_name, self.password)end This function calls the login method. Now if you observe closely, check_login calls the login function. One more point to remember—if a method 'test' returns a value and you call 'test' from another method 'test1,' then you don't need to say 'return test' from within 'test1'.The value returned from 'test' will be returned by 'test1' implicitly. That completes the changes to be done at the Model level. Now let us see the changes at the Controller-level. Controller In the Controller for User—UserController—add a new method named authenticate. The method will first create a User object based on the user name and password. Then it will invoke check_login on the newly created User object. If check_login is successful, that is, it does not return nil, then the user is redirected to the list view of Tales. Otherwise, the user is redirected to the login page itself. Here is what the method will look like: def authenticate@user = User.new(params[:user])valid_user = @user.check_loginif logged_in_userflash[:note]="Welcome "+logged_in_user.nameredirect_to(:controller=>'tale',:action => "list")elseflash[:notice] = "Invalid User/Password"redirect_to :action=> "index"endend The redirect_to method accepts two parameters—the name of the Controller and the method within the Controller. If the user is valid, then the list method of TaleController is called, or in other words, the user is redirected to the list of tales. Next, let us make it more robust by checking for the get method. If a user directly types a URL to an action, then the get method is received by the method. If any user does that, we want him/her to be redirected to the login page. To do this, we wrap up the user validation logic in an if/else block. The code will be the following: def authenticate if request.get?render :action=> 'index'else@user = User.new(params[:user])valid_user = @user.check_loginif valid_userflash[:note]="Welcome "+valid_user.user_nameredirect_to(:controller=>'tale',:action => 'list')else flash[:notice] = "Invalid User/Password"redirect_to :action=> 'index'endendend The get? method returns true if the URL has the GET method else it returns false. That completes the login authentication part. Next, let us set up the session. In Ruby, any method that returns a Boolean value—true or false—is suffixed with a question mark (?). The get method of the request object returns a boolean value. So it is suffixed with a question mark (?). Setting up the Session Once a user is authenticated, the next step is to set up the session to track the user. Session, by definition, is the conversation between the user and the server from the moment the user logs in to the moment the user logs out. A conversation is a pair of requests by the user and the response from the server. In RoR, the session can be tracked either by using cookies or the session object. The session is an object provided by RoR. The session object can hold objects where as cookies cannot. Therefore, we will be using the session object. The session object is a hash like structure, which can hold the key and the corresponding value. Setting up a session is as easy as providing a key to the session object and assigning it a value. The following code illustrates this aspect: def authenticateif request.get?render :action=> 'index'else@user = User.new(params[:user])valid_user = @user.check_loginif valid_usersession[:user_id]=valid_user.idflash[:note]="Welcome "+valid_user.user_nameredirect_to(:controller=>'tale',:action => 'list')elseflash[:notice] = "Invalid User/Password"redirect_to :action=> 'index'endendend That completes setting up the session part. That brings us to the last step—applying authorization. Applying Authorization Until now, we have authenticated the user and set up a session for him/her. However, we still haven't ensured that only the authenticated users can access the different functionalities of TaleWiki. This is where authorization comes into the picture. Authorization has two levels—coarse grained and fine grained. Coarse grained authorization looks at the whole picture whereas the fine grained authorization looks at the individual 'pixels' of the picture. Ensuring that only the authenticated users can get into TaleWiki is a part of coarse grained authorization while checking the privileges for each functionality comes under the fine grained authorization. In this article, we will be working with the coarse grained authorization. The best place to apply the coarse grained authorization is the Controller as it is the central point of data exchange. Just like other aspects, RoR provides a functionality to easily apply any kind of logic on the Controller as a whole in the form of filters. To jog your memory, a filter contains a set of statements that need to be executed before, after (or before and after) the methods within the Controllers are executed. Our problem is to check whether the user is authenticated or not, before any method in a Controller is executed. The solution to our problem is using a 'before filter'. But we have to apply authorization to all the Controllers. Hence, the filter should be callable from any of the Controller. If you look at the definition of a Controller, you can find such a place. Each Controller is inherited from the ApplicationController. Anything placed in ApplicationController will be callable from other Controllers. In other words, any method placed in ApplicationController becomes global to all the Controllers within your application. So, we will place the method containing the filter logic in ApplicationController. To check whether a user is authentic or not, the simplest way is to check whether a session exists for that person or not. If it exists, then we can continue with the normal execution. Let us name it check_authentic_user. The implementation will be as follows: def check_authentic_userunless session[:user_id]flash[:notice] = "Please log in"redirect_to(:controller => "user", :action =>"index")endend It checks for the user_id key in a session. If it is not present, the user is redirected to the login page. Place the code in the application.rb file as a method of ApplicationController. Next, let us use it as a filter. First, we will tell UserController to apply the filter for all the action methods except index and authenticate methods. Add the following statement to the UserController. It should be the first statement after the starting of the Controller class. class UserController < ApplicationControllerbefore_filter :check_authentic_user, :except =>[ :index, :authenticate ]::end Similarly, we will place the filter in other Controllers as well. However, in their case, there are no exceptions. So TaleController will have: class TaleController < ApplicationControllerbefore_filter :check_authentic_user::end GenreController and RoleController will be the same as TaleController. Thus, we have completed the 'applying authorization' part for the time being. Now, let's tie up one loose end—the problem of adding a new tale. Tying Up the Loose Ends When we developed the User management, the Tale management was affected as the tales table has a many-to-one relationship with the users table. Now we can solve the problem created by the foreign key reference. First, open the user.rb file and add the following statement indicating that it is at the 'one' end of the relationship: has_many :tale After addition of the statement, the class will look like the following: class User < ActiveRecord::Basevalidates_presence_of :user_name, :password, :first_name,:last_name, :age, :email, :country validates_uniqueness_of :user_namevalidates_numericality_of :age validates_format_of :email, :with => /A([^@s]+)@((?:[-a-z0-9]+.)+[a-z]{2,})Z/ibelongs_to :rolehas_many :taledef check_loginUser.login(self.name, self.password)enddef self.login(name,password)find(:first,:conditions => ["user_name = ? and password=?",name, password])endend Next, add the following statement to the tale.rb file: belongs_to :user The file will look like as follows: class Tale < ActiveRecord::Basevalidates_presence_of :title, :body_text, :sourcebelongs_to:genrebelongs_to :userend Next, open the tale_controller.rb file. In the create method, we need to add the user's id to the tale's user id reference so that the referential integrity can be satisfied. For that, we will get the current user's id from the session and set it as the value of the user_id attribute of the tale object. The create method will look like as follows, after doing the changes: def create @tale = Tale.new(params[:tale])@tale.genre_id=params[:genre]@tale.user_id=session[:user_id]@tale.status="new" if @tale.saveflash[:notice] = 'Tale was successfully created.'redirect_to :action => 'list'elserender :action => 'new'endend That's it. The 'loose ends' related to the User management are tied up. Now let us move onto the Comment Management module.

[Read the first part of this article here] Now you can click on the Preview Data… hyperlink which opens up the Preview Data window as shown in Figure 19. The Select an object to preview field gets populated automatically to run the getData () method. When you click on the Preview button, the grey area is populated by a table showing the retrieved rows of data from the Customers table as shown in Figure 19. Figure 19 Click on the Close button in the above window. In the various tasks of the DataGridView many options are chosen by default. You may also check reordering of the column by placing a check mark in the Edit Column Reordering in Figure 18 which opens Edit Columns window as shown in Figure 20, another useful control to manipulate the columns so that the columns you want to see are the first few columns. Figure 20 You may want to edit the columns and change some of the items such as reordering of the columns, column name, column width, etc. All this can be done from this screen. For this tutorial only the columns width was changed. A label was added and its text was changed to, "Demo 10 Database Customers" as shown in Figure 21. Figure 21     Build the project from the main menu item, Build. Now when the program is run by clicking the Debug --> Start without debugging, or by pressing Ctrl+F5, the program runs and Form1 is displayed as shown in Figure 22. Figure 22 Figure 23 shows the properties of the dataset DsAny that is created when the data source was created. Figure 23   The schema of the above dataset is shown in Figure 24. This gets added to the project files in the Solution Explorer. Figure 24   Using the smart tasks on the CustomerBindingSource you can carry out few of the indicated tasks shown in Figure 25. Figure 25   The properties of the CustomerBindingSource are shown in Figure 26. Figure 26 The CustomerTableAdapter directly connects to the database and it has its own properties window as shown in Figure 27. You will be able to edit queries in the dataset designer, add query, etc using the hyperlinks at the bottom of the properties window. Figure 27 Alternatively you will be able to carry out similar tasks from the smart tasks on the CustomerTableAdapter component in the component tray as shown in Figure 28. In Microsoft applications, you have more than one way of carrying out a task. Figure 28 The Object Browser shown in Figure 29 for this project shows the various data related classes that are used in the application working behind scenes as not a single line of code was explicitly used for this form to display the data. Figure 29  

We have come a long way from the day the WEB was created in 1992 by T.B.LEE in Switzerland. From hyper linking which was the only thing at that time, to streaming videos, instant gratification with AJAX, and a host of other do-dads that has breathed new life to JavaScript and internet usability. Silverlight among several others, is a push in this direction to satisfy the ever increasing needs of the internet users. Even so, the web application displays fall short of the rich experience one can achieve with desktop applications, and this is where the tools are being created and honed for creating RIA, short for Rich Internet Applications. In order to create such applications, a great deal of development has taken place in the Microsoft ecosystem . These are all described in the .NET and Windows Presentation Foundation which supports developers to create easily deployable Rich Internet Applications. We have to wait and see how it percolates to the Semantic Web in the future. Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in that renders XAML, the declarative tag-based files while exposing the JavaScript programming interface. It makes both developers and designers to collaborate and contribute to rich and interactive designs that are well integrated with Microsoft's Expression series of programs. Initial Steps to Take In this article we will be using Silverlight 1.0 with JavaScript. Initially you need to make your browser understand the XAML, and for this you need to install Silverlight available here. There is no need for a server to work with these Silverlight application files as they will be either HTML pages, XAML pages, or JavaScript pages. Of course these files may be hosted on the server as well. The next figure shows some details you need to know before installing the plug-in. Silverlight Project Details After having enabled the browser to recognize XAML - the Extensible Application Mark up Language, you need to consider the different components that will make Silverlight happen. In the present tutorial we will look at using Silverlight 1.0. Silverlight 2.0 is still in Beta stage. If you have Silverlight already installed you may be able to verify the version in the Control Panel / Add Remove Programs and display information as shown in the next figure. To make Silverlight happen you need the following files: An HTML page that you can browse to where the Silverlight plug-in is spawned A XAML page which is all the talk is about which provides the 'Richness' Supporting script files that will create the plug-in and embeds it in the HTML page The next figure shows how these interact with one another somewhat schematically. Basically you can start with your HTML page. You need to reference two .JS files as shown in the above figure. The script file Silverlight.js exposes the properties, methods, etc. of Silverlight. This file will be available in the SDK download. You can copy this file and move it around to any location. The second script createSilvelight.js creates a plug-in which you will embed in the HTML page using yet another short script. You will see how this is created later in the tutorial. The created plug-in then brings-in the XAML page which you will create as well. The first step is to create a blank HTML page, herein called, TestSilverLight.htm as shown in the following listing: Listing 1:TestSilverLight.htm Scaffold file <html><head><script type="text/javascript" src="Silverlight.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="createSilverlight.js"></script><title> </title> </head> <body> Next, you go ahead and create the createSilvelight.js file. The following listing shows how this is coded. This is slightly modified although taken from a web resource. Listing 2: createSilverlight.js function createSilverlight() { Silverlight.createObject( "TestSilver.xaml", // Source property value. parentElement, // DOM reference to hosting DIV tag. "SilverlightPlugInHost1", // Unique plug-in ID value. { // Plug-in properties. width:'1024', // Width of rectangular in pixels. height:'530', // Height of rectangular in pixels. inplaceInstallPrompt:false, // install prompt if invalid version is detected. background:'white', // Background color of plug-in. isWindowless:'false', // Determines whether to display in windowless mode. framerate:'24', // MaxFrameRate property value. version:'1.0' // Silverlight version. }, { onError:null, // OnError property value onLoad:null // OnLoad property value }, null, // initParams null); // Context value } This function, createSilverlight(), when called from within a place holder location will create a Silverlight object at that location with some defined properties. You may go and look up the various customizable items in this code on the web. The object that is going to be created will be the TestSilver.xaml at the "id" of the location which will be found using the ECMA script we will see later. The "id" is also named here, found by the "parentElement". To proceed further we need to create (a) the TestSilver.xaml file and (b) create a place holder in the HTML page. At first the changes made to Listing 1 are shown in bold. This is the place holder <div> </div> tags inside the 'body' tags as shown in the next listing with the "id" used in the createSilverlight.js file. You may also use <span> </span> tags, provided you associate a "id" with it. Listing 3: Place holder created in the HTML Page <head><script type="text/javascript" src="Silverlight.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="createSilverlight.js"></script><title> </title> </head> <body><div id="SilverlightPlugInHost1"> </div></body> </html> Creating the XAML File If you have neither used XAML, nor created a XAML page you should access the internet where you will find tons of this stuff. A good location is MSDN's Silvelight home page. You may also want to read up this article which will give some idea about XAML. Although this article is focusing on 'Windows' and not 'Web', the idea of what XAML is the same. The next listing describes the declarative syntax that will show a 'canvas', a defined space on your web page in which an image has been brought in. The 'Canvas' is the container and the image is the contained object. A XAML file should be well formed similar to an XML file. Listing 4: A Simple XAML file <Canvas Width="200" Height="200" Background="powderblue"><Image Canvas.Left="50" Canvas.Top="50" Width="200"Source="Fish.JPG"/></Canvas> Save the above file (text) with the extension XAML. If your Silverlight 1.0 is working correctly you should see this displayed on the browser when you browse to it. You also note the [.] notation to access the properties of the Canvas. For example, Canvas.Left is 50 pixels relative to the Canvas. The namespace is very important, more about it later. Without going into too much details, the pale blue area is the canvas whose width and height are 200 pixels each. The fish image is off set by the amounts shown relative to the canvas. Canvas is the portion of the browser window which functions as a place holder. While you use "Canvas" in web, you will have "Window" for desktop applications. The namespace of the canvas should be as shown otherwise you may get errors of various types depending on the typos. Inside the canvas you may place any type of object, buttons, textboxes, shapes, and even other canvases. If and when you design using the Visual Studio designer with intellisense guiding you along you will see a bewildering array of controls, styles, etc. The details of the various XAML tags are outside the scope of this tutorial. Although Notepad is used in this tutorial, you really should use a designer as you cannot possibly remember correctly the various Properties, Methods and Events supported. In some web references you may notice one more additional namespace . Remove this namespace reference as "Canvas" does not exist in this namespace. If you use it, you will get an XamlParseException. Also if you are of the cut and paste type make sure you save the XAML file as of type "All files" with XAML extension. With the above brief background review the TestSilver.xaml file whose listing is shown in the next paragraph. Listing 5: TestSilver.xaml file referenced in Plug-in script <Canvas Width="200" Height="150" Background="powderblue"> <Canvas Width="150" Height="250" Background="PaleGoldenRod"> <Ellipse Width="100" Height="100" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="2" Fill="Green" /> </Canvas><Image Canvas.Left="50" Canvas.Top="50" Width="200" Source="http://localhost/IMG_0086.JPG"/></Canvas> In the above code you see a second canvas embedded inside the first with its own independent window. The order they would appear will depend on where they are in the code unless the default order is changed. You also see that the image is now referenced to a graphic file on the local server. Later on you will see the Silverlight.htm hosted on the server. If you are using more recent versions of ASP.NET used on your site, or version of IE you may get to see the complete file and some times you may get to see only part of the XMAL content and additional error message such as this one. For example, while the image in the project folder is displayed, the image on the local server may be skipped. If the setting and versions are optimum, you will get to see this displayed on your browser when you browse to the above file. Script in HTML to Embed Silverlight Plug-in This really is the last piece left to be taken care of to complete this project. The code shown in the next listing shows how this is done. The code segment shown in bold is the script that is added to the place holder we created earlier. Listing 6: Script added to bring Plug-in <html><head><script type="text/javascript" src="Silverlight.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="createSilverlight.js"></script><title> </title> </head> <body><div id="SilverlightPlugInHost1"> <script type="text/javascript"> var parentElement = document.getElementById("SilverlightPluginHost1"); createSilverlight();</script></div></body> </html> Hosted Files on the IIS The various files used are then saved to a folder and can be set up as the target of a virtual directory on your IIS as shown. Now you can browse the Silverlight123.htm file on your browser to see the following displayed on your IE. Summary The present tutorial shows how to create a Silverlight project describing the various files used and how they interact with each other. The importance of using the correct namespace and some tips on creating the XAML files as well as hosting them on IIS are also described. A Windows XP with SP2 was used and the Silverlight.htm file tested on IIS 5.1; IE Ver 7.0.5370IC and web site enabled for ASP.NET Version 2.0.50727 with the registered MimeType application/xaml+xml.

I talk with Ryan Berens, from Guardian Digital makers of EnGarde Linux, to understand their role in the Linux distribution space. EnGarde is distributed in two flavors -- one of which can be had for gratis. EnGarde is what you'd call a minimalist distribution that you'd install on your server to run critical services. It's also popular for its one-stop WebTool remote administration tool. Mayank Sharma: Why do we need a specialist security distro? Why is this better than the 'adding security apps to an existing distro on the server' approach? Guardian Digital: These platforms exist to fulfill a significant need in the market. Many users want a hardened platform because locking down a system can be both difficult and time-consuming. The challenge of creating a secure foundation requires a holistic view over all of system resources, not only at default settings, but as configurations need to change. Hardened platforms, designed and built with security from the ground up, create a much more streamlined, integrated system that ensures a system can stay secure. Bloated distro's can be very insecure by default and overcoming that initial state won't be as effective as building security in from the ground up to ensure that tools all work together to minimize access to and control over resources. Simply adding a couple applications doesn't mean they necessarily 'play' well with other apps or the OS in order to perform as securely as needed. MS: What is involved in packaging a secure distro? Is there more to it than just packaging firewall and network monitoring apps? GD: So much more. As I said in the previous answer, a strong focus is on integration and default security. There are processes that could be left open to abuse, that would otherwise get overlooked. One simple example is that EnGarde sets the ls command to have the least privilege, and doesn't allow write access to /bin/ls. Ubuntu, for example, allows write access to the command ls by default. If a user isn't aware of this, it could be a hole in their system that can be compromised. The point is that adding apps that provide some kind of security process doesn't by any means address the internal security of the platform and how it interacts with other processes and applications. Sure they help, but using them, and using them securely are two different things. How does the system treat passwords? What tools does it use for ordinary, "non-security" apps? How does it integrate them? Does it use best-practices for secure remote access? So on and so on... MS: What are the main differences between the free Community and the commercial Enterprise releases? GD: Our free community platform is really more of a "bleeding edge" platform. It is a great way for users to set up a secure server and incorporate new and secure functionality, but it isn't always in the kind of stable development that is demanded for a corporate environment. Also, EnGarde Professional comes with our portfolio of secure, business-critical applications - SMS (Secure Mail Suite) for routing and securing email from Spam/Virus's for tens of thousands of users - SurfSecure, our web enforcement filter for corporate networks, and so on. These applications aren't available for the community (and most of the time, they wouldn't need to be, not at that level of scalability). And lastly is the service and support for all users. All implementations of EnGarde Professional are fully supported by our dedicated staff of security specialists, with service options for Installation, Remote Monitoring, custom development and much more. MS: Who would be the Community Edition's primary users? Can I use it as a secure desktop OS? GD: The primary users for our Community Edition are really administrators interested in providing a secure server foundation. EnGarde Community (as well as EnGarde Professional) is solely engineered for server operations. This is not a desktop OS for running spreadsheets or playing music - this is about secure, usable functionality for your servers. Even though the corporate version is recommended, there have been numerous examples where EnGarde Community was implemented in a small office environment. MS: What Package management does EnGarde have? Do you maintain your own repository of software? GD: We utilize RPM and yes we do maintain our own repository. The platform is engineered from the ground up, and this means that we choose secure packages, and then integrate and develop them expressly with security in mind. MS: Thank you for your time Ryan and wish you luck for the future.   Some more articles by Mayank Sharma: Zen Gift of Education Making a Complete yet Small Linux Distribution

Why do we still use WWW? If you were tasked with finding the letter that, when spoken out loud repeatedly, was more awkward than any other, you would come up with W. Every other letter in the English alphabet is pronounced with a single syllable, yet the W is unique in requiring an impressive three syllables to utter. The irony is that ‘World Wide Web’ can be said in just three syllables, yet the abbreviation WWW encounters a tongue-twisting nine! How can any abbreviation take three times the effort to speak than the very words it is an abbreviation of!? ‘duh-bull-you duh-bull-you duh-bull-you’. WWW is such a prolific term these days and so hard to verbalize that this abbreviation has been abbreviated further with phrases such as “dub dub dub” or “all the Ws”. Almost every website we use starts with WWW and mankind is desperately seeking a way to make the oration of these website addresses an easier and less embarrassing task. The answer, you may be surprised to hear, is shockingly easy. Don’t uses Ws! Websites don’t need them, we don’t like to speak them, the internet will run equally well without them. Addressing the Internet A website address is made up of 3 key parts. Take for example www.google.co.uk The google part combined with the .co.uk part makes up the domain name. When Google purchased this address they purchased google.co.uk, NOT www.google.co.uk. The .co.uk part typically indicates the country, or type of domain (known as Top Level Domain or TLD). The www part is a sub-domain that can indicate anything at all, or can even be omitted. When a domain such as google.co.uk is purchased, it is the web developer who decides what sub-domains should be used, and by following convention and perceived wisdom they will normally opt for WWW. Why do they do this when they could use anything or even nothing at all? Why not w.google.co.uk, or web.google.co.uk or why not just google.co.uk? Many web developers have seen the light and make sure that their websites work even when a sub-domain is omitted. Try browsing to google.co.uk for example, or yahoo.com, or digg.com, they all work just as well as the same domain names with the Ws. Forward Slash is killing me So now that we have freed up the sub-domain, let’s make some good use of it. How many times have you heard an advert for a website followed by ‘forward slash deals’ or similar. Forward slash gives us another three syllable description of a single punctuation character. Easy to type, annoying to verbalize. It sounds either crude or demonic, and the alternative ‘stroke’ is equally cringe-worthy. We like dots. DotCom is easy to say – and with sub-domains we can ditch the slashes and strokes in favor of the smallest punctuation mark with the shortest name. Try these examples... www.google.co.uk/adwords contains 22 syllables yet adwords.google.co.uk just 10. That’s less than half the time to read, less than half to remember and 17% less to type. If your website sells cars and bikes, you might currently use www.123autos.com/cars and www.123autos.com/bikes. How much more succinct it would be to use 123autos.com for the main website, cars.123autos.com for the car pages, and bikes.123autos.com for the bike pages? Drop ‘em This campaign is to encourage people to forget that WWW ever existed. Don’t type it, don’t speak it, and complain to every website that still requires it. Drop the forward slashes, strokes and hyphens too. The only punctuation that should be used is the mighty yet humble dot and to achieve this, sub-domains are your loyal friends. Let’s make the World Wide Web an easier place to talk about.

Kushal Sharma: What is the vision behind Miro? Nicholas Reville: There's an opportunity to build a new, open mass medium of online television. We're developing the Miro Internet TV platform so that watching Internet video channels will be as easy as watching TV and broadcasting a channel will be open to everyone. Unlike traditional TV, everyone will have a voice. KS: Does PCF finance the entire project or do you have any other contributors? NR: We have tons of help from volunteers – translating the software, coding, testing, and providing user support. We would not be able to do nearly enough without our community. KS: Are the developers full-time PCF employees or is it similar to other Open Source projects where people voluntarily contribute to the community in their spare-time? NR: We have 6 full-time developers and also volunteers. We're a hybrid model, like Mozilla. KS: Please highlight the most crucial features of Miro, and the idea behind having those features as part of this application. NR: The most crucial feature of Miro is the ability to download and play video RSS feeds. It's a truly open way to distribute video online. Using RSS means that creators can publish with any company they want and users can bring together video from multiple sources into one application. KS: How many languages is Miro translated into? NR: Miro is at least partially translated into more than 40 languages, but we always need helping revising and improving the translations. KS: How is Miro different from other players from the technological perspective? NR: Above all, Miro is open-source. That means that anyone can work on the code, improve, and customize it. Beyond this, Miro is unique in a number of ways. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It can play almost any video format. And it has more HD content available than any other Internet TV application. KS: Are the Torrent download capabilities as well developed as any other standalone Bit Torrent Client? Please tell us something more about it's download capabilities, the share ratio, configurable upload limits while downloading the torrents etc. compared to other software? NR: Our current version of Miro keeps the BitTorrent capabilities very simple and doesn't provide many options. We think that most users don't even notice when they are downloading a torrent feed, however, we want to expand our options and features for power users in future versions – expect much more bit torrent control in 3 months or so. KS: What type of support do you have for Miro? NR: Most of our support is provided user-to-user in the discussion forums – they are very useful, actually. In addition, because we are an open project, anyone can file a bug or even fix a bug. In the long-term this means we will have a more stable user experience than closed competitors. KS: With a host of TV channels and video content going online, viewers could really use a common solution for all their media needs rather than keeping tabs on multiple sources. How do you see Miro being instrumental in providing this? NR: We think that an open platform for video is the only way to create a unified experience for video. Miro is the only really open Internet video solution right now and we think we have a crucial role to play in unifying Internet TV in an open way. KS: Does Miro download Internet TV programs and store it on the hard disk or does it stream live media like any other online service? NR: For now, Miro downloads everything that's watched. This is useful in two key ways: first, you can watch HD video with no skipping or buffering delays. Second, you can move those files onto any external device, with no DRM or other restrictions. In the future we may add a streaming option for some special cases, or the ability to start watching while the download is in progress. KS: Subscription-free content is a great gift that viewers get with Internet TV, however, bandwidth issues could be a concern for some users. What minimum bandwidth requirements would you suggest for satisfactory Internet TV performance on Miro? Furthermore, does Miro have an alternate solution for users having low Internet bandwidth? NR: Miro actually works better than most Internet video solutions for low bandwidth users. On a dial-up connection, streaming video solutions are unusable. Miro will download videos in those circumstances – it may happen slowly, but once you have the video you can watch it full speed with no skipping. KS: I remember a statement on the PCF site saying “Miro is designed to eliminate gatekeepers”. Could you please elaborate on this? NR: Miro works with open standards and is designed to be decentralized, like the web. That means that users can use Miro to connect directly to any video publisher – they don't need our permission and the files don't travel through our servers. Companies like Joost design their software to be highly centralized so that they can control both users and creators. It's time to leave that model behind. KS: So far, what has the response been like? NR: Response has been great. Last month alone, we had more than 200,000 downloads and we've been growing with each release. I expect that when we release version 1.0 in November we'll see even faster growth. KS: What are your future plans for Miro in terms of releases, updates, functionality, etc.? NR: After version 1.0 is released, we'll be making major changes to Miro to improve performance and add an extension system that will give people new ways of customizing the software to fit their needs. KS: To me, Miro’s agenda is a lot more than simply creating a good player. You’re attempting to change the face of Internet Video and the way it’s being hosted right now. How would you describe the future of Miro and Internet Video to our readers? NR: We want Miro to push online video in an open direction. We're hoping to build the best video experience possible, something that can be a true substitute for traditional television. But that doesn't mean we want to control the future of online video – we want other people to build open video distribution platforms as well. Openness is vital to the future of our mass media. KS: What other projects is the PCF involved in? NR: Right now, PCF is exclusively focused on making video more open and Miro is at the center of that. KS: Thank you for your time Nicholas, and good luck developing Miro!

Making a Change For the next few months, the Center of Excellence paid off. Projects were identifying services early in the lifecycle. Those same projects were successfully identifying other potential consumers of these new services. Implementation technologies were being chosen correctly and interface design was being properly done. Most importantly, everyone felt the SOA effort was on track. By this time, it had been almost two years since Spencer's team developed the Customer Information Service for the auto insurance and home insurance divisions. While these two groups were very happy with the results, no additional teams had leveraged it. Outside of the annuity project, this wasn't a case of projects going in another direction; it was more due to lack of opportunities. That was about to change. Spencer was eating lunch in the cafeteria when Ramesh walked up. "Mind if I join you, Spencer?" "Hey Ramesh, it's been quite some time. Go ahead and pull up a chair." "Do you remember two years ago you tried to convince Ryan to use your Customer Information Service?" "I sure do. I didn't want to show my face in the annuity area for about a month after that. He really wasn't very receptive to the idea." "Well, I have some good news and some better news for you. The good news is that about six months later, Ryan decided to leave Advasco. The better news is that we've now got a major initiative to revamp a number of our systems in the annuity department. I'd like to take advantage of the Customer Information Service as part of that effort." "That's good news Ramesh. I didn't harbor any resentment towards Ryan, but I'm certainly happy about having another potential consumer for the Customer Information Service. I'll put you in touch with the service manager for it." "Thanks Spencer. That would be great. We're just getting started on our architecture, so the timing is perfect." "Let me know if you run into any problems. I'm still part of the SOA Center of Excellence, so it's still my job to make sure it goes well!" Spencer put Ramesh in contact with the service manager for the Customer Information Service, Maria. Maria had recently transferred over after her work on the account maintenance effort, and now had responsibilities for the Customer Information Service. In the meeting with Ramesh, she brought her technical lead, Craig, with her "Spencer told me that you're interested in utilizing the Customer Information Service in some of the new systems you're building in the annuity department, Ramesh." "That's right. We're rewriting a number of our systems, and based on what I remembered from Spencer two years ago, I thought we might be able to leverage the service." "Great, I'd be happy to help you out. This is Craig, the technical lead who covers the Customer Information Service. He's here if you've got any technical questions. Have you had a chance to review the information available in the service repository?" "I have. I reviewed the service interface, and while it certainly looks like there's enough there to warrant using the service rather than building our own, there's also a number of additional things that we'll need." Craig responded, "What kind of changes are you looking for? Are there new operations that you need that are specific to the annuity area?" Ramesh said, "There are two or three operations that we'd like to see, but most of the changes are actually in the message schemas for the existing operations. There are some additional attributes that we need, and some of the relationships between the attributes are different in our representation." For the rest of the meeting, Ramesh and Craig went through the changes that Ramesh wanted to be made to accommodate his needs. In the end, it was clear that some changes to the existing schemas would have to be made. Maria asked, "We're going to need to go back and look over these changes, along with the integration approach for your existing database. What does the schedule for your efforts currently look like?" Ramesh replied, "We're still in the initial stages of planning, which is why I wanted to make sure I talked to you now. Right now, the project sponsors would like to have something within six months, but they also know that nine months is far more likely. Since I have some flexibility in my schedule, why don't you take a week to look into the effort required for the changes, and let's work out the schedule then. Does that work for you?" "That works for me. We'll get back to you next week with what we think it will take to implement the changes." On the way back to their desks, Craig commented to Maria, "You know, while I don't have any concerns about getting the work done for Ramesh, I do have some concerns on how these changes are going to impact our existing consumers. Some of these changes are going to break the existing interfaces." Maria said, "That is a concern. I know that there aren't any resources available to do any work on the home insurance side of things. Any suggestions on how we should handle this?" Craig said, "Well, we definitely should make the existing consumers aware that a change is going to be made and at least get a clear idea of what the impact will be. If you can take care of that, I can take this to Spencer and the SOA Center of Excellence, and see what suggestions they have." "That sounds like a good plan to me," replied Maria Over the next week, the Customer Information Service team did the analysis required to estimate how long the changes would take to implement. Maria used the communication features of the service registry/repository to push out a message to the existing consumers about the pending change, and as she suspected, the biggest problem was going to be the home insurance system. Due to other priorities, the earliest they could even begin to make changes to their consumer would be nine months from now, potentially three months after the service needed to go live. Craig met with Spencer and explained the problem to him. Spencer agreed to facilitate a decision-making session to explore the different options. Representatives from all of the existing consumers were there, along with Ramesh, Craig, and Maria Spencer started the meeting, "I'm sure all of you saw the notification from Maria last week that some changes are necessary to the Customer Information Service in order to support its usage by the annuity department. The problem that we face is that these changes will break the existing consumers of the service, and not all of you can make the changes to your systems in the currently proposed timeframe. Let's start out by listing all possible options, regardless of whether we all presently agree or disagree on their viability." Craig started out, "Well, if we're listing all possible options, the first one is toupdate the service, and then get whatever push we need from management to get resources allocated to the consuming systems so they can make the changes in the time required." Maria replied, "Come on Craig, you know that we can't just pull resources off projects that easily." Jason, from the auto insurance department, added, "Aren't all of these changes a result of the annuity department? Why can't they just include modifying our applications within their project scope? They already have resources allocated to their project." Paul, from the home insurance department, replied, "Do you really want some developers that have never seen your application before mucking around in your code? I know I don't." Spencer said, "Let's remember, we're listing all options, regardless of whether we all know that the option won't fly. We want to make sure we've explored all of the options. I'm going to just leave this as one option, since we still wind up with the same result, regardless of where the resources come from. I'll capture the concerns about the option." Paul, from the home insurance group, added, "Okay, here's another option. Why don't we leave the existing service in place, and simply have the annuity project write a new service that just they use. Then, none of us using the existing service would be impacted." Craig replied, "That's true, but isn't that going against everything we're trying to do with SOA? I thought we were trying to avoid redundant implementations of the same capability." Spencer replied, "Duly noted, Craig. Just as with the last option, let's keep it on the board, and I'll make sure that your concerns are captured. Paul, that option actually triggered another one in my mind. In addition to having Maria's team write the new service for the annuity system, why couldn't they also keep the existing version of the service available in production for the rest of you? You can then migrate as your schedules allow." Paul and Jason both replied in tandem, "That would work for us!" Maria jumped into the conversation, "While I'm sure it would, that sets a very dangerous precedent for my team. How many versions of the service are we going to have to maintain? While it's a little bit better when all the implementations are owned by one team, we still have multiple implementations." Jason then asked, "Isn't there a way to make the new service backwards compatible with the messages associated with the old service? That way, Maria's teamwould only have one implementation, but we could each continue to use our existing interface." Spencer replied, "That's a very good question Jason. While we all agree that the service interface needs to change to support the annuity department's requirements, I don't know that any of us have thought about whether we can easily transform messages associated with the previous version to messages that will work with the new version, and vice versa. Craig, you're the one most familiar with the new proposed schemas. Do you think we could leverage XSLT to apply transformations for backward compatibility?" "Yes, I think it's possible. The only concern I have is what impact this will have on the service implementation. Working with XSLT within Java code isn't the easiest thing to do, and as we make future modifications, that's just going to get uglier and uglier." Spencer said, "There's another option for that. A year ago, we put some XML appliances in place for security purposes. I know they have XSLT capabilities and they're already in the request path." Craig replied, "Of all the options, I think that one would work out the best. I really don't like the idea of maintaining multiple versions of the service, and having to maintain all of that XSLT code within the service is only slightly better. Allowing the annuity group to write their own goes against everything we're trying to do with SOA." Spencer said, "Well, we know where Craig stands. Are there any other options that we should look into? No? Well, what does everyone think?" Paul was first, "We know that we're not going to find resources to make the changes in all of the consumers at the same time, so that option is out. Likewise, it doesn't make sense for Ramesh's team to write their own service given our SOA goals, so that one is out, too. As for whether Maria's team maintains two versions of the service or utilizes some transformations somewhere, it really doesn't matter to me. From my perspective, both options give me the freedom to migrate at the time that works best for me." Jason immediately added, "I agree with everything Paul just said." Ramesh then offered his opinion, "Well, I certainly know that I don't want to give up any of my developers to work on Jason's and Paul's systems. We need every developer we can get right now. As for writing our own service, we've already been down that path two years ago, and now we're obviously changing the system again. If we had migrated to the service earlier, it would be one less thing that we had to touch as part of these changes. As long as Maria's team delivers my service on time for my projects, it doesn't matter to me what Maria's team chooses to do on their side." Spencer replied, "Well Maria, it looks like everyone else thinks that we need a solution that will allow all of the consumers to continue to use their existing interfaces or the new one, but the details of how that happens is completely up to you and Craig." Maria said, "Let's not jump to conclusions yet. If I'm going to maintain multiple versions, I need some kind of guarantee that the existing consumers will eventually migrate to the new version. If my team allows continuous use of the old interface for 12 months from the time the new interface goes live, would that be an adequate time to complete whatever modifications are necessary?" Jason and Paul thought about it and decided that this was reasonable. For the past three years, they'd averaged an update every nine months. Maria said, "I'll make sure to remind you, early and often, that the old version and its associated interfaces are going to be decommissioned. In the meantime, I'd like to first get the new version built. I'm going to need to keep both versions around initially just to compare messages. Ramesh's team can begin using the new service, and…" As she was talking, she stopped mid-sentence. Spencer said, "Is there a problem, Maria?" She replied, "Well, I was just thinking, how are we going to avoid having two URL's out there? The existing consumers are using a URL that points to the XML appliances, right? We want to apply transformations to that path. What URL will Ramesh's team use? We don't want to try to apply transformations to their requests." Spencer said, "Fortunately, I don't think we'll need to do that. We'll need to talk to the team that operates the appliances to be sure, but I'm pretty sure that the appliances can apply processing based upon incoming attributes on the message. As long as we can determine which requests came from which consumer based on the message content, we should be able to control when transformations happen, while having all the existing consumers using a single URL. We'll obviously need multiple URLs behind the intermediary, but that will be hidden from the consumers." Maria replied, "Okay, that eases some of my fears. Just make sure you find out quickly whether the appliances can handle it or not. Until we find out, can we set up a simple routing rule so that requests from the annuity group go to the new service, while the old ones stay where they are? That way, Ramesh can use the new service as soon as it is available, and Craig and his team can start working on the transformations for backward compatibility. I'd like to wait and see how that work goes before deciding whether to leave both versions out there for 12 months or to leverage the intermediary. We've never used that functionality before, and I don't want to take a chance on impacting Ramesh's schedule in case we run into difficulty. By keeping both services available in production at first, we can eliminate any dependency between the decommissioning of the old service and Ramesh's schedule." Craig added, "From my point of view, that shouldn't be a problem. I can treat the new version as if it were a completely new service, as long as the intermediary shields the consumers from that change. I will need to check how we can manage both versions at the source code level, though." Maria responded, "Good points, Craig. Taking all of this into account, I think this approach poses the least risk overall." Spencer said, "Then we're all in agreement, right? Maria's team will build a new version of the service according to the new interface, and the old interface will be available for 12 months from the time the new service is deployed. Initially, both versions will be available in production, but Maria can decommission the old service before 12 months are up, so long as the new version can be made backwards compatible via XSLT transformations. Maria will notify all consumers prior to decommissioning the old service, since regression testing will be required to ensure that backward compatibility has been maintained. She will also notify all consumers as we get closer to the 12 month cutoff when the older interface will no longer be supported." Everyone in the meeting agreed with this approach, and the teams went off and made it happen. Craig's team investigated the best way to apply the transformations, testing them using the latest Java libraries, as well as the XML appliances that Advasco had recently installed. They found that the XML appliances performed very well, and kept the programming model of the service very clean. While the Java libraries performed satisfactorily, the resulting programming model was not as clean as the team desired. With the use of the routing rules in the appliance, they were able to remove the older version of the service from production, while still supporting the older messages for the full 12 months as promised.

SBS 2008 installation The installation process is split into two sections: Installation of the operating system and other files to the disk Installation of everything that makes it SBS 2008 You cannot separate the two or stop the second half from happening; although, you will be required to provide input to the server at each stage. Operating system installation If you are performing a migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, you must have your USB memory stick with the SBSAnswerFile.xml file loaded onto the root directory. You must also have a network cable plugged into the SBS server, connected to a hub or switch, for the installation to succeed. Migrating to SBS 2008 in a virtual environment If you are installing SBS 2008 into a virtual machine, such as under Hyper-V from Microsoft then you cannot simply plug in a USB memory stick as USB ports are not available within the virtual machine. For the install process to read it, either you must add it as a pass-through hard disk or you can create a Virtual Floppy Disk with the file on it. To add the USB Disk as a hard disk in Hyper-V, mark it as offline in the DISKPART tool and then add it as a drive before starting the virtual machine. For detailed instructions, take a look at http://davidoverton.com/r.ashx?12. If you have a DVD for the system, insert the DVD and boot the system and follow the instructions to boot from a DVD for your system. You will normally have to press a key to start the process. You will see the grey bar progressing across the screen as the DVD is read. If you have a system from a hardware manufacturer then the operating system may already be installed on the hard disk. If this is the case, simply turn on the machine. If your machine will not boot from the DVD and you have a DVD drive on the system, then check the BIOS settings to ensure that the DVD is the first boot drive. You will then be asked to set the Language to install, Time and currency format, and Keyboard or input method to match your needs. If you are migrating, you must ensure that you have installed the USB memory stick before you click on the Install Now button. However, if you are performing a clean installation, then simply press the button. If you wish to carry out a trial installation that gives you 30 days without activating your installation and fixing your hardware to your product key, do not enter a product key into the Product key box. If you are performing your final installation, then enter the key from the SBS 2008 package or the Certificate of Authenticity on the system case if SBS was pre-installed on the server. If you do not enter a product key, you will be prompted to enter the key within 30 days. You can extend the time without a key, but ultimately, you will need to activate SBS 2008 to continue using it. Next, accept the license and click on Next. Select the Custom (advanced) installation option. You should see one or more disks presented to you in a list. There are two schools of thought here on how to configure the first disk. One school has all the data on the first (or primary) partition and the other creates two partitions and splits the data and the operating system. The idea here is that the system partition can be correctly sized and backed up with a different strategy to the data partition. You can also easily move the second partition onto larger disks should there be a need to in the future. There are merits to both arguments, but if you only have a single disk, I would simply select this and install SBS 2008 to this disk without partitioning first. For SBS 2008, this should be absolutely fine as your data needs are not going to grow too rapidly. If you do have significant data requirements with multiple disks, then having the data and system separate does make sense. No hard disks showing If you do not see a hard disk shown in the screen, maybe because you need to load RAID disk drivers, click on the Load Driver button and insert the CD or floppy disk that came with your computer or motherboard. Provided your system supports Windows 2008, this will resolve this problem. Let's have a look at the following screenshot: Click on Next and the actual installation will finally start and take over an hour to complete. You will find yourself watching the progress on a screen similar to the one shown in the following screenshot. There is no interaction to this process, which means it can just be left on its own; however, it is best to check in ever so often to ensure that an error message has not interrupted the installation. The only error I've seen was when there was a read error from my DVD (I had scratched it!). I cleaned the disk and re-started the install again without any issue.

Advanced Row Striping Row striping can be as simple as two lines of code to alternate the background color: $(document).ready(function() {   $('table.sortable tbody tr:odd').addClass('odd');   $('table.sortable tbody tr:even').addClass('even'); }); If we declare background colors for the odd and even classes as follows, we can see the rows in alternating shades of gray: tr.even {   background-color: #eee; } tr.odd {   background-color: #ddd; } While this code works fine for simple table structures, if we introduce non‑standard rows into the table, such as sub-headings, the basic odd-even pattern no longer suffices. For example, suppose we have a table of news items grouped by year, with columns for date, headline, author, and topic. One way to express this information is to wrap each year's news items in a <tbody> element and use <th colspan="4"> for the subheading. Such a table's HTML (in abridged form) would look like this: <table class="striped"> <thead> <tr> <th>Date</th> <th>Headline</th> <th>Author</th> <th class="filter-column">Topic</th> </tr> </thead><tbody> <tr> <th colspan="4">2007</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Mar 11</td> <td>SXSWi jQuery Meetup</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>conference</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Feb 28</td> <td>jQuery 1.1.2</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>release</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Feb 21</td> <td>jQuery is OpenAjax Compliant</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>standards</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Feb 20</td> <td>jQuery and Jack Slocum's Ext</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>third-party</td> </tr></tbody><tbody> <tr> <th colspan="4">2006</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Dec 27</td> <td>The Path to 1.1</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>source</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Dec 18</td> <td>Meet The People Behind jQuery</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>announcement</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Dec 13</td> <td>Helping you understand jQuery</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>tutorial</td> </tr></tbody><tbody> <tr> <th colspan="4">2005</th> </tr> <tr> <td>Dec 17</td> <td>JSON and RSS</td> <td>John Resig</td> <td>miscellaneous</td> </tr></tbody></table> With separate CSS styles applied to <th> elements within <thead> and <tbody>, a snippet of the table might look like this: To ensure that the alternating gray rows do not override the color of the subheading rows, we need to adjust the selector expression: $(document).ready(function() { $('table.striped tbody tr:not([th]):odd').addClass('odd'); $('table.striped tbody tr:not([th]):even').addClass('even');}); The added selector, :not([th]), removes any table row that contains a <th> from the matched set of elements. Now the table will look like this: Three-color Alternating Pattern There may be times when we want to apply more complex striping. For example, we can apply a pattern of three alternating row colors rather than just two. To do so, we first need to define another CSS rule for the third row. We'll also reuse the odd and even styles for the other two, but add more appropriate class names for them: tr.even,tr.first { background-color: #eee;}tr.odd,tr.second { background-color: #ddd;}tr.third { background-color: #ccc;} To apply this pattern, we start the same way as the previous example—by selecting all rows that are descendants of a <tbody>, but filtering out the rows that contain a <th<. This time, however, we attach the .each() method so that we can use its built-in index: $(document).ready(function() { $('table.striped tbody tr').not('[th]').each(function(index) { //Code to be applied to each element in the matched set. });}); To make use of the index, we can assign our three classes to a numeric key: 0, 1, or 2. We'll do this by creating an object, or map: $(document).ready(function() { var classNames = { 0: 'first', 1: 'second', 2: 'third' }; $('table.striped tbody tr').not('[th]').each(function(index) { // Code to be applied to each element in the matched set. });}); Finally, we need to add the class that corresponds to those three numbers, sequentially, and then repeat the sequence. The modulus operator, designated by a %, is especially convenient for such calculations. A modulus returns the remainder of one number divided by another. This modulus, or remainder value, will always range between 0 and one less than the dividend. Using 3 as an example, we can see this pattern: 3/3 = 1, remainder 0.4/3 = 1, remainder 1.5/3 = 1, remainder 2.6/3 = 2, remainder 0.7/3 = 2, remainder 1.8/3 = 3, remainder 2. And so on. Since we want the remainder range to be 0 – 2, we can use 3 as the divisor (second number) and the value of index as the dividend (first number). Now we simply put that calculation in square brackets after classNames to retrieve the corresponding class from the object variable as the .each() method steps through the matched set of rows: $(document).ready(function() { var classNames = { 0: 'first', 1: 'second', 2: 'third' }; $('table.striped tbody tr').not('[th]').each(function(index) { $(this).addClass(classNames[index % 3]); });}); With this code in place, we now have the table striped with three alternating background colors: We could of course extend this pattern to four, five, six, or more background colors by adding key-value pairs to the object variable and increasing the value of the divisor in classNames[index % n].

Introduction Business needs often necessitate data migration from a smaller, less secure database to a higher end, faster database server with a more reliable availability. A typical scenario is the migration of data from a desktop sized database such as MS Access or Fox Pro to any other higher end database servers such as MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 or SQL Anywhere Server. Most of the database vendors provide tools to migrate from third party to their own database servers. In his three previous articles, the author has described the built-in tools to migrate from MS Access to SQL 2000 Server, SQL Anywhere Server, and from Oracle 10G XE to SQL Anywhere server.   In an earlier article on this site, the author showed how you may connect to an MS Access 2003 database and execute SQL statements using the Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 tool. In this tutorial the author shows you how to migrate an MS Access database to an Oracle 10G XE Server delineating all the steps involved in the migration process. Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 with this latest version is sometimes called the Migration version as it supports migrating data from three vendors (MySQL, SQL Server and MS Access) to an Oracle database. In fact, it has been designed to migrate from more than one version of MS Access. This feature was not available in the version 1.1 of this tool. Overview of this Tutorial Like in the earlier article, a simple MS Access 2003 database file will be created with just one table, a query and a linked table. This database file, about 292 KB, will be migrated to Oracle 10G XE database. Oracle 10G XE, by design, can have just one database on a computer. However, you can have separate applications by having different user schemas. Oracle 10G XE comes bundled with a sample database schema and data which can be accessed by using the credentials, username hr with a password hr. For the purposes of this example a new user will be created and his authentication will be used for creating necessary migration related schemas to be stored in a repository. This will become clear as you follow the various details and the steps. Once the ‘Repository’ is created then you can begin by capturing the metadata of the source followed by converting the captured source information into Oracle specific model where a mapping between the source data and the Oracle will be accomplished. After this process, you generate the data definition language script which will create the Oracle objects such as tables, views, etc. In the final step these tables will be populated by transferring the data from the source to Oracle 10G XE. MS Access 2003 Source An empty MS Access database file TestMigration.mdb is created in the default directory, My Documents. An Employees table will be imported, an Orders table will be linked and a TestQuery based on selecting a few columns of Employees table will be created. The Employees table and the Orders table may be found in the Northwind Database that ships with most of the MS Access versions. Creating a New User in Oracle 10G XE As described in the overview, the MS Access Database will be migrated to a User schema in Oracle 10G XE, but this requires reating this schema. Only a user with DBA privileges can create a new user. Open the Homepage of the Oracle 10G XE Server. Login with the credentials you supplied while installing the software where the user is system and the password is what you chose at that time, as shown in the next figure.   This gives you access to several of the tools that you can use to administer as well as work with database objects. Click on the icon for Administration and follow the drop-downs till you get to the menu item, Create User, as shown in the next figure. Create a new user MigrateAccess with some password that you choose and confirm. Keep the account status unlocked. This uses the default tablespace called USERS. The default user privilege does not include the DBA role but for this example, the DBA is also included by placing a check mark in this selection. Also several other system wide privileges are also granted. Please follow steps described in the earlier article for the details. The next figure shows all the details filled in. After this when you click the Create button you will have created the user, MigrateAccess. When you click the button Create, you will notice that the ‘bread crumb’ will change to Manage Database Users. You will notice that the new user MigrateAccess has been added to the list of users, as shown in the next figure. As no expiry was set for this user in the previous screen, you can notice that there is no expiry shown in the following screen. Now if you logout (remember you logged in as SYSTEM) and login with the new credentials, MigrateAccess/[chosen password] you can access all the tools on the database. Of course, all the objects (tables, views, etc) will be empty. Creating the Repository to Store Schemas Migration using this tool requires an Oracle database schema to store the Meta data it collects about the source. You will create a connection from the Oracle SQL Developer to the Oracle 10 XE, in which, you just finished creating a new user schema. This user’s schema is where the repository contents will be stored. Making a connection to the Oracle Right click on the Connections node, and from the drop-down menu select New Connection. This brings up the New / Select Database Connection (this has been described in the earlier referenced article) window. It comes up with the default connection to an Oracle database. It even recognizes the local Oracle 10G XE, capturing all its details as shown. You need to provide a Connection Name, a Username and a Password. The connection name is your choice (herein called conMigrate) and the user name and password is the same that was used while creating the new user MigrateAccess. When you click on the button ‘Test’, a (success) status message will be posted to this form above the Help button, as shown in the next figure after a little while, preceded by a little progress window. Now click on the OK button on the New / Select Database Connection window. This adds the conMigrate connection to the list of Connections as shown in the next figure. Notice that objects are all empty as we discussed earlier. Create Repository Click on the main menu item Migrate. From the drop-down, click on Repository Management –> Create Repository as shown in the next figure. This brings up the Create Repository window showing the connection conMigrate as shown in the next figure. You may connect or disconnect this from the tool as long as the authentication information is available. Now click on the Create button. This brings up the Installing Repository window which reports the various objects installed and finally shows a message “Repository Built Successfully” as shown in the next figure. Click on the Close button on this window. Now login to the Oracle 10G XE with the credentials for the user MigrateAccess, and click on the object browser. Now you see all the Tables, Views, etc in the repository as shown. You will notice that either two more windows, named captured and converted models appear below the Connections node in Oracle SQL Developer, or if they are not found in the Connections node, you may find in the submenu of the main menu, View. The next figure shows the submenus of the View menu. Connect to the Source Database Right click on the connection node and establish a new connection so that you can connect to the source database, conTestMigration as shown in the next figure. When you click the Test button you will see a message that gets posted to the screen indicating the connection was a success. Click on the Connect button. This adds the conTestMigrate connection to the list of Connections in the navigator window.

Database relationship is hard to maintain even for a mid-sized PHP/MySQL application, particularly, when multiple levels of relationships are involved because complicated SQL queries are needed. CakePHP offers a simple yet powerful feature called 'object relational mapping' or ORM to handle database relationships with ease.In CakePHP, relations between the database tables are defined through association—a way to represent the database table relationship inside CakePHP. Once the associations are defined in models according to the table relationships, we are ready to use its wonderful functionalities. Using CakePHP's ORM, we can save, retrieve, and delete related data into and from different database tables with simplicity, in a better way—no need to write complex SQL queries with multiple JOINs anymore! In this article by Ahsanul Bari and Anupom Syam, we will have a deep look at various types of associations and their uses. In particular, the purpose of this article is to learn: How to figure out association types from database table relations How to define different types of associations in CakePHP models How to utilize the association for fetching related model data How to relate associated data while saving There are basically 3 types of relationship that can take place between database tables: one-to-one one-to-many many-to-many The first two of them are simple as they don't require any additional table to relate the tables in relationship. In this article, we will first see how to define associations in models for one-to-one and one-to-many relations. Then we will look at how to retrieve and delete related data from, and save data into, database tables using model associations for these simple associations. Defining One-To-Many Relationship in Models To see how to define a one-to-many relationship in models, we will think of a situation where we need to store information about some authors and their books and the relation between authors and books is one-to-many. This means an author can have multiple books but a book belongs to only one author (which is rather absurd, as in real life scenario a book can also have multiple authors). We are now going to define associations in models for this one-to-many relation, so that our models recognize their relations and can deal with them accordingly. Time for Action: Defining One-To-Many Relation Create a new database and put a fresh copy of CakePHP inside the web root. Name the database whatever you like but rename the cake folder to relationship. Configure the database in the new Cake installation. Execute the following SQL statements in the database to create a table named authors, CREATE TABLE `authors` ( `id` int( 11 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY , `name` varchar( 127 ) NOT NULL , `email` varchar( 127 ) NOT NULL , `website` varchar( 127 ) NOT NULL ); Create a books table in our database by executing the following SQL commands: CREATE TABLE `books` ( `id` int( 11 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY , `isbn` varchar( 13 ) NOT NULL , `title` varchar( 64 ) NOT NULL , `description` text NOT NULL , `author_id` int( 11 ) NOT NULL ) Create the Author model using the following code (/app/models/authors.php): <?php class Author extends AppModel{ var $name = 'Author'; var $hasMany = 'Book';} ?> Use the following code to create the Book model (/app/models/books.php): <?phpclass Book extends AppModel{ var $name = 'Book'; var $belongsTo = 'Author';}?> Create a controller for the Author model with the following code: (/app/controllers/authors_controller.php): <?phpclass AuthorsController extends AppController { var $name = 'Authors'; var $scaffold;}?>   Use the following code to create a controller for the Book model (/app/controllers/books_controller.php): <?php class BooksController extends AppController { var $name = 'Books'; var $scaffold; } ?> Now, go to the following URLs and add some test data: http://localhost/relationship/authors/ and http://localhost/relationship/books/ What Just Happened? We have created two tables: authors and books for storing author and book information. A foreign-key named author_id is added to the books table to establish the one-to-many relation between authors and books. Through this foreign-key, an author is related to multiple books, as well as, a book is related to one single author. By Cake convention, the name of a foreign-key should be underscored, singular name of target model, suffixed with _id. Once the database tables are created and relations are established between them, we can define associations in models. In both of the model classes, Author and Book, we defined associations to represent the one-to-many relationship between the corresponding two tables. CakePHP provides two types of association: hasMany and belongsTo to define one-to-many relations in models. These associations are very appropriately named: As an author 'has many' books, Author model should have hasMany association to represent its relation with the Book model. As a book 'belongs to' one author, Book model should have belongsTo association to denote its relation with the Author model. In the Author model, an association attribute $hasMany is defined with the value Book to inform the model that every author can be related to many books. We also added a $belongsTo attribute in the Book model and set its value to Author to let the Book model know that every book is related to only one author. After defining the associations, two controllers were created for both of these models with scaffolding to see how the associations are working.