All1 Source technologies

How to Recover Linux Data after Hard Drive Crash?

Naggie — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 10:29:11 +0000

Is there problem with your Linux hard drive that abruptly get crashed every time when you boot your system? Or you are not able to boot your Linux computer and access data from it? The problems arise due to various reasons, causing hard drive crash.

Most commonly, the problem occurs due to missing or corrupt data structures of your Linux hard drive. Due to the same, the operating system can not locate stored files on the hard drive and access them. At this point, you need to opt for Linux data recovery solutions to get your valuable data recovered.

Symptoms that indicate the crash of a Linux hard drive: Such symptoms include the following ones:

Your Linux operating system-based computer does not boot up.
You encounter various error messages, such as “No Fixed Disk Present” or “DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER”
Black or blank screen after you power up your system.
System reboots, freezes, or stops responding frequently.
“Operating system not found” and “Drive not formatted” messages.

Hard drive crash can be caused by various reasons and renders entire system inaccessible. The most common reasons of Linux hard drive crash are as given below:

Boot sector virus or damaged MBR (Master Boot Record).
Corrupted or damaged file system of Linux hard drive.
Missing or damaged system files or operating system.
Virus infection.
Corrupt Superblock or other critical meta data structures.

In order to fix a crashed Linux hard drive and perform Data Recovery Linux, you are required to format it and reinstall operating system. This process replaces all the missing, corrupt, or damaged system resources and brings the hard drive back to life. However, it also removes all the data from hard drive and create needs of Linux recovery.

The best possible way is to recover i.e. recovery, and efficient commercial software, known as linux recovery software. They use high-end scanning techniques to carry out in-depth scan of entire Linux hard drive to extract all lost data from it.

Source: www.programmersheaven.com

CHKDSK/F Fails to Fix File System Problems

Naggie — Mon, 31 May 2010 10:44:05 +0000

One of the most common reasons for unbootability of the computer system is the file system corruption in Windows XP. And for damage in file system, the reasons responsible for that are unexpected system shutdown (due to power outage or human mistakes), virus infection, MFT (Master File Table) damage, and more.

In order to get past the corruption issues in a Windows XP system is by executing CHKDSK/F command. This command checks the physical and logical integrity of the file system and repairs it in case of any damage.

Though the command, in most of the situations, is a life-saver, but do not guarantee 100% success in every life system corruption issue. In such cases, when the CHKDSK command fails to repair, an ideal alternative is to reinstall Windows XP and restore data from an updated backup. However, in case no backup is available, the user can easily recover data using a commercial Windows Recovery application.

Let’s consider a practical scenario that explains the above situation. You encounter the below error message at the startup of Windows XP operating system:

“C:\$MFT is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the chkdsk utility.”

After the above boot error message pops up, your system becomes unbootable and its data gets inaccessible. As suggested in the error message, when you run CHKDSK utility, you encounter another error message:

In the master file table (MFT) bitmap, CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap. Windows found problems with the file system. Run CHKDSK with the /F (fix) option to correct these.

As error message suggest, when you execute CHKDSK utility with ‘/F’ parameter, it shows the same error message. Since the system could not be started, the data saved in the Windows based hard drive remains inaccessible.

Resolution: In order to overcome the CHKDSK/F failure error message, follow the step mention below:

1. Reinstall Windows XP on your system.
2. Restore the data from an updated backup. In case no backup is available, use a commercial Windows Data Recovery utility.

Such windows data recovery tools use effective recovery techniques to perform complete recovery of all formatted files and folders.

Source: www.programmersheaven.com

Dynamic Open Source Languages Head to the Cloud

Naggie — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:37:35 +0000

For developers building applications with open source dynamic languages, the cloud is a key development area, and not just for network administrators looking for scale.

In terms of language usage, it is found that nearly 80 percent of developers are using Javascript, while both Python and Perl came in at 47 percent, PHP at 42 percent and Ruby at 31 percent

According to the director of engineering at ActiveState, Jeff Hobbs, this confirms a lot of basic hunches that dynamic languages are just increasing their usage in standard programming applications and especially in newer development such as the cloud application space.

While many developers are headed to the cloud, however it is being noted that nearly 43 percent of respondents had no plans yet for cloud development in the next 24 months.

Hobbs said, “You think about the development cycle that a large enterprises has- they can go anywhere from one year to three to five-year cycles”. For the people who have just released applications, it might still be three to five years before they can assess the value of the advantages that might be presented in the cloud.

For developers, there are a number of differences between developing for the cloud versus traditional deployment methods. Some of the differences depend on the type of cloud deployment being used.

According to principal analyst and partner at Redmonk, Stephen O’Grady, the differences with Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings are typically things such as the APIs used to access the storage layer. “For Platform-as-a-Service offerings that tend to be far more prescriptive, the differences can be relatively extensive, from a difference in the typical infrastructure software (e.g. databases) to the implementation of the development framework.”

Hobbs noted that since the cloud virtualizes multiple elements of an application deployment stack, including the server, it makes the actual languages used stand out more than they have in the past. He added that he has seen some subtle shifts in dynamic languages that make the languages more cloud-friendly.

According to Hobbs, it’s really important that the language developers’ use already has the library and frameworks already provided and supported. The dynamic languages become an advantage to cloud app development as you’re ready to use all the pieces that you need to use and they’re abstracted in the right way.”

Challenges to Cloud Development

The dynamic programming aspects of dynamic languages allow for fast development times as well. However, there are number of challenges that still face dynamic language developers.

Hobbs noted that having the required tooling for deployment is critical. He added that concerns around security are also a barrier- one that 40 percent of poll respondents identified as an issue.

According to Redmonk’s O’Grady, the dynamic languages themselves can evolve to take better advantages of the cloud, though the cloud vendors can help out there, too.

While there are changes to the language runtimes that could improve their ease of use in the cloud, it’s more likely that changes will come at the framework layer. And it’s likely that cloud offerings, moving forward, will increasingly support event-based frameworks to better take advantage of the concurrency that the cloud offers.”

Source: www.developer.com

How to overcome after Blackmal virus- Hard Drive Data Lost?

Suzanne — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:02:28 +0000

For the data to be deleted fro the hard drive, concerns the computer virus as one of the most common factor. Each and every computer virus is different and designed to harm a particular set of files.

Some of the common ways through which a computer virus can enter your system are downloading files from the Internet, attaching a virus-infected external storage media, and e-mails. Though the consequences of a virus attack vary from situation to situation, the most common outcome is permanent deletion of files.

In order to overcome the after-effects of any virus attack and access the files, the user needs to restore the files from an up-to-date backup. However, if in case no backup is available or backup is unable to restore required files, the user needs to opt for a commercial Hard Drive Recovery Software that can perform recovery of deleted files.

The list of computer virus is too long but the most common one is ‘Blackmal’ virus. This virus has till now infected more than 6,00,000 computer systems and resulted in huge data loss. The virus is competent enough to permanently delete eleven varied file types on the third of every month.

The virus is programmed to delete files not only from the system’s hard drive, but also from network-attached storage.

Prevention: To prevent the attack of Blackmal virus, you will need to follow the below mentioned prevention tips:

1.Always keeps an updated anti-virus installed on your system.

2. Always scan the external storage media before attaching it to your system.

3. Always scan an e-mail (specifically with an attachment) using an anti-virus application.

In case, the above prevention tips are not followed and your different file types have been deleted, then you will need to follow the below steps:

Restore the files from an adequate backup.

In case of failure of the restoration process, you will need to recover the files using an effective third-party Hard Drive Recovery Software.

A Hard Drive Recovery utility is a powerful utility that can scan virus infected media and recovers all lost files after virus attack. The tool is built with self-explanatory user-interface and needs no prior technical knowledge to perform recovery.

Know- how to resolve ‘IN_PAGE_ERROR’ running Microsoft Office Setup

Naggie — Mon, 24 May 2010 10:17:06 +0000

File system and hard disk issues can be due to a variety of problems, which includes power outages, improper system maintenance, virus infection, human errors, hardware problems, etc. When this type of problems occurs, then the consequences are directly reflected in operations like installing a new application, accessing an existing file or folder, repairing the existing installations, and many more. Thus, one can easily analyze the file system corruption. And In worst cases, you might need to reformat the entire hard drive partitions and seek the help of Partition http://www.all1tunes.comRecovery tools, especially when no data backup is available.

Let’s check out the problem, which can occur when trying to set up or repair Microsoft Office on a Windows hard disk. Specifically, when you attempt to repair or install Microsoft Office 2002 (XP), Microsoft Office 2003 or Microsoft Office 2007, the setup may exit silently without notifying or displaying any error message on screen. For say, when you try to install or repair Office, it prompts you to specify the Product Identification key, but exits unexpectedly.

For typical Office setup failure, you can examine the associated log file, which is created by Office Setup in \Temp folder in .txt format. This file might contain one of the below or similar log entries with different module and function:

Exception code: C0000006 IN_PAGE_ERROR Module: C:\WINDOWS\System32\msi.dll Function: 0×7642452f

Exception code: C0000006 IN_PAGE_ERROR Module: C:\WINDOWS\system32\IMAGEHLP.dll Function: 0×76c94afa

The depicted problem, as mentioned, is generally the result of file system damage or hard disk problems. Thus, to resolve the problem, consider implementing the solutions mentioned underneath:

‘Analyze’ and then ‘Defragment’ the hard disk using Disk Defragmenter tool. To do so, you must have administrative rights to access the partition/volume.

Repair the disk using Autochk.exe, Chkdsk.exe,, and Chkntfs.exe tools. If the problem persists, reformat the hard disk and restore the deleted data from backup. Use a Partition Recovery Software than any kind of backup issues.

Use of a Partition Recovery utility allows to scan the logically crashed hard disk and restore the lost/deleted partitions in just few simple steps.

Creating Complex, Secure Web Forms with PHP and HTML_QuickForm2

Naggie — Sat, 22 May 2010 11:24:01 +0000

For PHP developers, HTML_QuickForm2 PEAR package provides a programmatic interface for rigorously defining form controls, value requirements, and user notifications. Using HTML_QuickForm2 helps these developers create usable and secure Web forms without sacrificing visual appeal. This solution takes much of the guesswork out of secure forms development, allowing you to create robust forms with minimal time investment.

It will show you how to take advantage of HTML_QuickForm2 to streamline the creation and validation of complex HTML forms.

Installing HTML_QuickForm2

HTML_QuickForm 2 is a PEAR package, meaning you can install it using the PEAR package installer. Presuming you’re using the original installer, execute the following command to install HTML_QuickForm2:

%>pear install –onlyreqdeps HTML_QuickForm2-alpha

When installed, you can begin programmatically creating your forms.

Creating a Form with HTML_QuickForm2

HTML_QuickForm2 is the second incarnation of the aptly-named HTML_QuickForm, rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the object-oriented (OO) features in PHP 5. Therefore, if you’re not familiar with the OO development approach, it will take some time to get acquainted with the syntax because forms are created using a rigorous class structure.

Let’s see these examples that hopefully will help elucidate how you can use HTML_QuickForm2 is to create increasingly complex forms.

Figure-1:

Figure 1. Creating a Simple Form with HTML_QuickForm2

The form in Figure 1 can be created using approximately 25 lines of code, as shown below.


 require_once "HTML/QuickForm2.php";
 require_once 'HTML/QuickForm2/Renderer.php';
 $format = array(
 ''     => 'Newsletter Format:',
 'text' => 'Text',
 'html' => 'HTML'
 );
 $form = new HTML_QuickForm2('newsletter');
 $name = $form->addText('name')->setLabel('Your Name:');
 $email = $form->addText('email')->setLabel('Your E-mail Address:');
 $newsletter = $form->addSelect('format', null, array('options' => $format));
 $newsletter->setLabel('Preferred Newsletter Format:');
 $form->addElement('submit', null, 'Submit!');
 $renderer = HTML_QuickForm2_Renderer::factory('default');
 echo $form->render($renderer);
?>

HTML_QuickForm2 offers a series of methods, which are responsible for creating form controls such as text fields (addText())and select boxes (addSelect()). Each of these controls is accompanied by control labels that can be added using the setLabel() method. Finally, HTML_QuickForm2 gives you the flexibility to render forms using a wide variety of approaches, including using the Smarty templating engine and an HTML_QuickForm2_Renderer object.

You can just use the default renderer as demonstrated here, passing that object to the render() method in order to output the form. Next, let’s consider the slightly more complex example depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Creating a More Complex Form Variation

This time, the fieldset tag has been used to create a slightly more organized form structure. Because the form elements appear inside the fieldset boundary, you need to create these elements using the methods exposed through the fieldset object! Neglecting to do so will cause form elements to be rendered outside of the boundary. The following listing creates the form presented in Figure 2.

require_once “HTML/QuickForm2.php”;
require_once ‘HTML/QuickForm2/Renderer.php’;
$format = array(
” => ‘Newsletter Format:’,
‘text’ => ‘Text’,
‘html’ => ‘HTML’
);
$form = new HTML_QuickForm2(’newsletter’);
$fieldSet = $form->addFieldset()->setLabel(’Subscribe to the Newsletter!’);
$name = $fieldSet->addText(’name’)->setLabel(’Your Name:’);
$email = $fieldSet->addText(’email’)->setLabel(’Your E-mail Address:’);
$newsletter = $fieldSet->addSelect(’format’, null, array(’options’ => $format));
$newsletter->setLabel(’Preferred Newsletter Format:’);

$fieldSet->addElement(’submit’, null, ‘Submit!’);
$renderer = HTML_QuickForm2_Renderer::factory(’default’);
echo $form->render($renderer);
?>

Try experimenting with creating form controls using the HTML_QuickForm2 object instead of the FieldSet object in order to observe the effects of control location placement.

Validating the Form

The previous two examples demonstrated how easy it is to create and render forms using HTML_QuickForm2, but they did nothing to inspect and validate user input — not to mention informing users when the form wasn’t successfully completed. You can configure control-specific validation requirements using theaddRule() method, as shown here: $name = $form->addText(’name’)->setLabel(’Your Name:’); $name->addRule(’required’, ‘Please provide your name.’); After having added similar requirements to the other form controls, HTML_QuickForm2 will automatically adjust the rendered form to inform the user of the required fields, as depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Adding Field Requirements

The required rule is just one of several supported by HTML_QuickForm2. Among others, you can control input lengths, compare the input with some predefined value, and even create your own custom rules using a callback. Consult the HTML_QuickForm2 documentation for the complete details. Even with the rules added, HTML_QuickForm2 will not actually validate the input until you explicitly call the HTML_QuickForm2 object’svalidate() method. Therefore, you’ll need to add the following code somewhere before the form is rendered:

if ($form->validate()) {
 echo "SUCCESS!
";
}

Of course, in a real-world situation you’ll want to carry out more than just a simple notification; you likely will add the subscriber’s information to a database. However, if the user’s input does not meet the validation requirements, HTML_QuickForm2 will notify the user of the problem, as depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Displaying Error Messages

You can easily add CSS to the form, thereby making the error messages quite evident.

HTML_QuickForm2 provides developers with the means for rigorously creating and validating forms in a manner that greatly reduces the likelihood of invalid or harmful input while simultaneously reducing the amount of time and effort needed to develop complex form layouts.

Ubuntu 10.10 Might Make btrfs the Default Filesystem

Naggie — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:15:35 +0000

The next version of Ubuntu 10.10 could include btrfs as the default filesystem replacing ext4, said Ubuntu Developer Manager Scott James Remnant.

A lot has to go right between now and the Ubuntu 10.10 feature freeze before btrfs can get promoted to the default.

According to the Kernel.org Wiki, Btrfs is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing fault tolerance, repair and easy administrative. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL.

According to Remnant, the btrfs needs to not be marked “experimental” in the kernel config. He also added, “This is planned for 2.6.35, which is the kernel version and expecting to ship” with Ubuntu 10.10.

Currently, the new filesystem is not supported by Grub2, Ubuntu’s boot loader, or the installer. That would need to be finished, before feature freeze, said Remnant.

He explained, if that happens, we may make it the default for Alpha releases to gain testing, that testing must go smoothly. And the btrfs upstream must be happy with the idea and, we must be happy with the idea.

He put the odds of all of this working out at 1 in 5.

Linux kernel 2.6.34 adds scalable Ceph filesystem

Naggie — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:56:45 +0000

This week, Linus Torvalds announced to make the official release of version 2.6.34 of the Linux kernel. The update introduces two new filesystems and brings a number of other technical improvements and bug fixes.

A new cloud filesystem, called Ceph, is one of the most significant additions. It is a distributed network filesystem that is designed for massive scalability, capable of managing petabytes of storage. The underlying technology has some novel characteristics, such as an adaptive metadata storage framework that can automatically redistribute information about the filesystem hierarchy across the storage nodes in response to fluctuations in demand. However, the developers warn that the project is still largely experimental and isn’t ready yet for deployment in production environments.

Developer Sage Weil in a kernel mailing list post wrote, “Although stability has improved greatly in the last few months, Ceph is still relatively new and experimental for something as conservative as storage, and only time and testing will change that”. “Getting the code upstream sooner rather than later will accelerate that process by reducing barriers to testing, expanding the pool of systems with a usable client, and making it easier for distros to include it.”

LogFS, a log-structured filesystem that is intended for use on flash storage devices, is another major addition. It is designed to replace the kernel’s Journaling Flash File System v2 (JFFS2), but is best-suited for larger flash storage devices. It is said to offer a reduction in mount time and memory overhead relative to JFFS2.

A number of other noteworthy improvements are present in the .34 release. Suspend and resume performance get a boost from a parallelization effort. Networking in KVM gets performance improvements too, thanks to the vhost net drivers.

How to resolve the error 2537 in SQL Server 2000?

Suzanne — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:12:23 +0000

While mounting the database, it could be frustrating to view an error message, which not only results in unmountability of the database, but also in inaccessibility of database records. Such error messages can be caused due to database corruption. Some of the few main reasons responsible for database corruption are metadata structure damage, network issues, hardware malfunction, improper system shutdown, and virus infections.

In order to overcome such error messages, the database administrator needs to run an inbuilt repair utility named ‘DBCC CHECKDB’. While this command is competent enough to repair a damaged SQL Server 2000 database, it might also result in loss of data from the database. To prevent any such data loss situation from occurring, you will need to repair the database by using a powerful MDF Database Repair application.

Lets consider a real-time scenario where you encounter a severity level 16 error message while trying to mount your SQL Server 2000 database:

“Table error: Object ID O_ID, index ID I_ID, page P_ID, row ROW_ID. Record check (CHECK_TEXT) failed. Values are VALUE1 and VALUE2.”

Once the above error message flashes on the screen, the database records become inaccessible.

Reason:

Two main reasons liable for the occurrence of 2537 error message are discussed underneath:

A condition specified in the CHECK_TEXT statement could not be fulfilled.
The database table is logically or physically damaged.

Tips to Resolve:

To get past the above error message, an easy way is to restore the database from an updated backup. However, if in case backup is not available, and then repair the database using following steps:

In case the SQL Server 2000 database table is physically damaged, and then replace the physically damaged component with a new component. To determine the component that is physically damaged, check the system logs.
In case the SQL Server 2000 database table is logically corrupted, then run DBCC CHECKDB command with a suitable repair clause. While doing so, the logical corruption can be resolved, but it might also result in loss of data. To ignore such data loss situations, it is advisable to repair the database using a commercial MDF Repair application. Such MDF File Repair tools are totally non-destructive and keep the original file untouched while repairing.

Recovering Linux System after Using Fsck on a Mounted System

Naggie — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:19:07 +0000

Is there any difficulty that you found while mounting your Linux system disk? The problem could be due to corruption in the file system. In order to address such issues, Linux OS provides fsck utility. It is a command-line utility, which checks integrity and consistency of the Linux file system. In addition it finds errors and fixes them, if possible. However, if you run this utility on a mounted file system, then you may not be able to access the data at all. In such cases, you should use third-party Linux data recovery software to perform data recovery Linux system.

Consider, you have accidentally run fsck on a mounted Linux OS. The inode root gets damaged and all inodes start calling similar blocks. When you try to mount the volume after fsck, the following error message is discovered:

“Mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error. In some cases useful info is found in syslog – try dmesg | tail or so”

When you run \dmesg\, as suggested in the error message, another error message may be displayed, that is:

“ext3-fs: corrupt root inode, run e2fsck”

And when you run e2fsck, yet another error message is displayed, that is:

“Root inode is not a directory. Clear?”

Once you press ‘Y’ and proceed with the process, the parent entry of each inode from the root directory will be deleted. The root inode will attempt to recover but if it fails, another error message will be displayed, that is:

“Cannot Allocate Root Inode”

After this error message, you will not be able to access your system.

Reason: This behavior is caused due to corruption of the file system, superblock, root inode, or any other Linux data structure. Because of this, the OS cannot locate the hard disk volumes.

Solution:

In order to sort out this problem and perform Linux data recovery, you should reformat the hard disk and reinstall the Linux operating system. However, that would invariably mean that your valuable data will be lost.

In such cases, you should use a third-party Linux recovery to recover lost data. Such tools are able to Recover Linux data safely by using fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms.

Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2 Released

Naggie — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:36:32 +0000

The Joomla project has released Joomla 1.6 alpha 2, which contains many new features requested by the community; most notably, ACL. Other features are listed below as well as what you can expect in the future for Joomla 1.6.

This is an alpha release. It is intended to be a developer/hobbyist preview and is not intended to be used on a production web site.

New improvements/features since alpha 1 include:

ACL: access management for global permissions as well as content item specific permissions, variable user groups, users member of more than one usergroup, permissions are inherited, really fast
Extendable user profile, profile view in frontend, extendable user parameters
Tableless com_content layouts
Improved com_content modules (mod_articles_archive, mod_articles_latest, mod_articles_popular)
Article linker plugin for editors
New frontend template (atomic)
New backend template (bluestork)
New uploader for media manager

Other Joomla 1.6 improvements that existed in alpha 1:

Mootools 1.2
Refactored backend
JForm
Nested Categories and category parameters
New views in frontend: categories, category
Lots of small code improvements, almost cut the code size in half while adding to the functionality
PHP 5.2 required, huge performance improvements, partially eaten up by new features => 1.6 will be faster than 1.5.

How to recover a corrupt MS SQL Sever database

Naggie — Mon, 03 May 2010 11:05:32 +0000

MS SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS), which is specifically developed to be used in the enterprise environment. It provides increased productivity, efficiency, availability, and administrative ease to your organization.

It’s the case with most of the applications it too can face some errors that may lead to data corruption. The data corruption cases may arise because of various issues such as power surges, virus infections, human errors, abrupt shutdown when the database is open, etc. In such cases, you should replace the database with an updated backup. And if the backup is not updated and you need the data urgently, then you should use an SQL MDF repair tool that will help you to repair SQL database.

Let’s consider a scenario wherein you have got MS SQL Server installed on your system, and one day when you open the SQL Server database, it fails to open. An error message is displayed.

“Server can’t find the requested database table.”

Once you encounter this error message, you are unable to access the database.

Cause: Here the error is that the SQL database is corrupt and, thus, inaccessible. It may have got corrupt because of various reasons such as virus infections, human errors, power surges, abrupt system shutdown when the database is open, etc.

Resolution: If the SQL database is not a complex one and there isn’t huge amount of data, then you should try and rebuild the database. However, if the database is complex and contains huge amount of data, then you should consider using a third-party sql server repair application for mdf repair. Such tools are read-only in nature and do not overwrite the data while scanning the databases using fast yet sophisticated algorithms. Also, these tools have rich interface and enable you to repair the database yourself without the intervention of an expert.

SQL Recovery software is an MS SQL repair tool that is able to repair SQL databases created in MS SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008. It can recover all kinds of database components such as tables, defaults, stored procedures, triggers, views and rules.

In addition, it can recover database constraints such as primary key, foreign key, unique key, and check. In addition to all this, it can repair a database even if it is not repairable by the DBCC CHECKDB command. This tool is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, 2003 Server, XP, 2000, and NT.

Open Source Squeak 4.1 Released

Naggie — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:13:16 +0000

On Friday, Squeak developers released version 4.1 of the Smalltalk open source programming language, and just before six weeks Squeak 4.0 was pushed out.

According to the release announcement, this version combines the licence change occurring in the 4.0 release with the development work that has been going on while the re-licensing process took place.

The latest version includes integration of Cog’s closure implementation, improved user interface look and feel, new anti-aliased fonts, core library improvements and advances in modularity.

According to the Weekly Squeak, one key focus for this release was to address the issues that have been known to frustrate developers using Squeak for the first time.

A much improved set of UI widgets, the new menu bar including the fast search control, integrated help, improved test coverage, more class and method comments, and integrated syntax highlighting all make the system more accessible.

Joomla 1.5.16 Released, Joomla Warns Against Upgrading

Naggie — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:06:04 +0000

The Joomla Project announced the release of version 1.5.16 of its popular open source content management system on Friday, but on Sunday Joomla posted a warning to not upgrade.

According to the Joomla Web Site warns, Version 1.5.16 contains two serious bugs that will affect your site if you use a version of PHP prior to 5.2 or if you have the Session Handler parameter set to none in Global Configuration.

The new version of Joomla fixes several security problems with the previous version, according to Joomla, “If you haven’t already upgraded to version 1.5.16, you may wish to wait for version 1.5.17 instead.”

And the next release is expected to be on April 27, 2010.

How to overcome DBF Corruption-

Shweta — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:29:40 +0000

Database computing- major presence of Oracle, Oracle is an RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), developed and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It stores all your valuable data in the DBF file. The DBF file contains all Oracle database objects, such as tables, reports, forms, macros, views, constraints, triggers, stored procedures, and more.

If any of these database objects or the entire database gets damaged, you can not access your valuable data from it. In such circumstances, Oracle Database Recovery software is required to extract data from the database.

In order to overcome DBF corruption, Oracle offers a number of methods to detect and repair data files. These options include:

DBVerify- It is an external command-line utility, which enables you to validate offline data files of Oracle database. In addition to the offline data files, you can also use this utility for checking validity of the backup data files.

ANALYZE … VALIDATE STRUCTURE- It is used to verify every single data block in the analyzed object. If this tool finds any corruption, rows are added to INVALID_ROWS table.

DB_BLOCK_CHECKING- If DB_BLOCK_CHECKING argument is set as TRUE, Oracle carries out a walk-through of the data in database block for checking whether it’s self-consistent or not. This block checking process may add 1 to 10% overhead to server. This setting is recommended only if you can accept the overhead.

DBMS_REPAIR- It enables you to find and fix database corruption. This process needs two administration Oracle database tables for holding the list of damaged blocks and the index keys which point to those damaged blocks.

Source: programmersheaven.com

DBCC CHECKDB unable to resolve SQL Database corruption

Naggie — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:42:21 +0000

The logical and physical integrity of all SQL Server database tables is performed by DBCC CHECKDB command. The command performs and divides its operations in three different phases.

The first phase checks the consistency of the allocation structures in disk space, the second phase checks the integrity of all pages and their structures, and the last phase checks the catalog consistency.

If critical errors are found in any of the phases, the DBCC CHECKDB command terminates immediately. This happens when the SQL Server database is badly corrupted, and is beyond the repairing capabilities of DBCC CHECKDB command. In such cases, if you need to access the database records, then you will need to restore the database records from a valid backup. But, if no backup is available or backup falls short to restore the required amount of data, then you will need to repair the database by using advanced MS SQL Server Recovery application.

Let’s consider a practical scenario, where you receive the below error message when you attempt to access one of your table records-

Table error: Object ID O_ID1, index ID I_ID1 cross-object chain linkage. Page P_ID1 points to P_ID2 in object IDO_ID2, index ID I_ID2.

The above error message primarily results in inaccessibility of all the table records. Additionally, the error message pops up every time you attempt to access the table records.

Cause: Reason of error

The above table error message occurs when the next page pointer of P_ID1 page points to different object. This can happen either due to logical corruption factors or physical crash of a system component.

Resolution: Steps to be used to resolve the above error message

Database table corruption, if caused due to physical damage, can be resolved by changing the damaged system component. For logical table corruption reasons, run DBCC CHECKDB command with appropriate repair clause.

While the physical corruption issues can be resolved easily changing the system component, the probability of logical corruption problems being resolved by DBCC CHECKDB command is slightly less. In such cases, you will need to use advanced Recovery application to repair the database table. A SQL Repair software can be easily downloaded from Internet.

Source: www.programmersheaven.com

PHP Development on the Facebook Platform- Build Your App

Naggie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:48:40 +0000

Facebook API is very powerful and it allows you to create your own Facebook applications, which you, your friends or everyone else can then consume. You can use the Facebook applications you build on profile pages, canvas pages, and so on. You can even make money by developing practical applications. So, let’s get started with creating your own Facebook application.

What You Need-

To create your own Facebook application, you should know how to program in one of the supported languages, such as PHP, Ruby on Rails, or Python. With that knowledge, all you need to do to get started is:
1. Add Facebook Developer Application to your Facebook account.
Go to the Facebook Developers page and click “Add developer.” This is the central location for all your applications on Facebook. You can request as many as 100 API keys from the applications page, as well as manage and change the settings for all your applications. Now that you have added Facebook Developer Application to your account, let’s move on to adding your very first application.

2. Add your first Facebook application.
Go back to the Facebook Developers page and click the Set Up New Application button. This will take you to the “Create Application” page, where you are required to provide the name of your application and, as a rule, agree to certain terms and conditions.
After saving changes to this page, you will be taken to your application’s homepage, which serves as your application’s edit page. You can change all the settings related to your application here, such as its name, description, icon, logo and much more. You can add more developers if you are going to develop the application in a team.
On the same page, Facebook provides you with an API Key and a Secret Key, which are the passports for your application to interact with

Facebook core applications and the outside world. Do not share you secret key with anyone.

Pre-development Changes

To start developing your application, you need to make important changes to the following settings:

API Key – This unique key helps Facebook identify whatever request(s) you make. Enclose this API key along with all your requests.
Secret Key – As mentioned previously, you should keep this key safe and share it with no one, because it is responsible for authenticating your request.

Now, click on the Authentication tab, where you need to specify:

Post-Authorize Callback URL – When a user authorizes your application and adds it to a Facebook account, then Facebook pings this URL. So, this URL needs to be your site’s URL where you application is hosted. This cannot be a URL from Facebook.
Post-Authorize Remove URL – When your application is removed by a user, this URL will be pinged along with a post request, which will contain the User_id. This process allows you to log which user has removed your application.

Now click on the canvas tab, where you need to specify:

Canvas Page URL – Choose a canvas page URL for Facebook, such as http://apps.facebook.com/your-app-name.
Canvas Callback URL – This is the muscle of your application. Facebook pulls the content from this URL and displays it on the application’s canvas page. The URL can be where you have your application hosted.
Render Method – You need to selected this option according to your code. If your code is going to have FBML tags, then you should select “FBML” in this option. Otherwise, leave it default as “iframe” (for this example, you can choose either).

These settings should be enough to get you started with your first Facebook application. Undoubtedly, you can make many other changes to suit your needs in due course.

Now that you have set up the application, let’s have a look-see at how to put some muscle on your bare-bones application. In this example, you need to use Facebook’s PHP client library, which is a compressed file. After downloading the client library, extract the files. You will get two folders namely, footprints and php.

Footprints is a sample application provided to help you understand how the Facebook API works. However, because the API functions keep changing, this code might have some deprecated functions. The php folder contains the library files that you will use to talk back to the Facebook API.

Create a file called index.php and copy the following code into it:

 require_once 'php/facebook.php';

 $appapikey = 'INPUT YOUR APP KEY HERE';

$appsecret = 'INPUT YOUR APP SECRET KEY HERE';

 //create the object

$facebook = new Facebook($appapikey, $appsecret);

/**

 * Check if we have an already logged in user ?

 * Yes - Skip the require_login

 * No - User is redirected to facebook login page

*/

if(!is_numeric($facebook->get_loggedin_user()) || !$facebook->api_client->users_hasAppPermission("publish_stream"))

  $facebook->require_login($required_permissions = 'publish_stream');

/**

 * In case user reaches here and our application doesn't have proper permissions to publish,

 * then display this error message

*/

 if(!$facebook->api_client->users_hasAppPermission("publish_stream"))

  echo 'Darn !! Something just broke !!' ;

/**

 * Check if we have Post data and a status to update

*/

if($_POST['update_me'] == 1)

    $res=$facebook->api_client->stream_publish($_POST['st'],'');

  $uid = $facebook->get_loggedin_user();

   $tmp = explode ("_",$res);

  if($uid == $tmp[0])

    echo "Timeline updated successfully,  Go back to your profile page";

  else

    echo "Couldn't update your status, Please try again";

/**

 * Display the form to update status

*/

else

?>

?>

Make sure you complete the following tasks to properly build your application:

Include the library file (facebook.php) and change the path in require_once to match your folder hierarchy.
Copy/paste the API key and secret key before trying to use your application. It won’t work without these anyhow.
Input the canvas page URL right to the path of the script on your server/domain.

When you execute the above script, it will look for logged in users, if any. If a user is not logged in, then it redirects the user to the Facebook login page. This is also handled by the require_login function, but the problem with require_login is that it redirects so often that any post data to your page is lost. So, you have put a check before calling the require_login function. In the same line, you also check whether or not your application has permission to post updates onto a user’s stream. If you do not have permission, the user is prompted to allow your application.

When you have permissions and post data, the status is updated to the user. When a status is successfully posted, a response of the typeuserid_postid is returned. If it fails, then different error codes are returned. Find a list of error codes on Facebook’s wiki page.

You can extend the above code to suit your requirements. If you feel confident, you can move on to write some advanced programs using FBJS and XFBML. Other than that, you should keep abreast of any functions that Facebook deprecates — particularly those that your code might be using. Otherwise, your application might crash all of a sudden.

How to Avert and Resolve Oracle Database Corruption

Shweta — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:35:02 +0000

A database administrator needs to perform various operations like performing incremental backups, identifying and resolving network issues, viewing archive log destination, error generation in alert log, etc. in order to ensure that the database always remains in a running state. However, the possibility of database corruption exists due to human mistakes, virus attacks, and hardware corruption.

Database remains unmountable in most cases after it is corrupted, further rendering to inaccessibility of all its records. In such situations, if the administrator wants to access the Oracle database records, then he/she will need to use a cold backup to restore the database. However, if the administrator has not created any backup or the backup is not sufficient to meet all his/her requirements, then he/she needs to use an advanced third-party Oracle Recovery utility to repair the database.

Let’s consider a practical case, where you, as a database administrator, perform below steps:

1.You copy your database file when your database is alive.
2. Then you update the table stored in the data file.
3. After this, you shutdown the database using ’shutdown immediate’ command and change the datafile with its ‘alive’ copy.

After this, when you try to mount your Oracle database, it does not mount. The reason is-

The fundamental reason for unmountability of the database is corruption in datafile. To prevent the corruption of datafile, you should never follow the above steps sequentially.

Resolution:

It is advisable to restore the database from a standby database in order to resolve datafile corruption and to mount your Oracle database. However, if no such database exists, then you will need to repair the database. To effectively do so, you will need to search for a commercial dbf recovery application that can repair your corrupted database.

A repair tool to recover Oracle database and to bring it back to a reusable state can be easily downloaded from the Internet. Such tools can Recover Oracle Database after any logical corruption scenario using powerful recovery algorithms. Moreover, these tools do not make any change in the original database, making them completely non-destructive in nature.

For most of the Oracle database administrators, Oracle Recovery Software is a utility that they use to recover Oracle database after all kinds of logical crashes. The tool supports recovery of Oracle 9i databases. Designed for Windows XP and 2003, the read only software leaves the original database untouched and unmodified.

ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 Released

Suzanne — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:05:53 +0000

ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 are released, which include lots of new features and improvements that enable the developers to build, deploy and manage great Web sites and applications.

Need to Build Better Websites-

Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2010 makes it easier to edit, search, and navigate code. Improved VB and C# Intellisense makes it even easier to find and use classes within the .NET Framework. Improved JavaScript IntelliSense enables better AJAX development.

New code navigation and visualization features enable to find quickly and navigate large projects and visualize dependencies across your code-base. Improved unit testing, debugging and profiling help support builds robust applications.

ASP.NET Web Forms
With ASP.NET 4, Web Forms controls now render clean, semantically correct, and CSS friendly HTML markup. Built-in URL routing functionality allows you to expose clean, search engine friendly, URLs and increase the traffic to your Website.
ViewState within applications is smaller and can now be more easily controlled. And more controls, including rich charting and data controls, are now built-into ASP.NET 4 and enable you to build applications even faster.

ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET MVC 2 is now built-into VS 2010 and ASP.NET 4, and provides a great way to build web sites and applications using a model-view-controller based pattern. ASP.NET MVC 2 adds features to easily enable client and server validation logic, provides new strongly-typed HTML and UI-scaffolding helper methods, enables more modular/reusable applications, and facilitates a clean unit testing and TDD workflow with Visual Studio 2010.

Web Deployment
Visual Studio 2010 makes deploying your Websites easy. You can now publish your Websites and applications to a staging or production server from within Visual Studio itself.

Visual Studio 2010 makes it easy to transfer all your files, code, configuration, database schema and data in one complete package. VS 2010 also makes it easy to manage separate web.config configuration files settings depending upon whether you are in debug, release, staging or production modes.

Perl 5.12 Debuts as Open Source Language Progresses

Naggie — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:33:05 +0000

This week, Perl is getting an update that will advance the open source development language with new capabilities. With Perl 5.12, support is being added for pluggable keywords, which could help to improve Perl developer efficiency.

According to a senior developer at ActiveState, the pluggable keyword mechanism hooks directly into the parser, so the mechanism allows the implementation of that keyword to define the syntax of the rest of the statement.

The new Perl 5.12 release comes at an interesting juncture for the Perl community as new user growth may be slowing down while development continues on Perl 6.

Since 1987, the Perl dynamic language has been around and Perl 5.0 appeared in 1994. Longevity is hallmark of Perl development, a feature that’s reinforced with a fix in Perl 5.12. Perl 5.12 includes a fix for a the year 2038 Unix flaw, which restricted Perl to show dates only up to the year 2038, at which point it would reset the calendar back to 1970.

Perl 6

The new Perl 5.12 release advances the Perl 5 platform, and the developers have been working on Perl 6 since 2004, and might will stretch out for years to come. According to Dubois, some people are tired of waiting for Perl 6, so the Perl 5 development effort is picking up again, hence the release of Perl 5.12.

There are currently a number of implementation efforts for Perl 6 underway, with Rakudo probably being the most prominent and advanced, Dubois said. In his opinion, it will still be many years before Perl 6 Rakudo could become a serious alternative to Perl 5 for most users.

Dubois said, it is hard to predict if this is ever going to happen or not. But Perl 5 users won’t have to wait for Perl 6 to get updated, as there is a plan in place for a new Perl 5 version next year.

With some more new features, the Perl 5.14 should be released in about one year.

Remove unprintable or invisible characters from string in VB.net

Naggie — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:08:55 +0000

This function will help to remove all invisible characters in vb.net string

Public Function Remove(ByVal str As String) As String
        Remove = str
        Dim x As Long
        ' remove all non-printable characters
        While InStr(Remove, vbCrLf) > 0
            Remove = Replace(Remove, vbCrLf, String.Empty)
        End While

        While InStr(Remove, vbTab) > 0
            Remove = Replace(Remove, vbTab, String.Empty)
        End While

        For x = 0 To 31
            While InStr(Remove, Chr(x)) > 0
                Remove = Replace(Remove, Chr(x), String.Empty)
            End While
        Next x

        For x = 127 To 255
            While InStr(Remove, Chr(x)) > 0
                Remove = Replace(Remove, Chr(x), String.Empty)
            End While
        Next x

        'Dim s = New String(" ", 2)
        'While InStr(Remove, s) > 0
        '    Remove = Replace(Remove, s, " ")
        'End While
    End Function

How to generate readable/remeberable random password?

Naggie — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:33:42 +0000

$randPwd = generatePassword(12);
?>

Fast, simple, and easy way to generate readable/remeberable random password

//Generates readable/rememberable random password.

function generatePassword($length = 6) {

$chars = array(”a”, “b”, “c”, “d”, “e”, “f”, “g”, “h”, “i”, “j”, “k”, “l”, “m”, “o”, “p”, “r”, “s”, “t”, “u”, “v”, “x”,”y”, “z”);

$vocals = array(”a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u”);

$password = “”;

mt_srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);

for ($i = 1; $i <= $length; $i++)

$password .= ($i % 2 == 0)?$chars[mt_rand(0, count($chars) - 1)]:$vocals[mt_rand(0,count($vocals) - 1)];

return $password;

}



//Generates readable/rememberable random password.
function generatePassword($length = 6) {
       $chars =

        array("a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "o", "p", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "x","y", "z");
       $vocals = array("a", "e", "i", "o", "u");
       $password = "";
       mt_srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
       for ($i = 1; $i <= $length; $i++)
           $password .= ($i % 2 == 0)?$chars[mt_rand(0, count($chars) - 1)]:$vocals[mt_rand(0,count($vocals) - 1)];
return $password;
}
?>

Inside JSF 2.0’s Ajax and HTTP GET Support

Naggie — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:46:31 +0000

With support for these techniques, this newest version of the Java component UI framework enables developers to build truly dynamic web pages simply and easily.

At the highest level, JSF technology provides an API for creating, managing, and handling UI components and a tag library for using components within a web page. The JSF 2.0 release simplifies the web developer’s life by providing the following:

Reusable UI components for easy authoring of web pages
Well defined and simple transfer of application data to and from the UI
Easy state management across server requests
Simplified event handling model
Easy creation of custom UI components

For GET requests and Ajax integration, we need to drill down into JSF 2.0’s support, as well as the productive features that this support makes possible. The demo application is an online quiz that allows a registered user to answer five simple questions that test his or her general knowledge. Towards the end of the quiz, the application displays the score.

Using GET Requests in JSF 2.0

To support GET requests, JSF 2.0 introduced the concept of View Parameters. View Parameters provide a way to attach query parameters to URLs. You use the tag to specify the query parameters.

Take this code for example:

In this example, the value of the parameter previousScore will be automatically picked up and pushed into the property oldScore of the recordBean. So, when a request like this comes for a URL:

displayData.jspx?previousScore=10

To support GET requests, JSF 2.0 introduced the concept of View Parameters. View Parameters provide a way to attach query parameters to URLs. You use the tag to specify the query parameters.

Take this code for example:

In this example, the value of the parameter previousScore will be automatically picked up and pushed into the property oldScore of the recordBean. So, when a request like this comes for a URL:

displayData.jspx?previousScore=10

The value of the bean property oldScore will be set to 10 when the request is processed, which avoids manually setting the value or using a listener. Another interesting point to notice is that like any other component the tag supports conversion and validation. Hence, there is no need for separate conversion/validation logic.

The new tags in JSF 2.0 related to support for the GETrequest.

h:button :- Renders a button that generates a GET request without any handcoding of URLs

h:link :- Renders a link that generates a GET request without any handcoding of URLs

h:outputStylesheet :- Refers to a CSS resource

h:outputScript :- Refers to a JavaScript resource

f:event :- Registers a specification-defined or a user-defined event

f:ajax :- Enables associated component(s) to make Ajax calls

f:metadata :- Declares the metadata facet for this view

f:viewParam :- Used in to define a view parameter that associates a request parameter to a model property

f:validateBean :- Delegates the validation of the local value to the Bean Validation API

f:validateRegex :- Uses the pattern attribute to validate the wrapping component

f:validateRequired :- Ensures the presence of a value

Bookmarking Support

Because all JSF 1.x interactions with the server use only HTTP POST requests, those JSF versions don’t support bookmarking pages in a web application. Even though some tags supported the construction of URLs, it was a manual process with no support for dynamic URL generation. JSF 2.0’s support for HTTP GET requests provides the bookmarking capability with the help of new renderer kits.

A new UI component UIOutcomeTarget provides properties that you can use to produce a hyperlink at render time. The component allows bookmarking pages for a button or a link.

The two HTML tags that support bookmarking are h:link and h:button. Both generate URLs based on the outcome property of the component, so that the author of the page no longer has to hard code the destination URL. These components use the JSF navigation model to decide the appropriate destination.

Take the following code for example:

This bookmarking feature provides an option for pre-emptive navigation (i.e., the navigation is decided at the render response time before the user has activated the component). This pre-emptive navigation is used to convert the logical outcome of the tag into a physical destination. At render time, the navigation system is consulted to map the outcome to a target view ID, which is then transparently converted into the destination URL. This frees the page author from having to worry about manual URL construction.

Support for Ajax

The default implementation provides a single JavaScript resource that has the resource identifier jsf.js. This resource is required for Ajax, and it must be available under the javax.faces library. The annotation@ResourceDependency is used to specify the Ajax resource for the components, the JavaScript function jsf.ajax.request is used to send information to the server in an asynchronous way, and the JavaScript function jsf.ajax.response is used for sending the information back from the server to the client.

On the client side, the API jsf.ajax.request is used to issue an Ajax request. When the response has to be rendered back to the client, the callback previously provided by jsf.ajax.request is invoked. This automatically updates the client-side DOM to reflect the newly rendered markup.

The two ways to send an Ajax request by registering an event callback function are:

Use the JavaScript function jsf.ajax.request
Use the tag

JavaScript Function jsf.ajax.request

The function jsf.ajax.request(source, event, options) is used to send an asynchronous Ajax request to the server. The code snippet below shows how you can use this function:

onclick=”jsf.ajax.request(this,event,

{execute:’newButton’,render:’status’,onevent: handleEvent,onerror: handleError});return false;”/>

The first argument in the function represents the DOM element that made an Ajax call, while the second argument (which is optional) corresponds to the DOM event that triggered this request. The third argument is composed of a set of parameters, which is sent mainly to control the client/server processing. The available options are execute, render, onevent, onerror, and params.

Tag

JSF 2.0 enables page authoring with , which is a declarative approach for making Ajax requests. You can use this tag instead of manually coding the JavaScript for Ajax request calls. This tag serves two roles, depending on the placement. You can nest it within any HTML component or custom component. If you nest it with a single component, it will associate an Ajax action with that component.

The tag has four important attributes:

render – ID or a space-delimited list of component identifiers that will be updated as a result of the Ajax call
execute – ID or a space-delimited list of component identifiers that should be executed on the server
event – The type of event the Ajax action will apply to (refers to a JavaScript event without the on prefix)
onevent – The JavaScript function to handle the event

Consider the following code from the login page of the online quiz application. The code validates the input of the email field by sending an Ajax call for every keystroke. The validation is done by a managed bean method that acts as a value change listener.

required=”true” valueChangeListener=”#{userBean.validateEmail}”>

…

Using Ajax to Validate the Input: The online quiz application validates email field input by sending an Ajax call for every keystroke.

Here, is nested within the emailId inputText component. For every keyup event that is generated, an Ajax call is sent to the server, which invokes the valueChangeListener. By default, the component in which the tag is nested is executed on the server. So, the execute attribute is not specified. Also, for an input component, the default event is valueChange, so the event attribute is also not used. The render attribute indicates that the outputText component emailResult should be updated after the Ajax call.

If you place this tag around a group of components, it will associate an Ajax action with all the components that support the events attribute.

In this example, input1 and link1 will exhibit Ajax behavior on a mouseover event.

In this example, input1 and link1 exhibit Ajax behavior on keyup and mouseover events, respectively.

Using the Ajax tag enhances the markup of the associated component to include a script that triggers the Ajax request. This the page author to issue Ajax requests without having to write any JavaScript code.

These new features enable developers to build truly dynamic web pages simply and easily.

http://www.developer.com

WordPress Guns for Web Content Management Duties

Suzanne — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:10:37 +0000

Long popular with bloggers, the open-source
WordPress blogging software is also starting to find a niche as a low-cost corporate CMS (content management system), at least for managing relatively simple Web sites.

“In the last six months or so, over half the sites being launched with WordPress are really not blogging sites per se, they are complete sites,” said Raanan Bar-Cohen, vice president of media services for Automattic, the company WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg started to offer a hosted version of the software.

Such use has caught at least some of the CMS community by surprise.

“There’s a debate raging within Twitter about whether traditional blogging platform WordPress is also a CMS,” wrote Tony Byrne in a blog post. Byrne is the founder of the CMS analyst firm The Real Story Group, formerly called CMS Watch. “Our take: many organizations are using WordPress as a CMS. That makes it a CMS.”

“A larger enterprise would almost never want [to] use one of those tools for a major web property. But they offer useful alternatives for [small and medium-size business] scenarios, as well as simpler projects,” Byrne elaborated.

WordPress, created in 2003, uses a variety of open-source programs and open standards, such as PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

Byrne admitted he was skeptical at first of the idea of using WordPress as a CMS. Out of the box, it doesn’t have many of the capabilities, such as workflow or advanced version control, needed even for basic CMS duties.

“It’s one thing to run a blog with a few extra plug-ins and widgets. It’s another to run a corporate Web site,” Byrne said in an interview.

Nonetheless, The Real Story Group spoke with customers and examined Web sites. It found that if an organization had to maintain a relatively simple Web site, one with 50 pages or fewer, then WordPress could prove to be a low-cost, relatively easy-to-maintain option.

“It’s not a [full] development platform, but it can drive a simple Web site fairly capably,” Byrne said.

While it is less sophisticated than many CMS packages, such as the open-source Drupal, it could provide an alternative to other simple platforms, like Joomla and the .Net-driven DotNetNuke.

In this realm, WordPress offers a few distinct advantages, most notably its intuitive interface. “WordPress has an ease of use that is something other vendors could learn from,” Byrne said.

Also, thanks to third-party developers, WordPress has a wide array of plug-ins to extend its functionality, some of which can be used to tackle CMS chores. For instance, a plug-in called
Edit Flow offers workflow, or the ability to route a document to multiple parties for editing and approval.

Overall, the WordPress site itself lists more than 8,600 plug-ins.

WordPress has its downsides as well. For one, access control is quite limited, Byrne said. The software offers only sitewide roles. Anybody with administrative rights has the ability to edit any page on the entire site. Someone from human resources, for instance, wouldn’t be restricted to editing only HR pages.

Another shortcoming is the lack of advanced content modeling. While a site can host a series of Web pages, it would be difficult to make finer distinctions among the pages — for a news site to separate news articles from case studies and features, for instance.

Making such distinctions would be possible through some development work, though other CMSes can make this sort of templating much easier.

In general, the deeper into development that a Web site administrator must go, the more the organization should consider another platform, Byrne said.

Dynamically Setting the Theme

Suzanne — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:40:11 +0000

Themes can be used to customize the look of your Website. If you need to select the theme based on user settings, you’ll be glad to know that ASP.NET allows you to set the theme of a page dynamically when the page is being created. This process is pretty straight forward; however, there are a couple of issues that may arise.

First of all, ASP.NET establishes the current theme prior to the page’s Load() event. In order to dynamically change the theme before the Load() event, you’ll need to set it during the page’s PreInit() event.

Setting the Theme in the PreInit() Event

That was easy enough. But what happens if your site uses a master page? Master pages allow you to control the appearance of all the pages on your site from a single master page. So it makes sense to want to set the theme from the master page. However, master pages do not provide a PreInit() event. So setting the theme dynamically from a master page is not as easy as you might guess.

One way to deal with this is to create a class that derives from IHttpModule. This class can be made to respond to all page requests on your site, and it gets called just before the request is handled, in plenty of time to set the theme for the current page.

public class ThemeManager : IHttpModule

{
   public ThemeManager()

  public void Init(HttpApplication app)

        // Set our handler to be called just before handling a request

        app.PreRequestHandlerExecute +=

            new EventHandler(Context_PreRequestHandlerExecute);

  void Context_PreRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)

        // Note: If handler does not implement IRequiresSessionState or

        // IReadOnlySessionState then Session state will be unavailable

        if (HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler is Page)

            // Set theme

            Page page = (Page)HttpContext.Current.CurrentHandler;

            page.Theme = "MyTheme";

        public void Dispose()

Setting the Theme from an IHttpModule-Derived Class

In order to use this class, you’ll have to modify your web.config file.

Web.config Changes

Also, be sure to clear any theme settings from your web.config file. Otherwise, it’s possible for ASP.NET to get confused and possibly reference multiple CSS files.

ASP.NET themes are quite powerful, and can be used to manage the appearance of various controls and images. Another thing themes do is let you specify CSS, or style sheets. If this is all your themes are used for, then a much simpler approach can be taken.

All you need to do is add a Literal control inside of the section of your master page. Then, you can set it to include your style sheet during the master page’s Load event.

Since you aren’t modifying the look of controls using skins, there is no need to change this setting in the PreInit() handler. In fact, you could handle it even later than the Load event since all that needs to happen is your page references the correct CSS file.

NetApp Debuts New Cloud Computing Management Tools

Suzanne — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:27:46 +0000

NetApp has unveiled a series of new design guides and management tools to help service providers build private and public clouds for their virtualization and storage customers.

The new offerings will fulfill the dual role of delivering cloud-management applications and services to their enterprise clients while also increasing functionality, security and efficiency for IT service providers building cloud environments for their own customers.

According to NetApp’s (NASDAQ: NTAP) vice president of solutions and alliances, Patrick Rogers, “NetApp has a proven track record of successfully teaming with leading service providers to power the cloud service offerings”.

NetApp’s new Service-Oriented Infrastructure (SOI) will give service providers a standardized and unified infrastructure that allows them to use and deploy storage, bandwidth and compute resources in a repeatable manner to give IT administrators greater flexibility throughout the cloud deployment process.

Data Protection-as-a-Service (DPaas) serves as a roadmap or design guide for organizing archiving and display recovery applications and processes, which includes NetApp’s FlexClone app for disaster recovery testing as well its SnapLock and Multistore applications for compliance and secure multi-tenancy, respectively.

NetApp also has teamed with on-demand backup and recovery software vendor Asigra on a Backup/Recovery-as-a-Service (BRaaS) offering that runs on the NetApp SOI platform to secure and storage huge data reservoirs in the cloud.

Its NetApp Open Management tool will enable service providers to link their IT service management and orchestration portals to NetApp’s storage automation engine for simplified storage provisioning and protection services.

NetApp announced a comprehensive cloud-computing partnership with Microsoft in December that’s designed to improve the technical integration between the two companies’ cloud computing, virtualization and data storage and management applications.

Programming Language: Seed7 05.20100307

Naggie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:19:26 +0000

Seed7 is a general purpose programming language, which is designed by Thomas Mertes. The Seed7 interpreter and the example programs are open-source software. There is also an open-source Seed7 compiler. The compiler compiles Seed7 programs to C programs which are subsequently compiled to machine code. Functions with type results and type parameters are more elegant than a template or generics concept.

And object orientation is used where it brings advantages and not in places where other solutions are more obvious.

Key Features of Seed7:-

• User defined statements and operators.
• Types are first class objects (Templates and generics can be defined easily without special syntax).
• Predefined constructs like arrays or for-loops are declared in the language itself.
• Object orientation with interfaces and multiple dispatch.
• Static type checking and no automatic casts.
• Support for bigInteger and big Rational numbers which have unlimited size.
• exception handling
• overloading of procedures/functions/operators/statements
• Various predefined types like resizable arrays, hashes, bitsets, structs, color, time, duration, etc.
• Runs under linux, various unix versions and windows.
• The interpreter and the example programs use the GPL license, while the runtime library uses the LGPL license.

Newly included features in this release:

• The functions in the gethttp.s7i library were improved to allow the specification of a port number as part of the location (e.g.: localhost:1080/index.html).
• The tarx.sd7 (tar archiving utility) example program was
renamed to tar7.sd7 .
• The codepage 8859_11 was added to the charsets.s7i library.
• The bas7.sd7 (basic interpreter) example program was improved.
• The toutf8.sd7 example program was improved to write an explanation and to support several IANA/MIME charset names.
• An explanation what to do, when the path of the bcc32 C compiler contains a space, was added to ’src/read_me.txt’.
• Documentation comments were added to the charsets.s7i library.

New Arrival: PC/OS OpenWorkstation 10.1 GNOME has released

Naggie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:08:22 +0000

PC/OS OpenWorkstation 10.1 GNOME is the first release in the PC/OS family to be based on the GNOME desktop environment, as the Linux distribution has traditionally been based on XFCE. According to the developers, they are targeting more high performance users with this release, but the minimum requirements are still very manageable.

Highlights of PC/OS OpenWorkstation 10.1 GNOME:

-GNOME 2.28;
-Linux kernel 2.6.31;
-Empathy replaces Pidgin as the default IM;
-OpenOffice.org 3.1;
-Exaile;
-Gambas2;
-WideStudio;
-Full multimedia codecs;
-Sun Java 6;
-Evolution Groupware Suite;
-GnomeBaker;
-Exaile;
-VLC;
-GIMP (With all plugins);
-Google Chrome;
-Nimbus GTK theme and Metacity.

Minimum system requirements:

1 GHz Processor;
512MB of RAM;
10GB of Hard Drive Space.

One of the biggest updates in PC/OS OpenWorkstation 10.1 is the upgrade of the underlying operating system and the distro is now based on Ubuntu 9.10, the latest stable release of the popular Linux distribution.

PC/OS aims to provide a complete experience out of the box, so it comes packed with all the components a user might need, like video codecs, the Java plugin and others.

New Release: PHP 5.3.2 Released

Naggie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:59:11 +0000

PHP 5.3.2 has been released, as the PHP.net site has posted the release announcement for the latest PHP version in the PHP 5.3.x series – 5.3.2.

PHP 5.3.2 is a maintenance release in the 5.3 series, which includes a large number of bug fixes.

Security/bug fixes included in this release take care of things like:

Safe_mode validation inside tempnam
A possible open_basedir/safe_mode bypass in sessions
Added support for SHA-256 and SHA-512 to php’s crypt.
Fixed a bug in the garbage collector that could cause a crash
Crashing when using ldap_next_reference

Key Bug Fixes in PHP 5.3.2 include:

Added protection for $_SESSION from interrupt corruption and improved “session.save_path” check.
Fixed bug #51059 (crypt crashes when invalid salt are given).
Fixed bug #50940 Custom content-length set incorrectly in Apache sapis.
Fixed bug #50847 (strip_tags() removes all tags greater then 1023 bytes long).
Fixed bug #50723 (Bug in garbage collector causes crash).
Fixed bug #50661 (DOMDocument::loadXML does not allow UTF-16).
Fixed bug #50632 (filter_input() does not return default value if the variable does not exist).
Fixed bug #50540 (Crash while running ldap_next_reference test cases).
Fixed bug #49851 (http wrapper breaks on 1024 char long headers).

http://www.all1martpro.com
http://www.all1sourcetech.com

Use JavaMail to Automate Email Distribution

Suzanne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:33:52 +0000

Every action can possibly be automated with software, then why not automate the email distribution to end-users/customers. In this case, the JavaMail API, currently in version 1.4.3, can support this development in a protocol-independent manner and remain platform independent as always.

Here’s the JavaMail code for sending the email:

import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;

class EmailClient
{
    final String emailInfo = "EmailInfo.properties";
    Properties properties = new Properties();

    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        EmailClient emailClient = new EmailClient ();
        emailClient.sendEmail();
    }

    private void sendEmail()
    {
       try{
            //This is required to load all the properties
           FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(emailInfo);
           properties.load(fileInputStream);
           fileInputStream.close();
        }catch(IOException ioe)
       {
            //throw IOException of your choice.
            //can end here
       }
        System.out.println("Email properties read successfully.");

       String smtpAddress = properties.getProperty("smtpAddress");
       String fromAddress = properties.getProperty("fromAddress");
       String toAddress = properties.getProperty("toAddress");
       String emailSubject = properties.getProperty("emailSubject");
       String emailBody = properties.getProperty("emailBody");

       Properties props = new Properties();
        props.put("mail.smtp.host", smtpAddress);
        props.put("mail.from", fromAddress);
       Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

       try
       {
           MimeMessage mimeMessage = new MimeMessage(session);
           mimeMessage.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO,toAddress);
           mimeMessage.setSentDate(new Date());
           mimeMessage.setSubject(emailSubject);
           mimeMessage.setText(emailBody);
           System.out.println("Sending e-mail...");
           Transport.send(mimeMessage);
           System.out.println("e-mail sent.");
       }
        catch(MessagingException me)
       {
           System.out.println("e-mail send failed.");
           me.getMessage();
       }
    }
}

The code is fairly simple to understand:

The properties have been loaded for the email to be sent from a properties file. This could come from any other source, such as hardcoded values, a database, a user interface, etc.
The processed information is updated to the MimeMessage object, which is the actual email object. (The MIME, or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is an Internet standard that specifies how messages must be formatted for interoperability.)
MimeMessage takes a session argument, which can either be created or refer to the default session.
The session—important in any context and used here for the email—is established using the properties mail.smtp.host and mail.from.
Other details such as the date, subject, and the body of the email, which will be used when the email is sent, are being set out.
Finally, the email is dispatched using the send() method of the Transport class.
The entire email information is made available in a properties file. Here are the contents of the properties file for this application:

smtpAddress=smtp.server.address
fromAddress=myself@me.com
toAddress=someone@you.com
emailSubject=First email
emailBody=My first email

It’s stated previously that the source of the required information can vary, so we can modify the entries at will without recompiling the code to experiment. By the way, holding configurable information in properties files is a standard programming practice.

It seems to be simple right, and now let’s add more advanced features to the application. Don’t you think, you need attachments with email? The following code creates that-

import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.activation.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;

class SendAdvancedEmail
{
    final String emailInfo = "EmailInfo.properties";
    Properties properties = new Properties();

    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        SendAdvancedEmail sendAdvancedEmail = new SendAdvancedEmail ();
        sendAdvancedEmail.sendEmail();
    }

    private void sendEmail()
    {
       try{
            //This is required to load all the properties
           FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(emailInfo);
           properties.load(fileInputStream);
           fileInputStream.close();
        }catch(IOException ioe)
       {
            //throw IOException of your choice.
            //can end here
       }
        System.out.println("Email properties read successfully.");

       String smtpAddress = properties.getProperty("smtpAddress");
       String fromAddress = properties.getProperty("fromAddress");
       String toAddress = properties.getProperty("toAddress");
       String emailSubject = properties.getProperty("emailSubject");
       String emailBody = properties.getProperty("emailBody");

       Properties props = new Properties();
        props.put("mail.smtp.host", smtpAddress);
        props.put("mail.from", fromAddress);
       Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

       try
       {
           MimeMessage mimeMessage = new MimeMessage(session);
           mimeMessage.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO,toAddress);
           mimeMessage.setSentDate(new Date());
           mimeMessage.setSubject(emailSubject);
            //The following is required to add attachments
           MimeMultipart multipart = new MimeMultipart();
           //Creating the text part of the email message
           BodyPart bodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
            //The type is set to "text/plain"
           bodyPart.setText(emailBody);
           //Creating the attachment part of the email message
           BodyPart attachment = new MimeBodyPart();
           DataSource source = new FileDataSource(emailInfo);
           attachment.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(source));
           attachment.setFileName(emailInfo);
           //attachment.setContent(properties, "text/html");
            //Now combining the email message and the attachment
           multipart.addBodyPart(bodyPart);
           multipart.addBodyPart(attachment);
           //Setting the message with the multipart just created
           mimeMessage.setContent(multipart);

           System.out.println("Sending e-mail...");
           Transport.send(mimeMessage);
           System.out.println("e-mail sent.");
       }
        catch(MessagingException me)
       {
           System.out.println("e-mail send failed."+me);
           me.getMessage();
       }
    }
}

The important difference between this code listing and the one for sending email in the previous section is the process of building the message body, which is now capable of adding a file as an attachment. The Multipart class is actually split into two sections, the message part and the attachment. The properties are actually the same as for the previous code listing.

You could use Multipart instead of MimeMultipart, but be aware that Multipart is an abstract class and hence requires you to create an instance of MimeMultipart. It’s a similar case with MimeMessage. You can use Message, which also is an abstract class. Understanding all the classes used here will help you familiarize yourself with the mail package.

The article has provided enough information for you to experiment with sending and receiving emails. But you need to know-

The details in the properties file must be accurate to achieve the desired results.
Ensure that you have mail.jar and activation.jar in your classpath.

WordPress Plugin Releases for 03/01

Suzanne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:18:17 +0000

All these new wordpress plugins releases this month as follows:

123 Flash Chat- This new plugin can be used to create your own chat room in WordPress. It allows you to insert chat room to your sidebar, with either a light chat client or a link to standard chat client in popup mod. And you can define the width and height of 123 Flash Chat as well as its skin & language. The chat room displays a “hosted by 123flashchat.com free of charge” message.

Asynchronous Widgets- It allows you to have any registered widget on your WordPress.org-powered site be loaded asynchronously via an AJAX call.

WP-Tabbity- WP-Tabbity allows authors to create one or more tab groups containing one or more tabs, animated by the WordPress-included
version of jQuery.

WP Function Reference- It provides a box on the dashboard with a list of the functions that are available for you to use in your Wordpress installation.

Disable WordPress Updates- Disables the theme; plugin and core update checking, the related cronjobs and notification system.

MySQL Profiler Plugin for WordPress

Naggie — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 10:05:55 +0000

WordPress is so flexible that it has not only made it a major hit but also made non-developers to customize it with ease. Most of the Wordpress functions are optimized for acceptable performance, incorrect usage can cause undesirable speed loss.

Code Profiling

A (code) profiler is a performance analysis tool that measures only the frequency and duration of function calls, but there are other specific types of profilers in addition to more comprehensive profilers, capable of gathering extensive performance data.

You may not notice any performance issues unless you use code profiling to assist you. For general PHP profiling, programmers often use xdebug with all sort of PHP applications including wordpress. But, if you’re a wordpress theme developer, usually all you need is a MySQL profiler.

WP MySQL Profiler

This simple plugin will assist both theme and plugin developers in MySQL Profiling. Once installed, MySQL statistics will be available at page footer.

Installation

Download WP MySQL Profiler and extract the archive.
Rename your wp-db.php file in wp-includes directory to wp-db-backup.php.
Upload wp-db.php included in the archive to your wp-includes directory.
Upload wpSqlProfiler.php to wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Edit your wp-config.php. Find define (‘WPLANG’, ”); and add below: define(’SAVEQUERIES’, true);
Enable “WP MySQL Profiler” plugin from the admin CP.

Usage

You will see MySQL query details at page footer, when you will log in as an admin. Keep an eye on both total queries and time. Each time you add code to your templates, use the profiling information to check if an optimized function or code snippet has been used.

If you notice high total queries or time, examine the queries and check the backtrace (below) to find where the query originated from. And then remove or replace the unoptimized function/code.

The Backtrace

In the profiler, third column will give you the most important information. It started at themes/default/single.php on line 7 with the function get_header() which called function wp_head(), kubrick_header_display() and finally get_option() in the file functions.php on line 83.

Note that there’s a link “Show Full Trace”. For simplicity, the profiler doesn’t show all the function calls by default. Instead, it tries to determine function calls from plugins and themes. Since you are going to use it when coding plugins and themes, it makes sense to assume that you’re concerned with function calls originating therein.

Final Steps

And if you want to use the same wordpress copy on a live site, make sure to:

delete the wp-db.php and rename wp-db-backup.php to wp-db.php. (optional)
remove define(‘SAVEQUERIES’, true); from wp-config.php.

Similarly, disable the WP MySQL Profiler plugin.

&title=&snippet=&srcURL=&srcTitle=’>Share to Google Buzz

How to Integrate Google Buzz to your WordPress Theme

Naggie — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:53:54 +0000

Google Buzz is a new social media service introduced by Google to share real-time updates. It is integrated directly with your gmail account. It can be integrated just like Twitter in your blog to let your readers share your blogs posts with their followers.

To generate a “Share to Google Buzz” link, you just need to add the following code in between your WordPress Posts Loop.

The link contains 4 parameters:

url: link to blog post
title: blog post title
srcURL: source url like your blog url
srcTitle: your blog name or title

It’s a simplest and plugin free way to add Google Buzz to your blog posts. If you want, you can add a Google Buzz icon instead of text link in the above code.

ASP.Net Compilation Tool – do you want to allow updates without redeploying?

Suzanne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:33:52 +0000

If we have an ASP.Net website that:
1. We want to pre-compile before deploying to the live servers for the usual reasons of performance (no delay on first hit) and security (source code not hosted on the servers)
2. Before starting the web application, we automatically generate its web.config file
3. By default we want to disable view state in all the pages by adding a
node in the generated web.config
The main issue was that even though the generated web.config file had the correct setting in it, the view state wasn’t being disabled. This confused us for quite a while.
It turns out that the default setting when a website is compiled by the ASP.Net compiler doesn’t allow subsequent updates to the site.
In our particular case, this meant the compiled pages were using the (default) value in our non-existent web.config at compile time, not the one actually on the server at runtime.
Once we realised that, the solution was easy: simply add a –u parameter to the compiler flags which meant:
-u specifies that the Aspnet_compiler.exe should create a precompiled application that allows subsequent updates of contents such as .aspx pages.
If this option is omitted, the resulting application contains only compiled files and cannot be updated on the deployment server. You can update the application only by changing the source markup files and recompiling.

http://www.all1Press.com

New Release: WordPress Theme Releases

Naggie — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:55:28 +0000

WordPress Theme-

Light Folio

Light Folio is a clean clean and light theme with a combination black and white color.

CleanTech

CleanTech is a clean, two column and elegant theme with support for threaded comments designed to focus your content.

Ultima

This is a 2-column, soft-colored, rounded theme that totally aims at content and nothing else.

How to build a PHP Link Scraper with cURL?

Naggie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:59:29 +0000

Let’s build a robot, which scrapes links from web pages and dumps them in a database, and then it read those links from the database and follows them, scraping up the links on those pages, and so on ad infinitum.

To begin, let’s have a look at the groundwork.

The cURL Component-

cURL (or “client for URLS”) is a command-line tool for getting or sending files using URL syntax. It was first used in 2007 by Daniel Stenberg as a way to transfer files via protocols such as HTTP, FTP, Gopher, and many others, via a command-line interface. Since then, many more contributors has participated in further developing cURL, and the tool is used widely today.

Using cURL with PHP-

PHP is one of the languages that provide full support for cURL. (Find a listing of all the PHP functions you can use for cURL.) Luckily, PHP also enables you to use cURL without invoking the command line, making it much easier to use cURL while the server is executing. The example below demonstrates how to retrieve a page called example.com using cURL and PHP.

$ch = curl_init(”http://www.example.com/”);

$fp = fopen(”example_homepage.txt”, “w”);

curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_FILE, $fp);

curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);

fclose($fp);

$ch = curl_init(”http://www.example.com/”);
$fp = fopen(”example_homepage.txt”, “w”);

curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_FILE, $fp);
curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_HEADER, 0);

curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
fclose($fp);
?>

The Link Scraper-

For the link scraper, you will use cURL to get the content of the page you are looking for, and then you will use some DOM to grab the links and insert them into your database. You can build the database from the information below; it is really simple stuff.

$query = mysql_query(”select URL from links where visited != 1);
if($query)
{

 	while($query = mysql_fetch_array($result))

$target_url = $query['url'];
$userAgent = ‘ScraperBot’;

Next, grab the URL from the database table inside a simple while loop.

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_USERAGENT, $userAgent);
curl_setopt($ch, cURLOPT_URL,$target_url);

After instantiating cURL, you use curl_setopt() to set the USER AGENT in the HTTP_REQUEST, and then tell cURL which page you are hoping to retrieve.

curl_setopt($qw, cURLOPT_FAILONERROR, true);
curl_setopt($qw, cURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
curl_setopt($qw, cURLOPT_AUTOREFERER, true);
curl_setopt($qw, cURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,true);
curl_setopt($qw, cURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);

You’ve set a few more HEADERS with curl_setopt(). This time, you made sure that when an error occurs the script will return a failed result, and you set the timeout of each page followed to 20 seconds. Usually, a standard server will time-out at 30 seconds, but if you run this from your localhost you should be able to set up a no-timeout server.

$html= curl_exec($qw);
if (!$html)
{

 	echo "ERROR NUMBER: ".curl_errno($ch);

 	echo "ERROR: ".curl_error($ch);

 	exit;

}

Grab the actual page by sending the HEADERS along while executing the cURL request using curl_exec(). If an error occurs, it will be reported to PHP by the number and description inside curl_errno() and curl_error, respectively. Obviously, if such an error exists, you exit the script.

$dom = new DOMDocument();
@$dom->loadHTML($html);

Next, you create a document model of your HTML (that you grabbed from the remote server) and set it up as a DOM object.

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);
$href = $xpath->evaluate(”/html/body//a”);

Use XPATH to grab all the links on the page.

for ($i = 0; $i < $href->length; $i++) {

 	$data = $href->item($i);

        $url = $data->getAttribute('href');

 	$query = "INSERT INTO links (url, gathered_from) VALUES ('$url', '$gathered_from')";

 	mysql_query($query) or die('Error, insert query failed');

        echo "Successful Link Harvest: ".$url;

}

Dump all the links into the database, as well as the URL they are gathered from, just so you never go back there again. A more intelligent system might have a separate table for URLs already visited, as well as a normalized relationship between the two.

Going a step further than just grabbing the links enables you to harvest images or entire HTML documents as well. This is kind of where you start when building a search engine. Creating your own search engine may seem naively ambitious, and this little bit of code may inspire you a bit.

Source:- http://www.developer.com

http://www.all1martpro.com
http://get-a-designer.com

4 Steps to Consume Web Services using Ajax

Naggie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 11:20:14 +0000

Normally the browser Ajax controls calls the ASP.NET code and the ASP.NET code consumes the web service, but there are scenarios where you would like to call the web services directly from the Ajax JavaScript functions rather than calling via the behind code.

Here, you can get the same following 4 steps-

Step 1: Create your Customer Class

The first step is to create the customer class as shown below. So the customer class has 4 properties on customer id, first name, address and designation.

public class Customers
{
// private properties
private int _intCustomerID;
private string _strFirstName;
private string _strAddress;
private string _strDesignation;

// Public property and
public int CustomerID
{
get
{
return _intCustomerID;
}
set
{
_intCustomerID = value;
}
}
public string FirstName
{
get
{
return _strFirstName;
}
set
{
_strFirstName = value;
}
}

public class Customers

{

// private properties

private int _intCustomerID;

private string _strFirstName;

private string _strAddress;

private string _strDesignation;

// Public property and

public int CustomerID

{

get

{

return _intCustomerID;

}

set

{

_intCustomerID = value;

}

public string FirstName

{

get

{

return _strFirstName;

}

set

{

_strFirstName = value;

}

Step 2: Create your Web Service

The next step is to create the web service which exposes the customer class to UI. Here is a simple web service which has encapsulated customer collection. In the constructor, we are loading some dummy data into the list of customers as shown in the below code snippet:

[System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService]
public class Customer : System.Web.Services.WebService {

// Customer collection
List listcust = new List();
public Customer ()
{
//Load some dummy data in to customer collection.
listcust.Clear();

Customers cust = new Customers();
cust.CustomerID = 1;
cust.FirstName = “Dan”;
cust.Address = “Live in UK”;
cust.Designation = “Software Developer”;
listcust.Add(cust);

cust = new Customers();
cust.CustomerID = 2;
cust.FirstName = “Sheen”;
cust.Address = “Live in Austrailia”;
cust.Designation = “Web Designer”;
listcust.Add(cust);

cust = new Customers();
cust.CustomerID = 3;
cust.FirstName = “Koraine”;
cust.Address = “Live in London”;
cust.Designation = “Architect”;
listcust.Add(cust);
}

// This function exposes all customers to the end client’
[WebMethod]
public List LoadCustomers()
{
return listcust;
}

// This function helps us to get customer object based in ID
[WebMethod]
public Customers LoadSingleCustomers(int _customerid)
{
return (Customers)listcust[_customerid-1];
}

Two functions have been exposed with the web service, one which gives out a list of customers and another which gives out individual customer data based on customer id.

Step 3: Reference your Web Service using the asp:servicereference

Using the ‘asp:ServiceReference’, the path to the ASMX file will be pointed as shown in the below code snippet. This will generate the JavaScript proxy which can be used to call the customer object.

ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">

        Path="Customer.asmx" />

Step 4: Call the Webservice and the JavaScript Code

Once you have defined the proxy, you can now call the ‘Customer’ proxy directly to make method calls.

function LoadAll()
{
Customer.LoadCustomers(LoadCustomerToSelectOption, ErrorHandler, TimeOutHandler);
}

When you call the JavaScript proxy object, then you need to provide three functions; the first function (‘LoadCustomerToSelectOption’) will be called when the web service finishes and returns data. The data will be returned in the fill variable which will then be looped and added to the customer combo box.

function LoadCustomerToSelectOption(Fill)
{
var select = document.getElementById(”cmbCustomers“);

for (var i = 0; i < Fill.length; i++)
{
var value = new Option(Fill[i].FirstName, Fill[i].CustomerID);
select.options.add(value);
}
}

There are two more functions which are attached; one which handles error and the other which handles time out.

function ErrorHandler(result)
{
var msg = result.get_exceptionType() + “\r\n“;
msg += result.get_message() + “\r\n“;
msg += result.get_stackTrace();
alert(msg);
}
function TimeOutHandler(result)
{
alert(”Timeout :” + result);
}

Improving CSS With .LESS

Naggie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:52:46 +0000

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a syntax used to describe the look and the feel of the elements in a web page. CSS allows a web developer to separate the document content – the HTML, text, and images – from the presentation of that content. Such separation makes the markup in a page easier to read, understand, and update; it can result in reduced bandwidth as the style information can be specified in a separate file and cached by the browser; and makes site-wide changes easier to apply.

Many style sheets include repeated styling information because CSS does not allow the use of variables. Such repetition makes the resulting style sheet lengthier and harder to read; it results in more rules that need to be changed when the website is redesigned to use a new primary color.

In order to specify the inherited CSS rules, such as indicating that the elements in h1 elements should not be underlined, requires creating a single selector name, like h1 a. Ideally, CSS would allow for nested rules, enabling you to define the rules directly within the h1 rules.

.LESS is a free, open-source port of Ruby’s LESS library. LESS (and .LESS, by extension) is a parser that allows web developers to create style sheets using new and improved language features, including variables, operations, mixins, and nested rules.

Behind the scenes, .LESS converts the enhanced CSS rules into standard CSS rules. This conversion can happen automatically and on-demand through the use of an HTTP Handler, or done manually as part of the build process. Moreover, .LESS can be configured to automatically minify the resulting CSS, saving bandwidth and making the end user’s experience a snappier one.

Converting HTML to PDF Using Java and Qt

Naggie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:32:30 +0000

Here is the code:

import com.trolltech.qt.core.*;

import com.trolltech.qt.gui.*;

import com.trolltech.qt.webkit.*;

class html2pdf extends QWebView

{

private QPrinter printer = new QPrinter();

public html2pdf()

{

loadFinished.connect(this, \”loadDone()\”);

setHtml(\”This is HTML\”);

// Or use load() to convert html page from url to pdf

}

public void loadDone()

{

printer.setPageSize(QPrinter.PageSize.A4);

printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter.OutputFormat.PdfFormat);

printer.setOutputFileName(\”test.pdf\”);

print(printer);

System.out.println(\”Done\”);

QApplication.exit();

}

public static void main(String args[])

{

QApplication.initialize(args);

html2pdf h2p = new html2pdf();

h2p.show();

QApplication.exec();

}

import com.trolltech.qt.core.*;

import com.trolltech.qt.gui.*;

import com.trolltech.qt.webkit.*;

class html2pdf extends QWebView

{

private QPrinter printer = new QPrinter();

public html2pdf()

{

loadFinished.connect(this, \”loadDone()\”);

setHtml(\”This is HTML\”);

// Or use load() to convert html page from url to pdf

}

public void loadDone()

{

printer.setPageSize(QPrinter.PageSize.A4);

printer.setOutputFormat(QPrinter.OutputFormat.PdfFormat);

printer.setOutputFileName(\”test.pdf\”);

print(printer);

System.out.println(\”Done\”);

QApplication.exit();

}

public static void main(String args[])

{

QApplication.initialize(args);

html2pdf h2p = new html2pdf();

h2p.show();

QApplication.exec();

}

`
http://www.all1press.com

How to restart a windows service using VBScript

Shweta — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:27:07 +0000

You can restart a windows service with the use of VBScript as shown in the below code snippet:

Set oshell = createobject(”Wscript.Shell“)
oshell.run”cmd.exe”
wscript.sleep 500
oshell.sendkeys “net stop “”Your service name here“”"+(”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 5000
oshell.sendkeys “net start “”Your service name here“”"+(”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 5000
oshell.sendkeys “exit“+(”{Enter}”)

set oshell = nothing

WScript.Quit

http://www.all1social.com
http://www.all1martpro.com

How to restart a GSM Modem using VBScript-

Suzanne — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:38:30 +0000

Now you can restart a GSM Modem with the use of VBScript-

1. Copy the script code and save as a .vbs file.
2. Open hyperterminal and setup the modem settings, for this example save the hyperterminal file as c:\example\example.ht
3. Add the below vbs file to your c:\program Files\Windows NT directory and execute.

Important: If you saved the .ht as anything other than example.ht in c:\example rename the file in script below as well.

Set oshell = createobject(”Wscript.Shell”)

oshell.run”cmd.exe”

wscript.sleep 500

oshell.sendkeys “hypertrm.exe c:\example\example.ht”+(”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys “at{+}cfun=1″ + (”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 4000

oshell.sendkeys”at” + (”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys “at{+}cfun=1″ + (”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 4000

oshell.sendkeys”at” + (”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys”%f”

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys”x”

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys(”{Enter}”)

wscript.sleep 1500

oshell.sendkeys”exit”+(”{Enter}”)

set oshell = nothing

Set oshell = createobject(”Wscript.Shell”)
oshell.run”cmd.exe”
wscript.sleep 500
oshell.sendkeys “hypertrm.exe c:\example\example.ht”+(”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys “at{+}cfun=1″ + (”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 4000
oshell.sendkeys”at” + (”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys “at{+}cfun=1″ + (”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 4000
oshell.sendkeys”at” + (”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys”%f”
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys”x”
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys(”{Enter}”)
wscript.sleep 1500
oshell.sendkeys”exit”+(”{Enter}”)
set oshell = nothing

Vine Linux 5.1 Released

Naggie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:30:42 +0000

Vine Linux 5.1 has been released on 25th Feb. 2010, announced by Daisuke Suzuki. ISO images for 32-bit, 64-bit and PowerPC architectures.

Vine Linux is a free Linux-based operating system. It is designed for both workstations and server machines. The new version of Vine Linux brings only security updates and bug fixes that were announced since the release of Vine Linux 5.0. Therefore, it should be considered a maintenance version, with no new features!

Highlights of Vine Linux 5.1:

-Linux kernel 2.6.27.29;
-X.Org 7.4;
-X Server 1.6.3;
-GNOME 2.26.3;
-Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2;
-Faster and lightweight;
-Reorganized software collection;
-Support for x86_64 (64-bit) platforms;
-Support for PPC (PowerPC) platforms;
-Greatly improved the look and feel;
-Added user-friendly utilities;
-Added DVD/USB installable images.

For 32-bit edition:

Pentium 1GHz or higher processor;
256MB (Recommend 512MB) system memory;
700MB free disk space for minimum install;
4GB free disk space for full install.

For 64-bit edition:

A 64-bit processor (AMD64 or Intel64 architecture CPU);
256MB (Recommend 1GB) system memory;
At least 1GB (Recommend 4GB) free disk space.

New Release- MySQL 5.1.44 / 5.5.2 Milestone 2

Naggie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:21:05 +0000

MySQL is the World’s Most Popular Open Source Database. It is a widely used and fast SQL database server.

MySQL is a client and server implementation, which consists of a server daemon (mysqld) and many different client programs/libraries. It is a type of SQL database management featured in Thelix hosting plans. A database is an organized collection of information that a computer uses to select and display data.

Databases can help organize and enhance your site content. Sites with dynamic pages and/or shopping cart software often need an underlying database structure.

It is to be pronounced as “my ess cue el” (each letter separately) and not “my SEE kwill.” MySQL is an open source RDBMS that relies on SQL for processing the data in the database. MySQL provides APIs for the languages C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP and Python. In addition, OLE DB and ODBC providers exist for MySQL data connection in the Microsoft environment. A MySQL

NET Native Provider, which allows native MySQL to .NET access without the need for OLE DB, is also available. MySQL is most commonly used for Web applications and for embedded applications and has become a popular alternative to proprietary database systems because of its speed and reliability. MySQL can run on UNIX, Windows and Mac OS.

MySQL is a relational database management system, which means it stores data in separate tables rather than putting all the data in one big area. This adds flexibility, as well as speed.

The SQL part of MySQL stands for “Structured Query Language,” which is the most common language used to access databases. The MySQL database server is the most popular open source database in the world. It is extremely fast and easy to customize, due to its architecture.

Extensive reuse of code within the software, along with a minimalist approach to producing features with lots of functionality, gives MySQL unmatched speed, compactness, stability, and ease of deployment.

Their unique separation of the core server from the storage engine makes it possible to run with very strict control, or with ultra fast disk access, whichever is more appropriate for the situation.