Ganesh's Professional Blog

Flavors of Cloud

2011-05-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

Cloud can be presented in three flavors. They are

· Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS), Eg: Amazon web services[ Amazon EC2], Rackspace etc

· Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) Eg: Microsoft Azure Platform, Google App Engine. and

· Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) Eg: SalesForce.com, Google Apps, Microsoft BPOs, Office365, SharePoint Online.

Depending upon the customer’s needs, one of the formats of cloud offering can be adopted. The benefits of each of the above flavors vary. In a nutshell, the benefits of the cloud offerings can be shown as under for the various flavors.

Problem Management

2011-05-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

Problem Management is the Process responsible for managing the Lifecycle of all Problems. The primary Objectives of Problem Management are to prevent Incidents from happening, and to minimize the Impact of Incidents that cannot be prevented. (ITIL® V3 Glossary v3.1.24, 11 May 2007)

While Incident Management is responsible for the fix or workaround, ultimately it is the Problem Management that performs the root cause analysis for chronic Incidents and provides a permanent solution.

There are two approaches towards managing a problem

When a problem has occurred and a solution need to be found, it is considered Reactive Problem Management
Proactive problem Management helps to manage a problem proactively (opposite opposite of reactive) by trying to anticipate problems and prevent them from happening.

When a problem has occurred and a solution need to be found, it is considered Reactive Problem Management

See also

Change Management

Change Management

2011-05-08T18:44:00.000-07:00

Change Management is an essential process of any IT department. Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Change Management ensures that only authorized and carefully considered Changes are implemented. Changes can be planned and unplanned and or emergency Changes and there is a process to handle both.

There are a number of business drivers for a change management process:

Compliance - Your industry may require that certain changes be reviewed, approved, documented, and deployed in a methodical way.
Productivity - The smallest change in a user interface can result in hours of lost productivity if users aren't given advance warning or training.
Reliability - Prevent the deployment of changes that may break existing workflows or processes.

Change management processes attempt to answer all or some of the following questions:

Who approved and/or made the change?
Why was the change needed?
When was the change made?
How was the change deployed?

See also

Problem Management

Excel Connection in SSIS

2007-10-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

While trying to load Excel files, by default SSIS will consider first 8 rows to determine the data type of each column. Refer http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189897/en-us regarding this. So, cases where the first 8-10 rows have empty data, the data type selected by SSIS may not be correct and we may face problems with uploading/transforming the data in these columns.

We can resolve this issue by adding "IMEX=1; MAXROWSTOSCAN=0" to the excel connection string extended properties. A typical excel connection string after adding the above properties will look as follows:


Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=C:\Test.xls;Extended Properties="EXCEL 8.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1; MAXROWSTOSCAN=0";

Writing Javascript from the Server Side

2007-03-12T16:24:00.000-07:00

Most of the time we might be require javascript to be created dynamically. This is required in most of the cases when you want to show some alert or confirm messages to the user. Sometimes, it may require to generate these javascript dynamically as we might need to show / process some values which are available from the serverside to these javascript functions.

This piece of code, displays the contents of the textbox in a message box to the user.

The HTML....

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<form runat="server">
<asp:TextBox id="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox>
<asp:Button id="Button1" onclick="Button1_Click" runat="server" Text="Show Alert"></asp:Button>
</form>
<script>
<asp:literal runat="server" id="ltScript"></asp:literal>
</script>
</body>
</html>

The Code...

void Button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Literal ltScript = (Literal) Page.FindControl("ltScript");
ltScript.Text = "alert('" + TextBox1.Text + "')";
}

See also

trim method in JavaScript

Set the Account Expiry property in LDAP

2006-09-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

In many forums, I have found the question of how to set the AccountExpiry property in LDAP. I saw these when I was facing such a similar issue. Most of the forums did not mention much or those which mentioned something were incomplete. That is why I thought of blogging my solution.

This piece of code, is the one which I use to create a temporary user for my application. This can be helpful when you want to create a user whose account will expire after a certain period of time. Here I set it as 90 days.

The Code...


void SetAccountExpiry(string UserName)
{
 DirectoryEntry UserDE = new DirectoryEntry(LDAPPath, LDAPUserName, LDAPPwd);

 DirectorySearcher oSearch = new DirectorySearcher(UserDE);
 oSearch.Filter = "(SAMAccountName=" + UserName + ")";
 SearchResult oResult = oSearch.FindOne();
 UserDE = oResult.GetDirectoryEntry();

 DateTime accExp = DateTime.Now.AddDays(90);
 int64 accExpNum = accExp.ToFileTime();
 UserDE.Properties["accountExpires"].Value = GetLargeinteger(accExpNum);
 UserDE.CommitChanges();
}


IADsLargeinteger GetLargeinteger(long val)
{                
 IADsLargeinteger largeint = new Largeinteger();
 largeint.HighPart = (int) (val >> 32);
 largeint.LowPart = (int) (val & 0xFFFFFFFF);
 return largeInt;                
}

Hope this code was helpful. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Creating Custom App Settings in Web.Config

2006-09-07T01:58:00.000-07:00

Most of the application requires lots of settings to be specified in the App Settings. Unless you manage that in a neat way, it will soon become a headache for you.

.Net helps you out in this situation by allowing you to have custom AppSettings in your web.config. This will help you to group your appSettings in a more efficient manner so that management becomes much easier.

In this blog, I have a sample code which lets you to retrieve the values from the custom AppSettings tag in your web.config.

The Code....


// Usage
string MyKey = GetSettings ("Mykey");

// The method
private string GetSettings(string Key)
{
 System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection obj = (System.Collections.Specialized.NameValueCollection) System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig("MySettings");
 return obj[Key].ToString();
}

The Web.config...


<!-- Defining a new section -->

<configSections>
 <section name="MySettings" 
                 type="System.Configuration.NameValueFileSectionHandler,System, Version=1.0.3300.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
</configSections>

<!-- The New Section -->

<MySettings>
 <add key="Mykey" value="MyKeyValue" />
</MySettings>

Highlight rows in a DataGrid

2006-07-28T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here is another useful piece of code which can be helpful for novice programmers.

DataGrid is a very nice tool to present the data. It is quite easy and once you start using that, I am sure, anybody would enjoy using that control. We can bind a grid to a dataset in just two steps.

Assign the DataSource property of the grid to a DataObject. The DataObject can be anything from a DataSet to an array.

Call the DataBind() method to bind the data.

We can do further processing in the control in its ItemDataBound event.

Once you have bound the data, the ItemDataBound even can be used to do furthur processing.

In this example I present how to mark certain rows in a DataGrid based on some data. Here I use the Employees table in the Northwind database. I populate a grid with data and mark the Employees whose city is "Seattle"

The Code...


void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
      DataGrid1.DataSource = GetData();
      DataGrid1.DataBind();
}
   
void DataGrid1_ItemDataBound(object sender, DataGridItemEventArgs e)
{
      if(e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.Item  e.Item.ItemType == ListItemType.AlternatingItem)
      {
            if (e.Item.Cells[4].Text == "Seattle") // Cell4 Contains the City
            {
                  e.Item.CssClass = "Hilite";
            }
      }
}

I have not included the code for creating the DataSet. The HTML has also not been inlcuded. It contains a DataGrid

See also

Adding and Removing items from a ListBox

2006-07-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

This is a small piece of code which can help startup programmers in ASP.Net

Paste this code in the code section.


void cmdAdd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
     ListItem LI = ListBox1.SelectedItem;
       
     if (LI != null)
     {
          ListBox2.Items.Add(LI);
          ListBox2.SelectedIndex = -1;
          ListBox1.Items.Remove(LI);
          ListBox1.SelectedIndex = -1;
     }
}
               
void cmdRemove_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
     ListItem LI = ListBox2.SelectedItem;
               
     if (LI != null)
     {
          ListBox1.Items.Add(LI);
          ListBox1.SelectedIndex = -1;
          ListBox2.Items.Remove(LI);
          ListBox2.SelectedIndex = -1;
     }
}

This example requires two listboxes named ListBox1 and ListBox2. At least one of them having some items.

XML Encode & Decode

2006-07-20T00:36:00.000-07:00

Whenever we use XML in your application, we might be required to encode and decode the data which we are passing in the XML since the data may contain some special charecters like XML tags. The charecters '<', '>', '&' and '"' may have to be replaced. I use these methods to encode and decode XML strings.

public string XMLEncode(string Value)
{
     return Value.Replace ("&", "&amp;").Replace("'", "&apos;").Replace ("\"", "&quot;").Replace ("<", "&lt;").Replace(">", "&gt;");
} 
        
public string XMLDecode(string Value)
{
    return Value.Replace ("&amp;", "&").Replace("&apos;", "'").Replace("&quot;", "\"").Replace ("&lt;", "<").Replace ("&gt;", ">");
}

Calling a Web Service by passing credentials

2006-07-18T23:38:00.000-07:00

Here is the method I use for calling WebServices from my .Net applications. Usually from web services, we might need to pass the credentials of the logged in user to the webService also

public static MyWS.MyWSMethod GetMyWSMethod()
{
     MyWS.MyWSMethod WS = new MyWS.MyWSMethod();
     WS.Url = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["MyWSURL"];
     WS.PreAuthenticate = false;
     WS.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
     return WS;
}

When PreAuthenticate = true, the WWW-authenticate header is sent with the first request if the authentication mechanism supports doing so. When PreAuthenticate = false, a request is made to the XML Web service method without initially attempting to authenticate the user. If the XML Web service allows anonymous access, then the XML Web service method is executed. If anonymous access is disallowed, a 401 HTTP return code is sent back to the client

When PreAuthenticate property to true, the NetworkCredential stored in the Credentials property will be sent to along with the resource request.

Export DataGrid to Excel

2006-07-17T02:07:00.000-07:00

Most of the applications which are being developed now require data to be exported to various formats. With ASP.Net this has become quite simple

private void Export2Excel(DataGrid grd)
{
     Response.Clear();
     Response.Buffer = true;
     Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-Excel";
     Response.Charset = "";
     EnableViewState = false;
     System.IO.StringWriter oStringWriter = new System.IO.StringWriter();
     System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter oHtmlTextWriter = new System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter(oStringWriter);

     // Convert the controls to string literals
     ClearControls(grd);
     grd.RenderControl(oHtmlTextWriter);

     Response.Write(oStringWriter.ToString());
     Response.End();
}

private void ClearControls(Control Ctrl)
{
     for (int i= Ctrl.Controls.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--)
     {
          ClearControls(Ctrl.Controls[i]);
     }

     if (!(Ctrl is TableCell))
     {
          if (Ctrl.GetType().GetProperty("SelectedItem") != null)
          {
               LiteralControl Lt = new LiteralControl();
               Ctrl.Parent.Controls.Add(Lt);
               try
               {
                    Lt.Text = (string)Ctrl.GetType().GetProperty("SelectedItem").GetValue(Ctrl, null);
               }
               catch {}

               Ctrl.Parent.Controls.Remove(Ctrl);
          }
          else if (Ctrl.GetType().GetProperty("Text") != null)
          {
               LiteralControl Lt = new LiteralControl();
               Ctrl.Parent.Controls.Add(Lt);
               Lt.Text = (string)Ctrl.GetType().GetProperty("Text").GetValue(Ctrl, null);

               Ctrl.Parent.Controls.Remove(Ctrl);
          }
     }
     return;
}

Hope this post helped you. Please feel free to post your comments.

Send Mail - formatted using XML & XSL

2006-07-14T02:41:00.000-07:00

Most of the applications which we develop needs to send mails. Mails can be sent from ASP.Net using the System.Web.Mail.MailMessage class. This has been stated in an earlier post. This is an enhancement for the earlier method. We might need to format the mail before sending it out to the recepients. Various methods can be adopted for this purpose. One of the methods is to take the contents of the mail from an XSL file which can be merged with a DataXML.

In this method, we can seperate the Data and Presentation layers so that it is easy to modify the static contents of the mail without recompiling the program. The following is the code sample for doing the same.


private void SendMail(string DataXML, string XSLFileName, string ToEMailAddress, string CCEMailAddress, string FromEMailAddress)
{
     string XML = GetFormattedXml(DataXML, XSLFileName);
     XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
     xDoc.LoadXml(XML);
     System.Web.Mail.MailMessage oMail = new    System.Web.Mail.MailMessage();
     oMail.To = ToEMailAddress;

     if (CCEMailAddress.Trim() != "")
          oMail.Cc = CCEMailAddress;
     oMail.From = FromEMailAddress;

     oMail.Subject = xDoc.SelectSingleNode("//subject").InnerText;
     oMail.Body = xDoc.SelectSingleNode("//messagebody").InnerXml;
     oMail.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
     oMail.BodyFormat = System.Web.Mail.MailFormat.Html;
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = MailServer;
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.Send(oMail);

     xDoc = null;
}

private string GetFormattedXml(string XML, string XSLFileName)
{
     System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform xslt = new System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform();
     xslt.Load(XSLFileName);
     System.IO.StringWriter stringWriter = new System.IO.StringWriter();
     XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
     xDoc.LoadXml(XML);
     xslt.Transform(xDoc, null, stringWriter);
     return stringWriter.ToString();
}

private string GetFormattedXml(string XML, string XSLFileName, System.Xml.Xsl.XsltArgumentList Arg)
{
     System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform xslt = new System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform();
     xslt.Load(XSLFileName);
     System.IO.StringWriter stringWriter = new System.IO.StringWriter();
     XmlDocument xDoc = new XmlDocument();
     xDoc.LoadXml(XML);
     xslt.Transform(xDoc, Arg, StringWriter);
     return stringWriter.ToString();
}

See Also

Sending Mail from .Net application

Enterprise Resource Planning

2006-04-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

ERP (Enterprise resource planning) is an industry term for the broad set of activities supported by multi-module application software that helps a manufacturer or other business manage the important parts of its business. These business activities include the following

Product Planning
Parts Purchasing
Inventory Management and Maintenance
Supplier Interaction
Providing Customer Service
Order Tracking

ERP can also include application modules for the finance and human resources aspects of a business. Typically, an ERP system uses or is integrated with a relational database system (RDBMS). The deployment of an ERP system can involve considerable business process analysis, employee retraining, and new work procedures

Sending Mail from .Net application

2006-04-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

This is a method which can be used for sending mails from Dot Net applications

private void SendMail(string FromAddress, string ToAddress, string BCCAddress, string Subject, string Message)
{
     System.Web.Mail.MailMessage oMail = new System.Web.Mail.MailMessage();

     oMail.To = ToAddress;
     oMail.Bcc = BCCAddress;
     oMail.From = FromAddress;

     oMail.Subject = Subject;
     oMail.Body = Message;

     oMail.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "smtp";
     System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.Send(oMail);
}

Showing Checkboxes in Grid

2005-04-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

This is a DataGrid uses a template column to show a bit field in a checkbox. In ASP.Net you can achieve this without much programming effort.

This page uses the method GetData() to retrieve data from the Authors database

The Script...

System.Data.DataSet GetData()
{
     string connectionString = "server=\'(local)\'; user id=\'sa\';password=\'pwd\'; database=\'pubs\'";
     System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection dbConnection = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection(connectionString); 
        
     string Sql = "SELECT au_id, au_lname, contract FROM authors";
     System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand dbCommand = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand();
     dbCommand.CommandText = Sql;
     dbCommand.Connection = dbConnection; 
        
     System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter dataAdapter = new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter();
     dataAdapter.SelectCommand = dbCommand;
     System.Data.DataSet dataSet = new System.Data.DataSet();
     dataAdapter.Fill(dataSet); 
        
     return dataSet;
} 
        
void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
     DataGrid1.DataSource = GetData();
     DataGrid1.DataBind();
}

Unable to start debugging on the web server.

2005-04-25T03:01:00.000-07:00

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Domain Controller Security Policy.

Click Security Settings.

Click Local Policies, and then click User Rights Assignment.
In the right pane, double-click Impersonate a client after authentication.

In the Security Policy Setting window, click Define these policy settings.
Click Add, and then click Browse.

In the Select Users or Groups window, select the IWAM account name, click Add, and then click OK.
Click OK two times.

To enforce an update of the computer policy, type the following command at a command prompt, and then press ENTER:
secedit /refreshpolicy machine_policy /enforce

At the command prompt,
type iisreset, and then press ENTER.

Building SQL Strings

2005-03-18T23:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a nice utility to make sql strings from the Query which you have created. To do this create the following procedure in your master database

CREATE PROCEDURE sp_SqlForCS
@Sql varchar(4000)
AS
SET NoCount On
-- Never change this
SELECT '
StringBuilder Sql = new StringBuilder();

Sql.Append("' + replace(
-- Never change this
replace(replace(replace(replace(@Sql,'SELECT','SELECT'),'FROM','FROM'),'WHERE','WHERE'),'INNER JOIN','INNER JOIN')

-- Never change this
,
'
',
'");
Sql.Append("')+ '");'

-- Never change this
SET NoCount Off

Now you can start preparing your sql statement from Query analyzer. Once you have done with the formatting and the rest of the stuff, put a single quote ['] before and after the query and execute sp_SqlForCS with the string as the paramter

sp_SqlForCS
'SELECT titles.title, titleauthor.au_ord, authors.au_lname, titles.price, titles.ytd_sales,
titles.pub_id
FROM authors
INNER JOIN titleauthor
ON authors.au_id = titleauthor.au_id
INNER JOIN titles
ON titleauthor.title_id = titles.title_id'

and you will get the following output

StringBuilder Sql = new StringBuilder();

Sql.Append("SELECT titles.title, titleauthor.au_ord, authors.au_lname, titles.price, ");
Sql.Append(" titles.ytd_sales, titles.pub_id");
Sql.Append("FROM authors ");
Sql.Append(" INNER JOIN titleauthor ");
Sql.Append(" ON authors.au_id = titleauthor.au_id ");
Sql.Append(" INNER JOIN titles ");
Sql.Append(" ON titleauthor.title_id = titles.title_id");

trim method in JavaScript

2005-01-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

JavaScript does not contain a method for trimming strings. You can create one for yourself and use it whereever you want to trim strings.

STEP 1: JavaScript Methods

The first step is to create the methods for trimming the strings. This can be done using regular expressions.

function strltrim()
{
return this.replace(/^\s+/,'');
}

function strrtrim()
{
return this.replace(/\s+$/,'');
}

function strtrim()
{
return this.replace(/^\s+/,'').replace(/\s+$/,'');
}

String.prototype.ltrim = strltrim;
String.prototype.rtrim = strrtrim;
String.prototype.trim = strtrim;

STEP 2: Usage

//To remove the leading blanks from a string variable
sTextsText = sText.ltrim();
//To remove the trailing blanks from a string variable
sTextsText = sText.rtrim();
//To remove the leading and trailing blanks from a string variable
sTextsText = sText.trim();

Response.Redirect, Server.Transfer, Server.Execute

2004-12-20T03:09:00.000-08:00

Response.Redirect

Tells the browser to redirect.

Server.Transfer

Consumes less server resources than Response.Redirect
Changes the focus on the web server and transfers the request.
Does not maintains the original URL.
Cannot navigate to an external URL.
Has a second parameter "preserveForm" which when set to true, all the objects in the page can be accessed from the page which you are transfering to. You can access that using Request.Form("txtName")

Server.Execute

Executes a page and returns the results.
Is not very important in ASP.Net

Registering Visual Studio Solutions

2004-12-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

I had a strange problem with my Visual Studio .Net 2003. I was not able to add any new items to my projects nor was I able to create any new projects. I got a solution from Micorsoft Newsgroups and it worked well. I had to register the CSProj.dll and all was working fine.

regsvr32.exe "c:\program files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\vcpackages\csproj.dll"

Hello Cochin

2004-12-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

All are welcome to Cochin, the Queen of the Arabian Sea. This is a wonderful place to live in.