AndreaCol's Blog

Blog closing

AndreaCol — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:17:56 GMT

this is sad, but I've no more time to spend in this activity. I've enjoyed this new experience for the last year, so I'm thinking to close the blog and switch the site into few informational pages about my freelance activity.

Changes happened in my professional and private life, both good and bad ones, I think also it's better to have more time to get involved in my personal project and more free time, the latter is becoming increasingly rare as the days pass.

I hope you enjoied the contents, see you.

My Velocity blog posts series

AndreaCol — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:44:37 GMT

Today I finished my first blog posts series about Microsoft Velocity, unfortunately (for English readers) it’s written in Italian for UgiDotNet community. I struggled with few graphics to better explain what i was going to talk about…

..if you want to know more, visit the complete series here

At the moment I’m thinking to write another series for my English blog, probably with a more deep internal cut, but due to favorable weather and sea conditions I just can’t begin right now :)

Velocity Session delivered!

AndreaCol — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:30:05 GMT

Last week I presented my first session titled “introducing Microsoft Velocity”.

It was a practical overview about this cache framework, in which I’ve demonstrated all Velocity features in CTP3, and talked about the futures also.

The complete High Availability demo, with a 3 server cache cluster (3 VM running Velocity on WIN2008 with 512MB ram), was successfully presented. During this demo I stopped one of the servers, then requested the same page from another one (miming a Network Load Balancer) and keep getting my session cart and catalog items too. Then I restarted the same server and it joined the cache cluster serving session and catalog data seamlessly. I’ve also simulated a backoffice, winform application, from which I added a new product to the “live” catalog and It was soon displayed… and added to the cart from the Web Application.

Here are few pictures of me while presenting.

My first speech about Microsoft Velocity

AndreaCol — Sun, 24 May 2009 07:43:41 GMT

This week, I’ll be presenting a session titled “Introduction to Microsoft Velocity” at Community Nights, in Milan.

This will be my first public speech and, sorry if I’m wrong, will be also the first speech about Microsoft Velocity in Italy.

My interest about Velocity started during Tech-Ed EMEA 2008 in Barcelona, where I attended a session about this new project, that was still in CTP2. Since then I started playing with it, building a virtualized cluster and a demo application to demonstrate High Availability. During my studies, I faced to compare existing MS cache frameworks like ASP.Net Cache and Enterprise Library Caching Application Block, so I’ve published a feature matrix to explain and better identify Velocity strengths and place it in the right “department” when you’ll go shopping for a cache framework. By the way, if Velocity fits your needs, it will be available as free download (AFAIK).

In this blog you can also find some articles and posts about interesting things I’ve found on my way studying and playing with Velocity. In the official forum also I try to give my little contribution to people that faced to common issue or asked just a question about a feature, I’ve also asked some questions and received the right support quickly, even the project is still in CTP, there’s an efficient team behind it (msdn forums also use Velocity!).

After the session at Community Nights, I’ll post something about it, and on June 6th, I’ll be recording my first podcast about Velocity for the Italian .net community DotDotNet.

Thanks to Andrea and Daniele for giving me this great opportunity.

Cross fingers for me!

Velocity CTP3 cache notifications

AndreaCol — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:28:36 GMT

One of the new features introduced with CTP3, is the ability to subscribe notifications.

There are 3 types of notification levels: Cache, Region and Item.
Before analyzing all steps needed to start receiving notifications, let’s see how official documentation describes this feature:

“Cache notifications only report data-related changes to regions and cache items in the cluster, they do not report events of the cluster itself.”

Here’s showed the six-steps procedure to start listening to notifications.

Step 1: Create a notification-enabled namedCache using Powershell:

new-cache <chacheName> –NotificationsEnabled

Step 2: Get a DataCacheFactory instance using specific constructor:

        1: DataCacheFactory factory;

       2:             factory = new DataCacheFactory(servers, 

       3:                                            true,

       4:                                            false, 

       5:                                            DataCacheLocalCacheSyncPolicy.NotificationBased, 

       6:                                            100,

       7:                                            int.Parse(txtPollInterval.Text));

Step 3: Select which type of operations to listen to:

       1: //Which operations to listen to?

       2: DataCacheOperation allCacheOperations = DataCacheOperation.AddItem |

       3:                                         DataCacheOperation.ReplaceItem |

       4:                                         DataCacheOperation.RemoveItem |

       5:                                         DataCacheOperation.CreateRegion |

       6:                                         DataCacheOperation.ClearRegion |

       7:                                         DataCacheOperation.RemoveRegion;

Step 4: Provide a notification callback using delegate:

       1: //provide a notification callback

       2: DataCacheNotificationCallback cb;

       3: cb = new DataCacheNotificationCallback(OnNotificationReceived);

Step 5: Subscribe notifications using cache.addCacheLevelNotification method:

       1: //add cache-level notification callback 

       2: cache.AddCacheLevelCallback(allCacheOperations, cb);

Step 6: Implement your notification handling logic:

       1: public void OnNotificationReceived(string CacheName,

       2:                                    string regionName,

       3:                                    string key, 

       4:                                    DataCacheItemVersion version,

       5:                                    DataCacheOperation cacheOperation,

       6:                                    DataCacheNotificationDescriptor nd)

       7: {

       8:     if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(regionName)) regionName = "Default";

       9:  

      10:     string message = string.Format(@"{0} {1} in Cache: ""{2}"" Region: ""{3}""", cacheOperation.ToString(), key, CacheName, regionName);

      11:     notificationDelegate del = new notificationDelegate(LogNotification);

      12:     lstNotifications.Invoke(del,message );

      13: }

That’s all you need to do, but there is a detail to be aware of: as reported on this Velocity Forum thread, if you start listening to cache notifications, you’ll receive all notification history since the cluster has started, not just notifications from the point-in-time you start to listen.

Depending on each specific scenario, this behavior might both generate useless traffic or give the chance to get all notification history, so in my opinion it will be more flexible to be able to choose whether or not receive all notification history or from a specific point in time such callback creation or notification subscription.

Velocity CTP3 is out

AndreaCol — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:03:40 GMT

…and it’s time to update your assemblies, change the namespace to Microsoft.Data.Caching, add “data” prefix almost before any type:

…and update your web.config (pay attention to differences into names now starting with DataCacheXXX), here’s a full configuration file that works with Velocity CTP3:

        1: <?xml version="1.0"?>

       2: <configuration>

       3:     <configSections>

       4:         <sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions" type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">

       5:             <sectionGroup name="scripting" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">

       6:                 <section name="scriptResourceHandler" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>

       7:                 <sectionGroup name="webServices" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35">

       8:                     <section name="jsonSerialization" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>

       9:                     <section name="profileService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>

                    <section name="authenticationService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>

                    <section name="roleService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingRoleServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication"/>

                </sectionGroup>

            </sectionGroup>

        </sectionGroup>

        <!-- Velocity 1 of 3 START -->

        <section name="dataCacheClient" type="Microsoft.Data.Caching.DataCacheClientSection, CacheBaseLibrary" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>

    <section name="fabric" type="System.Data.Fabric.Common.ConfigFile, FabricCommon" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>

        <!-- Velocity 1 of 3 END -->

    </configSections>

    <!-- Velocity 2 of 3 START-->

  <dataCacheClient deployment="routing">

        <localCache isEnabled="true" sync="TTLBased" ttlValue="300"/>

        <hosts>

            <!--List of services -->

            <host name="localhost" cachePort="22233" cacheHostName="DistributedCacheService"/>

        </hosts>

    </dataCacheClient>

    <fabric>

        <section name="logging" path="">

            <collection name="sinks" collectionType="list">

                <!--LOG SINK CONFIGURATION-->

                <!--defaultLevel Values:  -->

                <!--  -1 = no tracing -->

                <!--   0 = Errors only -->

                <!--   1 = Warnings and Errors only -->

                <!--   2 = Information, Warnings, Errors -->

                <!--   3 = Verbose (all event information)-->

                <customType className="System.Data.Fabric.Common.EventLogger,FabricCommon" sinkName="System.Data.Fabric.Common.ConsoleSink,FabricCommon" sinkParam="" defaultLevel="-1"/>

                <customType className="System.Data.Fabric.Common.EventLogger,FabricCommon" sinkName="System.Data.Fabric.Common.FileEventSink,FabricCommon" sinkParam="Dcache/dd-hh-mm" defaultLevel="-1"/>

        <customType className="System.Data.Fabric.Common.EventLogger,FabricCommon" sinkName="Microsoft.Data.Caching.ETWSink, CacheBaseLibrary" sinkParam="" defaultLevel="-1"/>

      </collection>

        </section>

    </fabric>

    <!-- Velocity 2 of 3 END-->

    <appSettings/>

    <connectionStrings/>

    <system.web>

        <!--

    <sessionState mode ="InProc" cookieless="UseUri">

    Velocity 3 of 3 START

    <sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="SessionStoreProvider" cookieless="UseUri">

            <providers>

                <add name="SessionStoreProvider" type="System.Data.Caching.SessionStoreProvider, ClientLibrary" cacheName="ASPNETSessionCache"/>

            </providers>

        </sessionState>

    Velocity 3 of 3 END

    -->

        <sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="SessionStoreProvider" cookieless="UseUri">

            <providers>

                <add name="SessionStoreProvider" type="Microsoft.Data.Caching.DataCacheSessionStoreProvider, ClientLibrary" cacheName="ASPNETSessionCache"/>

            </providers>

        </sessionState>

        <compilation debug="false">

            <assemblies>

                <add assembly="System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

                <add assembly="System.Data.DataSetExtensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

                <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

                <add assembly="System.Xml.Linq, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/>

                <add assembly="System.Design, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B03F5F7F11D50A3A"/>

                <add assembly="System.Web.Extensions.Design, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

                <add assembly="System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=B77A5C561934E089"/></assemblies>

        </compilation>

        <authentication mode="None"/>

        <!--

            The <customErrors> section enables configuration 

            of what to do if/when an unhandled error occurs 

            during the execution of a request. Specifically, 

            it enables developers to configure html error pages 

            to be displayed in place of a error stack trace.



        <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="GenericErrorPage.htm">

            <error statusCode="403" redirect="NoAccess.htm" />

            <error statusCode="404" redirect="FileNotFound.htm" />

        </customErrors>

        -->

        <pages theme="DefaultTheme">

            <controls>

                <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

                <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

            </controls>

        </pages>

        <httpHandlers>

            <remove verb="*" path="*.asmx"/>

            <add verb="*" path="*.asmx" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

            <add verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" validate="false" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

            <add verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" validate="false"/>

        </httpHandlers>

        <httpModules>

            <add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

        </httpModules>

    </system.web>

    <system.codedom>

        <compilers>

            <compiler language="c#;cs;csharp" extension=".cs" warningLevel="4" type="Microsoft.CSharp.CSharpCodeProvider, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">

                <providerOption name="CompilerVersion" value="v3.5"/>

                <providerOption name="WarnAsError" value="false"/>

            </compiler>

        </compilers>

    </system.codedom>

    <!-- 

        The system.webServer section is required for running ASP.NET AJAX under Internet

        Information Services 7.0.  It is not necessary for previous version of IIS.

    -->

    <system.webServer>

        <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false"/>

        <modules>

            <remove name="ScriptModule"/>

            <add name="ScriptModule" preCondition="managedHandler" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

        </modules>

        <handlers>

            <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated"/>

            <remove name="ScriptHandlerFactory"/>

            <remove name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices"/>

            <remove name="ScriptResource"/>

            <add name="ScriptHandlerFactory" verb="*" path="*.asmx" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

            <add name="ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices" verb="*" path="*_AppService.axd" preCondition="integratedMode" type="System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

            <add name="ScriptResource" preCondition="integratedMode" verb="GET,HEAD" path="ScriptResource.axd" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>

        </handlers>

    </system.webServer>

    <runtime>

        <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">

            <dependentAssembly>

                <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Extensions" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35"/>

                <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-1.1.0.0" newVersion="3.5.0.0"/>

            </dependentAssembly>

            <dependentAssembly>

                <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.Extensions.Design" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35"/>

                <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0-1.1.0.0" newVersion="3.5.0.0"/>

            </dependentAssembly>

        </assemblyBinding>

    </runtime>

</configuration>

Now, after a first test, I’m updating all my cache hosts that are part of my Virtual Farm.

NHProfiler for my tool belt

AndreaCol — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:11:30 GMT

In these days, I’m working on a personal project that uses NHibernate to persist its entities. During development, it often happens to use SQL Server profiler, to check for roundtrips and database load because of NH transparent persistence and easy-to use api. SQL Profiler don’t offer a great UI for reading sql instructions and obviously is not aware of entities and sessions used by NH.

So I tried this tool, called NHProfiler, to have some benchmark data and interactive suggested practices to avoid common pitfalls using NHibernate.

First download NHProfiler from here, and add a reference in your project to this assembly: HibernatingRinos.NHibernate.Profiler.Appender.dll.

Now in the application startup (Application_Start in web applications, Program.Main in windows applications or the App constructor for WPF applications), initialize the profile as shown here:

Finally enable NHibernate statistics in your config file

<property name ="generate_statistics">True</property>

Now you’re ready to start profiling your application starting NHProfiler, and easily look to what’s happening behind the scenes: sql statements called, parameter’s value, sessions and benchmark data and finally alerts related to common pitfalls and suggestions (redirects to an online help page) on how to avoid them.

A great and easy to use tool, and I think is a must for who use NHibernate because:

it’s easy to set up and nonintrusive
clear statement, parameters and returned data inspection
Session factory statistics
Row count, duration and alerts for each statement
analysis: Unique queries, View by method and overall usage
cool user interface

but:

alerts are explained with online pages

Blog running on Windows 2008 and IIS7

AndreaCol — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:42:47 GMT

Wow, finally I did it, I’ve migrated all my sites, including this blog, on windows 2008 server and IIS7. It was a matter of submitting a migration form, chatting with technical staff, paying a 20$ fee, but it wasn’t a smooth procedure though, I mean that there were some issues with it, not much technical ones but almost regarding my ticket management… anyway so far so good, my development and “production” environments are now upgraded to latest server o.s. and IIS7.

70-564 beta PASSED!

AndreaCol — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:17:04 GMT

This morning I received the confirmation email: I’ve passed the beta exam: 70-564 Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5

The real exam number was 71-564 because was a beta exam.

Here’s the new logo:

I did this exam on November 28 2008, it took about two months to get the results, without any score, I wonder if it is possible to get the final score…

Book review: Pro Silverlight 2.0 in C# 2008

AndreaCol — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:03:29 GMT

My latest book review on Pro Silverlight 2.0 in C# 2008, a book I’ve read in December, is available here on AspAlliance site.