Precautions while using StateServer and SQLServer Mode in ASP.NET State Management

Precautions while using StateServer and SQLServer Mode in ASP.NET State Management       

                                                         

In this article on session state management in asp.net, we will discuss precautions which should be taken care while using StateSever mode and SQLServer mode. As in these types of session state management, the session is stored outside your machine, you need to take care of following things:
                                                                                                              
1. To use StateServer mode, you must first be sure the ASP.NET state service is running on the server used for the session store. The ASP.NET state service is installed as a service when ASP.NET and the .NET Framework are installed. The ASP.Net state service is installed at the following location:

systemroot\Microsoft.NET\Framework\versionNumber\aspnet_state.exe

2. To improve the security of your application when using StateServer mode, it is recommended that you protect your stateConnectionString value by encrypting the sessionState section of your configuration file.

3. Set the stateConnectionString attribute to tcpip=serverName:42424.

4. By default, stateConnectionString used the IP 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and port 42424. But we can change the port from the Registry editor.

The StateServer may be the current system or a different system. But it will be totally independent of IIS. The destination of the StateServer will depend on the web.config stateConnectionString setting. If we set it to 127.0.0.1:42424, it will store data in the local system itself. For changing the StateServer destination, we need to change the IP, and make sure aspnet_state.exe is up and running on that system.

5. Objects stored in session state must be serializable if the mode is set to StateServer.

6. To use StateServer mode in a Web farm, you must have the same encryption keys specified in the machineKey element of your Web configuration for all applications that are part of the Web farm.

7. To use SQLServer mode, you must first be sure the ASP.NET session state database is installed on SQL Server. You can install the ASP.NET session state database using the Aspnet_regsql.exe tool.

8. To improve the security of your application when using SQLServer mode, it is recommended that you protect your sqlConnectionString value by encrypting the sessionState section of your configuration file.

9. To configure SQLServer mode for a Web farm, in the configuration file for each Web server, set the sessionState element's sqlConnectionString attribute to point to the same SQL Server database. The path for the ASP.NET application in the IIS metabase must be identical on all Web servers that share session state in the SQL Server database.

10. Session ID is 120 bit long.

11.  Advantages and Disadvantages of StateServer

Based on the above discussion:

Advantages:

A) It keeps data separate from IIS so any issues with IIS will not hamper session data.
B) It is useful in web farm and web garden scenarios.

Disadvantages:

A) Process is slow due to serialization and de-serialization.
B) State Server always needs to be up and running.

Disadvantages of InProc:

A) Performance overhead in case of large volumes of data/user, because session data is stored in server memory.

B) Overhead involved in serializing and de-serializing session data, because in the case of StateServer and SQLServer session modes, we need to serialize the objects before storing them.

HTML5 Streaming Video Tag: HTML5 Video Tag vs Flash

HTML5 Streaming Video Tag: HTML5 Video Tag vs Flash

In this article we will see some exciting video feature of HTML5. Now its very easy to stream videos on your web browser using HTML5. HTML5 has introduced video tag for streaming videos. HTML5 video tag is the replacement of Flash. We will also see the difference between HTML5 Video Tag and Flash.

Video tag for the purpose of playing videos or movies has been introduced in HTML5.

Note: The <video> tag was proposed by Opera Software  in February 2007.

No need of third party flash plugins

Video Tag plays the video on the web without any need of third party plugins. Third party plugins were not available for every device or operating system. Communication between a browser and a plug-in was limited and therefore the multimedia was very much a black box.

In simple terms, whenever you include a plugin in your pages, you're reserving a certain drawing area that the browser delegates to the plugin. As far as the browser is concerned, the plugin's area remains a black box — the browser does not process or interpret anything that is happening there.

Normally, this is not a problem, but issues can arise when your layout overlaps the plugin's drawing area. Imagine for instance a site that contains a Flash movie, but also has JavaScript or CSS-based dropdown menus that need to unfold over the movie. By default, the plugin's drawing area sits on top of the webpage, meaning that these menus will strangely appear behind the movie.

With the native <video> tag, it's the browser itself that is taking care of the rendering. As such, <video> tag behaves no differently from any other element in your page layout. It can be positioned, floated, overlapped or dynamically resized, with no additional hacks required. It is even possible to achieve interesting effects such as semi-transparent video simply by setting the opacity for the element via CSS.

Style your videos with CSS

You can style your video with CSS. You can overlay semi-transparent videos over each other, set borders and background images, rotate them on hover with transitions and transforms and many more.

Use Subtitles with your videos

You can use HTML5 <track> tag, which synchronises a file of text and timing information with a media file, displaying the text at the right time.  <track> tag is a child element of the <video> or <audio> tag, and points to a subtitles file.

Keyboard accessibility out-of-the-box

One of the great unresolved problems of using Flash is keyboard accessibility. With the exception of Internet Explorer on Windows, there is usually no way for a keyboard user to Tab or otherwise move their focus into a Flash movie. And even if these users somehow manage to get their focus into the movie (using additional assistive technologies), there is no easy way for them to Tab back out of it (unless additional ActionScript code is added to the movie to programmatically set the browser focus back out of the plugin and onto the page). In contrast, as the browser is directly responsible for the <video> element, it can handle the movie's controls as if they were regular buttons on a web page and include them in its normal tabbing order.

Importance of Stack Overflow to Developers and Programmers

Importance of Stack Overflow to Developers and Programmers

What is Stack Overflow?

While Stack Overflow is a community based Q/A site for programmers and developers which aims to bring solutions to day to day problems faced by them.

StackOverflow is neither encyclopedia, forum, nor blog, but rather a combination of all three that  is specifically designed for programmers and developers. It’s a community for programmers to answer and ask programming related questions, a place where developers can vote on most useful answers, and an encyclopedic resource for thousands of techies to troubleshoot their problems. The site is completely built upon user contributions.

Why StackOverflow?

Stack Overflow is so widely used by a modern day programmer. Stack Overflow has made the great impact on  present day computer programming world. Stack Overflow provides sheer volume of usable content which has really helped along many developers.

StackOverflow is the number one forum for asking a coding question. Even if you don’t have an account, it’s worth it just for browsing questions and learning. Experts and some great developers are sitting there round the clock answering all the questions they can answer.

StackOverflow is jam packed with excellent candidates and loaded with tons of information about what those candidates’ skills look like!

Developers come here to find answers to the technical questions they are struggling with, to show off their coding skills, and to connect with other techies who have similar interests.

Importance of Stack Overflow Reputation Score

As a developer nothing is more important for you other than your reputation. Every answer you give here, based on the ratings from other people of your answer you build your reputation. This is the new CV for developers. You just give your profile on stackoverflow.com as your resume and it will speak for you.

Stack Overflow reputation can help you to earn a high paying job. You are more likely to get a job by maintaining open source projects, writing proficiently, leaving good impressions, and making personal connections within the community.

HRs look on stackoverflow and stackoverflow careers. You can be noticed and invited to an interview because of your stackoverflow profile. Apart from that, you can put your stackoverflow profile on your CV. That alone can’t be a reason to get hired, but it will likely be a plus. Don’t overemphasize it, though.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Stack Overflow Community

Advantages of Stack Overflow

1. Learning: You will learn a lot of things everyday by new questions and answers posted there on stack overflow. If you cannot answer any questions, still you can see the answers and make notes from there. There are questions that you can’t answer, and when you see others’ answers, you learn something new. There are questions that you research before answering, so you improve your knowledge. Why do people ask questions that they can also research? Because you have a higher level of general programming knowledge that allows you to look at the right place and find the information. Even if you already know the answer, you get a better understanding when writing it down. Answering questions on Stack Overflow can be compared to reading blogs that discuss common technical issues.

2. Self Evaluation: You see where you stand – if others agree with your answers (and upvote them), that makes you feel confident in the topics that you follow. Which is a good thing (if it’s not overconfidence). Questions that people ask show you areas that you probably didn’t know about, but that are important. That way you get a more adequate view of where you stand with your programming knowledge.

3. Improve Communication Skills: Writing good answers doesn’t necessarily mean you are a good programmer. But it certainly means you are a good communicator. And that’s a very important skill. It might even be better to be a good programmer and a good communicator than to be a slightly better programmer that can’t communicate his ideas.

4. Improving Analytical Skills and Problem Solving Ability: You get to know what the questions is about. In many cases the questions are not well-phrased or miss important information. You have to analyze what information is needed, or what the poster has meant.

5. Improve Your Speed:  For some questions you must act fast, otherwise other answers will appear before yours and get all the upvotes. Well, sometimes you need to act fast in your programming career. Production issue, unhappy customers. If you can analyze and solve the problem in 5 minutes it will be way better than 10 minutes, let alone an hour.

Limitations and Disadvantages of Stack Overflow

1. Stack Overflow is filled with a lot of silly / obsolete and repeated questions.

2. Answers to complexe questions are voted up less as compared to the answers to the simple questions.

3. Many questions on Stack Overflow remain unanswered.

4. Its time consuming. You have to spend a lot of time to build your reputation there on Stack Overflow.

Google Dremel vs Apache Hadoop: Big Data Analytics Tools and Techniques

Google Dremel vs Apache Hadoop: Big Data Analytics Tools and Techniques

This is the article about some useful and popular real time big data analytics tools and techniques. Some of the big names are Apache Hadoop and Google Dremel. There are also other open source big data analytics tools and techniques like storm and apache S4. We will see the difference between Google Dremel and Apache Hadoop.

What is Google Dremel?

Google Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google.

Apache Hadoop vs Google Dremel: Difference between Apache Hadoop and Google Dremel

Dremel is a data analysis tool designed to quickly run queries on massive, structured datasets (such as log or event files). It supports a SQL-like syntax, but apart from table appends, it is read-only. It doesn't support update or create functions, nor does it feature table indexes. Data is organized in a "columnar" format, which contributes to very fast query speed. Google's BigQuery product is an implementation of Dremel accessible via RESTful API.

Hadoop (an open source implementation of MapReduce) in conjunction with the "Hive" data warehouse software, also allows data analysis for massive datasets using a SQL-style syntax. Hive essentially turns queries into MapReduce functions. In contrast to using a ColumIO format, Hive attempts to make queries quick by using techniques such as table indexing.

Hadoop is for batch processing, meaning that queries are run on a set of data that you already have. Streaming engines process data as it comes in. The terms “streaming” and “real time” are often used interchangeably, which could lead to some confusion about Dremel/Drill since they are also referred to as real time.

It should be noted that Google is intending Dremel as a complement, not a replacement, for MapReduce and Hadoop. According to the paper, Dremel is frequently used to analyze MapReduce results or serve as a test run for large scale computations. Dremel can execute many queries over such data that would ordinarily require a sequence of MapReduce, but at a fraction of the execution time. As noted before, Dremel experimentally surpassed MapReduce by orders of magnitude.

Google Dremel vs Apache Drill

Apache Drill is an attempt to build an open source version of Google Dremel. There’s another project in the works to create an open source version of Dremel called OpenDremel. Other projects working on speedy queries for big data include Apache CouchDB and the Cloudant backed variant BigCouch.

Other open source Big Data Analytics Tools and Techniques

1. Storm, which was developed at Backtype and open sourced by Twitter.

2. Apache S4, which was open sourced by Yahoo.

 

Difference between Dremel and other real-time big data systems such as Storm and S4 is that these are streaming engines, while Dremel is designed for ad-hoc querying, ie really fast search results.

Apache Hadoop Big Data Analytics Tool and Technology: Defination, Advantages, Disadvantages

Apache Hadoop Big Data Analytics Tool and Technology: Defination, Advantages, Disadvantages

In this article, we will discuss some point about Apache Hadoop Big Data Tool and Technology available to us for managing the real time big data. We will also look on advantages and disadvantages of Apache Hadoop Big Data Analytics.

What is Hadoop Big Data Analytics Tool and Technology

Hadoop is the best tool available today for processing and storing herculean amounts of big data . Hadoop throws hundreds or thousands of computers at the big data problem, rather than using single computer.

Hadoop makes data mining, analytics, and processing of big data cheap and fast. Hadoop can take most of your big data problems and unlock the answers, because you can keep all your data, including all of your historical data, and get an answer before your children graduate college.

Apache Hadoop is an open-source project inspired by research of Google. Since you were wondering, Hadoop is named after the stuffed toy elephant of the lead programmer's son. This explains the preponderance of pachyderms wherever Hadoop is mentioned.

In Hadoop parlance, the group of coordinated computers is called a cluster, and the individual computers in the cluster are called nodes.

Advantages of Hadoop Big Data Analytics Tool and Technology

1. Hadoop is cheap. Hadoop is an open-source Apache project, which means anybody is free to use it. Hadoop runs on commodity hardware (i.e. normal everyday computers), so you don't have to buy million-dollar specialized database machines.

2. Hadoop is fast. Hadoop can deal with terabytes of data in minutes, and with petabytes in hours. Hadoop is the only way that companies with gigantic amounts of data like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon can cost-effectively and quickly make decisions.

3. Hadoop scales to large amounts of big data storage. Need to add more space? Just add more hard drives to a node, or even add more nodes to your cluster. You never shut down Hadoop.

4. Hadoop scales to large amounts of big data computation. Is your cluster slow? Just add more nodes to spread out the computation. Hadoop scales almost linearly in many cases - this means you can halve the time it takes to do a job by doubling the number of compute nodes.

5. Hadoop is flexible with types of big data. Are you dealing with structured data? Great. Do you have semi-structured or unstructured (document-oriented) data? Lovely. Hadoop stores and processes any kind of data.

6. Hadoop is flexible with programming languages. Hadoop is natively written in Java, but you can access your data in a SQL-inspired language called Apache Hive. If you want a more procedural language for analysis, there is Apache Pig. If you want to get deep into the framework, you can custom-analyse your data by writing code in Java, C/C++, Ruby, Python, C#, QBASIC or anything else.

Disadvantages of Hadoop Big Data Analytics Tool and Technology

1. Plain Hadoop is hard to to set up. Have you tried setting up this thing? Your best bet may be to kidnap some professors and press them into your service.

2. Plain Hadoop is hard to manage. How do you do anything? Where is the graphical user interface? Oh, there is none.

3. Plain Hadoop is hard to keep alive. Hadoop has various single points of failure. When Hadoop collapses, you lose data and you lose time. That hurts.

4. Plain Hadoop is hard to use. Seriously, this is not a joke. Even adding up a list of numbers is painful.

5. Plain Hadoop is not secure. Your files are not secure and users can easily corrupt or steal data. I hope you trust everybody.

6. Plain Hadoop is not optimized for your hardware. Hadoop does not run at full capacity for your hardware, which is like being stuck in second gear.