text:
Do not brush your teeth with hard bristle brushes. These brushes can open up the root surface and recede your gum-line. Hard bristles can also damage your tooth enamel. All of this makes your teeth act more sensitive, so medium or soft toothbrushes are recommended.
If you feel like you might not be able to handle your dental procedure, speak with your dentist about how you can signal to them that you need a break or some reassurance. Perhaps you can create a hand signal to get your message across. Many times you will not need this step, but knowing it is available can relax you. Monitor your gum line, and look for signs of decay. This is where the nerves start and they are more susceptible to decay. If not taken care of quickly, any issues that arise in this area may require a root canal. If you happen to experience pain, make sure that you call your dentist right away. A fantastic hint when it comes to oral cleanliness would be to stay away from intense temperature alterations. Whenever you go coming from a notably popular atmosphere to your frosty 1 (or visa versa) your the teeth could become quite hypersensitive and in some cases, you can damage the enamel. This also implies you shouldn't try to eat cold and warm food products collectively. For best results while brushing, you should move the toothbrush up and down from the gums to the tops of your teeth. This grabs the food debris and gets it away from your gums so they are cleaned completely. You may begin with a side-to-side motion if desired.
Disliking mint flavor is no reason to stop brushing your teeth. There are many more flavors to toothpaste than just mint. Shop around to find the perfect flavor for every member of your family. If you cannot find anything you like, ask your family dentist for advice.


text:
Robots to the Rescue
Saving civilians from tsunamis and building robots with Lego blocks is all in a day's work for some East Rutherford Middle School sixth-graders.
These students are members of Rutherford County's first robotics team and are practicing to compete with schools around the state in the spring.
Jovielle Clark, sixth-grade teacher, is the facilitator for the team. He received an email about the competition from CyberKids Robotics and brought the idea to Jo Oliver, principal at the middle school.
"I thought this is something the students would like to do and the principal felt it would be good," Clark said. "We are hoping that maybe more schools will start to participate and we can have a county competition next year."
From there, the school went through a selection process and created sixth and seventh grade teams. The seventh-grade team will start soon with cyber droids, but the sixth-grade team has already started practicing in a different category and will be competing in a First Lego League (FLL) competition.
"I wanted to be on the team because my dad is really good with Legos
see robots/page XX
and i wanted to show him I could be good with it," said student Olivia Hallman. "It's been fun and it's going pretty good."
In the fall, the FLL releases a challenge which is based on a real-world scientific topic. Each challenge has three parts; the Robot Game, the Project and the FLL Core Values. Teams of up to 10 children participate in the challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field (game board) and develop a solution to a problem they have identified using certain values laid out by the league.
The 2013 challenge is called Nature's Fury. According to Clark, the team is working on their project, which will represent the aftermath of a tsunami and our in the process if designing and building their robot.
"We are meeting two or three times a week. I'm letting them do everything. My job is just to guide them," Clark said.
Jordyn Haney, a Gardner-Webb University student employed by CyberKids, is helping the team plan how they want to build their robot.
"I've taught at several schools in Cleveland County. I'm going to help them with setting up the game board and programming their robot," Haney said. "They love making their robot do something they can actually see."
During the challenge, the students have to move Lego people that are impacted by the tsunami into a safe zone and complete other tasks using the robot they programmed. They have two minutes and thrity seconds to complete the challenge.
"It like science and I like building stuff," said team member Justin Irvin. "This is fun and we are going to win."
The sixth-grade team will attend their first competition in the spring. The seventh-grade team will be put together and start practicing soon.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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text:
Jerry Burrell gave me a heads up on an upcoming auction at Tidwell's in the "extreme Southeast corner of Oklahoma" and it appears they have an affinity for selling items from our favorite era. I have not previously heard of this auction before so we'll need to keep an eye on them as they appear to have 2-3 sales a year.
The next sale is this weekend and there are certainly some items of interest, but I wouldn't go looking for Meeks or Belters or P&S in this particular one.
One item that caught my eye from a research perspective was the Kilian Brothers table to the left. It looks to have a veneer issue on the inlaid top and is missing the chains that would have strung between the legs. Finding tables with a complete set of chains seems to be very uncommon.
As you may or may not know, Kilian provided high-design furniture at a level affordable for the middle class. Their furniture was sold extensively at wholesale, and according to the Magazine Antiques article from May 1999 where this table is pictured, it is unclear whether they ever sold at retail.
This particular table was known to have been resold by Prudent Mallard of New Orleans – a far cry from New York – due to the existence of Mallard-labeled instance(s) of this table.
The May 1997 issue of Magazine Antiques goes so far as to say, "… from surviving documents as well as extant examples it becomes apparent that beginning about 1840 New Orleans was primarily a center for retailing rather than manufacturing household furnishings".
This wholesaling/resaling greatly complicates the job of trying to unravel the truth behind who made particular pieces.
In one of my next posts, I will profile another example of this challenge in the form of a chair that recently sold that could rewrite what we know of "known" Henkels pieces.


text: Dr. Cheap 5pts I wanted a nice daily driver with 4 doors. It had to be special from the driver seat, and practicle enough for the family. I have driven summer only cars before, but hated parking the sports machine over the winter. Driving a nice car all year long is a better model for me. In 2 months my new S8 will be delivered to the dealership for pickup. Its a perfect fit for the 40 something family guy.


text:
Pictured is the Pete's Coach Jody Hull – he has managed to guide his team to within inches of a playoff spot. They start this weekend only 2 points behind the Kingston Frontenacs for the final slot in the Eastern Conference.
Mississauga at Niagara
The Steelheads can do themselves a huge favor in the coming days with some timely victories. They can move to within 1 point of Niagara with a regulation win tonight. These 2 teams will tangle again on March 7 back in Niagara. Their schedule does increase in difficulty with 6 of their final 12 games coming against teams that are in the top 4 of their conferences. Last time these teams met, was Feb 8 in Mississauga where the home side would win 4-2. The Steelheads powerplay was 3/5 and Spencer Martin was really good in the nets after a mediocre first period.
Two of the next 4 games for the Icedogs are against 2 teams that are behind them in the playoff race. The Steelheads are a slim 3 points behind and the Fronts are 5 points behind. Niagara is coming off two straight losses – most recently they were pushed around by a superior London Knights squad on Sunday afternoon. The 5-1 score was not truly indicative of the play, as London's goaltender was marvelous and Niagara's Festarini was just average. Brett Ritchie was hit firmly with a puck during that game, but didn't miss any ice time and should be in action tonight.
My prediction Mississauga 2 Niagara 3
Oshawa at Peterborough
Four goals in the third period lead the Oshawa Generals to a 6-2 win on home ice over the Sudbury Wolves on Family Day. They won 2 of 3 over the weekend, but that wasn't enough to keep pace with the red hot Belleville Bulls, who have leapfrogged them into the East Division lead. Oshawa is 8 points behind the Conference leading Bulls, and 5 points back of the Colts. With the two wins the Generals did clinch a playoff spot over the weekend.
Much has been made of Oshawa's explosive offense, but coach D.J. Smith has been pleased with how his team has defended of late. They gave up just 19 shots on Saturday night to the Sting, and 18 to the Wolves on Monday afternoon.
Brett Findlay has helped to lead the Petes to within 4 points of a playoff spot, with 11 games left in their regular season. He is their leading scorer. Prior to Christmas, Findlay had eight goals and five assists in 35 games, and was ready to quit the last place Petes, and go home to the Soo. In the 22 games since Christmas he has 7 goals and 18 assists for the Petes. He credits new coach Jody Hull with turning around the attitude of the players, and getting them to play for each other. Since Hull took over as head coach, on Dec. 21st, the Petes are 12-7-0-3. Findlay and his linemates, Nick Czinder, and Jonatan Tanus have been the Petes' best line. The goalkeeping tandum of Andrew D'Agostini, and Michael Giugovaz have played much better in the 2nd half of the season.
My prediction Oshawa 4 at Peterborough 2
Sault Ste Marie at Sarnia
The Greyhounds expect to face a very different team that they destroyed 8-0 last Wednesday in the Soo. They outshot Sarnia 49-25 en route to their first shut out of an opponent this season. Soo defenseman, Alex Gudbranson, expects the Sting to have a "chip on their shoulder" and play a solid 60 minute game. The Soo are in seventh place in the Conference, one point behind the Sting.
The Soo will be looking for consistency in their game, and will look to improve on their sloppy home ice effort on Saturday night. They gave up 7 goals against the Frontenacs. The Greyhounds are expected to start backup goalie, Justin Nichols in tonight's game, as starter Matt Murray has been pulled in 3 of his last 5 starts, including on Saturday night, when he gave up 6 Kingston goals in 33 minutes.
The Sting's magic number is down to 3. That is, any combination of Sting wins, and games where the Windsor Spitfires do not gain a point will clinch a playoff spot. Sarnia has 10 games remaining, and are in 6th place in the Western Conference, a point ahead of the Soo, and two points behind Guelph. Coach Beaulieu expects to face either London, Plymouth, or Kitchener in the first round of the playoffs. He likes his chances, if his team can practice clogging up the centre of the ice, and not give up as many shots. Because of the closeness of the standings, Beaulieu is treating this game as a "must win". At the same time, he'd like to rest some of his key players at times during the remaining regular season games, and give some of his rookies some increased playing time. Mike Dipaolo skated with the team yesterday, and may be ready to go tonight. Defenseman, Taki Pantziris will not play.
The Soo's Nick Cousins (93 points), coming off of OHL player of the week honours, leads Sarnia's Charles Sarault (89 points) by 4 points for the OHL scoring title.
My prediction Sault Ste Marie 4 at Sarnia 3
Erie at Windsor
The Otters are interested in playing spoiler for their remaining games as they have no playoff possibilities this seasion. This will be a great game to catch as former Midget teammates Josh Ho-Sang (Spits) will be against the reigning Rookie point leader Connor McDavid (Otters). Interesting that Otters Owen Bassin has been critical of some of his players in that they appear disinterested in playing anymore. Look for the Connors to be active in tonight's game to get their side playing better.
Windsor is teetering with their playoff hopes as they start this weekend 11 points behind the Saginaw Spirit for the final spot. They have not helped their cause at all by dropping their last 5 games and only winning 2 of their last 10. Their home record is 13-11-0-3 and they have given up 10 more goals than they have scored at the WFCU Centre. Their next contest is a home / home series against the surging Plymouth Whalers. After a 21 game absence, Ty Bilcke will return to the lineup to give some much needed grit after a few other recent injuries – including Sieloff and Bateman. Vail has been recruited back to the defence corps for this contest.
My prediction Erie 4 Windsor 2
Owen Sound at Barrie
Barrie is eager for a rematch with the Attack after their last contest didn't go the way that the Colts would have liked. The Jan 30 contest saw the host Attack outplay the visiting Colts. Catenacci scored an early third period powerplay goal for the 3-1 advantage and then potted the empty net goal in the final minute to produce the final 4-1 score.
Both teams have qualified for the post season and are now playing for playoff positioning. Barrie recently lost the top spot to the red hot Belleville Bulls and now trail them by 3 points. The Attack continue to jostle with the Kitchener Rangers for the #3 spot and currently lead Kitchener by 2 points. These two teams will meet again on Feb 28 in Barrie.
My prediction Owen Sound 2 Barrie 5


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Get on-location tips and post-production techniques to speed up time and create compelling visual effects with time-lapse photography.
Designed for those shooting high-definition video with the Canon 5D Mark II and creating a finished product using Final Cut Pro.
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World of Nerfcraft.
View Single Post
whip yo ass!
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 653
Re: World of Nerfcraft.
I have a 33 Paladin on Frostwolf server. Its one of the servers that is borked right now heh.
I was reading through the first few pages, and I dont think I would have any right to get upset if they took away some of Paladins power. When Im in a fight with horde or NPCs I have like 3 or 4 lives where as they have only one, not to mention the armor on my legs and chest is probably higher than any comparable level horde characters whole body. I came to realise Paladins needed to be detuned when I could roll through just about any class horde around 7-8 levels higher than me with absolute ease, hell a couple weeks ago I killed a 37 Tauren shaman with my Paly and I was only lvl 29 at the time. One would think even if the player sucked that was the higher level, the level gap alone would be enough to beat me.
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text:
YARMOUTH — The Yarmouth Alumni Association recently awarded its second annual Community Stewardship Grant to high school juniors Reed Wommack and Danielle Torres, who will work on community outreach projects. The two students will each receive a $3,000 grant. The grant opportunity...
YARMOUTH — On Tuesday at 11:30 a.m., high school students started pouring into the hallways and down the stairs to claim a seat in the Performing Arts Center to watch Barack Obama take the presidential oath of office and deliver his inaugural address.
YARMOUTH — BusinessWeek magazine, in a list of the nation's best high schools, named Yarmouth High School Maine's "Best Overall Academic Performance" and "Best Improved."
YARMOUTH — High school student Jonathan "Yoni" Blumberg is one of 104 students from around the country who will participate in the 47th annual U.S. Senate Youth program in Washington D.C. in March.
YARMOUTH — Nell Pierce was accepted to Dartmouth College, but decided to postpone her college education to spend a year helping disadvantaged children in Guatemala.


text:
Add to TreeDBNotes 1.2.1-signed
by TreeDBNotes
This extension allows you to send the selection to the TreeDBNotes. Just select some text from web page and press "Add to TreeDBNotes" from Firefox Right-click menu.
This add-on has been preliminarily reviewed by Mozilla. Learn more
This add-on is not compatible with your version of Firefox because of the following:


text:
It's a new school year, and as usual the scammers are coming out in full force to try to find ways to take advantage of students.
This year we're seeing a lot of a couple of different types of scams. One of the more successful ones over the past year have been bogus honor societies that have had invitations hitting inboxes at universities nationwide.
The Association of College Honor Societies, the only accrediting body for honor societies nationwide, has warnings listed for the claimed organizations below. These organizations notably lack transparency, bylaws, university chapters, and ultimately any scholastic benefit for students:
- HonorSociety.org
- Phi Sigma Theta
- National Society of Leadership & Success / Sigma Alpha Phi
- Bloomsbury Honor Society
- Honors Society (with no more specific name)
More information can be found here:
Additionally we've been seeing a lot of messages that at first glance may appear very legitimate:
- Offers of $2,500 cash scholarships
- Offers of $100 reward cards for amazon.com, jcpenney.com, Best Buy, WalMart, and other retailers
- Notifications about (non-existent) background checks performed against you
- Provide information about miracle cures, skin treatments, etc.
- Notifications about non-existent overdrafts or overcharges
- Notifications claiming to be from Washburn ITS or other Washburn departments
These have been successful at getting through spam and malicious content filters nationwide. The details of these messages vary: some take you to sites that host malicious software, some present fake login pages to try to get you to enter your username and password for retailer websites, some try to get you to enter credit card information, and some try to get you to provide your e-mail account credentials to them.
Instead of hitting large numbers of inboxes with the same message, the message often varies slightly from person to person and are usually only sent to a small number of people at a time to avoid triggering automatic responses to mass e-mails.
- Be wary of any message that wants you to take urgent action, they often want you to act before you can think about the message
- Check the FROM: e-mail address and any reply e-mail addresses in the message. These will often be different, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically from what the organization it claims to be from uses
- Never respond to an e-mail that instructs you to send your username and password. Washburn ITS and other legitimate websites will never ask you to do so
- Don't respond to e-mails requesting personal information
- Don't click the links in e-mails, if one claims to be directing you to Amazon.com or Washburn.edu, enter that website in your web browser yourself. They'll often make the links look similar to real ones, though close examination may reveal minor variations
- If something is too good to be true, it probably is. Feel free to contact Washburn ITS is you have a question about such a message. You may contact us at 785.670.3000, email@example.com, or by coming by the support window in Bennett 104
More information about identifying and dealing with such messages can be found at the links below:


text:
"For true A-Fish-A-Nados
and Beginners alike!"
The word "Klutina" is the Athabascan word for "fast water". This river covers about 26 miles, dropping about 30 feet per mile and running from 5 to 14 miles per hour. This will from time to time, depending on weather conditions, create a few Class 1 and Class 2 rapids. Just sufficient to insure an exciting but very safe ride.
The Klutina season begins on July 1 and runs through August 10.
Our guides will continue to fish the Copper River Kings on the Gulkana River in June until the Klutina River King season opens on July 1.
When the Red Salmon (Sockeye) are in the Klutina, we will offer five-hour and ten-hour charters, too.
The Klutina River normally produces larger fish and because it is white water the challenge is superior. These fish average between 18 and 50 pounds, but in most years fish can easily top out above 60 pounds with occasional catches over 70 pounds.
Without question, fishing the Klutina is a world-class experience for both the most dedicated fishermen as well as the novice. The limit on Kings is one fish per day and four fish per season.
As in all our rivers in East Alaska, for Chinook (King) Salmon the rule is catch and release all day ~ keep one per day and four per season.
The Sockeye (Reds) range in size from 4 to 8 pounds. For the Sockeye Salmon, the rule is catch and release all day ~ keep three per day with no seasonal limit.
Of course, some days anglers will limit out and some days fishing can be challenging. I cannot guarantee your catch but I can guarantee that our guides will do all they can to provide an exciting and eventful day as they put our guests in the middle of them. The rest us up to you and providence.
Because of the distance on the Klutina of over 14 miles it is highly recommended that you book the full day charter. That will insure that you have the best opportunity to be successful in catching a really great Copper River King Salmon.
With up to three trips daily, Copper River Salmon Charters will outfit every client with all the essentials including your own fully insured and permitted professional guide and rafts, all tackle, boots and PFD's. For your nourishment, we carry snacks and beverages for the five-hour charters. We carry sack lunches, snacks and beverages for the ten-hour trips. (No alcoholic beverages, please!)
Your only requirement is to come with your current Alaska fishing license, King Stamp and dressed for the weather. You can purchase your license and King stamp locally when you arrive or on line at: http://www.admin.adfg.state.ak.us/admin/license/11-527.pdf
It is strongly recommended that all anglers bring good rain gear for the Klutina River as the water originates at the Klutina Glacier and is in the mid-30's. Odds are, everyone will get wet in the rapids (class 1 and 2). Rain gear will help to keep everyone dry and comfortable all day.
Morning Leave: 7:00 AM ~ Return: 12:00 PM
Afternoon Leave: 1:00 PM ~ Return: 6:00 PM
Morning Leave: 7:00 AM ~ Return: 5:00 PM
Above times include transport from headquarters to the river and return to headquarters. Times are subject to change depending on water conditions, weather and the needs of the clients.
Adults: $240.00
Children (8-12 years old): $175.00
Adults: $350.00
Children (8-12 years old): $275.00
Transportation from our property to the river and return back from the river to our property
Professional fishing gear including:
Gakona Cabins are available on the property.
Gakona Stop 'n Shop offers groceries, tobacco and gifts.
Gakona ECO Gas offers unleaded and diesel fuel at competitive prices.
One day overnight shipping of your catch with FedEx is available on request.


text:
Maximize space in unexpected areas by adding a small sofa for a reading nook.
This upstairs landing, albeit spacious, makes the perfect spot to pause and unwind without the distractions of the kitchen or TV room. Tables with concealed storage hide clutter away in high-traffic areas.
Browse the Brian Gluckstein Interiors gallery for more of his style.
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text:
It Girl & The Atomics #10
Series Info
Latest Issue:
It Girl & The Atomics #12
- Story By: Jamie S. Rich
- Art By: Natalie Nourigat
- Cover By: Michael Allred
- Cover By: Laura Allred
Price: $1.99
Diamond ID: MAR130470
Published: May 15, 2013"TWEENAGE FBI" Part One BETWEEN GEARS creator NATALIE NOURIGAT joins the Atomics team! Someone broke into Flem's lab and stole a dangerous invention. It Girl picks up the crooks' trail, only to discover it leads to a team of underage secret agents - though the real criminal mastermind is centuries older than all of them.


text:
Discover how a database can benefit both you and your architecture, whatever the programming language, operating system, or application type you use.
Shows how to architect PostgreSQL databases and integrate them into web applications using PHP.
"It is like taking college classes without leaving home. Great for total beginners and long-time veterans." —Trevor C.
more from our members »


text:
HOLLAND, Mich. (WZZM) - An Allegan County man has died, following a plane crash at Tulip City Airport.
Dispatchers received the first call about the crash around 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The initial report was that a plane was "upside down" on the east end of the airport.
The pilot and lone occupant of the plane died at the scene. He is identified as Gerald Brinkerhuff, 65, of Gobles.
Investigators say Brinkerhuff was flying an experimental, single-engine plane that he built himself. Sgt. Drew Torres of the Holland Department of Public Safety says Brinkerhuff was performing a landing maneuver at the time of the crash.
"He was practicing what are called touch and go landings and came in and fell short or crashed just short of the runway from the east to the west of the runway."
An investigation into the plane crash is on-going.


text:
The Bluebirds will head into the fixture at Goodison Park on the back of a 3-1 home win over Fulham that enhanced their chances of staving off relegation this season.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's side are now third from bottom in the league with 25 points from 29 matches, level on points with 17th-placed West Brom, who have a game in hand.
Everton are currently seventh in the standings and are looking for a top-five finish, but Turner wants his team-mates to collect a draw at least in Liverpool.
"A lot of people will think this is a game where we cannot get any points, but we absolutely need to go there and get something," Wales Online quotes the 26-year-old as saying.
"We need a solid foundation to try and stay in the game and get something out of it because if we can go on a good run it could be massive for us.
"It is difficult going up there, they are a very good side in possession and they are very good at making opposition players run.
"They've beaten top-four sides this season on a number of occasions which shows how good a side they are.
"We can go up to Everton with more confidence than we had this time last week.
"We have a win and some goals and a platform. We needed a result against Fulham, we got it and can take a lot of confidence from it."


text:
Letters to the Editor, May 21
Laughingstock of the world?
There are many American citizens clamoring for amnesty for illegal aliens in our country. Give them all benefits our own tax payers receive including medical, educational and welfare. We are not talking about those who request and are given permission to enter our country. They are welcome to come here provided they are willing to accept and adapt to our customs. We have immigration laws that our present and past administrations have chosen to ignore. This has resulted in millions having illegally crossed our borders, primarily that with Mexico.
While it would seem we are accepting even their worst, the Mexican government does not accept one of, perhaps, our best. A U.S. Marine has been in prison for more than a month as a result of accidentally crossing into Mexico. While hundreds head north daily intentionally, one crossing in a southerly direction accidentally is unacceptable.
It also seems that our State Department has zero credibility in foreign countries, and our president has no interest in this situation. When a country such as Mexico, rife with corruption, can poke us in the eye, have we, indeed, become the laughingstock of the world? All of our military branches are noted for not leaving anyone behind. The U.S. Marine Corps lives by that code.
Okay, vets, as Memorial Day nears, let's make our voices loud and clear all the way to that big White House, that we are mad as hell and we ain't going to take this anymore.
Curtis Casey


text:
A method and system for collecting and transmitting data across or through a firewall using HTTP and/or XML between computer systems that do not otherwise grant access to each other. A method and system for preparing data reports using data and report generation modules using HTTP and/or XML between computer systems.
1. A method for data record transmission, the method comprising:
transmitting, from a first location to a second location a request for data records, the request including a last record identifier of a last previously received data record;
determining, at the second location, further data records that have become available subsequent to the second location sending the last previously received data record to the first location, the further data records not having been available for sending at the time of sending of the last previously received data record, the determining being based on the last record identifier being compared with further record identifiers associated with the further data records;
transmitting, from the second location to the first location, the further data records, the further data records being associated with a respective one of the further record identifiers, each of the last record identifier and the further record identifiers being a unique numeric identification that is assigned by the second location to a respective one, and only one, data record such that the last record identifier and the further record identifiers are all different from each other; and
updating, at the first location, the further record identifier of a last received further data record.
2. A method according to
3. A method according to
4. A method according to
5. A method according to
6. A method according to
7. A method according to
8. A method according to
9. A method according to
10. A method according to
11. A method according to
12. A method according to
13. A method according to
14. A method according to
15. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions, when executed by a processor, for performing the following steps:
transmitting, from a first location to a second location a request for data records, the request including a last identifier of a last previously received data record;
determining, at the second location, further data records that have become available subsequent to the second location sending the last previously received data record to the first location, the further data records not having been available for sending at the time of sending of the last previously received data record, the determining being based on the last record identifier being compared with further record identifiers associated with the further data records;
transmitting, from the second location to the first location, the further data records, each of the further data records being associated with one of the further record identifiers; each of the last record identifier and the further record identifiers being a unique numeric identification that is assigned by the second location to a respective one, and only one, data record such that the last record identifier and the further record identifiers are all different from each other; and
updating, at the first location, the further record identifier of the last received further data record; and
wherein a network firewall denying unrestricted access separates the first location and second location.
16. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon computer executable instructions, when executed by a processor, for performing the following steps:
transmitting, from a first location to a second location, a request for further data records, the request including a last identifier of a last previously received data record;
determining, at the second location, further data records that have become available subsequent to the second location sending the last previously received data record to the first location, the further data records not having been available for sending at the time of sending of the last previously received data record, the determining being based on the last identifier being compared with further identifiers associated with the further data records;
transmitting, from the second location to the first location, the further data records, the further data records being associated with a further identifier, each of the last record identifier and the further record identifiers being a unique numeric identification that is assigned by the second location to a respective one, and only one, data record such that the last record identifier and the further record identifiers are all different from each other; and
updating, at the first location, the further record identifier of the last received further data record, wherein a network firewall denying unrestricted access separates the first location and second location.
17. A programmed computer for data record transmission comprising:
a memory having at least one region for storing computer executable program code, and
a processor for executing the program code stored in the memory, wherein the program code comprises:
code to transmit, from a first location to a second location a request for data records, the request including a last identifier of a last previously received data record;
code to determine, at the second location, further data records that have become available subsequent to the second location sending the last previously received data record to the first location, the further data records not having been available for sending at the time of sending of the last previously received data record, the determining being based on the last record identifier being compared with further record identifiers associated with the further data records;
code to transmit, from the second location to the first location, the further data records, each of the further data records being associated with a further record identifier, each of the last record identifier and the further record identifiers being a unique numeric identification that is assigned by the second location to a respective one, and only one, data record such that the last record identifier and the further record identifiers are all different from each other; and
code to update, at the first location, the further record identifier of the further data record.
18. A method for data record transmission, the method comprising:
maintaining, at a subscriber location, an identifier of a last previously received data record;
transmitting, from the subscriber location to a publisher location through a network firewall using hypertext transport protocol, a request for data records, the request using extensible markup language including a last identifier of the last received record;
maintaining, at the publisher location, a plurality of record identifiers with associated data records in a data structure;
determining, at the second location, further data records that have become available subsequent to the second location sending the last previously received data record to the first location, the further data records not having been available for sending at the time of sending of the last previously received data record, the determining being based on the last record identifier being compared with further record identifiers associated with the further data records;
transmitting, from the publisher location to the subscriber location through a network firewall using hypertext transport protocol and extensible markup language, the further data record with an associated further record identifier of the further data record, each of the last record identifier and the further record identifiers being a unique numeric identification that is assigned by the second location to a respective one, and only one, data record such that the last record identifier and the further record identifiers are all different from each other; and
updating, at the subscriber location, the identifier of a last received further record.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/233,871, which was filed Sep. 20, 2000, entitled "System And Method For Portal Infrastructure Tracking," the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data transmission between computer systems where the systems are separated by a firewall, and more particularly to the use of hypertext transfer protocol and extensible markup language for the data transmission without a logon across the firewall.
2. Description of the Related Art
As known in the art, it is common for computer systems to install or erect firewall protection to control or restrict access to the system by users or computers that are not part of the system. However, there are circumstances where the system within the firewall (the protected system), needs to allow access by systems or computers that are on the opposite side of the firewall (the outside systems). One way to provide this access through the firewall is to require logon with various forms of authentication or credentials. Once an outside system has been properly authenticated, the outside system can gain access to the authorized data and/or files that are located on the protected system and that would not normally be available to the outside system. This form of logon and authentication does provide a measure of security to the protected system. However, it also requires a user account for the outside system, which may be undesireable for various reasons. For this reason, it is desirable to provide outside systems with access to some of the data on a protected system without providing system access.
As also known in the art, it is common for system administrators to provide regular tracking reports for distributed computer systems. These reports may include statistics on the numbers of users that have accessed a particular web page during a particular period. These types of reports are also generated at different levels of detail or fidelity to correspond to the different interest levels of management that want to review the data. System operators may be interested in much greater detail than senior administrators. However, the data the makes up these different individual reports typically comes from the same resources. Report generation tools exist, and they help with the collection and formatting of data for these types of reports. However, the tools are not particularly flexible in their design, and tend to require multiple resource queries to prepare reports of varying fidelity or detail. Additionally, the programming skills required to use these tools can be high. For this reason, it is desirable to provide tools that provide greater flexibility, while reducing the need to query a resource multiple times. It is also desirable that the tools be reusable, to reduce the need for expensive programming assets.
The preceding description is not to be construed as an admission that any of the description is prior art relative to the instant invention.
In one embodiment, the invention provides a system and method for data record transmission. The system and method comprises transmitting, from a first location to a second location, a request for unsent data records, the request including information to identify a last received record. The system and method also comprises transmitting, from the second location to the first location, at least one previously unsent data record with associated record identifier. Finally, the system and method comprises updating, at the first location, an identifier of the last received record, wherein a network firewall denying unrestricted access separates the first location and second location.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a system and method for data extraction to support data reporting. The system and method comprises presenting a plurality of data extraction templates, with associated parameters. The system and method also comprises receiving parameters for a particular data extraction template using hypertext transport protocol and extensible markup language. The system and method also comprises extracting data corresponding to the parameters. Finally, the system and method comprises generating a document using the data.
The foregoing specific objects and advantages of the instant invention are illustrative of those which can be achieved by the instant invention and are not intended to be exhaustive or limiting of the possible advantages that can be realized. Thus, the objects and advantages of the instant invention will be apparent from the description herein or as modified in view of any variation that may be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the present invention resides in the novel parts, constructions, arrangements, combinations and improvements herein shown and described.
The features and other aspects of the invention are explained in the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein:
It is understood that the drawings are for illustration only and are not limiting.
The various embodiments of the instant invention have many applications, including distributed and networked systems. One particular application is where data sources are located behind network firewalls.
Referring to
Some of the computers may be part of a particular organization or network 140 that has a firewall 136 to protect the entire network, as well as a firewall 130 to protect individual assets 106.
Although not illustrated, the distributed computers also generally include central processor(s), volatile and nonvolatile memory, input/output devices, displays, removable and fixed storage media and various communication and network interface devices, such as modem, Ethernet, wireless etc.
For the purposes of illustration, computer 102 performs functions of monitor and data collection. In one embodiment, computer 102 is a subscriber. One of the functions of computer 102 is to collect statistics and data from the various other computers (104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114). In one embodiment other computers 104, 106, 108, 110, 112 and 114 are publishers. Much of the data stored on the other computers is time sensitive and confidential, and the statistics are constantly changing. Therefore computer 102 needs to get data or snapshots of the statistics at particular times. Without the present invention, an operator at computer 102 can log onto each of the other computers and extract the desired data or statistics. However, where the other computer is located behind a firewall, the operator must have access rights to that computer. Providing large numbers of access rights to multiple different computer operators may not be particularly desirable. In one embodiment, the instant invention provides systems and methods for query of the data or statistics residing on other computers without requiring higher level access to the other computers.
An Example of a Portal Infrastructure Tracking Component
The portal infrastructure tracking component running on computer 102 monitors a distributed group of web servers. Data collection, transmission and report generation are specific areas of interest.
Data Collection & Transmission
Referring again to
There are several kinds of data for the data feed. The data include event data relating to users accessing assets (documents) on web servers, and the creation and modification of the assets themselves. In one technique, this data on the web servers is ordered.
As indicated, in one embodiment, system 100 has two types of participants, multiple "publishers" and a "subscriber". In this embodiment, all the web servers and content providers (104, 106, 108, 110, 112, and 114) are publishers and the tracking computer 102 is the subscriber.
The publishers produce data with defined ordering characteristics. Assets of the publishers have, or are assigned, a unique numeric ID. For example, more recent assets have higher ID numbers, and no ID number is used more than once by any publisher. In the case of event data, this is gathered from the web server access log files, and each record in the file is treated as a message, with the message physical address in the file being it's ID.
Each publisher implements the publisher end of the interface. However, there is no persistent state associated with each publisher. Additionally, the publishers do not know who is subscribing to the data or where they all are in consuming the data.
The subscriber maintains a record of the ID number of the last message it successfully received. When the subscriber needs to get an update from a particular publisher, the subscriber connects to the particular publisher and passes this ID number to the publisher. The particular publisher receives this ID number and then sends all previously unsent records with a higher ID number than the value received from the subscriber. This is possible when the records are ordered by ID number, and the publisher sends the ID number with the data in each record.
After receiving an update, the subscriber stores the most recent ID number for that particular publisher in a database transaction with the record data. This ensures that the "most recently received ID number" in the subscribers database accurately reflects the data which has been successfully stored as well as received.
In one embodiment, the publisher pushes or continues to send data indefinitely, "sleeping" when there is no more data. As more data becomes available the publisher immediately sends data to the connected subscriber.
In another embodiment, each publisher maintains the data and the subscriber requests or pulls data from the publisher.
If for any reason the subscriber looses some data (say that it restores its database from a backup) then the "most recently received ID number" will be automatically wound back because it too is stored in the database. When the subscriber reconnects with the publisher, this earlier ID number is sent and the publisher re-sends any records after that point. As there is no state on the publishers there is no reconciliation problem, this makes failure modes much simpler than with other publish/subscribe protocols.
In one embodiment, the method is implemented using extensible markup language (XML) with hypertext transport protocol (HTTP). Both are industry standards, and an important characteristic of this combination is that it allows operation over a firewall, without requiring a logon of the accessed computer system. In this manner, computer 102 of system 100 collects data from other computers in an environment that is otherwise somewhat hostile to access using other protocols.
A person of ordinary skill will understand what constitutes XML and HTTP, and therefore a detailed description is not required. However, to assist those who may be less familiar with these two standards, the following summary of XML is extracted from "http://www.w3.org/".
XML provides a method for putting structured data in a text file. "Structured data" includes such things as spreadsheets, address books, configuration parameters, financial transactions, technical drawings, etc. Use of a text format allows a user to look at or use the data without the program that produced it. XML is a set of rules, guidelines, or conventions, for designing text formats for such data, in a way that produces files that are easy to generate and read (by a computer), that are unambiguous, and that avoid common pitfalls, such as lack of extensibility, lack of support for internationalization/localization, and platform-dependency.
XML looks a bit like HTML but is not HTML. Like HTML, XML makes use of tags (words bracketed by '<' and '>') and attributes (of the form name="value"), but while HTML specifies what each tag & attribute means (and often how the text between them will look in a browser), XML uses the tags only to delimit pieces of data, and leaves the interpretation of the data completely to the application that reads it. In other words, if you see "<p>" in an XML file, don't assume it is a paragraph. Depending on the context, it may be a price, a parameter, a person, etc.
XML is text that is not intended to be read by humans. As text files, it intended to be read by a computer, although it allows experts (such as programmers) to more easily debug applications, and in emergencies, they can use a simple text editor to fix a broken XML file. However, the rules for XML files are more strict than for HTML. A forgotten tag, or an attribute without quotes makes the file unusable, while in HTML such practice is often explicitly allowed, or at least tolerated. It is written in the official XML specification: applications are not allowed to try to second-guess the creator of a broken XML file; if the file is broken, an application has to stop right there and issue an error.
XML is a family of technologies. There is XML 1.0, the specification that defines what "tags" and "attributes" are, but around XML 1.0, there is a growing set of optional modules that provide sets of tags & attributes, or guidelines for specific tasks. There is, e.g., Xlink (still in development as of November 1999), which describes a standard way to add hyperlinks to an XML file. XPointer & XFragments (also still being developed) are syntaxes for pointing to parts of an XML document. (An XPointer is a bit like a URL, but instead of pointing to documents on the Web, it points to pieces of data inside an XML file.) CSS, the style sheet language, is applicable to XML as it is to HTML. XSL (autumn 1999) is the advanced language for expressing style sheets. It is based on XSLT, a transformation language that is often useful outside XSL as well, for rearranging, adding or deleting tags & attributes. The DOM is a standard set of function calls for manipulating XML (and HTML) files from a programming language. XML Namespaces is a specification that describes how you can associate a URL with every single tag and attribute in an XML document. What that URL is used for is up to the application that reads the URL, though. (RDF, W3C's standard for metadata, uses it to link every piece of metadata to a file defining the type of that data.) XML Schemas 1 and 2 help developers to precisely define their own XML-based formats. There are several more modules and tools available or under development.
XML is verbose. Since XML is a text format, and it uses tags to delimit the data, XML files are nearly always larger than comparable binary formats. That was a conscious decision by the XML developers. The advantages of a text format are evident and the disadvantages can usually be compensated at a different level. In addition, communication protocols such as modem protocols and HTTP/1.1 (the core protocol of the Web) can compress data on the fly, thus saving bandwidth as effectively as a binary format.
Development of XML started in 1996 and it is a W3C standard since February 1998. Although XML itself is relatively new, the technology itself is not very new. Before XML there was SGML, developed in the early '80s, an ISO standard since 1986, and widely used for large documentation projects. And of course HTML, whose development started in 1990. The designers of XML have taken parts of SGML, guided by the experience with HTML, and produced something that is no less powerful than SGML, but vastly more regular and simpler to use. While SGML is mostly used for technical documentation and much less for other kinds of data, with XML it is exactly the opposite.
HTTP is a communication standard, and the following edited extract of Request for Comment (RFC) 2068 is a summary from "http://www.w3.org/" to assist those with less understanding.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP has been in use by the World-Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. The first version of HTTP, referred to as HTTP/0.9, was a simple protocol for raw data transfer across the Internet. HTTP/1.0, as defined by RFC 1945, improved the protocol by allowing messages to be in the format of MIME-like messages, containing metainformation about the data transferred and modifiers on the request/response semantics. However, HTTP/1.0 does not sufficiently take into consideration the effects of hierarchical proxies, caching, the need for persistent connections, and virtual hosts. In addition, the proliferation of incompletely-implemented applications calling themselves "HTTP/1.0" has necessitated a protocol version change in order for two communicating applications to determine each other's true capabilities.
RFC 2068 defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1". This protocol includes more stringent requirements than HTTP/1.0 in order to ensure reliable implementation of its features. Practical information systems require more functionality than simple retrieval, including search, front-end update, and annotation. HTTP allows an open-ended set of methods that indicate the purpose of a request. It builds on the discipline of reference provided by the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), as a location (URL) or name (URN), for indicating the resource to which a method is to be applied. Messages are passed in a format similar to that used by Internet mail as defined by the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME).
HTTP is also used as a generic protocol for communication between user agents and proxies/gateways to other Internet systems, including those supported by the SMTP, NNTP, FTP, Gopher, and WAIS protocols. In this way, HTTP allows basic hypermedia access to resources available from diverse applications.
An Example of a Method for Data Collection & Transmission
Referring now to
At step 204, if there is no connection, the publisher continues to listen for a connection.
If there is a connection, then at step 206, the publisher listens for a request from a subscriber. The request will include the last received record identifier that the subscriber holds in their files, and the last received record identifier is maintained by the subscriber. The publisher maintains a similar list of data record identifiers, with associated data records. In this manner, the publisher can compare the subscriber's last received record identifier with the records held by the publisher to determine whether there are any unsent data records.
At step 208, the publisher determines whether there is unsent data to send.
If there is no unsent data to send, then at step 210, the publisher waits or sleeps for some period of time.
If there is unsent data to send, then at step 212, the publisher reads one batch of messages, starting with the oldest unsent batch of messages as indicated by the data identification.
Not illustrated in
After sending a message and associated identifier, at step 214, the publisher determines whether the connection between the publisher and subscriber is lost.
If the connection is lost, then at step 202, the publisher listens for a connection from the subscriber.
If the connection is not lost, then at step 208, the publisher determines whether there is unsent data to send.
This process continues until terminated.
Report Generation
Having collected data from various other computers and transmitted the data from the publishers to the subscriber, computer 102 needs to produce reports from it. Using similar techniques the instant invention also includes a distributed reporting tool.
Reporting consists of two quite separate tasks: data extraction, and data presentation. As these are quite different problems, they require different skills to design. However, known reporting tools tend to merge these into one task.
Many of the desired management reports include multiple sections, which are independent of each other in content. Additionally, reports may contain some sections also found in other reports. The combination of these report sections is therefore a presentation (formatting) issue.
One embodiment of the instant invention includes the idea of a "reportlet". A reportlet extracts the data for one report section. The primary task for a reportlet is the data extraction. Presentation itself is not a task of a reportlet. The output of a reportlet is a dialect of XML, which simply describes the structure of the data.
Reportlets operate over HTTP and take their parameters using the standard HTTP parameter passing mechanism. However, the parameters for reportlets are defined in such a way that it is possible to identify parameters taken by two reportlets, which are semantically equivalent.
As an example, consider two reportlets, one shows the "n" most popular documents on a web site, starting from date "D" for a period of "t" days. Another reportlet shows the "n" most active users on that web site, starting from date "D" for a period of "t" days.
A report containing these two reportlets will probably need to report those two statistics for the same period. When constructing a report by choosing a set of reportlets the invention can see where the same value could be passed to all reportlets, thereby simplifying the user experience.
Once the reportlets have been executed and the data gathered, the presentation (formatting) is done using standard tools, such as based on XSLT. This means that the reportlets can be used to produce significantly different results (tables vs graphs for example) simply by applying different XSL style sheets.
In one embodiment of the invention, the reportlets operate over HTTP, and thus they can be located anywhere. This also means that the reportlets need not be connected to a database, and can get data from any source. For example, reportlets can be written which show the current free space available on server file systems and databases. A tracking report engine can then execute these reportlets on all machines in a production cluster and produce a single report showing data for the whole cluster.
Accordingly, in one embodiment, the instant invention provides total absence of server side persistent state relating to client subscriptions, with resulting desirable failure mode characteristics. This includes use of web standards to enable distributed data gathering and reporting.
An Example of Report Generation
Referring now to
At step 304, computer 102 processes a report header.
At step 306, computer 102 calls one of the reportlets, which includes a reportlet and style sheet processor.
At step 308, computer 102 determines whether there are additional reportlets. If there are additional reportlets, then at step 306, computer 102 calls another one of the reportlets.
If there are no additional reportlets, then at step 310, computer 102 processes the report trailer, and at step 312 displays the report. a
Having provided a detailed description of the system and method of the invention, further examples are provided below.
An Example Server "QueryGram": Any SQML server can contain QueryGram contexts, if required in addition to normal SQML contexts. In this example the server is a publisher.
To add a QueryGram context we construct the context and add items to it as before. All we need to do in addition is call the SQMLContext.setQueryGram( ). This method takes the following parameters:
This completes the implementation, the SQMLServlet class provides all the necessary functionality to service queries as they arrive.
An Example Client "Querygram": The implementation of a QueryGram client is very similar to a normal SQML client. In this example the client is a subscriber.
QueryGram requests are identified with a context name, and you can specify which fields you require using the wanted( )method as before.
The only difference in the request is that the queryGram( )method must be called, passing the integer ID of the most recently received QueryGram. All QueryGrams with a higher id than this will then be returned in ID sequence.
Note that you will get the QueryGram id with each row returned irrespective of whether you request it. This ID must be persisted so that you can restart the feed from the correct point next time. Conditions are ignored by QueryGram requests because they are keyed on the QueryGram ID by definition.
Data is then returned in the same way as with a normal SQML request, the only difference being that there will never be any end to the data returned. When all available data has been sent the server will wait for more to become available and this will be returned as additional rows at that time.
Note that the server may throttle (place limits on) the returned data stream.
Tracking QueryGram Example: The Tracking service provides a QueryGram interface to provide notifications of events. As with the normal SQML example we need to sub class SQMLQueryProxy:
Inside the run( )method we construct the query proxy as before, specifying the wanted items, but instead of setting a condition we call the queryGram( )method passing in a QueryGram id. The process( )method is then called, as before:
A Total System: The Example Server and Example Client above describe the essential aspects of one embodiment of the invention. The example of a total system, which is provided below, illustrates other embodiments of the invention in a larger system context.
Tracking: The Tracking & Reporting component of the Portal Infrastructure implements a number of SQML interfaces. The examples below describe the various interfaces and their use, but before describing the interfaces in detail we will describe the tracking application particularly with respect to its needs from content providers.
The tracking system monitors activity on web based portals. There are 2 parts to the process with respect to any given content provider. Firstly there is the tracking of events, or user activity on the site. Secondly, there is a need to find out what asset any particular URL refers to and to map those assets on to Tracking's unified asset model.
Content Providers, Portals and Users: Tracking is a multiple system tracking and reporting service. This means that activity is tracked across multiple systems and activity for a single user on several systems can be reported on together.
Tracking also understands the idea of a portal, as an intermediary between the user and the content provider which acts as an aggregator. Tracking is currently linked to the CRD user account system, and so only systems which use CRD for account maintenance can be easily tracked.
When recording events, it is possible to describe the user, the asset (document, page or whatever) and the portal. This means that it is possible to report in a variety of ways including: 1) All activity for a given user; 2) Activity for all content providers through a given portal; and 3) Activity for a given content provider through all portals.
The Asset Model: It is important to understand that each content provider maintains, identifies and classifies its assets in its own way. The object of the Tracking & Reporting system, however, is to provide an integrated reporting environment where user activity may be tracked across portals and content providers. It is therefore necessary to name assets and classifications in a globally unique way. This is done by prefixing some system specific name with the domain name of the content provider, so a Morgan Markets asset might be called www.morganmarkets.com/asset/12345 and a JPM Portal asset could be portal.jpmorgan.com/asset/567.
The only requirement on these Globally Unique Identifiers is that they are unique, however there is a convention that assets are called domain/asset/id, classifications are domain/class/id and classification types are domain/classtype/id. An asset may be assigned one or more classifications, which help to describe the asset. Examples of classifications might be United Kingdom, US Dollars or North America.
Reports can be produced based upon asset classifications, so one might produce a report detailing all assets associated with North America.
Classifications are hierarchical, so US Dollars might be a child of United States so a query for all assets associated with United States would include all assets classified as US Dollars.
Classifications all have exactly one classification type. Examples of classification types are Country, Currency and Country Group.
Interfaces: Tracking has 2 collection interfaces, the first collects data about events in the systems monitored. The second is the asset lookup interface, which tracking uses to find out about assets for which events have been received.
There are two implementations of the event data interface. The first is a web server log file reader, which processes the standard log file produced by a web server. The second is an API which an application can call to record trackable events.
The Problem With Webserver Logfile Processing: Most web server tracking solutions work by processing the event logs of the web servers. This is a fundamentally difficult approach for a number of reasons: 1) The web log is written by the web server as a general debugging aid and is not specifically aimed at tracking business events; 2) There is a large quantity of uninteresting or irrelevant data in the logs; 3) While there is some standardization of log file formats there is variation in the files produced by different systems and extra processing is required to resolve URLs recorded in the log file to asset Identifiers; 4) URLs on their own do not always uniquely identify what the user saw, for example a URL might mean "display the latest edition of Global Data Watch." It is not possible to determine which document was displayed without further processing; and 5) Log files contain the GET parameters for URLs accessed by default. They do not contain POST parameters or cookies unless special action is taken to log that data. In any event there may be additional context within an application which makes it impossible to see from the logfile data what actually happened.
An API approach is preferable because the application knows when a business event has taken place and can usually identify the exact asset which is being accessed.
Interface Design Principles: The first design rule of tracking interfaces is that tracking is not a mission critical application. This means that if for any reason there is a system failure which makes tracking user activity impossible that this should not interfere with the underlying application. No user should be refused any service on the grounds that the delivery of that service cannot be tracked.
The second design rule is that content systems should not be required to maintain any state relating to tracking interfaces.
The event capture API works by creating a file on the content providers local system. This file is then read by a remote log reader in the same way as web server log files.
Event Capture: The job of the event interface is to collect raw event data as quickly as possible, it should not be doing any complex processing. That said, there is a large volume of uninteresting data in web server logs, and the log reader discards irrelevant data wherever it can.
As we have already said, the Event API works by writing a log file on the content system's local disk. This file is then read by a special version of the log reader which is also used to process web server logs.
The log reader works as a CGI application, running on a web server on the system being monitored. The reader is given the name of the log file to read and the point to which it has already processed the file by the Tracking server. It then processes the file and sends back one record per asset access.
For each event the log reader sends back the following information:
The assets are identified by a modified form of URL called a MUURL. This is like a URL except that the protocol element (http://, https:// etc.) is stripped off and any unnecessary parameters may also be stripped off. An MUURL therefore looks like a domain name, followed by a slash and some string which can be used to identify assets within that domain.
A single URL does not always map onto a single asset, and each asset does not always have a single URL. Assets are identified by a globally unique identifier (GUID). When processing web server logs it is sometimes impossible to uniquely identify the asset from the given URL without some complex processing (for example looking up attributes in a database).
When using the event logging API the application is required to provide the GUID for the asset being accessed. When processing a webserver log file, if it is possible to deduce the asset's GUID then this is indicated by prefixing the GUID with a slash character and providing it as the MUURL. If this is not possible then the asset lookup interface is called by tracking later with the MUURL and the time of the event, it must then return a GUID from these two pieces of data, using whatever asset databases it requires.
Event API: The Event API works by writing a special log file on a local disk of the content system servers. A log reader then reads this data and sends it back to the tracking server. The Event API interface is defined in terms of the format of the file, tracking then also provides a set of bindings to facilitate the creation of this file.
Event Log File Format: The event API log file consists of newline terminated records each containing tab separated fields. Each record (line) records one event. The fields for each record are as follows:
The tracking provided API bindings ensure that the generated file is correctly named and written sequentially. If an application generates the file directly it must ensure that if several processes write to the file that the data is written correctly. In particular it is essential that if two processes write to the file simultaneously that the data is not interleaved and that only whole records (lines) are written.
Event Log File Naming and Handling: The event log file must have a name which contains no dot characters. This name must be suffixed with a dot and the date in the form YYYYMMDD. The application should periodically (normally daily) create a new log file with a new date suffix. The old files must remain in place for at least 48 hours, after which they may be archived or deleted.
The log file reader will automatically detect the creation of a new file and begin reading it, after which the old file will not normally be re-read. It is therefore important that only one file be appended to at any one time. If it is necessary to create multiple files simultaneously then these must be named differently and each must be suffixed with the current date.
If it is necessary to roll logs more than once per day then additional sequence numbers may be added to the end of the date suffix, but it is essential that the files are created in alphabetical sequence of their suffixes.
Java API: The Java Event API is part of the tracking public API (package com.jpmorgan.portalinfra.tracking) and is distributed as part of tracking.jar. The API has a threaded model which attempts to ensure that the application calling the API is not blocked on any internal activity such as writing the log file. The application thread calling the API simply places the logged data on an in memory queue, a separate thread is responsible for actually writing out the data.
The log file name give is automatically suffixed with the current date, users of the Java API need not worry about rolling the log file, although archiving and deleting old files is the responsibility of the calling application.
Using The API In An Application: There are 2 classes which are of interest when logging events from applications. TrackingEventManager is the class which handles the actual writing of the log file. It is a singleton, and has a getINstance( ) method. It also has a setLogFileName(String name) method which enables you to set the name of the log file. This should be a full path name ending with a name containing no dot characters. The current date will be appended to the given name automatically.
In this code fragment we get the EventManager and set the log file name:
In order to log an event we must create a LoggableTrackingEvent object. This has various setter methods which can be called to set the attributes of the event:
Finally we must call the Events log( ) method to log the event:
Using The API In A Servlet: The same technique could be used when logging events from a servlet. However as a convenience the tracking library provides the LoggableTrackingServletEvent class which can initialize itself from a HTTPServletRequest:
Example Log Reader: The log reader interface is implemented as a C++ application. There are a number of classes which implement the basic log reader functionality and one class which is responsible for parsing the log file. This class must be modified for each system to be monitored.
We will illustrate the implementation of a log reader with the Morgan Markets log file reader. The abstract base class TtrkGenericLogParser implements the bulk of the parser, this must be sub-classed and the method processLine must be defined. Aside from the constructor and destructor (which may be empty) this is all that needs to be implemented.
We begin by including the necessary headers and defining a few constants and the constructor/destructor:
The GID for any assets begins with the domain name of the provider, for Morgan Markets this is www.morganmarkets.com, and the constant myDomain is defined for this.
Next we declare the processLine method. This is passed the line to be parsed, together with the file name, inode number, seek address and line number of the data, which must be passed back to the tracking server if an event is to be recorded from this log file entry.
Various variables are declared, which are used later, eventType is always "display" at present, but a tracking constant for this is defined in TtrkGenericLogParser. The processLine method should return false on end of file or other fatal processing error, otherwise it should return true.
In order to record an event, processLine( ) must call the logaccess( ) method defined in TtrkGenericLogParser. If for any reason the parser wished to discard the current line, it simply returns without calling this method.
The parser first checks to see if the line is the format header which the web server usually writes as the first line in the file. If so then this is discarded. Next it calls tokeniseLine( ) which breaks up a line on white space, respecting quotes and fills in an array of char pointers to point to each word in the line. The return value is the number of words detected.
A check is performed to ensure that the expected number of fields have been found, if there are not enough then the error( ) method is called to pass an error message to the tracking server, the line is then discarded.
Morgan Markets fills in the principal (user) ID in the REMOTE_USER field (the third field in the log file). Lines without any user id data are of little use, and in the case of Morgan Markets represent accesses to the portal before login has been completed. These entries (which have a single hyphen in the file) are ignored.
Some of the required fields are then extracted based on known positions in the log file. The method parseStdWebLogDate( ) parses a standard web log file date (of the form [21/May/2000:00:01:56-0400]) and returns a time_t value.
The asset details identified above is actually a quoted field with three words, the HTTP methof (GET or POST), the URL, and the HTTP protocol ID. We now use tokeniseLine( ) again to extract just the URL from this field, again an error is reported if insufficient words are parsed.
The THttpURL class is defined in the tracking interface library, and represents a URL. It provides a number of methods to access the various fields of a URL including any GET parameters. The methods uriFile( ) and uripath( ) return the last element of the URL file path and all but the last element of the file path respectively.
Within Morgan Markets the last file name element before the file name represents the research area.
Having established the research area and file name, a number of possibilities can be checked to see if the line should be discarded
The httpUrl.getParamByName(name) method returns the value of a single HTTP get parameter included in a URL. The values of market and REGION can be used to augment the research area name.
Within Morgan Markets, a URL with a get parameter called z is used to access an asset by its Morgan Markets unique identifier. When the URL is of this form we can immediately generate the GID for the asset, which saves a call to the Asset Lookup interface later.
A complete resolution of the GID is indicated by returning a MUURL which begins with a slash character. In this case, the value of the z parameter is a number and the GID for this asset is www.morganmarkets.com/asset/nnnn where nnnn is the value of the z parameter.
A number of special cases are now checked, where URLs do not map onto assets in the database:
Next we check for a number of special portal attributes which may have been added to the URL as GET parameters if this access came via the JPM portal. The following attributes may be defined:
If the refererUrl is defined then a THttpURL object is created and its toLoggerString method is used to convert it to the MUURL format. We pass the value of myDomain so that the correct domain can be added if this is a relative URL.
The other portal values are then checked, note that we must check both the long and short names.
If the variable stripParams has been set to true then all of the GET parameters on the URL can be discarded. The httpUrl.removeAllParams( ) method ensures that when the url is constructed by the toLoggerString method that these are not included.
Finally, we call logAccess( ) to send back the access details to the tracking server.
A trivial main( ) is also required to instantiate an instance of the concrete parser class and the log reader main class:
TtrkGenericLogParser: TtrkGenericLogParser is the abstract super class for log parser implementations. It defines a number of utility methods for use by concrete implementations. These utility methods are declared as follows:
Utility Methods:
error(message)—Returns the given message as a fatal error message to the tracking server.
warning(message)—Returns the given message as a non-fatal warning message to the tracking server.
info(message)—Returns the given message as an informational message to the tracking server.
parseStdWebLogDate(date)—Takes a standard web server log file format date string and returns the time_t representation of it. The date is expected to be of the form [21/May/2000:00:01:56-0400] where the last number represents an offset from GMT.
tokenizeLine(line, tokens, cnt)—Breaks up a line into tokens. Tokens are separated by white space and may be quoted with double quote characters. All token separaters and quotes are removed, the array tokens is filled in with addresses of the first cnt tokens. The number of tokens detected is returned.
logAccess( . . . )—Sends an event message to the tracking server, the following parameters are required:
ThttpURL: ThttpURL represents a URL and defines a number of public methods as follows:
THttpURL(urlString)—The constructor takes the string representation of a URL and initializes the class. An example URL is http:example.jpmorgan.com/docs/examples/first.html?mode=header&title=First
toLoggerString(host)—This method constructs the string representation of the given URL as a MUURL suitable for passing to the tracking server. A MUURL has no protocol element, and should have all extraneous elements removed. The example URL above would be represented as example.jpmorgan.com/docs/examples/first.html?mode=header&title=First. The optional domain parameter will be used to fill in the domain for a relative URL. Some or all of the parameters may be removed from the MUURL representation.
removeAllParams( )—Marks all parameters to be excluded from the MUURL form when toLoggerString is subsequently called.
getParamByName(name)—Returns the value of the given parameter, or NULL if not present. Using the example above getPramByName("mode") would return the string "header".
getParamByNameAndRemove(name)—Returns the value of the given parameter and marks it to be excluded from the MUURL form when toLoggerString is subsequently called.
getParamAt(idx)—Returns the value of the parameter at index position idx.
getNameAt(idx)—Returns the name of the parameter at index position idx.
getParamCnt( )—Returns the number of parameters present.
toString( )—Returns the whole URL in its string representation.
protocol( )—Returns the protocol element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value http://
host( )—Returns the host element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value example.jpmorgan.com
port( )—Returns the port element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value NULL. Note that this method does not substitute known port assignments by the value of the protocol.
uriPath( )—Returns the path element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value/docs/examples
uriFile( )—Returns the file name element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value first.html
uriExtension( )—Returns the file name extension element of the URL. In the example above this would be the value html
Asset Lookup: The Asset Lookup interface provides a way for the tracking system to find out about assets from the system being monitored. This is implemented as an SQML server.
A single URL does not always map onto a single asset, and each asset does not always have a single URL. The first step in processing an event is to uniquely identify the assets involved. It is sometimes possible for the log reader to deduce the globally unique identifier (GUID) for an asset just from the information in the log file, and if this is possible it does so. If this is not possible then the asset lookup interface is called with the MUURL and the time of the event, it must return a GUID from these two pieces of data, using whatever asset databases it requires.
Once a GUID has been obtained for an event the tracking system looks to see if it already knows about this asset. If it does not then another call is made to the asset lookup interface to get the necessary details for the asset.
The details required are:
The asset lookup interface also provides interfaces for the tracking system to discover the details (name, description and type) for a classification and the name and description of a classification type. The asset lookup interface is implemented as an SQML server. This server must implement the following SQML query contexts:
The asset context is a QueryGram, which may be used to actively tell tracking about new assets as they are published. The other contexts are used by tracking to discover details of assets it has seen events for from the Log Reader interface.
The tracking server will only call these interfaces for assets which it has no record of. If the content provider system updates assets then the QueryGram interface must be used to notify tracking when an update occurs, otherwise updates will not be detected by tracking.
For each of the required contexts there is an abstract super class provided in the Tracking library which implements helper methods. The following table lists the classes defined for the Morgan Markets asset lookup, and the appropriate super class. The table links to the source code for the examples and the API documentation for the super classes:
Example Asset Lookup: The Morgan Markets asset lookup interface is an example of the complex form of an SQML server. The Morgan Markets asset database is a Sybase data server, however some of the URLs used to access assets do not map directly on to database tables. The asset QueryGram is implemented as a simple SQML QueryGram, with a database table as the data source. All of the other contexts require some special processing. Additionally the actual access to the database is exclusively through Sybase stored procedures.
The class MorganMarketsSQMLServlet contains the main SQMLServlet declaration which defines the required query contexts. This class uses the Portal Iffrastructure Database class to encapsulate database access, and requires a "pool name" to get the DB connection details from a properties file.
Several of the classes we will describe shortly need the database connection pool name. The constructor follows the usual pattern for an SQML servlet, passing in the pool name and a logger to the SQMLServlet constructor.
As with all SQMLServlets, there is no actual body in this implementation, just a definition of the init method, the super class is then left to handle requests as usual.
The init method begins by declaring some variables and calling the usual SQML super class initialization methods.
Now begins the task of actually declaring the various contexts, first the assetId context, which is implemented as a custom class.
Next we declare the url item, which is a mandatory key, and may not be selected as a result item (i.e., if url is supplied as the value of a wanted element of an SQML querey then an error will result). This is indicated by the field SQMLBaseItem.MANDATORY|SQMLBaseItem.FILTERONLY. We also need to restrict the comparisons which may be made in the query to equality tests, this is because the query will be answered by a stored procedure which takes fixed parameters. This is indicated by the field SQMLExpression.EQ.
We then go on to declare the accessTime item, which is an optional key, and the guid (Globally Unique Identifier) which is the only result item. Finally we add this context to the servlet.
The classRelations context is implemented as a standard SQMLContext which uses a stored procedure to answer actual queries. We use the getSQMLContext method, which is provided by SQMLServlet to create this context and pass the usual parameters.
Because this context is using a stored procedure the tableList parameter is passed the name of the stored procedure (portalGetClassRelations in this example), the joinClause parameter is null and an additional boolean parameter with the value true indicates that the interface is via a stored procedure.
The stored procedure takes a single class ID produces a result set containing att_keyname and att_keyname_parent. It is defined as follows:
The class SQMLPrefixltem is used to define the items for this query because the values passed to and returned by the query have a fixed prefix by comparison to the values used by the stored procedure. For example the GUID www.morganmarkets.com/class/100000789 is identified in the database as a row with a value of 100000789. SQMLPrefixltem takes an additional parameter which is the prefix which should be stripped from selection criteria values and added to results.
The code then goes on to declare the other contexts in a similar way, except for the QueryGram context, which is slightly different. This query is also answered by a stored procedure, note that the id key must be specified as a greater than condition by the field SQMLExpression.GT.
The statement context.setQueryGram(item, 20, 30000, 50); makes this a QueryGram context. The parameters mean that at most 20 rows will be returned on each call, the server will sleep for 30 seconds (30000 milliseconds) when there is no more data, and will sleep for at least 50 milliseconds after each batch.
A Custom Context: The assetId context is implemented as a custom context because some URL's require database lookups and some do not. Furthermore depending on the URL the actual DB query varies. This could probably have been implemented as a single Sybase Stored Procedure but this is unnatural and would be inefficient.
The class MorganMarketsAssetIdContext defines the custom context, which is actually a trivial class returning instances of The class MorganMarketsAssetIdQuery, which implements the actual lookup logic.
The purpose of a query context object is to hold any parameters required by the context (such as a database connection pool name) and to act as a factory class for query objects to answer queries as they arrive. The SQML server is a sub class of HttpServlet, and is multi threaded. It is therefore important that the context class ensures that each query object is thread safe. In this example this means ensuring that each query object has its own database connection.
The getQuery method therefore constructs a new Database object for each query, the same log object is shared as this is a synchronized class.
Now we come to the query class, which does the actual work. This is a subclass of IdentifyAssetSQMLQuery which is a Tracking class. This is an abstract class, the method processAssetIdQuery must be defined by subclasses. IdentifyAssetSQMLQuery handles the SQML query interface, and sets up the following protected member variables before calling IdentifyAssetSQMLQuery:
A helper method protected String getParam(String name) is also provided which returns the value for a given parameter name, or NULL if not present.
The query class begins by defining the constructor, which is quite straight forward. Note that the domain name for Morgan Markets is hard coded here, as this class is specific to that system.
The real work takes place in the processAssetIdQuery method, which begins by checking for the trivial case that the MUURL given is a fully resolved asset ID, of the form/asset/xxxxx. This is necessary because a reference to a Morgan Markets URL might appear in the log file from another system. This URL might be in the fully resolved format but the log reader for that system cannot know that, and neither does tracking, so such URLs will be passed to the Morgan Markets asset lookup interface for resolution.
The local variable assetId is used to indicate the result of the query.
The next step is to identify the file name and research area, which are the last two elements of the filename part of a Morgan Markets URL. We do not try to explain or justify the structure of Morgan Markets URLs here, but these two elements are used to identify assets.
The next section finds the value of a parameter called z or Z, URLs which contain this parameter are references to assets in the Morgan Markets database and the value of z is the primary key on the asset table.
The parameters market and REGION augment the research area.
A number of trivial cases are then checked, where the ID can be deduced directly from the URL contents for either assets identified by a z number or pseudo assets, index pages etc.
Finally the more complex cases where a database lookup are required are handled. The actual DB lookup is done in one of two further methods, described below.
At this point the asset ID has either been resolved or there is a fatal error. The method returns true if any output was generated, as is standard for any SQML query class. The method sqmlApplicationError(String message) can be used to return an error message to the tracking server.
The queries requiring DB lookups are handled by further methods. getAssetByAttr finds assets based upon attributes and an access time. The database_member is a Portal Infrastructure Database object which wraps a JDBC connection and handles deadlock retries. The style of use is the same as for a raw JDBC connection.
The stored procedure portalGetAssetByAttr executes the necessary database query.
Although illustrative embodiments have been described herein in detail, it should be noted and will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that numerous variations may be made within the scope of this invention without departing from the principle of this invention and without sacrificing its chief advantages.
Unless otherwise specifically stated, the terms and expressions have been used herein as terms of description and not terms of limitation. There is no intention to use the terms or expressions to exclude any equivalents of features shown and described or portions thereof and this invention should be defined in accordance with the claims that follow.
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Ed Rampell: Today, due to the collapse of the USSR, the industry that put the first creatures and human into the cosmos has largely been reduced to providing Yankee billionaires with an extraterrestrial playground – for, of course, a fee: $20 million per launch.
Helen Thomas: Asking the Questions Real Democracy Demands
Lydia Howell: When one considers how many scoundrels remain in powerful positions in both public and private life, the swiftness with which Helen Thomas was dumped after 50 years of reporting on U.S. presidents was breathtaking. More so when you listen to TV talking-heads blandly repeating corporate and Pentagon PR as "news" and Faux News blowhards like Beck and Limbaugh shamelessly make vicious slanders, perpetrate outright lies and create disinformation.


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This content has been removed as our copyright has expired.
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Below is the poem entitled WHO SAYS THAT CRIME DOESN'T PAY which was written by poet
Willis. Please feel free to comment on this poem. However, please remember, PoetrySoup is a place of encouragement and growth.
Read Poems by
William Willis
Note-Barlinnie Prison-is meant to be one of Britains toughest prisons.However,times
are changing and many impoverished criminals see it as a roof over their head with
no need to worry about where the next meal is coming from.
It's Christmas at Barlinnie but Jimmys free now on the streets.
He's homeless and bedraggled and ignored by friends he meets.
Its Christmas at Barlinnie,all the cons are getting fed.
Three course lunch,tea and mints,full breakfast and fried bread.
Jimmys in and out of jail,a life full of crime and sin.
Less money in his pocket now recession is kicking in.
With no aspirations,a convict, thief and liar.
His family have dis-owned him, all their dreams now lie in tatters.
As mollycoddled prisoners,tuck into their Christmas treats.
Jimmy's bones begin to freeze,it's minus fiveteen on the street.
As mollycoddled prisoners,feast on a turkey steak.
Jimmy's bellies empty,there is no food there on his plate.
Distant moon in observation,Jimmy sleeps in cardboard box.
Drunken revellers,slamming shutters,smell of hot-dogs,hungry fox.
Fearful moon now glaring,as the night turns into day.
Jimmy's dreaming of Barlinnie,who says that crime doesn't pay.
A comment has not been posted for this poem. Encourage a poet by being the first to comment.