How-To Tutorials

article-image-getting-started-python-packages

02 Nov 2016

37 min read

Getting Started with Python Packages

02 Nov 2016

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0
7169

article-image-why-secure-web-based-applications-with-kali-linux

Guest Contributor

12 Dec 2019

12 min read

Why secure web-based applications with Kali Linux?

Guest Contributor

12 Dec 2019

12 min read

0
0
7167

article-image-getting-started-codeblocks

Packt

28 Oct 2013

7 min read

Getting Started with Code::Blocks

Packt

28 Oct 2013

7 min read

0
0
7167

article-image-working-targets-informatica-powercenter-10-x

Savia Lobo

11 Dec 2017

8 min read

Working with Targets in Informatica PowerCenter 10.x

Savia Lobo

11 Dec 2017

8 min read

0
0
7162

article-image-reinforcement-learning-mdp-markov-decision-process-tutorial

Fatema Patrawala

09 Jul 2018

11 min read

Implement Reinforcement learning using Markov Decision Process [Tutorial]

Fatema Patrawala

09 Jul 2018

11 min read

0
0
7160

Packt

30 Apr 2010

11 min read

Vim 7.2 Formatting Code

Packt

30 Apr 2010

11 min read

Formatting code often depends on many different things. Each programming language has its own syntax, and some languages rely on formatting like indentation more than others. In some cases, the programmer is following style guidelines given by an employer so that code can follow the company-wide style. So, how should Vim know how you want your code to be formatted? The short answer is that it shouldn't! But by being flexible, Vim can let you set up exactly how you want your formatting done. However, the fact is that even though formatting differs, most styles of formatting follow the same basic rules. This means that in reality, you only have to change the things that differ. In most cases, the changes can be handled by changing a range of settings in Vim. Among these, there are a few especially worth mentioning: Formatoptions: This setting holds formatting-specific settings (see :help 'fo') Comments: What are comments and how they should be formatted (see :help 'co') (no)expandtab: Convert tabs to spaces (see :help 'expandtab') Softtabstop: How many spaces a single tab is converted to (see :help 'sts') Tabstop: How many spaces a tab looks like (see :help 'ts') With these options, you can set nearly every aspect of how Vim will indent your code, and whether it should use spaces or tabs for indentation. But this is not enough because you still have to tell Vim if it should actually try to do the indentation for you, or if you want to do it manually. It you want Vim to do the indentation for you, you have the choice between four different ways for Vim to do it. In the following sections, we will look at the options you can set to interact with the way Vim indents code. Autoindent Autoindent is the simplest way of getting Vim to indent your code. It simply stays at the same indentation level as the previous line. So, if the current line is indented with four spaces, then the new line you add by pressing Enter will automatically be indented with four spaces too. It is then up to you as to how and when the indentation level needs to change again. This type of indentation is particularly good for languages where the indentation stays the same for several lines in a row. You get autoindent by using :set, autoindent, or :set ai. Smartindent Smartindent is the next step when you want a smarter indent than autoindent. It still gives you the indentation from the previous line, but you don't have to change the indentation level yourself. Smartindent recognizes the most common structures from the C programming language and uses this as a marker for when to add / remove the indentation levels. As many languages are loosely based on the same syntax as C, this will work for those languages as well. You get smart indent by using any of the following commands: :set smartindent :set si Cindent Cindent is often called clever indent or configurable indent because it is more configurable than the previous two indentation methods. You have access to three different setup options: cinkeys This option contains a comma-separated list of keys that Vim should use to change the indentation level. An example could be: :set cinkeys="0{,0},0#,:", which means that it should reindent whenever it hits a {, a } or a # as the first character on the line, or if you use : as the last character on the line (as used in switch constructs in many languages).The default value for cinkeys is "0{, 0}, 0), :, 0#, !^F, o, O, and e". See :help cinkeys for more information on what else you can set in this option. cinoptions This option contains all the special options you can set specifically for cindent. A large range of options can be set in this comma-separated list. An example could be:set cinoptions=">2,{3,}3", which means that we want Vim to add two extra spaces to the normal indent length, and we want to place { and } three spaces as compared to the previous line. So, if we have a normal indent to be four spaces, then the previous example could result in the code looking like this (dot marks represent a space): if( a == b) ...{ ......print "hello"; ...} The default value for cinoptions is this quite long string: ">s,e0,n0,f0,{0,}0,^0,:s,=s,l0,b0,gs,hs,ps,ts,is,+s,c3,C0,/0,(2s,us,U0,w0,W0,m0,j0,)20,*30" . See :help 'cinoptions' for more information on all the options. cinwords This option contains all the special keywords that will make Vim add indentation on the next line. An example could be: :set cinwords="if,else,do,while,for,switch", which is also the default value for this option. See :help 'cinwords' for more information. Indentexpr Indentexpr is the most flexible indent option to use, but also the most complex. When used, indentexpr evaluates an expression to compute the indent of a line. Hence, you have to write an expression that Vim can evaluate. You can activate this option by simply setting it to a specific expression such as: :set indentexpr=MyIndenter() Here, MyIndenter() is a function that computes the indentation for the lines it is executed on. A very simple example could be a function that emulates the autoindent option: function! MyIndenter() " Find previous line and get its indentation let prev_lineno = s:prevnonblank(v:lnum) let ind = indent( prev_lineno ) return indendfunction Adding just a bit more functionality than this, the complexity increases quite fast. Vim comes with a lot of different indent expressions for many programming languages. These can serve as inspiration if you want to write your own indent expression. You can find them in the indent folder in your VIMHOME. You can read more about how to use indentexpr in :help 'indentexpr' and :help 'indent-expression'. Fast code-block formatting After you have configured your code formatting, you might want to update your code to follow these settings. To do so, you simply have to tell Vim that it should reindent every single line in the file from the first line to the last. This can be done with the following Vim command: 1G=G If we split it up, it simply says: 1G: Go to the first line of the file (alternatively you can use gg) =: Equalize lines; in other words, indent according to formatting configuration G: Go to the last line in the file (tells Vim where to end indenting) You could easily map this command to a key in order to make it easily accessible: :nmap <F11> 1G=G:imap <F11> <ESC>1G=Ga The last a is to get back into the insert mode as this was where we originally were. So, now you can just press the F11key in order to reindent the entire buffer correctly. Note that if you have a programmatic error, for example, missing a semicolon at the end of a line in a C program, the file will not be correctly indented from that point on in the buffer. This can sometimes be useful to identify where a scope is not closed correctly (for example, a { not closed with a } ). Sometimes, you might just want to format smaller blocks of code. In those cases, you typically have two options—use the natural scope blocks in the code, or select a block of code in the visual mode and indent it. The last one is simple. Go into the visual mode with, for example,Shift+v and then press = to reindent the lines. When it comes to using code blocks on the other hand, there are several different ways to do it. In Vim, there are multiple ways to select a block of code. So in order to combine a command that indents a code block, we need to look at the different types and the commands to select them: i{ Inner block, which means everything between { and } excluding the brackets. This can also be selected with i} and iB. a{ A block, which means all the code between { and } including the brackets. This can also be selected with a} and aB. i( Inner parenthesis, meaning everything between ( and ) excluding the parentheses. Can also be selected with i) and ib. a( A parentheses, meaning everything between ( and ) including the parenthesis. Can also be selected with a) and ab. i< Inner < > block, meaning everything between < and > excluding the brackets. Can also be selected with i>. a< A < > block, meaning everything between < and > including the brackets. Can also be selected with a>. i[ Inner [ ] block, meaning everything between [ and ] excluding the square brackets. Can also be selected with i]. a[ A [ ] block, meaning everything between [ and ], including the square brackets. This can also be selected with a]. So, we have defined what Vim sees a block of code as; now, we simply have to tell it what to do with the block. In our case, we want to reindent the code. We already know that = can do this. So, an example of a code block reindentation could look like this: =i{ Let's execute the code block reindentation in the following code (| being the place where the cursor is): if( a == b ) { print |"a equals b"; } This would produce the following code (with default C format settings): if( a == b ) { print |"a equals b"; } If, on the other hand, we choose to use a { as the block we are working on, then the resulting code would look like this: if( a == b ) { print "a equals b"; } As you can see in the last piece of code, the =a{ command corrects the indentation of both the brackets and the print line. In some cases where you work in a code block with multiple levels of code blocks, you might want to reindent the current block and maybe the surrounding one. No worries, Vim has a fast way to do this. If, for instance, you want to reindent the current code block and besides that want to reindent the block that surrounds it, you simply have to execute the following command while the cursor is placed in the innermost block: =2i{ This simply tells Vim that you will equalize / reindent two levels of inner blocks counting from the "active" block and out. You can replace the number 2 with any number of levels of code blocks you want to reindent. Of course, you can also swap the inner block command with any of the other block commands, and that way select exactly what you want to reindent. So, this is really all it takes to get your code to indent according to the setup you have. Auto format pasted code The trend among programmers tells us that we tend to reuse parts of our code, or so-called patterns. This could mean that you have to do a lot of copying and pasting of code. Most users of Vim have experienced what is often referred to as the stair effect when pasting code into a file. This effect occurs when Vim tries to indent the code as it inserts it. This often results in each new line to be indented to another level, and you ending up with a stair: code line 1 code line 2 codeline 3 code line 4 ... The normal workaround for this is to go into the paste-mode in Vim, which is done by using: :set paste After pasting your code, you can now go back to your normal insert mode again: :set nopaste But what if there was another workaround? What if Vim could automatically indent the pasted code such that it is indented according to the rest of the code in the file? Vim can do that for you with a simple paste command. p=`] This command simply combines the normal paste command (p) with a command that indents the previously inserted lines (=`]). It actually relies on the fact that when you paste with p (lowercase), the cursor stays on the first character of the pasted text. This is combined with `], which takes you to the last character of the latest inserted text and gives you a motion across the pasted text from the first line to the last. So, all you have to do now is map this command to a key and then use this key whenever you paste a piece of code into your file. Using external formatting tools Even though experienced Vim users often say that Vim can do everything, this is of course not the truth—but is close. For those things that Vim can't do, it is smart enough to be able to use external tools. In the following sections, we will take a look at some of the most used external tools that can be used for formatting your code, and how to use them.

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7160

article-image-validating-and-using-model-data

Packt

07 May 2013

14 min read

Validating and Using the Model Data

Packt

07 May 2013

14 min read

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Declarative validation It's easy to set up declarative validation for an entity object to validate the data that is passed through the metadata file. Declarative validation is the validation added for an attribute or an entity object to fulfill a particular business validation. It is called declarative validation because we don't write any code to achieve the validation as all the business validations are achieved declaratively. The entity object holds the business rules that are defined to fulfill specific business needs such as a range check for an attribute value or to check if the attribute value provided by the user is a valid value from the list defined. The rules are incorporated to maintain a standard way to validate the data. Knowing the lifecycle of an entity object It is important to know the lifecycle of an entity object before knowing the validation that is applied to an entity object. The following diagram depicts the lifecycle of an entity: When a new row is created using an entity object, the status of the entity is set to NEW. When an entity is initialized with some values, the status is changed from NEW to INITIALIZED. At this time, the entity is marked invalid or dirty; this means that the state of the entity is changed from the value that was previously checked with the database value. The status of an entity is changed to UNMODIFIED, and the entity is marked valid after applying validation rules and committing to the database. When the value of an unmodified entity is changed, the status is changed to MODIFIED and the entity is marked dirty again. The modified entity again goes to an UNMODIFIED state when it is saved to the database. When an entity is removed from the database, the status is changed to DELETED. When the value is committed, the status changes to DEAD. Types of validation Validation rules are applied to an entity to make sure that only valid values are committed to the database and to prevent any invalid data from getting saved to the database. In ADF, we use validation rules for the entity object to make sure the row is valid all the time. There are three types of validation rules that can be set for the entity objects; they are as follows: Entity-level validation Attribute-level validation Transaction-level validation Entity-level validation As we know, an entity represents a row in the database table. Entity-level validation is the business rule that is added to the database row. For example, the validation rule that has to be applied to a row is termed as entity-level validation. There are two unique declarative validators that will be available only for entity-level validation—Collection and UniqueKey. The following diagram explains that entity-level validations are applied on a single row in the EMP table. The validated row is highlighted in bold. Attribute-level validation Attribute-level validations are applied to attributes. Business logic mostly involves specific validations to compare different attribute values or to restrict the attributes to a specific range. These kinds of validations are done in attribute-level validation. Some of the declarative validators available in ADF are Compare, Length, and Range. The Precision and Mandatory attribute validations are added, by default, to the attributes from the column definition in the underlying database table. We can only set the display message for the validation. The following diagram explains that the validation is happening on the attributes in the second row: There can be any number of validations defined on a single attribute or on multiple attributes in an entity. In the diagram, Empno has a validation that is different from the validation defined for Ename. Validation for the Job attribute is different from that for the Sal attribute. Similarly, we can define validations for attributes in the entity object. Transaction-level validation Transaction-level validations are done after all entity-level validations are completed. If you want to add any kind of validation at the end of the process, you can defer the validation to the transaction level to ensure that the validation is performed only once. Built-in declarative validators ADF Business Components includes some built-in validators to support and apply validations for entity objects. The following screenshot explains how a declarative validation will show up in the Overview tab: The Business Rules section for the EmpEO.xml file will list all the validations for the EmpEO entity. In the previous screenshot, we will see that the there are no entity-level validators defined and some of the attribute-level validations are listed in the Attributes folder. Collection validator A Collection validator is available only for entity-level validation. To perform operations such as average, min, max, count, and sum for the collection of rows, we use the collection validator. Collection validators are compared to the GROUP BY operation in an SQL query with a validation. The aggregate functions, such as count, sum, min, and max are added to validate the entity row. The validator is operated against the literal value, expression, query result, and so on. You must have the association accessor to add a collection validation. Time for action – adding a collection validator for the DeptEO file Now, we will add a Collection validator to DeptEO.xml for adding a count validation rule. Imagine a business rule that says that the number of employees added to department number 10 should be more than five. In this case, you will have a count operation for the employees added to department number 10 and show a message if the count is less than 5 for a particular department. We will break this action into the following three parts: Adding a declarative validation: In this case, the number of employees added to the department should be greater than five Specifying the execution rule: In our case, the execution of this validation should be fired only for department number 10 Displaying the error message: We have to show an error message to the user stating that the number of employees added to the department is less than five Adding the validation Following are the steps to add the validation: Go to the Business Rules section of DeptEO.xml. You will find the Business Rules section in the Overview tab. Select Entity Validators and click on the + button. You may right-click on the Entity Validators folder and then select New Validator to add a validator. Select Collection as Rule Type and move on to the Rule Definition tab. In this section, select Count for the Operation field; Accessor is the association accessor that gets added through a composition association relationship. Only the composition association accessor will be listed in the Accessor drop-down menu. Select the accessor for EmpEO listed in the dropdown, with Empno as the value for Attribute. In order to create a composition association accessor, you will have to create an association between DeptEO.xml and EmpEO.xml based on the Deptno attribute with cardinality of 1 to *. The Composition Association option has to be selected to enable a composition relationship between the two entities. The value of the Operator option should be selected as Greater Than. Compare with will be a literal value, which is 5 that can be entered in the Enter Literal Value section below. Specifying the execution rule Following are the steps to specify the execution: Now to set the execution rule, we will move to the Validation Execution tab. In the Conditional Execution section, add Deptno = '10' as the value for Conditional Execution Expression. In the Triggering Attribute section, select the Execute only if one of the Selected Attributes has been changed checkbox. Move the Empno attribute to the Selected Attributes list. This will make sure that the validation is fired only if the Empno attribute is changed: Displaying the error message Following are the steps to display the error message: Go to the Failure Handling section and select the Error option for Validation Failure Severity. In the Failure Message section, enter the following text: Please enter more than 5 Employees You can add the message stored in a resource bundle to Failure Message by clicking on the magnifying glass icon. What just happened? We have added a collection validation for our EmpEO.xml object. Every time a new employee is added to the department, the validation rule fires as we have selected Empno as our triggering attribute. The rule is also validated against the condition that we have provided to check if the department number is 10. If the department number is 10, the count for that department is calculated. When the user is ready to commit the data to the database, the rule is validated to check if the count is greater than 5. If the number of employees added is less than 5, the error message is displayed to the user. When we add a collection validator, the EmpEO.xml file gets updated with appropriate entries. The following entries get added for the aforementioned validation in the EmpEO.xml file: <validation:CollectionValidationBean Name="EmpEO_Rule_0" ResId= "com.empdirectory.model.entity.EmpEO_Rule_0" OnAttribute="Empno" OperandType="LITERAL" Inverse="false" CompareType="GREATERTHAN" CompareValue="5" Operation="count"> <validation:OnCondition> <![CDATA[Deptno = '10']]> </validation:OnCondition> </validation:CollectionValidationBean> <ResourceBundle> <PropertiesBundle PropertiesFile= "com.empdirectory.model.ModelBundle"/> </ResourceBundle> The error message that is added in the Failure Handling section is automatically added to the resource bundle. The Compare validator The Compare validator is used to compare the current attribute value with other values. The attribute value can be compared against the literal value, query result, expression, view object attribute, and so on. The operators supported are equal, not-equal, less-than, greater-than, less-than or equal to, and greater-than or equal to. The Key Exists validator This validator is used to check if the key value exists for an entity object. The key value can be a primary key, foreign key, or an alternate key. The Key Exists validator is used to find the key from the entity cache, and if the key is not found, the value is determined from the database. Because of this reason, the Key Exists validator is considered to give better performance. For example, when an employee is assigned to a department deptNo 50 and you want to make sure that deptNo 50 already exists in the DEPT table. The Length validator This validator is used to check the string length of an attribute value. The comparison is based on the character or byte length. The List validator This validator is used to create a validation for the attribute in a list. The operators included in this validation are In and NotIn. These two operators help the validation rule check if an attribute value is in a list. The Method validator Sometimes, we would like to add our own validation with some extra logic coded in our Java class file. For this purpose, ADF provides a declarative validator to map the validation rule against a method in the entity-implementation class. The implementation class is generated in the Java section of the entity object. We need to create and select a method to handle method validation. The method is named as validateXXX(), and the returned value will be of the Boolean type. The Range validator This validator is used to add a rule to validate a range for the attribute value. The operators included are Between and NotBetween. The range will have a minimum and maximum value that can be entered for the attribute. The Regular Expression validator For example, let us consider that we have a validation rule to check if the e-mail ID provided by the user is in the correct format. For the e-mail validation, we have some common rules such as the following: The e-mail ID should start with a string and end with the @ character The e-mail ID's last character cannot be the dot (.) character Two @ characters are not allowed within an e-mail ID For this purpose, ADF provides a declarative Regular Expression validator. We can use the regex pattern to check the value of the attribute. The e-mail address and the US phone number pattern is provided by default: Email: [A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-,9.-]+.[A-Z]{2,4} Phone Number (US): [0-9]{3}-?[0-9]{3}-?[0-9]{4} You should select the required pattern and then click on the Use Pattern button to use it. Matches and NotMatches are the two operators that are included with this validator. The Script validator If we want to include an expression and validate the business rule, the Script validator is the best choice. ADF supports Groovy expressions to provide Script validation for an attribute. The UniqueKey validator This validator is available for use only for entity-level validation. To check for uniqueness in the record, we would be using this validator. If we have a primary key defined for the entity object, the Uniqueness Check Definition section will list the primary keys defined to check for uniqueness, as shown in the following screenshot: If we have to perform a uniqueness check against any attribute other than the primary key attributes, we will have to create an alternate key for the entity object. Time for action – creating an alternate key for DeptEO Currently, the DeptEO.xml file has Deptno as the primary key. We would add business validation that states that there should not be a way to create a duplicate of the department name that is already available. The following steps show how to create an alternate key: Go to the General section of the DeptEO.xml file and expand the Alternate Keys section. Alternate keys are keys that are not part of the primary key. Click on the little + icon to add a new alternate key. Move the Dname attribute from the Available list to the Selected list and click on the OK button. What just happened? We have created an alternate key against the Dname attribute to prepare for a unique check validation for the department name. When the alternate key is added to an entity object, we will see the AltKey attribute listed in the Alternate Key section of the General tab. In the DeptEO.xml file, you will find the following code that gets added for the alternate key definition: <Key Name="AltKey" AltKey="true"> <DesignTime> <Attr Name="_isUnique" Value="true"/> <Attr Name="_DBObjectName" Value="HR.DEPT"/> </DesignTime> <AttrArray Name="Attributes"> <Item Value= "com.empdirectory.model.entity.DeptEO.Dname"/> </AttrArray> </Key> Have a go hero – compare the attributes For the first time, we have learned about the validations in ADF. So it's time for you to create your own validation for the EmpEO and DeptEO entity objects. Add validations for the following business scenarios: Continue with the creation of the uniqueness check for the department name in the DeptEO.xml file. The salary of the employees should not be greater than 1000. Display the following message if otherwise: Please enter Salary less than 1000. Display the message invalid date if the employee's hire date is after 10-10-2001. The length of the characters entered for Dname of DeptEO.xml should not be greater than 10. The location of a department can only be NEWYORK, CALIFORNIA, or CHICAGO. The department name should always be entered in uppercase. If the user enters a value in lowercase, display a message. The salary of an employee with the MANAGER job role should be between 800 and 1000. Display an error message if the value is not in this range. The employee name should always start with an uppercase letter and should end with any character other than special characters such as :, ;, and _. After creating all the validations, check the code and tags generated in the entity's XML file for each of the aforementioned validations.

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7154

article-image-sql-server-user-management

Vijin Boricha

10 Apr 2018

8 min read

Get SQL Server user management right

Vijin Boricha

10 Apr 2018

8 min read

The question who are you sounds pretty simple, right? Well, possibly not where philosophy is concerned, and neither is it where databases are concerned either. But user management is essential for anyone managing databases. In this tutorial, learn how SQL server user management works - and how to configure it in the right way. SQL Server user management: the authentication process During the setup procedure, you have to select a password which actually uses the SQL Server authentication process. This database engine comes from Windows and it is tightly connected with Active Directory and internal Windows authentication. In this phase of development, SQL Server on Linux only supports SQL authentication. SQL Server has a very secure entry point. This means no access without the correct credentials. Every information system has some way of checking a user's identity, but SQL Server has three different ways of verifying identity, and the ability to select the most appropriate method, based on individual or business needs. When using SQL Server authentication, logins are created on SQL Server. Both the user name and the password are created by using SQL Server and stored in SQL Server. Users connecting through SQL Server authentication must provide their credentials every time that they connect (user name and password are transmitted through the network). Note: When using SQL Server authentication, it is highly recommended to set strong passwords for all SQL Server accounts. As you'll have noticed, so far you have not had any problems accessing SQL Server resources. The reason for this is very simple. You are working under the sa login. This login has unlimited SQL Server access. In some real-life scenarios, sa is not something to play with. It is good practice to create a login under a different name with the same level of access. Now let's see how to create a new SQL Server login. But, first, we'll check the list of current SQL Server logins. To do this, access the sys.sql_logins system catalog view and three attributes: name, is_policy_checked, and is_expiration_checked. The attribute name is clear; the second one will show the login enforcement password policy; and the third one is for enforcing account expiration. Both attributes have a Boolean type of value: TRUE or FALSE (1 or 0). Type the following command to list all SQL logins: 1> SELECT name, is_policy_checked, is_expiration_checked 2> FROM sys.sql_logins 3> WHERE name = 'sa' 4> GO name is_policy_checked is_expiration_checked -------------- ----------------- --------------------- sa 1 0 (1 rows affected) 2. If you want to see what your password for the sa login looks like, just type this version of the same statement. This is the result of the hash function: 1> SELECT password_hash 2> FROM sys.sql_logins 3> WHERE name = 'sa' 4> GO password_hash ------------------------------------------------------------- 0x0200110F90F4F4057F1DF84B2CCB42861AE469B2D43E27B3541628 B72F72588D36B8E0DDF879B5C0A87FD2CA6ABCB7284CDD0871 B07C58D0884DFAB11831AB896B9EEE8E7896 (1 rows affected) 3. Now let's create the login dba, which will require a strong password and will not expire: 1> USE master 2> GO Changed database context to 'master'. 1> CREATE LOGIN dba 2> WITH PASSWORD ='S0m3c00lPa$$', 3> CHECK_EXPIRATION = OFF, 4> CHECK_POLICY = ON 5> GO 4. Re-check the dba on the login list: 1> SELECT name, is_policy_checked, is_expiration_checked 2> FROM sys.sql_logins 3> WHERE name = 'dba' 4> GO name is_policy_checked is_expiration_checked ----------------- ----------------- --------------------- dba 1 0 (1 rows affected) Notice that dba logins do not have any kind of privilege. Let's check that part. First close your current sqlcmd session by typing exit. Now, connect again but, instead of using sa, you will connect with the dba login. After the connection has been successfully created, try to change the content of the active database to AdventureWorks. This process, based on the login name, should looks like this: # dba@tumbleweed:~> sqlcmd -S suse -U dba Password: 1> USE AdventureWorks 2> GO Msg 916, Level 14, State 1, Server tumbleweed, Line 1 The server principal "dba" is not able to access the database "AdventureWorks" under the current security context As you can see, the authentication process will not grant you anything. Simply, you can enter the building but you can't open any door. You will need to pass the process of authorization first. Authorization process After authenticating a user, SQL Server will then determine whether the user has permission to view and/or update data, view metadata, or perform administrative tasks (server-side level, database-side level, or both). If the user, or a group to which the user is amember, has some type of permission within the instance and/or specific databases, SQL Server will let the user connect. In a nutshell, authorization is the process of checking user access rights to specific securables. In this phase, SQL Server will check the login policy to determine whether there are any access rights to the server and/or database level. Login can have successful authentication, but no access to the securables. This means that authentication is just one step before login can proceed with any action on SQL Server. SQL Server will check the authorization process on every T-SQL statement. In other words, if a user has SELECT permissions on some database, SQL Server will not check once and then forget until the next authentication/authorization process. Every statement will be verified by the policy to determine whether there are any changes. Permissions are the set of rules that govern the level of access that principals have to securables. Permissions in an SQL Server system can be granted, revoked, or denied. Each of the SQL Server securables has associated permissions that can be granted to each Principal. The only way a principal can access a resource in an SQL Server system is if it is granted permission to do so. At this point, it is important to note that authentication and authorization are two different processes, but they work in conjunction with one another. Furthermore, the terms login and user are to be used very carefully, as they are not the same: Login is the authentication part User is the authorization part Prior to accessing any database on SQL Server, the login needs to be mapped as a user. Each login can have one or many user instances in different databases. For example, one login can have read permission in AdventureWorks and write permission in WideWorldImporters. This type of granular security is a great SQL Server security feature. A login name can be the same or different from a user name in different databases. In the following lines, we will create a database user dba based on login dba. The process will be based on the AdventureWorks database. After that we will try to enter the database and execute a SELECT statement on the Person.Person table: dba@tumbleweed:~> sqlcmd -S suse -U sa Password: 1> USE AdventureWorks 2> GO Changed database context to 'AdventureWorks'. 1> CREATE USER dba 2> FOR LOGIN dba 3> GO 1> exit dba@tumbleweed:~> sqlcmd -S suse -U dba Password: 1> USE AdventureWorks 2> GO Changed database context to 'AdventureWorks'. 1> SELECT * 2> FROM Person.Person 3> GO Msg 229, Level 14, State 5, Server tumbleweed, Line 1 The SELECT permission was denied on the object 'Person', database 'AdventureWorks', schema 'Person' We are making progress. Now we can enter the database, but we still can't execute SELECT or any other SQL statement. The reason is very simple. Our dba user still is not authorized to access any types of resources. Schema separation In Microsoft SQL Server, a schema is a collection of database objects that are owned by a single principal and form a single namespace. All objects within a schema must be uniquely named and a schema itself must be uniquely named in the database catalog. SQL Server (since version 2005) breaks the link between users and schemas. In other words, users do not own objects; schemas own objects, and principals own schemas. Users can now have a default schema assigned using the DEFAULT_SCHEMA option from the CREATE USER and ALTER USER commands. If a default schema is not supplied for a user, then the dbo will be used as the default schema. If a user from a different default schema needs to access objects in another schema, then the user will need to type a full name. For example, Denis needs to query the Contact tables in the Person schema, but he is in Sales. To resolve this, he would type: SELECT * FROM Person.Contact Keep in mind that the default schema is dbo. When database objects are created and not explicitly put in schemas, SQL Server will assign them to the dbo default database schema. Therefore, there is no need to type dbo because it is the default schema. You read a book excerpt from SQL Server on Linux written by Jasmin Azemović. From this book, you will be able to recognize and utilize the full potential of setting up an efficient SQL Server database solution in the Linux environment. Check out other posts on SQL Server: How SQL Server handles data under the hood How to implement In-Memory OLTP on SQL Server in Linux How to integrate SharePoint with SQL Server Reporting Services

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article-image-working-on-jetson-tx1-development-board-tutorial

Amrata Joshi

03 Mar 2019

11 min read

Working on Jetson TX1 Development Board [Tutorial]

Amrata Joshi

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How-To Tutorials

article-image-implementing-fault-tolerance-in-spark-streaming-data-processing-applications-with-apache-kafka

Pravin Dhandre

01 Feb 2018

16 min read

Implementing fault-tolerance in Spark Streaming data processing applications with Apache Kafka

Pravin Dhandre

01 Feb 2018

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article-image-administrating-mysql-server-phpmyadmin

Packt

13 Oct 2010

8 min read

Administrating the MySQL Server with phpMyAdmin

Packt

13 Oct 2010

8 min read

Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.3.x for Effective MySQL Management A complete guide to get started with phpMyAdmin 3.3 and master its features The best introduction to phpMyAdmin available Written by the project leader of phpMyAdmin, and improved over several editions A step-by-step tutorial for manipulating data with phpMyAdmin Learn to do things with your MySQL database and phpMyAdmin that you didn't know were possible! Managing users and their privileges The Privileges subpage (visible only if we are logged in as a privileged user) contains dialogs to manage MySQL user accounts. It also contains dialogs to manage privileges on the global, database, and table levels. This subpage is hierarchical. For example, when editing a user's privileges, we can see the global privileges as well as the database-specific privileges. We can then go deeper to see the table-specific privileges for this database-user combination. The user overview The first page displayed when we enter the Privileges subpage is called User verview. This shows all user accounts and a summary of their global privileges, as shown in the next screenshot: From this page, we can: Edit a user's privileges, via the Edit link for this user Use the checkboxes to remove users, via the Remove selected users dialog Access the page when the Add a new User dialog is available The displayed users' list has columns with the following characteristics: Privileges reload At the bottom of User Overview, the following message is displayed: Note: phpMyAdmin gets the users' privileges directly from MySQL's privilege tables. The content of these tables may differ from the privileges the server uses, if they have been changed manually. In this case, you should reload the privileges before you continue. Here, the text reload the privileges is clickable. The effective privileges (the ones against which the server bases its access decisions) are the privileges that are located in the server's memory. Privilege modifications that are made from the User overview page are made both in memory and on disk, in the mysql database. Modifications made directly to the mysql database do not have immediate effect. The reload the privileges operation reads the privileges from the database and makes them effective in memory. Adding a user The Add a new User link opens a dialog for user account creation. First, we see the panel where we'll describe the account itself: The second part of the Add a new User dialog is where we'll specify the user's global privileges, which apply to the server as a whole. Entering the username The User name menu offers two choices. Firstly, we can choose Use text field and enter a username in the box, or we can choose Any user to create an anonymous user (the blank user). Let's choose Use text field and enter bill. Assigning a host value By default, this menu is set to Any host, with % as the host value. The Local choice means "localhost". The Use host table choice (which creates a blank value in the host field) means to look in the mysql.hosts table for database-specific privileges. Choosing Use text field allows us to enter the exact host value we want. Let's choose Local. Setting passwords Even though it's possible to create a user without a password (by selecting the No password option), it's best to have a password. We have to enter it twice (as we cannot see what is entered) to confirm the intended password. A secure password should have more than eight characters, and should contain a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, digits, and special characters. Therefore, it's recommended to have phpMyAdmin generate a password—this is possible in JavaScript-enabled browsers. In the Generate Password dialog, clicking on Generate enters a random password (in clear text) on the screen and fills the Password and Re-type input fields with the generated password. At this point, we should note the password so that we can pass it on to the user. Understanding rights for database creation A frequent convention is to assign a user the rights to a database having the same name as this user. To accomplish this, the Database for user section offers the checkbox Create database with same name and grant all privileges. Selecting this checkbox automates the process by creating both the database (if it does not already exist) and the corresponding rights. Please note that, with this method, each user would be limited to one database (user bill, database bill). Another possibility is to allow users to create databases that have the same prefix as their usernames. Therefore, the other choice, Grant all privileges on wildcard name (username_%), performs this function by assigning a wildcard privilege. With this in place, user bill could create the databases bill_test, bill_2, bill_payroll, and so on; phpMyAdmin does not pre-create the databases in this case. Assigning global privileges Global privileges determine the user's access to all databases. Hence, these are sometimes known as "superuser privileges". A normal user should not have any of these privileges unless there is a good reason for this. Of course, if we are really creating a superuser, we will select every global privilege that he or she needs. These privileges are further divided into Data, Structure, and Administration groups. In our example, bill will not have any global privileges. Limiting the resources used We can limit the resources used by this user on this server (for example, the maximum queries per hour). Zero means no limit. We will not impose any resource limits on bill. The following screenshot shows the status of the screen just before hitting Go to create this user's definition (with the remaining fields being set to default): Editing a user profile The page used to edit a user's profile appears after a user's creation, or whenever we click on Edit for a user in the User overview page. There are four sections on this page, each with its own Go button. Hence, each section is operated independently and has a distinct purpose. Editing privileges The section for editing the user's privileges has the same look as the Add a new User dialog, and is used to view and change global privileges. Assigning database-specific privileges In this section, we define the databases to which our user has access, and his or her exact privileges on these databases. As shown in the previous screenshot, we see None because we haven't defined any privileges yet. There are two ways of defining database privileges. First, we can choose one of the existing databases from the drop-down menu: This assigns privileges only for the chosen database. We can also choose Use text field and enter a database name. We could enter a non-existent database name, so that the user can create it later (provided that we give him or her the CREATE privilege in the next panel). We can also use special characters, such as the underscore and the percent sign, for wildcards. For example, entering bill here would enable him to create a bill database, and entering bill% would enable him to create a database with any name that starts with bill. For our example, we will enter bill and then click on Go. The next screen is used to set bill's privileges on the bill database, and create table-specific privileges. To learn more about the meaning of a specific privilege, we can move the mouse over a privilege name (which is always in English), and an explanation about this privilege appears in the current language. We give SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, ALTER, INDEX, and DROP privileges to bill on this database. We then click on Go. After the privileges have been assigned, the interface stays at the same place, so that we can refine these privileges further. We cannot assign table-specific privileges for the moment, as the database does not yet exist. To go back to the general privileges page of bill, click on the 'bill'@'localhost' title. This brings us back to the following, familiar page, except for a change in one section: We see the existing privileges (which we can Edit or Revoke) on the bill database for user bill, and we can add privileges for bill on another database. We can also see that bill has no table-specific privileges on the bill database. Changing the password The Change password dialog is part of the Edit user page, and we can use it either to change bill's password or to remove it. Removing the password will enable bill to login without a password. The dialog offers a choice of password hashing options, and it's recommended to keep the default of MySQL 4.1+ hashing. For more details about hashing, please visit http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/password-hashing.html

0
0
7139

article-image-implement-an-effective-crm-system-in-odoo-11-tutorial

Sugandha Lahoti

18 Jul 2018

18 min read

Implement an effective CRM system in Odoo 11 [Tutorial]

Sugandha Lahoti

18 Jul 2018

18 min read

Until recently, most business and financial systems had product-focused designs while records and fields maintained basic customer information, processes, and reporting typically revolved around product-related transactions. In the past, businesses were centered on specific products, but now the focus has shifted to center the business on the customer. The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system provides the tools and reporting necessary to manage customer information and interactions. In this article, we will take a look at what it takes to implement a CRM system in Odoo 11 as part of an overall business strategy. We will also install the CRM application and setup salespersons that can be assigned to our customers. This article is an excerpt from the book, Working with Odoo 11 - Third Edition by Greg Moss. In this book, you will learn to configure, manage, and customize your Odoo system. Using CRM as a business strategy It is critical that the sales people share account knowledge and completely understand the features and capabilities of the system. They often have existing tools that they have relied on for many years. Without clear objectives and goals for the entire sales team, it is likely that they will not use the tool. A plan must be implemented to spend time training and encouraging the sharing of knowledge to successfully implement a CRM system. Installing the CRM application If you have not installed the CRM module, log in as the administrator and then click on the Apps menu. In a few seconds, the list of available apps will appear. The CRM will likely be in the top-left corner: Click on Install to set up the CRM application. Look at the CRM Dashboard Like with the installation of the Sales application, Odoo takes you to the Discuss menu. Click on Sales to see the new changes after installing the CRM application. New to Odoo 10 is an improved CRM Dashboard that provides you a friendly welcome message when you first install the application. You can use the dashboard to get an overview of your sales pipelines and get easy access to the most common actions within CRM. Assigning the sales representative or account manager In Odoo 10, like in most CRM systems, the sales representative or account manager plays an important role. Typically, this is the person that will ultimately be responsible for the customer account and a satisfactory customer experience. While most often a company will use real people as their salespeople, it is certainly possible to instead have a salesperson record refer to a group, or even a sub-contracted support service. We will begin by creating a salesperson that will handle standard customer accounts. Note that a sales representative is also a user in the Odoo system. Create a new salesperson by going to the Settings menu, selecting Users, and then clicking the Create button. The new user form will appear. We have filled in the form with values for a fictional salesperson, Terry Zeigler. The following is a screenshot of the user's Access Rights tab: Specifying the name of the user You specify the username. Unlike some systems that provide separate first name and last name fields, with Odoo you specify the full name within a single field. Email address Beginning in Odoo 9, the user and login form prompts for email as opposed to username. This practice has continued in Odoo version 10 as well. It is still possible to use a user name instead of email address, but given the strong encouragement to use email address in Odoo 9 and Odoo 10, it is possible that in future versions of Odoo the requirement to provide an email address may be more strictly enforced. Access Rights The Access Rights tab lets you control which applications the user will be able to access. By default, Odoo will specify Mr.Ziegler as an employee so we will accept that default. Depending on the applications you may have already installed or dependencies Odoo may add in various releases, it is possible that you will have other Access Rights listed. Sales application settings When setting up your sales people in Odoo 10, you have three different options on how much access an individual user has to the sales system: User: Own Documents Only This is the most restrictive access to the sales application. A user with this access level is only allowed to see the documents they have entered themselves or which have been assigned to them. They will not be able to see Leads assigned to other salespeople in the sales application. User: All Documents With this setting, the user will have access to all documents within the sales application. Manager The Manager setting is the highest access level in the Odoo sales system. With this access level, the user can see all Leads as well as access the configuration options of the sales application. The Manager setting also allows the user to access statistical reports. We will leave the Access Rights options unchecked. These are used when working with multiple companies or with multiple currencies. The Preferences tab consists of the following options: Language and Timezone Odoo allows you to select the language for each user. Currently, Odoo supports more than 20 language translations. Specifying the Timezone field allows Odoo to coordinate the display of date and time on messages. Leaving Timezone blank for a user will sometimes lead to unpredictable behavior in the Odoo software. Make sure you specify a timezone when creating a user record. Email Messages and Notifications In Odoo 7, messaging became a central component of the Odoo system. In version 10, support has been improved and it is now even easier to communicate important sales information between colleagues. Therefore, determining the appropriate handling of email, and circumstances in which a user will receive email, is very important. The Email Messages and Notifications option lets you determine when you will receive email messages from notifications that come to your Odoo inbox. For our example, we have chosen All Messages. This is now the new default setting in Odoo 10. However, since we have not yet configured an email server, or if you have not configured an email server yourself, no emails will be sent or received at this stage. Let's review the user options that will be available in communicating by email. Never: Selecting Never suppresses all email messaging for the user. Naturally, this is the setting you will wish to use if you do not have an email server configured. This is also a useful option for users that simply want to use the built-in inbox inside Odoo to retrieve their messages. All Messages (discussions, emails, followed system notifications): This option sends an email notification for any action that would create an entry in your Odoo inbox. Unlike the other options, this action can include system notifications or other automated communications. Signature The Signature section allows you to customize the signature that will automatically be appended to Odoo-generated messages and emails. Manually setting the user password You may have noticed that there is no visible password field in the user record. That is because the default method is to email the user an account verification they can use to set their password. However, if you do not have an email server configured, there is an alternative method for setting the user password. After saving the user record, use the Change Password button at the top of the form. A form will then appear allowing you to set the password for the user. Now in Odoo 10, there is a far more visible button available at the top left of the form. Just click the Change Password button. Assigning a salesperson to a customer Now that we have set up our salesperson, it is time to assign the salesperson their first customer. Previously, no salesperson had been assigned to our one and only customer, Mike Smith. So let's go to the Sales menu and then click on Mike Smith to pull up his customer record and assign him Terry Ziegler as his salesperson. The following screenshot is of the customer screen opened to assign a salesperson: Here, we have set the sales person to Terry Zeigler. By assigning your customers a salesperson, you can then better organize your customers for reports and additional statistical analysis. Understanding Your Pipeline Prior to Odoo 10, the CRM application primarily was a simple collection of Leads and opportunities. While Odoo still uses both Leads and opportunities as part of the CRM application, the concept of a Pipeline now takes center stage. You use the Pipeline to organize your opportunities by what stage they are within your sales process. Click on Your Pipeline in the Sales menu to see the overall layout of the Pipeline screen: In the preceding Pipeline forms, one of the first things to notice is that there are default filters applied to the view. Up in the search box, you will see that there is a filter to limit the records in this view to the Direct Sales team as well as a My Opportunities filter. This effectively limits the records so you only see your opportunities from your primary sales team. Removing the My Opportunities filter will allow you to see opportunities from other salespeople in your organization. Creating new opportunity In Odoo 10, a potential sale is defined by creating a new opportunity. An opportunity allows you to begin collecting information about the scope and potential outcomes for a sale. These opportunities can be created from new Leads, or an opportunity can originate from an existing customer. For our real-world example, let's assume that Mike Smith has called and was so happy with his first order that he now wants to discuss using Silkworm for his local sports team. After a short conversation we decide to create an opportunity by clicking the Create button. You can also use the + buttons within any of the pipeline stages to create an opportunity that is set to that stage in the pipeline. In Odoo 10, the CRM application greatly simplified the form for entering a new opportunity. Instead of bringing up the entire opportunity form with all the fields you get a simple form that collects only the most important information. The following screenshot is of a new opportunity form: Opportunity Title The title of your opportunity can be anything you wish. It is naturally important to choose a subject that makes it easy to identify the opportunity in a list. This is the only field required to create an opportunity in Odoo 10. Customer This field is automatically populated if you create an opportunity from the customer form. You can, however, assign a different customer if you like. This is not a required field, so if you have an opportunity that you do not wish to associate with a customer, that is perfectly fine. For example, you may leave this field blank if you are attending a trade show and expect to have revenue, but do not yet have any specific customers to attribute to the opportunity. Expected revenue Here, you specify the amount of revenue you can expect from the opportunity if you are successful. Inside the full opportunity form there is a field in which you can specify the percentage likelihood that an opportunity will result in a sale. These values are useful in many statistical reports, although they are not required to create an opportunity. Increasingly, more reports look to expected revenue and percentage of opportunity completions. Therefore, depending on your reporting requirements you may wish to encourage sales people to set target goals for each opportunity to better track conversion. Rating Some opportunities are more important than others. You can choose none, one, two, or three stars to designate the relative importance of this opportunity. Introduction to sales stages At the top of the Kanban view, you can see the default stages that are provided by an Odoo CRM installation. In this case, we see New, Qualified, Proposition, and Won. As an opportunity moves between stages, the Kanban view will update to show you where each opportunity currently stands. Here, we can see because this Sports Team Project has just been entered in the New column. Viewing the details of an opportunity If you click the three lines at the top right of the Sports Team Project opportunity in the Kanban view, which appears when you hover the mouse over it, you will see a pop-up menu with your available options. The following screenshot shows the available actions on an opportunity: Actions you can take on an opportunity Selecting the Edit option takes you to the opportunity record and into edit mode for you to change any of the information. In addition, you can delete the record or archive the record so it will no longer appear in your pipeline by default. The color palette at the bottom lets you color code your opportunities in the Kanban view. The small stars on the opportunity card allow you to highlight opportunities for special consideration. You can also easily drag and drop the opportunity into other columns as you work through the various stages of the sale. Using Odoo's OpenChatter feature One of the biggest enhancements brought about in Odoo 7 and expanded on in later versions of Odoo was the new OpenChatter feature that provides social networking style communication to business documents and transactions. As we work our brand new opportunity, we will utilize the OpenChatter feature to demonstrate how to communicate details between team members and generate log entries to document our progress. The best thing about the OpenChatter feature is that it is available for nearly all business documents in Odoo. It also allows you to see a running set of logs of the transactions or operations that have affected the document. This means everything that applies here to the CRM application can also be used to communicate in sales and purchasing, or in communicating about a specific customer or vendor. Changing the status of an opportunity For our example, let's assume that we have prepared our proposal and made the presentation. Bring up the opportunity by using the right-click Menu in the Kanban view or going into the list view and clicking the opportunity in the list. It is time to update the status of our opportunity by clicking the Proposition arrow at the top of the form: Notice that you do not have to edit the record to change the status of the opportunity. At the bottom of the opportunity, you will now see a logged note generated by Odoo that documents the changing of the opportunity from a new opportunity to a proposition. The following screenshot is of OpenChatter displaying a changed stage for the opportunity: Notice how Odoo is logging the events automatically as they take place. Managing the opportunity With the proposal presented, let's take down some details from what we have learned that may help us later when we come back to this opportunity. One method of collecting this information could be to add the details to the Internal Notes field in the opportunity form. There is value, however, in using the OpenChatter feature in Odoo to document our new details. Most importantly, using OpenChatter to log notes gives you a running transcript with date and time stamps automatically generated. With the Generic Notes field, it can be very difficult to manage multiple entries. Another major advantage is that the OpenChatter feature can automatically send messages to team members' inboxes updating them on progress. let's see it in action! Click the Log an Internal note link to attach a note to our opportunity. The following screenshot is for creating a note: The activity option is unique to the CRM application and will not appear in most documents. You can use the small icons at the bottom to add a smiley, attach a document, or open up a full featured editor if you are creating a long note. The full featured editor also allows you to save templates of messages/notes you may use frequently. Depending on your specific business requirements, this could be a great time saver. When you create a note, it is attached to the business document, but no message will be sent to followers. You can even attach a document to the note by using the Attach a File feature. After clicking the Log button, the note is saved and becomes part of the OpenChatter log for that document. Following a business document Odoo brings social networking concepts into your business communication. Fundamental to this implementation is that you can get automatic updates on a business document by following the document. Then, whenever there is a note, action, or a message created that is related to a document you follow, you will receive a message in your Odoo inbox. In the bottom right-hand corner of the form, you are presented with the options for when you are notified and for adding or removing followers from the document. The following screenshot is of the OpenChatter follow options: In this case, we can see that both Terry Zeigler and Administrator are set as followers for this opportunity. The Following checkbox at the top indicates that I am following this document. Using the Add Followers link you can add additional users to follow the document. The items followers are notified are viewed by clicking the arrow to the right of the following button. This brings up a list of the actions that will generate notifications to followers: The checkbox next to Discussions indicates that I should be notified of any discussions related to this document. However, I would not be notified, for example, if the stage changed. When you send a message, by default the customer will become a follower of the document. Then, whenever the status of the document changes, the customer will receive an email. Test out all your processes before integrating with an email server. Modifying the stages of the sale We have seen that Odoo provides a default set of sales stages. Many times, however, you will want to customize the stages to best deliver an outstanding customer experience. Moving an opportunity through stages should trigger actions that create a relationship with the customer and demonstrate your understanding of their needs. A customer in the qualification stage of a sale will have much different needs and much different expectations than a customer that is in the negotiation phase. For our case study, there are sometimes printing jobs that are technically complex to accomplish. With different jerseys for a variety of teams, the final details need to go through a final technical review and approval process before the order can be entered and verified. From a business perspective, the goal is not just to document the stage of the sales cycle; the primary goal is to use this information to drive customer interactions and improve the overall customer experience. To add a stage to the sales process, bring up Your Pipeline and then click on the ADD NEW COLUMN area in the right of the form to bring up a little popup to enter the name for the new stage: After you have added the column to the sales process, you can use your mouse to drag and drop the columns into the order that you wish them to appear. We are now ready to begin the technical approval stage for this opportunity. Drag and drop the Sports Team Project opportunity over to the Technical Approval column in the Kanban view. The following screenshot is of the opportunities Kanban view after adding the technical approval stage: We now see the Technical Approval column in our Kanban view and have moved over the opportunity. You will also notice that any time you change the stage of an opportunity that there will be an entry that will be created in the OpenChatter section at the bottom of the form. In addition to the ability to drag and drop an opportunity into a new stage, you can also change the stage of an opportunity by going into the form view. Closing the sale After a lot of hard work, we have finally won the opportunity, and it is time to turn this opportunity into a quotation. At this point, Odoo makes it easy to take that opportunity and turn it into an actual quotation. Open up the opportunity and click the New Quotation tab at the top of the opportunity form: Unlike Odoo 8, which prompts for more information, in Odoo 10 you get taken to a new quote with the customer information already filled in: We installed the CRM module, created salespeople, and proceeded to develop a system to manage the sales process. To modify stages in the sales cycle and turn the opportunity into a quotation using Odoo 11, grab the latest edition Working with Odoo 11 - Third Edition. ERP tool in focus: Odoo 11 Building Your First Odoo Application How to Scaffold a New module in Odoo 11

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7138

article-image-opencv-image-processing-using-morphological-filters

Packt

25 May 2011

6 min read

OpenCV: Image Processing using Morphological Filters

Packt

25 May 2011

6 min read

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article-image-building-an-android-app-using-the-google-faces-api-tutorial

Sugandha Lahoti

27 Sep 2018

11 min read

Building an Android App using the Google Faces API [ Tutorial]

Sugandha Lahoti

27 Sep 2018

11 min read

The ability of computers to perform tasks such as identifying objects has always been a humongous task for both the software and the required architecture. This isn't the case anymore since the likes of Google, Amazon, and a few other companies have done all the hard work, providing the infrastructure and making it available as a cloud service. It should be noted that they are as easy to access as making REST API calls. Read Also: Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS): How Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and AWS are democratizing Artificial Intelligence This article is taken from the book Learning Kotlin by building Android Applications by Eunice Adutwumwaa Obugyei and Natarajan Raman. This book will teach you programming in Kotlin including data types, flow control, lambdas, object-oriented, and functional programming while building Android Apps. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the face detection API from Google's Mobile Vision API to detect faces and add fun functionalities such as adding rabbit ears to a user's picture. We will cover the following topics: Identifying human faces in an image Tracking human faces from a camera feed Identifying specific parts of the face (for example, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth) Drawing graphics on specific parts of a detected face in an image (for example, rabbit ears over the user's ears) Introduction to Mobile Vision The Mobile Vision API provides a framework for finding objects in photos and videos. The framework can locate and describe visual objects in images or video frames, and it has an event-driven API that tracks the position of those objects. Currently, the Mobile Vision API includes face, barcode, and text detectors. Faces API concepts Before diving into coding the features, it is necessary that you understand the underlying concepts of the face detection capabilities of the face detection API. From the official documentation: Face detection is the process of automatically locating human faces in visual media (digital images or video). A face that is detected is reported at a position with an associated size and orientation. Once a face is detected, it can be searched for landmarks such as the eyes and nose. A key point to note is that only after a face is detected, will landmark such as eyes and a nose be searched for. As part of the API, you could opt out of detecting these landmarks. Note the difference between face detection and face recognition. While the former is able to recognize a face from an image or video, the latter does the same and is also able to tell that a face has been seen before. The former has no memory of a face it has detected before. We will be using a couple of terms in this section, so let me give you an overview of each of these before we go any further: Face tracking extends face detection to video sequences. When a face appears in a video for any length of time, it can be identified as the same person and can be tracked. It is important to note that the face that you are tracking must appear in the same video. Also, this is not a form of face recognition; this mechanism just makes inferences based on the position and motion of the face(s) in a video sequence. A landmark is a point of interest within a face. The left eye, right eye, and nose base are all examples of landmarks. The Face API provides the ability to find landmarks on a detected face. Classification is determining whether a certain facial characteristic is present. For example, a face can be classified with regards to whether its eyes are open or closed or smiling or not. Getting started – detecting faces You will first learn how to detect a face in a photo and its associated landmarks. We will need some requirements in order to pursue this. With a minimum of Google Play Services 7.8, you can use the Mobile Vision APIs, which provide the face detection APIs. Make sure you update your Google Play Services from the SDK manager so that you meet this requirement. Get an Android device that runs Android 4.2.2 or later or a configured Android Emulator. The latest version of the Android SDK includes the SDK tools component. Creating the FunyFace project Create a new project called FunyFace. Open up the app module's build.gradle file and update the dependencies to include the Mobile Vision APIs: dependencies { implementation fileTree(dir: 'libs', include: ['*.jar']) implementation"org.jetbrains.kotlin:kotlin-stdlib-jre7:$kotlin_version" implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-vision:11.0.4' ... } Now, update your AndroidManifest.xml to include meta data for the faces API: <meta-data android:name="com.google.android.gms.vision.DEPENDENCIES" android:value="face" /> Now, your app is ready to use the face detection APIs. To keep things simple, for this lab, you're just going to process an image that is already present in your app. Add the following image to your res/drawable folder: Now, this is how you will go about performing face detection. You will first load the image into memory, get a Paint instance, and create a temporary bitmap based on the original, from which you will create a canvas. Create a frame using the bitmap and then call the detect method on FaceDetector, using this frame to get back SparseArray of face objects. Well, let's get down to business—this is where you will see how all of these play out. First, open up your activity_main.xml file and update the layout so that it has an image view and a button. See the following code: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" tools:context="com.packtpub.eunice.funyface.MainActivity"> <ImageView android:id="@+id/imageView" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:src="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round" app:layout_constraintBottom_toTopOf="parent" android:scaleType="fitCenter"/> <Button android:id="@+id/button" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_gravity="bottom|center" android:text="Detect Face"/> </FrameLayout> That is all you need to do here so that you have FrameLayout with ImageView and a button. Now, open up MainActivity.kt and add the following import statements. This is just to make sure that you import from the right packages as you move along. In your onCreate() method, attach a click listener to the button in your MainActivity layout file: package com.packtpub.eunice.funface import android.graphics.* import android.graphics.drawable.BitmapDrawable import android.os.Bundle import android.support.v7.app.AlertDialog import android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity import com.google.android.gms.vision.Frame import com.google.android.gms.vision.face.FaceDetector import kotlinx.android.synthetic.main.activity_main.* class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() { override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState) setContentView(R.layout.activity_main) button.setOnClickListener { detectFace() } } } Loading the image In your detectFace() method, you will first load your image from the drawable folder into memory and create a bitmap image from it. Since you will be updating this bitmap to paint over it when the face is detected, you need to make it mutable. This is what makes your bitmap mutable: options.inMutable=true See the following implementation: private fun detectFace() { // Load the image val bitmapOptions = BitmapFactory.Options() bitmapOptions.inMutable = true val myBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource( applicationContext.resources, R.drawable.children_group_picture, bitmapOptions) } Creating a Paint instance Use the Paint API to get an instance of the Paint class. You will only draw around the face, and not paint the whole face. To do this, set a thin stroke, give it a color, which in our case is red, and set the style of paint to STROKE using Paint.Style.STROKE: // Get a Paint instance val myRectPaint = Paint() myRectPaint.strokeWidth = 5F myRectPaint.color = Color.RED myRectPaint.style = Paint.Style.STROKE The Paint class holds the information related to the style and color related to the text, bitmap, and various shapes. Creating a canvas To get the canvas, first create a bitmap using the dimensions from the bitmap you created earlier. With this canvas, you will paint over the bitmap to draw the outline of the face after it has been detected: // Create a canvas using the dimensions from the image's bitmap val tempBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(myBitmap.width, myBitmap.height, Bitmap.Config.RGB_565) val tempCanvas = Canvas(tempBitmap) tempCanvas.drawBitmap(myBitmap, 0F, 0F, null) The Canvas class is used to hold the call made to draw. A canvas is a drawing surface and it provides various methods for drawing onto a bitmap. Creating the face detector All you have done thus far is basically housekeeping. You will now access the FaceDetector API by which you will, well, detect the face in the image. You will disable tracking for now, as you only want to detect the face at this stage. Note that on its first run, the Play Services SDK will take some time to initialize the Faces API. It may or may not have completed this process at the time you intend to use it. Therefore, as a safety check, you need to ensure its availability before using it. In this case, you will show a simple dialog to the user if the FaceDetector is not ready at the time the app is run. Also, note that you may need an internet connection as the SDK initializes. You also need to ensure you have enough space, as the initialization may download some native library onto the device: // Create a FaceDetector val faceDetector = FaceDetector.Builder(applicationContext).setTrackingEnabled(false) .build() if (!faceDetector.isOperational) { AlertDialog.Builder(this) .setMessage("Could not set up the face detector!") .show() return } Detecting the faces Now, you will use the detect() method from the faceDetector instance to get the faces and their metadata. The result will be SparseArray of Face objects: // Detect the faces val frame = Frame.Builder().setBitmap(myBitmap).build() val faces = faceDetector.detect(frame) Drawing rectangles on the faces Now that you have the faces, you will iterate through this array to get the coordinates of the bounding rectangle for the face. Rectangles require x, y of the top left and bottom right corners, but the information available only gives the left and top positions, so you have to calculate the bottom right using the top left, width, and height. Then, you need to release the faceDetector to free up resources. Here's the code: // Mark out the identified face for (i in 0 until faces.size()) { val thisFace = faces.valueAt(i) val left = thisFace.position.x val top = thisFace.position.y val right = left + thisFace.width val bottom = top + thisFace.height tempCanvas.drawRoundRect(RectF(left, top, right, bottom), 2F, 2F, myRectPaint) } imageView.setImageDrawable(BitmapDrawable(resources, tempBitmap)) // Release the FaceDetector faceDetector.release() Results All set. Run the app, press the DETECT FACE button, and wait a while...: The app should detect the face and a square box should appear around the face, voila: Okay, let's move on and add some fun to their faces. To do this, you need to identify the position of the specific landmark you want, then draw over it. To find out the landmark's representation, you label them this time around, then later draw your filter to the desired position. To label, update the for loop which drew the rectangle around the face: // Mark out the identified face for (i in 0 until faces.size()) { ... for (landmark in thisFace.landmarks) { val x = landmark.position.x val y = landmark.position.y when (landmark.type) { NOSE_BASE -> { val scaledWidth = eyePatchBitmap.getScaledWidth(tempCanvas) val scaledHeight = eyePatchBitmap.getScaledHeight(tempCanvas) tempCanvas.drawBitmap(eyePatchBitmap, x - scaledWidth / 2, y - scaledHeight / 2, null) } } } } Run the app and take note of the labels of the various landmarks: There you have it! That's funny, right? Summary In this tutorial, we learned how to use the Mobile Vision APIs, in this case, the Faces API. There are a few things to note here. This program is not optimized for production. Some things you can do on your own are, load the image and do the processing in a background thread. You can also provide a functionality to allow the user to pick and choose images from different sources other than the static one used. You can get more creative with the filters and how they are applied too. Also, you can enable the tracking feature on the FaceDetector instance, and feed in a video to try out face tracking. To know more about Kotlin APIs as a preliminary for building stunning applications for Android, read our book Learning Kotlin by building Android Applications. 6 common challenges faced by Android App developers Google plans to let the AMP Project have an open governance model, soon! Entry level phones to taste the Go edition of the Android 9.0 Pie version

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