Invalid Embed directive in stylesheet

On a few occasions now, for no really apparent reason, suddenly our Problem Pane will be spammed with tons of messages all sort of looking like this:

Invalid Embed directive in stylesheet - can't resolve source 'Embed(source = "/assets/common.swf", symbol = "AccordionHeader_disabledOverSkin")'.

In the past, sometimes it would only happen on a mac, other times windows machines. I've tried deleting my bin folder, cleaning the project, recompiling the swf's, moving the swf's around, changing the syntax in the css ever so slightly. I've googled this on many occasions and found no clear answer. Today I decided that I needed to know what caused this and if in fact I figured it out, to share it with you.

What ended up being the root cause of our problem is that in several places in the application we were referencing image assets directly in our assets folder, i.e. /assets/delete.png, which is often the case when our designers aren't keeping up with asset creation and developers just throw some image up as a placeholder for the time being. Now it just so happened that ONE of these references was incorrect and its Embed pointed to a file that did not exist. I discovered this when I commented out our style css references in the application, and saw the error only then. It was this broken reference that caused the above error. I fixed the reference to point to the right file, did a Project clean, and all the Invalid Embed Directive errors went away.

I should note that we had over 100 references to symbols in our css, and by default Flexbuilder only shows the first 100 errors. Unluckily the "unable to resolve 'assets/deleted.png' for transcoding in ...." was error number 138 and did not show up in the list. I had to change my preferences to show all 138 errors.

So the lesson learned is that when you get spammed with this error, it could well be that only one Embed tag somewhere in your app is actually broken, and that your css and swf is probably just fine.

ESB error [TOPLINK-3001]

This is an error where I have been working on for too long.
And in fact it has a very easy solution.
I was building my application that I already mentioned in a previous post.
When I tested the xsl file(in the xsl file right click and choose test), everything looked fine and no problem occurred.
But when I deployed the application into my application server and I wanted to upload the content of the csv file into the database, I always received an error.

For the solution read more…

This was the error I received:
nested exception is: ORABPEL-11616 DBWriteInteractionSpec Execute Failed Exception. insert failed. Descriptor name: [DBTank.PersonFuelCosts]. Caused by Uitzondering [TOPLINK-3001] (Oracle TopLink - 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.3.0) (Build 070608)): oracle.toplink.exceptions.ConversionException Omschrijving uitzondering: Het object [50,1], van klasse [class java.lang.String], kon niet worden geconverteerd naar [class java.math.BigDecimal]. Interne uitzondering: java.lang.NumberFormatException. at oracle.tip.adapter.fw.wsif.jca.WSIFOperation_JCA.executeRequestResponseOperation

Reading this error message I believed that there was something wrong with the translation from my csv content into the database, and that this was caused by a declaration in one of the xsd files. The type of the variable in the xsd file in the csv file was a ‘String’, but for the xsd file for the database adapter the type was ‘decimal’.
I replaced the types in the xsd files with different kinds of other types, but this didn’t changed a thing, I still received the error message.
After a lot of searching and testing I found out that, when I changed the value in the csv from 56,2 into 56.1 everything worked fine.
Strange thing is that my DB reads ‘,’ and not ‘.’ .
Ones I found this, the workaround was rather easy to find.
On my xsl file I used a function to replace the ‘,’ by a ‘.’
This function can be found in the ‘Component Palette’ where you have to choose ‘String Functions’ and select the ‘translate’ function.
Ones this was done I managed to get the data correct into my database.

Invalid Embed directive in stylesheet

On a few occasions now, for no really apparent reason, suddenly our Problem Pane will be spammed with tons of messages all sort of looking like this:

Invalid Embed directive in stylesheet - can't resolve source 'Embed(source = "/assets/common.swf", symbol = "AccordionHeader_disabledOverSkin")'.

In the past, sometimes it would only happen on a mac, other times windows machines. I've tried deleting my bin folder, cleaning the project, recompiling the swf's, moving the swf's around, changing the syntax in the css ever so slightly. I've googled this on many occasions and found no clear answer. Today I decided that I needed to know what caused this and if in fact I figured it out, to share it with you.

What ended up being the root cause of our problem is that in several places in the application we were referencing image assets directly in our assets folder, i.e. /assets/delete.png, which is often the case when our designers aren't keeping up with asset creation and developers just throw some image up as a placeholder for the time being. Now it just so happened that ONE of these references was incorrect and its Embed pointed to a file that did not exist. I discovered this when I commented out our style css references in the application, and saw the error only then. It was this broken reference that caused the above error. I fixed the reference to point to the right file, did a Project clean, and all the Invalid Embed Directive errors went away.

I should note that we had over 100 references to symbols in our css, and by default Flexbuilder only shows the first 100 errors. Unluckily the "unable to resolve 'assets/deleted.png' for transcoding in ...." was error number 138 and did not show up in the list. I had to change my preferences to show all 138 errors.

So the lesson learned is that when you get spammed with this error, it could well be that only one Embed tag somewhere in your app is actually broken, and that your css and swf is probably just fine.

Working With BlazeDS Beta 1

Last week we successfully ported an AIR application from amfphp to BlazeDS. The code for this application was almost completely generated by a new generator we're working on (coming soon!). With the announcement of BlazeDS, we kinda shelved our php generator and redirected our efforts in doing the same thing for BlazeDS. In the process, we put together our own version of the blazeds.war file that ships with BlazeDS beta 1, which we use as the starting point for all our BlazeDS projects. Here's a list of the changes we've made:

• Modified the context.xml found in the META-INF folder - the packaged one was producing Valve Errors
• Added the missing my-streaming-amf channel to services-config.xml, which I found in the BlazeDS samples war's config file
  
• Incorporated the latest Flex 3 Compiler Module files to allow server-side compilation of mxml files
• Created a very simple java class and a corresponding destination which will verify Blaze backend functionality
• Created a very simple Flex application that calls the above java class function test(string)
• Added 2 jars to WEB-INF, one is crazedTemplate.jar, which our new codegenerator (coming soon) uses, the other is sharpertools.jar, which the jar requires.
  

You can choose to go ahead and just use the application as is. It's only been tested on Tomcat / Win / OSX 10.5.2. If you don't intend on using our generator (coming soon!) to generate your java and AS3 Classes then you can go ahead and delete the 2 jars mentioned above. I really like this separation of compiler and essentially what was FDS. When FDS was originally released, it did both runtime compiles as well as Remoting, Messaging, Proxy and Managed Data Services. In our case, we never deployed anything that required runtime compilation AND furthermore, with each subsequent Flex release (2.01, Hotfix 1, 2 and 3), converting FDS projects that were set to compile on the server wasn't trivial. So we stopped using it. If I was super Java savvy I might have been able to figure out what parts I could yank out of my FDS application, but generally it seemed better to just leave it alone.

Now, with Blaze and the compiler war being separate, I've gone through the web.xml in this project and put comments to show which pieces are required by the compiler module and which pieces are required by Blaze. To get this back to being a pure Blaze non-Flex 3 Compiler Module, you'd just need to remove the appropriately marked sections from the web.xml and then remove all folders and files from WEB-INF/flex with the exception of:

• services-config.xml
• remoting-config.xml
• proxy-config.xml
• messaging-config.xml
  

Some of our clients have asked what the differences exactly are between BlazeDS and LCDS (prev. known as FDS). If you do enough research on the web, you can find several answers. From what I've seen, here's some differences I've found so far:

• BlazeDS does not support the RTMP Channel typically used by LCDS for data push (RTMP typically means firewall port challenges all around anyway!)
• BlazeDS does support AMF Streaming which offers data push like RTMP, however not nearly as scalable (100's vs 10000's of concurrent users)
• BlazeDS does support proxy so you can bypass the all too familiar sandbox issues when accessing remote data where no crossdomain.xml is present
• BlazeDS does not come packaged with the Compiler Module
• BlazeDS does not have managed dataservices. This means that you don't need the fds.swc (DataService & [Managed]) in your flex projects.. you will use either Consumer, Producer or RemoteObject Classes
• BlazeDS does support AMF3, RemoteClasses & Messaging with a "lite" version of push via amf streaming
  

To download the blazeBlank application click here. (as new builds of Flex 3 and BlazeDS are released I'll try to keep this application updated). This application currently uses Flex 3 Beta 3 and BlazeDS Beta 1. Be sure to visit the url /{context}/TestApp/Main.mxml to ensure that the application is working properly. (i.e. http://localhost:8600/blazeBlank/TestApp/Main.mxml)

ESB error [TOPLINK-3001]

This is an error where I have been working on for too long.
And in fact it has a very easy solution.
I was building my application that I already mentioned in a previous post.
When I tested the xsl file(in the xsl file right click and choose test), everything looked fine and no problem occurred.
But when I deployed the application into my application server and I wanted to upload the content of the csv file into the database, I always received an error.

For the solution read more…

This was the error I received:
nested exception is: ORABPEL-11616 DBWriteInteractionSpec Execute Failed Exception. insert failed. Descriptor name: [DBTank.PersonFuelCosts]. Caused by Uitzondering [TOPLINK-3001] (Oracle TopLink - 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.3.0) (Build 070608)): oracle.toplink.exceptions.ConversionException Omschrijving uitzondering: Het object [50,1], van klasse [class java.lang.String], kon niet worden geconverteerd naar [class java.math.BigDecimal]. Interne uitzondering: java.lang.NumberFormatException. at oracle.tip.adapter.fw.wsif.jca.WSIFOperation_JCA.executeRequestResponseOperation

Reading this error message I believed that there was something wrong with the translation from my csv content into the database, and that this was caused by a declaration in one of the xsd files. The type of the variable in the xsd file in the csv file was a ‘String’, but for the xsd file for the database adapter the type was ‘decimal’.
I replaced the types in the xsd files with different kinds of other types, but this didn’t changed a thing, I still received the error message.
After a lot of searching and testing I found out that, when I changed the value in the csv from 56,2 into 56.1 everything worked fine.
Strange thing is that my DB reads ‘,’ and not ‘.’ .
Ones I found this, the workaround was rather easy to find.
On my xsl file I used a function to replace the ‘,’ by a ‘.’
This function can be found in the ‘Component Palette’ where you have to choose ‘String Functions’ and select the ‘translate’ function.
Ones this was done I managed to get the data correct into my database.

Working With BlazeDS Beta 1

Last week we successfully ported an AIR application from amfphp to BlazeDS. The code for this application was almost completely generated by a new generator we're working on (coming soon!). With the announcement of BlazeDS, we kinda shelved our php generator and redirected our efforts in doing the same thing for BlazeDS. In the process, we put together our own version of the blazeds.war file that ships with BlazeDS beta 1, which we use as the starting point for all our BlazeDS projects. Here's a list of the changes we've made:

• Modified the context.xml found in the META-INF folder - the packaged one was producing Valve Errors
• Added the missing my-streaming-amf channel to services-config.xml, which I found in the BlazeDS samples war's config file
  
• Incorporated the latest Flex 3 Compiler Module files to allow server-side compilation of mxml files
• Created a very simple java class and a corresponding destination which will verify Blaze backend functionality
• Created a very simple Flex application that calls the above java class function test(string)
• Added 2 jars to WEB-INF, one is crazedTemplate.jar, which our new codegenerator (coming soon) uses, the other is sharpertools.jar, which the jar requires.
  

You can choose to go ahead and just use the application as is. It's only been tested on Tomcat / Win / OSX 10.5.2. If you don't intend on using our generator (coming soon!) to generate your java and AS3 Classes then you can go ahead and delete the 2 jars mentioned above. I really like this separation of compiler and essentially what was FDS. When FDS was originally released, it did both runtime compiles as well as Remoting, Messaging, Proxy and Managed Data Services. In our case, we never deployed anything that required runtime compilation AND furthermore, with each subsequent Flex release (2.01, Hotfix 1, 2 and 3), converting FDS projects that were set to compile on the server wasn't trivial. So we stopped using it. If I was super Java savvy I might have been able to figure out what parts I could yank out of my FDS application, but generally it seemed better to just leave it alone.

Now, with Blaze and the compiler war being separate, I've gone through the web.xml in this project and put comments to show which pieces are required by the compiler module and which pieces are required by Blaze. To get this back to being a pure Blaze non-Flex 3 Compiler Module, you'd just need to remove the appropriately marked sections from the web.xml and then remove all folders and files from WEB-INF/flex with the exception of:

• services-config.xml
• remoting-config.xml
• proxy-config.xml
• messaging-config.xml
  

Some of our clients have asked what the differences exactly are between BlazeDS and LCDS (prev. known as FDS). If you do enough research on the web, you can find several answers. From what I've seen, here's some differences I've found so far:

• BlazeDS does not support the RTMP Channel typically used by LCDS for data push (RTMP typically means firewall port challenges all around anyway!)
• BlazeDS does support AMF Streaming which offers data push like RTMP, however not nearly as scalable (100's vs 10000's of concurrent users)
• BlazeDS does support proxy so you can bypass the all too familiar sandbox issues when accessing remote data where no crossdomain.xml is present
• BlazeDS does not come packaged with the Compiler Module
• BlazeDS does not have managed dataservices. This means that you don't need the fds.swc (DataService & [Managed]) in your flex projects.. you will use either Consumer, Producer or RemoteObject Classes
• BlazeDS does support AMF3, RemoteClasses & Messaging with a "lite" version of push via amf streaming
  

To download the blazeBlank application click here. (as new builds of Flex 3 and BlazeDS are released I'll try to keep this application updated). This application currently uses Flex 3 Beta 3 and BlazeDS Beta 1. Be sure to visit the url /{context}/TestApp/Main.mxml to ensure that the application is working properly. (i.e. http://localhost:8600/blazeBlank/TestApp/Main.mxml)

ESB error [TOPLINK-3001]

This is an error where I have been working on for too long.
And in fact it has a very easy solution.
I was building my application that I already mentioned in a previous post.
When I tested the xsl file(in the xsl file right click and choose test), everything looked fine and no problem occurred.
But when I deployed the application into my application server and I wanted to upload the content of the csv file into the database, I always received an error.

For the solution read more…

This was the error I received:
nested exception is: ORABPEL-11616 DBWriteInteractionSpec Execute Failed Exception. insert failed. Descriptor name: [DBTank.PersonFuelCosts]. Caused by Uitzondering [TOPLINK-3001] (Oracle TopLink - 10g Release 3 (10.1.3.3.0) (Build 070608)): oracle.toplink.exceptions.ConversionException Omschrijving uitzondering: Het object [50,1], van klasse [class java.lang.String], kon niet worden geconverteerd naar [class java.math.BigDecimal]. Interne uitzondering: java.lang.NumberFormatException. at oracle.tip.adapter.fw.wsif.jca.WSIFOperation_JCA.executeRequestResponseOperation

Reading this error message I believed that there was something wrong with the translation from my csv content into the database, and that this was caused by a declaration in one of the xsd files. The type of the variable in the xsd file in the csv file was a ‘String’, but for the xsd file for the database adapter the type was ‘decimal’.
I replaced the types in the xsd files with different kinds of other types, but this didn’t changed a thing, I still received the error message.
After a lot of searching and testing I found out that, when I changed the value in the csv from 56,2 into 56.1 everything worked fine.
Strange thing is that my DB reads ‘,’ and not ‘.’ .
Ones I found this, the workaround was rather easy to find.
On my xsl file I used a function to replace the ‘,’ by a ‘.’
This function can be found in the ‘Component Palette’ where you have to choose ‘String Functions’ and select the ‘translate’ function.
Ones this was done I managed to get the data correct into my database.