brian holder chow - Page 10

Get to Know a Candidate (1 of 25): Tom Hoefling–America’s Party

- by Brian Lanham

DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. If you recall, on Sunday I blogged about not voting against a candidate and, instead, voting for a candidate. As promised, this is the first post of 25. Meet Tom Hoefling of America’s Party In addition to being America’s Party nominee, he’s also the national chairman of the party. Mr. Hoefling also served as the political director for Alan Keyes’ political group America’s Revival. He is a representative for the American Conservative Coalition. Mr. Hoefling is on the ballot in: CA, CO, FL and is a qualified write-in candidate in IN. America’s Party This party was originally known as “America’s Independent Party” and considers itself conservative. The following describes their standing on specific issues. * Tax Reform – The party seeks to reform the tax structure by advocating the repeal of the 16th Amendment, and despite the fact that many members support the FairTax, the platform remains open on what to replace the Federal income tax with. * Other - The party supports the Federal Marriage Amendment being added to the U.S. Constitution. It is also pro-life on abortion. Learn more about Tom Hoefling and America’s Party on Wikipedia.

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An Open Letter from Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards

- by Brian Dayton

From Lyle Ekdahl, Group Vice President and General Manager, Oracle's JD Edwards As you may have heard, we recently announced some changes to the way Oracle will offer licensing of technology products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Specifically, we have withdrawn from new sales the product known as JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Technology Foundation ("Blue Stack"). Our motivation for this change is simply to streamline licensing for our customers. Going forward, customers will license Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. Customers who are currently licensed for Technology Foundation will continue to receive support--unchanged--through September 30, 2016. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for IBM products with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. New customers choosing to run JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on IBM technology should license JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Core Tools from Oracle while licensing Infrastructure and any licenses of IBM products from IBM. For more information about this announcement, customers should refer to My Oracle Support article 1232453.1 Questions included in the "Frequently Asked Questions" document on My Oracle Support: Is Oracle dropping support for IBM DB2 and IBM WebSphere with JD Edwards EnterpriseOne? No. This announcement affects how customers license these IBM products; it does not affect Oracle's certification roadmap for these products. The JD Edwards EnterpriseOne matrix of supported databases, web servers, and portals remains unchanged, including planned support for IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM WebSphere Portal. Customers who are currently running their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne infrastructure using IBM platform components can continue to do so regardless of whether they license these components via Technology Foundation or directly from IBM. As always, the timing and versions of such third-party certifications remain at Oracle's discretion. Does this announcement mean that Oracle is withdrawing support for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the IBM i platform? Absolutely not. JD Edwards EnterpriseOne support on the IBM i platform remains unchanged. This announcement simply states that customers will acquire Oracle products from Oracle and IBM products from IBM. In fact, as evidenced by the recent "IBM i Solution Edition for JD Edwards" offering, IBM and the JD Edwards product teams continue to innovate and offer attractive, cost-competitive solutions to the ERP marketplace. For more information about this offering see: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/i/advantages/oracle/. I hope this clarifies any concerns. Let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. -Lyle

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If You Could Cut Your Meeting Times in ½ Would You?

- by Brian Dayton

I know it sounds like a big promise. And what I'm thinking about may not cut a :60 minute meeting into :30 minutes, but it could make meetings and interactions up to 2X more productive. How? Social Media for the Enterprise, Not Social Media In the Enterprise Bear with me. I'm not talking about whether or not workers should or shouldn't have access to Facebook on corporate networks. That topic has been discussed @ length. I'm also not talking about the direct benefits of Social Networking tools like Presence (the ability to see someone online and ask a question in real-time), blogs, RSS feeds or external tools like Twitter. The Un-Measurable Benefits Would you do something that you believe will have a positive effect--but can't be measured? It's impossible to quantify the effectiveness of a meeting. However, what I am talking about would be more of a byproduct of all of the social networking tools above. Here's the hypothesis: As I've gotten more and more busy with work, family, travel and kids--and the same has happened to my friends and family--I'm less and less connected. But by introducing Facebook to my life I've not only made connections with longtime friends whom I haven't spoken to in years--but I've increased the pace and quality of interactions, on and offline, with close friends who I see and speak to every week. In some cases it even enhances the connections and interactions with those I see or speak to every day. The same holds true in an organization. Especially a larger one with highly matrixed organizational structures. You work with people on a project, new people come in with each different project and a disproportionate amount of time is spent getting oriented and staying current. Going back to the initial value proposition--making meetings shorter/more effective--a large amount of time is spent: - At Project Kick-off: Meeting and understanding team member's histories, goals & roles - Ongoing: Summarizing events since the last meeting or update email In my personal, Facebook life today I know that: - My best friend from college - has been stranded in India for 5 days because of the volcano in Iceland and is now only 250 miles from home - One of my co-workers started conference calls at 6:30 this morning - My wife wasn't terribly pleased with my painting skills in our new bathroom (disclosure: she told me this face to face too) Strengthening Weak Links A recent article in CIO Magazine, Three Dangerous Social Media Misconceptions (Kristen Burnham, March 12, 2010) calls out the #1 misconception as follows: 1. "Face-to-face relationships are far more valuable than virtual ones." While some level of physical interaction will always add value to relationships, Gartner says that come 2020, most relationships and teams will be based on "weak links"--that is, you may not have personally met a contact, but you'll know of or may have interacted with him via social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The sooner your enterprise adopts these tools, the sooner your employees will learn them, and the sooner you'll begin to cultivate these relationships-of-the-future. I personally believe that it's not an either/or choice between face-to-face and virtual interactions. In fact, I'll be as bold as saying it doesn't matter. I can point to two extremely valuable work relationships that I've had over the past 5 years: - I shared an office with one of them - I met the other person, face-to-face, only once Both relationships were very productive. The dynamics were similar. The communication tactics differed immensely. What does matter is the quality, frequency and relevance of interactions. Still sound like too much? An over-promise? Stay tuned for my next post The Gap Between Facebook and LinkedIn. I'll also connect some of the dots with where Oracle Applications and technologies are headed.

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Sun Fire X4270 M3 SAP Enhancement Package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) Two-Tier Standard Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark

- by Brian

Oracle's Sun Fire X4270 M3 server achieved 8,320 SAP SD Benchmark users running SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 with unicode software using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Solaris 10. The Sun Fire X4270 M3 server using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Solaris 10 beat both IBM Flex System x240 and IBM System x3650 M4 server running DB2 9.7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition. The Sun Fire X4270 M3 server running Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Solaris 10 beat the HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 server using SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition by 6%. The Sun Fire X4270 M3 server using Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Solaris 10 beat Cisco UCS C240 M3 server running SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition by 9%. The Sun Fire X4270 M3 server running Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Solaris 10 beat the Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S7 server using SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition by 10%. Performance Landscape SAP-SD 2-Tier Performance Table (in decreasing performance order). SAP ERP 6.0 Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode) Results (benchmark version from January 2009 to April 2012) System OS Database Users SAPERP/ECCRelease SAPS SAPS/Proc Date Sun Fire X4270 M3 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Database 11g 8,320 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 45,570 22,785 10-Apr-12 IBM Flex System x240 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 EE DB2 9.7 7,960 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 43,520 21,760 11-Apr-12 HP ProLiant BL460c Gen8 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 EE SQL Server 2008 7,865 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 42,920 21,460 29-Mar-12 IBM System x3650 M4 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 EE DB2 9.7 7,855 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 42,880 21,440 06-Mar-12 Cisco UCS C240 M3 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 DE SQL Server 2008 7,635 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 41,800 20,900 06-Mar-12 Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S7 2xIntel Xeon E5-2690 @2.90GHz 128 GB Windows Server 2008 R2 EE SQL Server 2008 7,570 20096.0 EP4(Unicode) 41,320 20,660 06-Mar-12 Complete benchmark results may be found at the SAP benchmark website http://www.sap.com/benchmark. Configuration and Results Summary Hardware Configuration: Sun Fire X4270 M3 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690 processors 128 GB memory Sun StorageTek 6540 with 4 * 16 * 300GB 15Krpm 4Gb FC-AL Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 Oracle Database 11g SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) Certified Results (published by SAP): Number of benchmark users: 8,320 Average dialog response time: 0.95 seconds Throughput: Fully processed order line: 911,330 Dialog steps/hour: 2,734,000 SAPS: 45,570 SAP Certification: 2012014 Benchmark Description The SAP Standard Application SD (Sales and Distribution) Benchmark is a two-tier ERP business test that is indicative of full business workloads of complete order processing and invoice processing, and demonstrates the ability to run both the application and database software on a single system. The SAP Standard Application SD Benchmark represents the critical tasks performed in real-world ERP business environments. SAP is one of the premier world-wide ERP application providers, and maintains a suite of benchmark tests to demonstrate the performance of competitive systems on the various SAP products. See Also SAP Benchmark Website Sun Fire X4270 M3 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard SAP SD benchmark based on SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0 (Unicode) application benchmark as of 04/11/12: Sun Fire X4270 M3 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 8,320 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, Oracle 11g, Solaris 10, Cert# 2012014. IBM Flex System x240 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 7,960 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, DB2 9.7, Windows Server 2008 R2 EE, Cert# 2012016. IBM System x3650 M4 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 7,855 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, DB2 9.7, Windows Server 2008 R2 EE, Cert# 2012010. Cisco UCS C240 M3 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 7,635 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 DE, Cert# 2012011. Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX300 S7 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 7,570 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 EE, Cert# 2012008. HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 (2 processors, 16 cores, 32 threads) 7,865 SAP SD Users, 2 x 2.90 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2690, 128 GB memory, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 EE, Cert# 2012012. SAP, R/3, reg TM of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. More info www.sap.com/benchmark

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"Mac" vs "OS X" vs "Mac OS X"

- by Brian Campbell

I am writing server software that gives administrators options that apply only to Mac OS X clients. When naming those options, I need to decide how I am going to refer to such clients. I can see three choices: Mac OS X Mac OS X In context, I feel that "Mac OS X" might be a little clumsy: "Default protocol for Mac OS X clients"; "Change Mac OS X protocol". In discussing with my boss, he suggests "OS X", as that's the name for the OS itself, while I think that "Mac" is more recognizable. While "OS X" is technically correct and is what Apple recommends, I feel that it has a lot less name recognition than "Mac"; in particular, administrators who work in a Windows-only environment may not even recognize "OS X" and wonder what the options is about, while I think everyone knows what "Mac" refers to. In looking at what several popular pieces of software choose, I see that Microsoft has "Office for Mac". Adobe calls it "Macintosh" (which sounds very outdated, I believe that Apple stopped using that "Macintosh" years ago). Firefox uses "Mac OS X". Google has "Google Software Downloads for Mac". I don't see many popular pieces of software that refer to it solely as OS X; it seems that either "Mac OS X" or "Mac" is used most often. Apple does refer to it as OS X, but I think the fact that it's coming from Apple provides the disambiguation that you need, so it's not confusing coming from them, while it may be in another context. Is there any good solution for this? Should I just use the somewhat clumsy "Mac OS X" everywhere (or at least, the first time I refer to it in any given screen)? Obviously, my boss has final say, but I'd like to be able to provide a coherent argument.

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Google Search Parameter Question

- by Brian

I've been trying to determine different parameters used by Google in their search queries. In particular, the usg parameter is what is giving me troubles. Here is an example value given for it, which is from an actual Google query: usg=0_zDqudnCN52ATGjAl3tignXNtBo4%3D Does anyone know what it could be for / recognize it? I've done a bit of digging, but haven't found any confirmation as to what it could be. Here is the link that I took a look at: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3892573.htm

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Adventures in MVVM – My ViewModel Base

- by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

More Adventures in MVVM First, I’d like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. I tend to believe that MVVM support code should be specific to the system you are building and the developers working on it. I have yet to find an MVVM framework that does everything I want it to without doing too much. Don’t get me wrong… there are some good frameworks out there. I just like to pick and choose things that make sense for me. I’d also like to add that some of these features only work in WPF. As of Silveright 4, they don’t support binding to dynamic properties, so some of the capabilities are lost. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world. I have had several conversations with people about the problems I have solved using this ViewModel base. A while back, I posted an article about some experiments with a “Rails Inspired ViewModel”. What followed from those ideas was a ViewModel base class that I take with me and use in my projects. It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models. I have put the code out on Codeplex under the project: ViewModelSupport. Finally, this article focuses on the ViewModel and only glosses over the View and the Model. Without all three, you don’t have MVVM. But this base class is for the ViewModel, so that is what I am focusing on. Features: Automatic Command Plumbing Property Change Notification Strongly Typed Property Getter/Setters Dynamic Properties Default Property values Derived Properties Automatic Method Execution Command CanExecute Change Notification Design-Time Detection What about Silverlight? Automatic Command Plumbing This feature takes the plumbing out of creating commands. The common pattern for commands in a ViewModel is to have an Execute method as well as an optional CanExecute method. To plumb that together, you create an ICommand Property, and set it in the constructor like so: Before public class AutomaticCommandViewModel { public AutomaticCommandViewModel() { MyCommand = new DelegateCommand(Execute_MyCommand, CanExecute_MyCommand); } public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } public DelegateCommand MyCommand { get; private set; } } With the base class, this plumbing is automatic and the property (MyCommand of type ICommand) is created for you. The base class uses the convention that methods be prefixed with Execute_ and CanExecute_ in order to be plumbed into commands with the property name after the prefix. You are left to be expressive with your behavior without the plumbing. If you are wondering how CanExecuteChanged is raised, see the later section “Command CanExecute Change Notification”. After public class AutomaticCommandViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } } Property Change Notification One thing that always kills me when implementing ViewModels is how to make properties that notify when they change (via the INotifyPropertyChanged interface). There have been many attempts to make this more automatic. My base class includes one option. There are others, but I feel like this works best for me. The common pattern (without my base class) is to create a private backing store for the variable and specify a getter that returns the private field. The setter will set the private field and fire an event that notifies the change, only if the value has changed. Before public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string text; public string Text { get { return text; } set { if(text != value) { text = value; RaisePropertyChanged("Text"); } } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName) { var handlers = PropertyChanged; if(handlers != null) handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } This way of defining properties is error-prone and tedious. Too much plumbing. My base class eliminates much of that plumbing with the same functionality: After public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get<string>("Text"); } set { Set("Text", value);} } } Strongly Typed Property Getters/Setters It turns out that we can do better than that. We are using a strongly typed language where the use of “Magic Strings” is often frowned upon. Lets make the names in the getters and setters strongly typed: A refinement public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text); } set { Set(() => Text, value); } } } Dynamic Properties In C# 4.0, we have the ability to program statically OR dynamically. This base class lets us leverage the powerful dynamic capabilities in our ecosystem. (This is how the automatic commands are implemented, BTW) By calling Set(“Foo”, 1), you have now created a dynamic property called Foo. It can be bound against like any static property. The opportunities are endless. One great way to exploit this behavior is if you have a customizable view engine with templates that bind to properties defined by the user. The base class just needs to create the dynamic properties at runtime from information in the model, and the custom template can bind even though the static properties do not exist. All dynamic properties still benefit from the notifiable capabilities that static properties do. For any nay-sayers out there that don’t like using the dynamic features of C#, just remember this: the act of binding the View to a ViewModel is dynamic already. Why not exploit it? Get over it :) Just declare the property dynamically public class DynamicPropertyViewModel : ViewModelBase { public DynamicPropertyViewModel() { Set("Foo", "Bar"); } } Then reference it normally <TextBlock Text="{Binding Foo}" /> Default Property Values The Get() method also allows for default properties to be set. Don’t set them in the constructor. Set them in the property and keep the related code together: public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text, "This is the default value"); } set { Set(() => Text, value);} } Derived Properties This is something I blogged about a while back in more detail. This feature came from the chaining of property notifications when one property affects the results of another, like this: Before public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); RaisePropertyChanged("Percentage"); RaisePropertyChanged("Output"); } } public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } The problem is: The setter for Score has to be responsible for notifying the world that Percentage and Output have also changed. This, to me, is backwards. It certainly violates the “Single Responsibility Principle.” I have been bitten in the rear more than once by problems created from code like this. What we really want to do is invert the dependency. Let the Percentage property declare that it changes when the Score Property changes. After public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } [DependsUpon("Percentage")] public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } Automatic Method Execution This one is extremely similar to the previous, but it deals with method execution as opposed to property. When you want to execute a method triggered by property changes, let the method declare the dependency instead of the other way around. Before public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); WhenScoreChanges(); } } public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } After public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } Command CanExecute Change Notification Back to Commands. One of the responsibilities of commands that implement ICommand – it must fire an event declaring that CanExecute() needs to be re-evaluated. I wanted to wait until we got past a few concepts before explaining this behavior. You can use the same mechanism here to fire off the change. In the CanExecute_ method, declare the property that it depends upon. When that property changes, the command will fire a CanExecuteChanged event, telling the View to re-evaluate the state of the command. The View will make appropriate adjustments, like disabling the button. DependsUpon works on CanExecute methods as well public class CanExecuteViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MakeLower() { Output = Input.ToLower(); } [DependsUpon("Input")] public bool CanExecute_MakeLower() { return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Input); } public string Input { get { return Get(() => Input); } set { Set(() => Input, value);} } public string Output { get { return Get(() => Output); } set { Set(() => Output, value); } } } Design-Time Detection If you want to add design-time data to your ViewModel, the base class has a property that lets you ask if you are in the designer. You can then set some default values that let your designer see what things might look like in runtime. Use the IsInDesignMode property public DependantPropertiesViewModel() { if(IsInDesignMode) { Score = .5; } } What About Silverlight? Some of the features in this base class only work in WPF. As of version 4, Silverlight does not support binding to dynamic properties. This, in my opinion, is a HUGE limitation. Not only does it keep you from using many of the features in this ViewModel, it also keeps you from binding to ViewModels designed in IronRuby. Does this mean that the base class will not work in Silverlight? No. Many of the features outlined in this article WILL work. All of the property abstractions are functional, as long as you refer to them statically in the View. This, of course, means that the automatic command hook-up doesn’t work in Silverlight. You need to plumb it to a static property in order for the Silverlight View to bind to it. Can I has a dynamic property in SL5? Good to go? So, that concludes the feature explanation of my ViewModel base class. Feel free to take it, fork it, whatever. It is hosted on CodePlex. When I find other useful additions, I will add them to the public repository. I use this base class every day. It is mature, and well tested. If, however, you find any problems with it, please let me know! Also, feel free to suggest patches to me via the CodePlex site. :)

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Updating the managed debugging API for .NET v4

- by Brian Donahue

In any successful investigation, the right tools play a big part in collecting evidence about the state of the "crime scene" as it was before the detectives arrived. Unfortunately for the Crash Scene Investigator, we don't have the budget to fly out to the customer's site, chalk the outline, and eat their doughnuts. We have to rely on the end-user to collect the evidence for us, which means giving them the fingerprint dust and the evidence baggies and leaving them to it. With that in mind, the Red Gate support team have been writing tools that can collect vital clues with a minimum of fuss. Years ago we would have asked for a memory dump, where we used to get the customer to run CDB.exe and produce dumps that we could analyze in-house, but those dumps were pretty unwieldy (500MB files) and the debugger often didn't dump exactly where we wanted, or made five or more dumps. What we wanted was just the minimum state information from the program at the time of failure, so we produced a managed debugger that captured every first and second-chance exception and logged the stack and a minimal amount of variables from the memory of the application, which could all be exported as XML. This caused less inconvenience to the end-user because it is much easier to send a 65KB XML file in an email than a 500MB file containing all of the application's memory. We don't need to have the entire victim shipped out to us when we just want to know what was under the fingernails. The thing that made creating a managed debugging tool possible was the MDbg Engine example written by Microsoft as part of the Debugging Tools for Windows distribution. Since the ICorDebug interface is a bit difficult to understand, they had kindly created some wrappers that provided an event-driven debugging model that was perfect for our needs, but .NET 4 applications under debugging started complaining that "The debugger's protocol is incompatible with the debuggee". The introduction of .NET Framework v4 had changed the managed debugging API significantly, however, without an update for the MDbg Engine code! After a few hours of research, I had finally worked out that most of the version 4 ICorDebug interface still works much the same way in "legacy" v2 mode and there was a relatively easy fix for the problem in that you can still get a reference to legacy ICorDebug by changing the way the interface is created. In .NET v2, the interface was acquired using the CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion method in mscoree.dll. In v4, you must first create IClrMetaHost, enumerate the runtimes, get an ICLRRuntimeInfo interface to the .NET 4 runtime from that, and use the GetInterface method in mscoree.dll to return a "legacy" ICorDebug interface. The rest of the MDbg Engine will continue working the old way. Here is how I had changed the MDbg Engine code to support .NET v4: private void InitFromVersion(string debuggerVersion){if( debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v1") ){throw new ArgumentException( "Can't debug a version 1 CLR process (\"" + debuggerVersion + "\"). Run application in a version 2 CLR, or use a version 1 debugger instead." );} ICorDebug rawDebuggingAPI=null;if (debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v4")){Guid CLSID_MetaHost = new Guid("9280188D-0E8E-4867-B30C-7FA83884E8DE"); Guid IID_MetaHost = new Guid("D332DB9E-B9B3-4125-8207-A14884F53216"); ICLRMetaHost metahost = (ICLRMetaHost)NativeMethods.ClrCreateInterface(CLSID_MetaHost, IID_MetaHost); IEnumUnknown runtimes = metahost.EnumerateInstalledRuntimes(); ICLRRuntimeInfo runtime = GetRuntime(runtimes, debuggerVersion); //Defined in metahost.hGuid CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy = new Guid(0xDF8395B5, 0xA4BA, 0x450b, 0xA7, 0x7C, 0xA9, 0xA4, 0x77, 0x62, 0xC5, 0x20);Guid IID_ICorDebug = new Guid("3D6F5F61-7538-11D3-8D5B-00104B35E7EF"); Object res;runtime.GetInterface(ref CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy, ref IID_ICorDebug, out res); rawDebuggingAPI = (ICorDebug)res; }elserawDebuggingAPI = NativeMethods.CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion((int)CorDebuggerVersion.Whidbey,debuggerVersion);if (rawDebuggingAPI != null)InitFromICorDebug(rawDebuggingAPI);elsethrow new ArgumentException("Support for debugging version " + debuggerVersion + " is not yet implemented");} The changes above will ensure that the debugger can support .NET Framework v2 and v4 applications with the same codebase, but we do compile two different applications: one targeting v2 and the other v4. As a footnote I need to add that some missing native methods and wrappers, along with the EnumerateRuntimes method code, came from the Mindbg project on Codeplex. Another change is that when using the MDbgEngine.CreateProcess to launch a process in the debugger, do not supply a null as the final argument. This does not work any more because GetCORVersion always returns "v2.0.50727" as the function has been deprecated in .NET v4. What's worse is that on a system with only .NET 4, the user will be prompted to download and install .NET v2! Not nice! This works much better: proc = m_Debugger.CreateProcess(ProcessName, ProcessArgs, DebugModeFlag.Default,String.Format("v{0}.{1}.{2}",System.Environment.Version.Major,System.Environment.Version.Minor,System.Environment.Version.Build)); Microsoft "unofficially" plan on updating the MDbg samples soon, but if you have an MDbg-based application, you can get it working right now by changing one method a bit and adding a few new interfaces (ICLRMetaHost, IEnumUnknown, and ICLRRuntimeInfo). The new, non-legacy implementation of MDbg Engine will add new, interesting features like dump-file support and by association I assume garbage-collection/managed object stats, so it will be well worth looking into if you want to extend the functionality of a managed debugger going forward.

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Productivity Tips

- by Brian T. Jackett

A few months ago during my first end of year review at Microsoft I was doing an assessment of my year. One of my personal goals to come out of this reflection was to improve my personal productivity. While I hear many people say “I wish I had more hours in the day so that I could get more done” I feel like that is the wrong approach. There is an inherent assumption that you are being productive with your time that you already have and thus more time would allow you to be as productive given more time. Instead of wishing I could add more hours to the day I’ve begun adopting a number of processes or behavior changes in my personal life to make better use of my time with the goal of improving productivity. The areas of focus are as follows: Focus Processes Tools Personal health Email Note: A number of these topics have spawned from reading Scott Hanselman’s blog posts on productivity, reading of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, and discussions with friends and coworkers who had great insights into this topic. Focus Pre-reading / viewing: Overcome your work addiction Millennials paralyzed by choice Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (Scott Hanselman video) I highly recommend Scott Hanselman’s video above and this post before continuing with this article. It is well worth the 40+ mins price of admission for the video and couple minutes for article. One key takeaway for me was listing out my activities in an average week and realizing which ones held little or no value to me. We all have a finite amount of time to work each day. Do you know how much time and effort you spend on various aspects of your life (family, friends, religion, work, personal happiness, etc.)? Do your actions and commitments reflect your priorities? The biggest time consumers with little value for me were time spent on social media services (Twitter and Facebook), playing an MMO video game, and watching TV. I still check up on Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft internal chat forums, and other services to keep contact with others but I’ve reduced that time significantly. As for TV I’ve cut the cord and no longer subscribe to cable TV. Instead I use Netflix, RedBox, and over the air channels but again with reduced time consumption. With the time I’ve freed up I’m back to working out 2-3 times a week and reading 4 nights a week (both of which I had been neglecting previously). I’ll mention a few tools for helping measure your time in the Tools section. Processes Do not multi-task. I’ll say it again. Do not multi-task. There is no such thing as multi tasking. The human brain is optimized to work on one thing at a time. When you are “multi-tasking” you are really doing 2 or more things at less than 100%, usually by a wide margin. I take pride in my work and when I’m doing something less than 100% the results typically degrade rapidly. Now there are some ways of bending the rules of physics for this one. There is the notion of getting a double amount of work done in the same timeframe. Some examples would be listening to podcasts / watching a movie while working out, using a treadmill as your work desk, or reading while in the bathroom. Personally I’ve found good results in combining one task that does not require focus (making dinner, playing certain video games, working out) and one task that does (watching a movie, listening to podcasts). I believe this is related to me being a visual and kinesthetic (using my hands or actually doing it) learner. I’m terrible with auditory learning. My fiance and I joke that sometimes we talk and talk to each other but never really hear each other. Goals / Tasks Goals can give us direction in life and a sense of accomplishment when we complete them. Goals can also overwhelm us and give us a sense of failure when we don’t complete them. I propose that you shift your perspective and not dwell on all of the things that you haven’t gotten done, but focus instead on regularly setting measureable goals that are within reason of accomplishing. At the end of each time frame have a retrospective to review your progress. Do not feel guilty about what you did not accomplish. Feel proud of what you did accomplish and readjust your goals for the next time frame to more attainable goals. Here is a sample schedule I’ve seen proposed by some. I have not consistently set goals for each timeframe, but I do typically set 3 small goals a day (this blog post is #2 for today). Each day set 3 small goals Each week set 3 medium goals Each month set 1 large goal Each year set 2 very large goals Tools Tools are an extension of our human body. They help us extend beyond what we can physically and mentally do. Below are some tools I use almost daily or have found useful as of late. Disclaimer: I am not getting endorsed to promote any of these products. I just happen to like them and find them useful. Instapaper – Save internet links for reading later. There are many tools like this but I’ve found this to be a great one. There is even a “read it later” JavaScript button you can add to your browser so when you navigate to a site it will then add this to your list. Stacks for Instapaper – A Windows Phone 7 app for reading my Instapaper articles on the go. It does require a subscription to Instapaper (nominal $3 every three months) but is easily worth the cost. Alternatively you can set up your Kindle to sync with Instapaper easily but I haven’t done so. SlapDash Podcast – Apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8 (possibly other platforms) to sync podcast viewing / listening across multiple devices. Now that I have my Surface RT device (which I love) this is making my consumption easier to manage. Feed Reader – Simple Windows 8 app for quickly catching up on my RSS feeds. I used to have hundreds of unread items all the time. Now I’m down to 20-50 regularly and it is much easier and faster to consume on my Surface RT. There is also a free version (which I use) and I can’t see much different between the free and paid versions currently. Rescue Time – Have you ever wondered how much time you’ve spent on websites vs. email vs. “doing work”? This service tracks your computer actions and then lets you report on them. This can help you quantitatively identify areas where your actions are not in line with your priorities. PowerShell – Windows automation tool. It is now built into every client and server OS. This tool has saved me days (and I mean the full 24 hrs worth) of time and effort in the past year alone. If you haven’t started learning PowerShell and you administrating any Windows OS or server product you need to start today. Various blogging tools – I wrote a post a couple years ago called How I Blog about my blogging process and tools used. Almost all of it still applies today. Personal Health Some of these may be common sense or debatable, but I’ve found them to help prioritize my daily activities. Get plenty of sleep on a regular basis. Sacrificing sleep too many nights a week negatively impacts your cognition, attitude, and overall health. Exercise at least three days. Exercise could be lifting weights, taking the stairs up multiple flights of stairs, walking for 20 mins, or a number of other "non-traditional” activities. I find that regular exercise helps with sleep and improves my overall attitude. Eat a well balanced diet. Too much sugar, caffeine, junk food, etc. are not good for your body. This is not a matter of losing weight but taking care of your body and helping you perform at your peak potential. Email Email can be one of the biggest time consumers (i.e. waster) if you aren’t careful. Time box your email usage. Set a meeting invite for yourself if necessary to limit how much time you spend checking email. Use rules to prioritize your email. Email from external customers, my manager, or include me directly on the To line go into my inbox. Everything else goes a level down and I have 30+ rules to further sort it, mostly distribution lists. Use keyboard shortcuts (when available). I use Outlook for my primary email and am constantly hitting Alt + S to send, Ctrl + 1 for my inbox, Ctrl + 2 for my calendar, Space / Tab / Shift + Tab to mark items as read, and a number of other useful commands. Learn them and you’ll see your speed getting through emails increase. Keep emails short. No one Few people like reading through long emails. The first line should state exactly why you are sending the email followed by a 3-4 lines to support it. Anything longer might be better suited as a phone call or in person discussion. Conclusion In this post I walked through various tips and tricks I’ve found for improving personal productivity. It is a mix of re-focusing on the things that matter, using tools to assist in your efforts, and cutting out actions that are not aligned with your priorities. I originally had a whole section on keyboard shortcuts, but with my recent purchase of the Surface RT I’m finding that touch gestures have replaced numerous keyboard commands that I used to need. I see a big future in touch enabled devices. Hopefully some of these tips help you out. If you have any tools, tips, or ideas you would like to share feel free to add in the comments section. -Frog Out Links Scott Hanselman Productivity posts http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Productivity Overcome your work addiction http://blogs.hbr.org/hbsfaculty/2012/05/overcome-your-work-addiction.html?awid=5512355740280659420-3271 Millennials paralyzed by choice http://priyaparker.com/blog/millennials-paralyzed-by-choice Its Not What You Read Its What You Ignore (video) http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ItsNotWhatYouReadItsWhatYouIgnoreVideoOfScottHanselmansPersonalProductivityTips.aspx Cutting the cord – Jeff Blankenburg http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2011/04/06/cutting-the-cord/ Building a sitting standing desk – Eric Harlan http://www.ericharlan.com/Everything_Else/building-a-sitting-standing-desk-a229.html Instapaper http://www.instapaper.com/u Stacks for Instapaper http://www.stacksforinstapaper.com/ Slapdash Podcast Windows Phone - http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/slapdash-podcasts/90e8b121-080b-e011-9264-00237de2db9e Windows 8 - http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/slapdash-podcasts/0c62e66a-f2e4-4403-af88-3430a821741e/m/ROW Feed Reader http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/feed-reader/d03199c9-8e08-469a-bda1-7963099840cc/m/ROW Rescue Time http://www.rescuetime.com/ PowerShell Script Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/bb410849.aspx

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DNS propogation question with name server change

- by Brian

The registrar I have is networksolutions.com, and for quite a while, the name servers were pointing to Site5.com, where hosting is for one of my domains. I wanted to bring DNS control back to networksolutions, so I pointed the name servers back to networksolutions and added in all my A records. However, I noticed that the site soon became unreachable. I'm curious as to why this happened? If the domain was pointing to either the old name servers or the new ones, it would still have the proper A records and whatnot. Is this because when I changed name servers, a request was made to delete them completely, and then the DNS servers worldwide have to wait for network solutions to send out the new ones or something? I was hoping this would be a switch with zero downtime, such as a normal A record change.

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Oracle WebCenter - Well Connected

- by Brian Dirking

800x600 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} An good post from Dan Elam on the state of the ECM industry (http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/community/ECM-Vendors-go-to-War) . For those of you who don’t know Dan, he is one of the major forces in the content management industry. He founded eVisory and IMERGE Consulting, he is an AIIM Fellow and a former US Technical Expert to the International Standards Organization (ISO), and has been a driving force behind EmTag, AIIM’s Emerging Technologies Group. His post is interesting – it starts out talking about our Moveoff Documentum campaign, but then it becomes a much deeper insight into the ECM industry. Dan points out that Oracle has been making quiet strides in the ECM industry. In fact, analysts share this view Oracle, pointing out Oracle is growing greater than 20% annually while many of the big vendors are shrinking. And as Dan points out, this cements Oracle as one of the big five in the ECM space – the same week that Autonomy was removed from the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM. One of the key things points out is that Oracle WebCenter is well connected. WebCenter has out-of-the-box connections to key enterprise applications such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards. Those out-of-the-box integrations make it easy for organizations to drive content right into the places where it is needed, in the midst of business processes. At the same time, WebCenter provides composite interface capabilities to bring together two or more of these enterprise applications onto the same screen. Combine that with the capabilities of Oracle Social Network, you start to see how Oracle is providing a full platform for user engagement. But beyond those connections, WebCenter can also connect to other content management systems. It can index and search those systems from a single point of search, bringing back results in a single combined hitlist. WebCenter can also extend records management capabilities into Documentum, SharePoint, and email archiving systems. From a single console, records managers can define a series, set a retention schedule, and place holds – without having to go to each system to make these updates. Dan points out that there are some new competitive dynamics – to be sure. And it is interesting when a system can interact with another system, enforce dispositions and holds, and enable users to search and retrieve content. Oracle WebCenter is providing the infrastructure to build on, and the interfaces to drive user engagement. It’s an interesting time.

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Virtual Brown Bag Recap: NuGet, PoshCode, Code Templates

- by Brian Schroer

"Virtual Brown Bag" anagrams: Roving Tuba Brawl Lawn Bug Vibrator Rubbing Two Larva Vulgar Rabbi Town A Vibrant Grub Owl Blurting a Bar Vow At this week's Roving Tuba Brawl Virtual Brown Bag meeting: Claudio Lassala asked "What does your work environment look like?" He and several others shared pictures. George Mauer talked about NuGet, .NET's answer to Ruby Gems, and PoshCode, a PowerShell code repository Claudio showed how he uses CodeRush templates to quickly generate unit test code Alan Stevens showed how to do the same thing with Resharper templates For detailed notes, links, and the video recording, go to the VBB wiki page: https://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/main_page/2010-12-02

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Converting Openfire IM datetime values in SQL Server to / from VARCHAR(15) and DATETIME data types

- by Brian Biales

A client is using Openfire IM for their users, and would like some custom queries to audit user conversations (which are stored by Openfire in tables in the SQL Server database). Because Openfire supports multiple database servers and multiple platforms, the designers chose to store all date/time stamps in the database as 15 character strings, which get converted to Java Date objects in their code (Openfire is written in Java). I did some digging around, and, so I don't forget and in case someone else will find this useful, I will put the simple algorithms here for converting back and forth between SQL DATETIME and the Java string representation. The Java string representation is the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970. SQL Server's DATETIME is actually represented as a float, the value being the number of days since 1/1/1900, the portion after the decimal point representing the hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds... as a fractional part of a day. Try this and you will see this is true: SELECT CAST(0 AS DATETIME) and you will see it returns the date 1/1/1900. The difference in days between SQL Server's 0 date of 1/1/1900 and the Java representation's 0 date of 1/1/1970 is found easily using the following SQL: SELECT DATEDIFF(D, '1900-01-01', '1970-01-01') which returns 25567. There are 25567 days between these dates. So to convert from the Java string to SQL Server's date time, we need to convert the number of milliseconds to a floating point representation of the number of days since 1/1/1970, then add the 25567 to change this to the number of days since 1/1/1900. To convert to days, you need to divide the number by 1000 ms/s, then by 60 seconds/minute, then by 60 minutes/hour, then by 24 hours/day. Or simply divide by 1000*60*60*24, or 86400000. So, to summarize, we need to cast this string as a float, divide by 86400000 milliseconds/day, then add 25567 days, and cast the resulting value to a DateTime. Here is an example: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) SET @tmp = '1268231722123' SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, CAST((CAST(@tmp AS FLOAT) / 86400000) + 25567 AS DATETIME) as SQLTime To convert from SQL datetime back to the Java time format is not quite as simple, I found, because floats of that size do not convert nicely to strings, they end up in scientific notation using the CONVERT function or CAST function. But I found a couple ways around that problem. You can convert a date to the number of seconds since 1/1/1970 very easily using the DATEDIFF function, as this value fits in an Int. If you don't need to worry about the milliseconds, simply cast this integer as a string, and then concatenate '000' at the end, essentially multiplying this number by 1000, and making it milliseconds since 1/1/1970. If, however, you do care about the milliseconds, you will need to use DATEPART to get the milliseconds part of the date, cast this integer to a string, and then pad zeros on the left to make sure this is three digits, and concatenate these three digits to the number of seconds string above. And finally, I discovered by casting to DECIMAL(15,0) then to VARCHAR(15), I avoid the scientific notation issue. So here are all my examples, pick the one you like best... First, here is the simple approach if you don't care about the milliseconds: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + '000' SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime If you want to keep the milliseconds: DECLARE @tmp as VARCHAR(15) DECLARE @dt as DATETIME DECLARE @ms as int SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SET @ms as DATEPART(ms, @dt) SET @tmp = CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + RIGHT('000' + CAST(@ms AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) SELECT @tmp as JavaTime, @dt as SQLTime Or, in one fell swoop: DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SELECT @dt as SQLTime , CAST(DATEDIFF(s, '1970-01-01 00:00:00' , @dt) AS VARCHAR(15)) + RIGHT('000' + CAST( DATEPART(ms, @dt) AS VARCHAR(3)), 3) as JavaTime And finally, a way to simply reverse the math used converting from Java date to SQL date. Note the parenthesis - watch out for operator precedence, you want to subtract, then multiply: DECLARE @dt as DATETIME SET @dt = '2010-03-10 14:35:22.123' SELECT @dt as SQLTime , CAST(CAST((CAST(@dt as Float) - 25567.0) * 86400000.0 as DECIMAL(15,0)) as VARCHAR(15)) as JavaTime Interestingly, I found that converting to SQL Date time can lose some accuracy, when I converted the time above to Java time then converted that back to DateTime, the number of milliseconds is 120, not 123. As I am not interested in the milliseconds, this is ok for me. But you may want to look into using DateTime2 in SQL Server 2008 for more accuracy.

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New Release Overview Part 1

- by brian.harrison

Ladies & Gentlemen, I have been getting a lot of questions over the last month or two about the next release of WCI codenamed "Neo". Unfortunately I cannot give you an exact release date which I know you all would be asking me for if we were talking face to face, but I can definitely provide you with information about some of the features that will be made available. So over the next few blog entries, I am going to provide you with details about two features and even provide you with screenshots for some of them. KD Browser Portlet This portlet will provide a windows explorer look and feel to the Knowledge Directory from with a Community Page or My Page. Not only will the portlet provide access to the folder structure and the documents within, but the user or community manager will also have the ability to modify what is being shown. From with a preferences page, the user or community manager can change what top-level folders are shown within the folder structure as well as what properties are available for each document that is shown. There are also a number of other portlet specific customizations available as well. Embedded Tagging Engine As some of you might be aware, there was a product made available just prior to the Oracle acquisition known as Pathways which gave users the ability to add tags to documents that were either in the Knowledge Directory or in the Collaboration Documents section. Although this product is no longer available separately for customers to purchase, we definitely did feel that the functionality was important and interesting enough that other customers should have access to it. The decision was made for this release to embed the original Pathways product as the Tagging Engine for WCI and Collaboration. This tagging engine will allow a user to add tags to a document as well as through the Collaboration Documents section. Once the tags are added to the Tagging Engine and associated with documents, then a user will have the ability to filter the documents when processing a search according to the Tags Cloud that will now be available on the Search Results page and this will be true no matter what kind of search is being processed. In addition to all of that, all of the Pathways portlets will also be available for users to add to their My Page.

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ASP.NET MVC localization DisplayNameAttribute alternatives: a good way

- by Brian Schroer

The ASP.NET MVC HTML helper methods like .LabelFor and .EditorFor use model metadata to autogenerate labels for model properties. By default it uses the property name for the label text, but if that’s not appropriate, you can use a DisplayName attribute to specify the desired label text: [DisplayName("Remember me?")] public bool RememberMe { get; set; } I’m working on a multi-language web site, so the labels need to be localized. I tried pointing the DisplayName attribute to a resource string: [DisplayName(MyResource.RememberMe)] public bool RememberMe { get; set; } …but that results in the compiler error "An attribute argument must be a constant expression, typeof expression or array creation expression of an attribute parameter type”. I got around this by creating a custom LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute class that inherits from DisplayNameAttribute: 1: public class LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute : DisplayNameAttribute 2: { 3: public LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute(string resourceKey) 4: { 5: ResourceKey = resourceKey; 6: } 7: 8: public override string DisplayName 9: { 10: get 11: { 12: string displayName = MyResource.ResourceManager.GetString(ResourceKey); 13: 14: return string.IsNullOrEmpty(displayName) 15: ? string.Format("[[{0}]]", ResourceKey) 16: : displayName; 17: } 18: } 19: 20: private string ResourceKey { get; set; } 21: } Instead of a display string, it takes a constructor argument of a resource key. The DisplayName method is overridden to get the display string from the resource file (line 12). If the key is not found, I return a formatted string containing the key (e.g. “[[RememberMe]]”) so I can tell by looking at my web pages which resource keys I haven’t defined yet (line 15). The usage of my custom attribute in the model looks like this: [LocalizedDisplayName("RememberMe")] public bool RememberMe { get; set; } That was my first attempt at localized display names, and it’s a technique that I still use in some cases, but in my next post I’ll talk about the method that I now prefer, a custom DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider class…

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Speaking at SPTechCon SF 2011 and SPSNOLA 2011

- by Brian Jackett

From Feb 7th-9th I’ll be presenting two sessions at SPTechCon San Francisco 2011. My first presentation is a new session called “The Expanding Developer Toolbox for SharePoint 2010” which covers many of the new tools and functionality available to SharePoint 2010 developers. My second sessions is called “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” (presented at last SPTech Con Boston) which covers tips, tricks, and advice on deploying SharePoint 2007 solutions. If you hurry you may still be able to register for this SPTechCon. Click here for registration information. Hope to see you there. In addition to SPTechCon, I’ll also be speaking at SharePoint Saturday New Orleans 2011 on Feb 26th. My presentation is called “Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell”. I’ve given this presentation at a number of recent conferences and it has been popular. I’m excited for this weekend as well since it will be my first time visiting New Orleans. Click here for registration information. Sessions Where: SPTech Con San Francisco 2011 Title: The Expanding Developer Toolbox for SharePoint 2010 Audience and Level: Developer, Beginner/Intermediate Abstract: LINQ to SharePoint, native Visual Studio 2010 support, easier access to logging, Business Connectivity Services… The list of new features and tools available to developers rapidly grew between SharePoint 2007 and 2010. In this session we will cover these and many of the other newest features added for SharePoint developers to utilize. This session is targeted to SharePoint 2007 developers upgrading their skills to SharePoint 2010 or developers new to SharePoint 2010. Where: SPTech Con San Francisco 2011 Title: Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions Audience and Level: Admin/Developer, Intermediate Abstract: “All I have to do is run some STSADM commands to deploy my SharePoint solutions, right?” If you are saying that to yourself then you are missing out on some of the more advanced processes you can employ to deploy and maintain your SharePoint solutions and farm. In this session we will cover lessons learned from 3 years of deploying and automating SharePoint solutions. This will include using a combination of STSADM, PowerShell, SharePoint API and a number of other tools in a real world situation to deploy an entire suite of custom SharePoint solutions. This session is targeted to farm administrators and developers. Prior experience with SharePoint solutions, STSADM and minimal PowerShell experience is suggested. Where: SharePoint Saturday New Orleans Title: Managing SharePoint 2010 Farms with PowerShell Audience and Level: Admin, Beginner Abstract: Having you been using STSADM (or worse hand editing processes) to manage your SharePoint 2007 farms? Are you hearing about needing to learn PowerShell to manage SharePoint 2010 farms? This session will serve as part introduction to PowerShell and part overview of how you can use PowerShell to more efficiently and effectively manage your SharePoint 2010 farm. This session is targeted to farm administrators and IT pros and no previous experience with PowerShell is required. -Frog Out

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The Other "C" in CRM

- by Brian Dayton

Folks who know me know that I rarely, if ever, talk politics. And I never talk politicians. Having grown up in a household with one parent leaning left and the other leaning to the right it was the best way to keep the peace. This isn't about politics. It's about "constituents" and the need to improve the services and service levels for people--at the city, county, state/province, etc. level all the way up to national governments. As a citizen and tax payer it's also important to me that these services be provided at a reasonable cost. If there's a better and more efficient way to do something then it's my hope that a public sector organization takes advantage of technology the same way private sector companies do. Social services organizations have a complex job. They provide the services that people need, from healthcare and children's assistance to helping people find jobs. But many of these organizations are still managing these processes manually or outdated, home-grown applications that could have been written up to 30 years ago. A lot has changed in technology. On the (this is as political as I'm going to get) political front, stakeholders like you and me are expecting greater transparency on where and how funds are spent. I'll admit that most of the time, when I think about CRM systems, I think about my experience as a customer of my bank, utilities company or cable operator. But now that I'm older, have children and a house--I find myself interacting more and more with agencies and services organizations. My experiences are sometimes good and sometimes not so good. Along those lines, last week's announcement of Siebel CRM 8.2 for Public Sector caught my eye. You may not work in the public sector, but you are a constituent of some--actually a lot--of public sector organizations. I don't know which CRM systems city and county utilize but I'm going to start paying closer attention.

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Announcing Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g

- by [email protected]

Today Oracle announced Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g. This is a major release for us, and reinforces our three key themes at Oracle: Complete New in this release - Oracle ECM Suite 11g is built on a single, unified repository. Every piece of content - documents, HTML pages, digital assets, scanned images - is stored and accessbile directly from the repository, whether you are working on websites, creating brand logos, processing accounts payable invoices, or running records and retention functions. It makes complete, end-to-end management of content possible, from the point it enters the organization, through its entire lifecycle. Also new in this release, the installation, access, monitoring and administration of Oracle ECM Suite 11g is centralized. As a complete system, organizations can lower the costs of training and usage by having a centralized source of information that is easily administered. As part of this new unified repository release, Oracle has released a benchmarking white paper that shows the extreme performance and scalability of Oracle ECM Suite. When tested on a two node UCM Server running on Sun Oracle DB Machine Half Rack Hardware with an Exadata storage server, Oracle ECM Suite 11g is able to ingest over 178 million documents per day. Open Oracle ECM Suite 11g is built on a service-oriented architecture. All functions are available through standards-based services calls in Web Services or Java. In this release Oracle unveils Open Web Content Management. Open Web Content Management is a revolutionary approach to web content management that decouples the content management process from the process of creating web applications. One piece of this approach is our one-click web content management. With one click, a web application builder can drag content services into their application, enabling their users to also edit content with just one click. Open Web Content Management is also open because it enables Web developers to add Web content management to new and existing JavaServer Pages (JSP), JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) Faces applications Open content distribution - Oracle ECM Suite 11g offers flexible deployment options with a built-in smart cache so organizations can deliver Web sites or Web applications without requiring Oracle ECM Suite as part of the delivery system Integrated Oracle ECM Suite 11g also offers a series of next generation desktop integrations, providing integrations such as: New MS Office integration with menus to access managed content, insert managed links, and compare managed documents using standard MS Office reviewing tools Automatic identity tagging of documents on download - to help users understand which versions they are viewing and prevent duplicate content items in the content repository. New "smart productivity folders" to show a users workflow inbox, saved searches and checked out content directly from Windows Explorer Drag and drop metadata pop-ups Check in and check out for all file formats with any standard WebDAV server As part of Oracle's Enterprise Application Documents initiative, Oracle Content Management 11g also provides certified application integrations with solution templates You can read the press release here. You can see more assets at the launch center here. You can sign up for the announcement webinar and hear more about the new features here. You can read the benchmarking study here.

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Sun Fire X4800 M2 Posts World Record x86 SPECjEnterprise2010 Result

- by Brian

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 using the Intel Xeon E7-8870 processor and Sun Fire X4470 M2 using the Intel Xeon E7-4870 processor, produced a world record single application server SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark result of 27,150.05 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server ran the application tier and the Sun Fire X4470 M2 server was used for the database tier. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server demonstrated 63% better performance compared to IBM P780 server result of 16,646.34 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server demonstrated 4% better performance than the Cisco UCS B440 M2 result, both results used the same number of processors. This result used Oracle WebLogic Server 12c, Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server 1.7.0_02, and Oracle Database 11g. This result was produced using Oracle Linux. Performance Landscape Complete benchmark results are at the SPEC website, SPECjEnterprise2010 Results. The table below compares against the best results from IBM and Cisco. SPECjEnterprise2010 Performance Chart as of 3/12/2012 Submitter EjOPS* Application Server Database Server Oracle 27,150.05 1x Sun Fire X4800 M2 8x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-8870 Oracle WebLogic 12c 1x Sun Fire X4470 M2 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle Database 11g (11.2.0.2) Cisco 26,118.67 2x UCS B440 M2 Blade Server 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle WebLogic 11g (10.3.5) 1x UCS C460 M2 Blade Server 4x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 Oracle Database 11g (11.2.0.2) IBM 16,646.34 1x IBM Power 780 8x 3.86 GHz POWER 7 WebSphere Application Server V7 1x IBM Power 750 Express 4x 3.55 GHz POWER 7 IBM DB2 9.7 Workgroup Server Edition FP3a * SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS, bigger is better. Configuration Summary Application Server: 1 x Sun Fire X4800 M2 8 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processor E7-8870 256 GB memory 4 x 10 GbE NIC 2 x FC HBA Oracle Linux 5 Update 6 Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1 (10.3.5) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM on Linux, version 1.7.0_02 (Java SE 7 Update 2) Database Server: 1 x Sun Fire X4470 M2 4 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E7-4870 512 GB memory 4 x 10 GbE NIC 2 x FC HBA 2 x Sun StorageTek 2540 M2 4 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 4 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array Oracle Linux 5 Update 6 Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2 Benchmark Description SPECjEnterprise2010 is the third generation of the SPEC organization's J2EE end-to-end industry standard benchmark application. The SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark has been designed and developed to cover the Java EE 5 specification's significantly expanded and simplified programming model, highlighting the major features used by developers in the industry today. This provides a real world workload driving the Application Server's implementation of the Java EE specification to its maximum potential and allowing maximum stressing of the underlying hardware and software systems. The workload consists of an end to end web based order processing domain, an RMI and Web Services driven manufacturing domain and a supply chain model utilizing document based Web Services. The application is a collection of Java classes, Java Servlets, Java Server Pages, Enterprise Java Beans, Java Persistence Entities (pojo's) and Message Driven Beans. The SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark heavily exercises all parts of the underlying infrastructure that make up the application environment, including hardware, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers, and the system network. The primary metric of the SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark is jEnterprise Operations Per Second ("SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS"). This metric is calculated by adding the metrics of the Dealership Management Application in the Dealer Domain and the Manufacturing Application in the Manufacturing Domain. There is no price/performance metric in this benchmark. Key Points and Best Practices Sixteen Oracle WebLogic server instances were started using numactl, binding 2 instances per chip. Eight Oracle database listener processes were started, binding 2 instances per chip using taskset. Additional tuning information is in the report at http://spec.org. See Also Oracle Press Release -- SPECjEnterprise2010 Results Page Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Sun Fire X4270 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Sun Storage 2540-M2 Array oracle.com OTN Oracle Linux oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN WebLogic Suite oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement SPEC and the benchmark name SPECjEnterprise are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Sun Fire X4800 M2, 27,150.05 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS; IBM Power 780, 16,646.34 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS; Cisco UCS B440 M2, 26,118.67 SPECjEnterprise2010 EjOPS. Results from www.spec.org as of 3/27/2012.

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Major Analyst Report Chooses Oracle As An ECM Leader

- by brian.dirking(at)oracle.com

Oracle announced that Gartner, Inc. has named Oracle as a Leader in its latest "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management" in a press release issued this morning. Gartner's Magic Quadrant reports position vendors within a particular quadrant based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. According to Gartner, "Leaders have the highest combined scores for Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. They are doing well and are prepared for the future with a clearly articulated vision. In the context of ECM, they have strong channel partners, presence in multiple regions, consistent financial performance, broad platform support and good customer support. In addition, they dominate in one or more technology or vertical market. Leaders deliver a suite that addresses market demand for direct delivery of the majority of core components, though these are not necessarily owned by them, tightly integrated, unique or best-of-breed in each area. We place more emphasis this year on demonstrated enterprise deployments; integration with other business applications and content repositories; incorporation of Web 2.0 and XML capabilities; and vertical-process and horizontal-solution focus. Leaders should drive market transformation." "To extend content governance and best practices across the enterprise, organizations need an enterprise content management solution that delivers a broad set of functionality and is tightly integrated with business processes," said Andy MacMillan, vice president, Product Management, Oracle. "We believe that Oracle's position as a Leader in this report is recognition of the industry-leading performance, integration and scalability delivered in Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g." With Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite 11g, Oracle offers a comprehensive, integrated and high-performance content management solution that helps organizations increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve content security. In the report, Oracle is grouped among the top three vendors for execution, and is the furthest to the right, placing Oracle as the most visionary vendor. This vision stems from Oracle's integration of content management right into key business processes, delivering content in context as people need it. Using a PeopleSoft Accounts Payable user as an example, as an employee processes an invoice, Oracle ECM Suite brings that invoice up on the screen so the processor can verify the content right in the process, improving speed and accuracy. Oracle integrates content into business processes such as Human Resources, Travel and Expense, and others, in the major enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and E-Business Suite. As part of Oracle's Enterprise Application Documents strategy, you can see an example of these integrations in this webinar: Managing Customer Documents and Marketing Assets in Siebel. You can also get a white paper of the ROI Embry Riddle achieved using Oracle Content Management integrated with enterprise applications. Embry Riddle moved from a point solution for content management on accounts payable to an infrastructure investment - they are now using Oracle Content Management for accounts payable with Oracle E-Business Suite, and for student on-boarding with PeopleSoft e-Campus. They continue to expand their use of Oracle Content Management to address further use cases from a core infrastructure. Oracle also shows its vision in the ability to deliver content optimized for online channels. Marketers can use Oracle ECM Suite to deliver digital assets and offers as part of an integrated campaign that understands website visitors and ensures that they are given the most pertinent information and offers. Oracle also provides full lifecycle management through its built-in records management. Companies are able to manage the lifecycle of content (both records and non-records) through built-in retention management. And with the integration of Oracle ECM Suite and Sun Storage Archive Manager, content can be routed to the appropriate storage media based upon content type, usage data or other business rules. This ensures that the most accessed content is instantly available, and archived content is stored on a more appropriate medium like tape. You can learn more in this webinar - Oracle Content Management and Sun Tiered Storage. If you are interested in reading more about why Oracle was chosen as a Leader, view the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management.

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Homebrew development for 7th gen home consoles

- by Brian McKenna

I'm looking to do some homebrew development for either the Wii, Xbox360 or PS3. I'll be developing from a Linux system. The programming language doesn't matter. Wii - devkitPPC and libogc look fairly easy and complete Xbox360 - Mono.XNA looks interesting but not very feature complete PS3 - psl1ght seems interesting but I haven't been able to find out much How homebrew friendly are each of these consoles? Is someone able to give a comparison of each of these scenes?

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ASP.NET MVC localization DisplayNameAttribute alternatives: a better way

- by Brian Schroer

In my last post, I talked bout creating a custom class inheriting from System.ComponentModel.DisplayNameAttribute to retrieve display names from resource files: [LocalizedDisplayName("RememberMe")] public bool RememberMe { get; set; } That’s a lot of work to put an attribute on all of my model properties though. It would be nice if I could intercept the ASP.NET MVC code that analyzes the model metadata to retrieve display names to make it automatically get localized text from my resource files. That way, I could just set up resource file entries where the keys are the property names, and not have to put attributes on all of my properties. That’s done by creating a custom class inheriting from System.Web.Mvc.DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider: 1: public class LocalizedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider : 2: DataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider 3: { 4: protected override ModelMetadata CreateMetadata( 5: IEnumerable<Attribute> attributes, 6: Type containerType, 7: Func<object> modelAccessor, 8: Type modelType, 9: string propertyName) 10: { 11: var meta = base.CreateMetadata 12: (attributes, containerType, modelAccessor, modelType, propertyName); 13: 14: if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertyName)) 15: return meta; 16: 17: if (meta.DisplayName == null) 18: GetLocalizedDisplayName(meta, propertyName); 19: 20: if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(meta.DisplayName)) 21: meta.DisplayName = string.Format("[[{0}]]", propertyName); 22: 23: return meta; 24: } 25: 26: private static void GetLocalizedDisplayName(ModelMetadata meta, string propertyName) 27: { 28: ResourceManager resourceManager = MyResource.ResourceManager; 29: CultureInfo culture = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture; 30: 31: meta.DisplayName = resourceManager.GetString(propertyName, culture); 32: } 33: } Line 11 calls the base CreateMetadata method. Line 17 checks whether the metadata DisplayName property has already been populated by a DisplayNameAttribute (or my LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute). If so, it respects that and doesn’t use my custom localized text lookup. The GetLocalizedDisplayName method checks for the property name as a resource file key. If found, it uses the localized text from the resource files. If the key is not found in the resource file, as with my LocalizedDisplayNameAttribute, I return a formatted string containing the property name (e.g. “[[RememberMe]]”) so I can tell by looking at my web pages which resource keys I haven’t defined yet. It’s hooked up with this code in the Application_Start method of Global.asax: ModelMetadataProviders.Current = new LocalizedDataAnnotationsModelMetadataProvider();

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Oracle @ AIIM Conference

- by [email protected]

Oracle will be at the AIIM Conference and Exposition next week in Philadelphia. On the opening morning, Robert Shimp, Group Vice President, Global Technology Business Unit, of Oracle Corporation, will moderate an executive keynote panel. Mr. Shimp will lead four Oracle customer executives through a lively discussion of how innovative organizations are driving the integration of content management with their core business processes on Tuesday April 20th at 8:45 AM. Our panelists are: CINDY BIXLER, CIO, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University TOM SHOWALTER, Managing Director, JP Morgan Chase IRFAN MOTIWALA, Vice President, Moody's Investors Service MIT MONICA CROCKER, CRM, PMP, Corporate Records Manager, Land O'Lakes For more information on our panelists, click here. Oracle will be in booth #2113 at the AIIM Expo. Come by and enter the daily raffle to win a Netbook! Oracle and Oracle partners will demonstrate solutions that increase productivity, reduce costs and ensure compliance for business processes such as accounts payable, human resource onboarding, marketing campaigns, sales management, large scale diagrams for facilities and manufacturing, case management, and others Oracle products including Oracle Universal Content Management, Oracle Imaging and Process Management, Oracle Universal Records Management, Oracle WebCenter, Oracle AutoVue, and Oracle Secure Enterprise Search will be demonstrated in the booth. Oracle will host a private event at The Field House Sports Bar - see your Oracle representative for more details Oracle customers can meet in private meeting rooms with their Oracle representatives Key Sessions Besides the opening morning keynote panel, Oracle will have a number of other sessions at the conference. Oracle Content Management will be featured in the session G08 - A Passage to Improving Healthcare: Enhancing EMR with Electronic Records Wednesday April 21st 2:25PM-3:10PM Kristina Parma of Oracle partner ImageSource will deliver this session, along with Pam Doyle of Fujitsu and Nancy Gladish of Swedish Medical Center. Kristina will also be in the Oracle booth to talk about this solution. On Tuesday April 20th at 4:05 PM Ajay Gandhi of Oracle will deliver a session entitled Harnessing SharePoint Content for Enterprise Processes in PeopleSoft, Siebel, E-Business Suite and JD Edwards Tuesday April 20th 1:15PM-1:45PM - Bringing Content Management to Your AP, HR, Sales and Marketing Processes - Application Showcase Theater (on the AIIM Expo Floor - Booth 1549 Wednesday April 21st 12:30PM-1:00PM - Embed and Edit Content Anywhere - Application Showcase Theater (on the AIIM Expo Floor - Booth 1549 For more information, see the AIIM Expo page on the Oracle website.

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Good Scoop: The PeopleSoft/IBM Backstory

- by Brian Dayton

Sometimes you're searching for something online and you find an unrelated, bonus nugget. Last week I stumbled across an interesting blog post from Chris Heller of a PeopleSoft consulting shop in San Ramon, CA called Grey Sparling. I don't know these guys. But Chris, who apparently used to work on the PeopleTools team, wrote a great article on a pre-acquisition, would-be deal between IBM and PeopleSoft that would have standardized PeopleSoft on IBM technology. The behind-the-scenes perspective is interesting. His commentary on the challenges that the company and PeopleSoft customers would have encountered if the deal had gone through was also interesting: · "No common ownership. It's hard enough to get large groups of people to work together when they work for the same company, but with two separate companies it is much, much harder. Even within Oracle, progress on Fusion applications was slow until Thomas Kurian took over Fusion applications in addition to Fusion middleware." · "No customer buy-in. PeopleSoft customers weren't asking for a conversion to WebSphere, so the fact that doing that could have helped PeopleSoft stay independent wouldn't have meant much to them, especially since the cost of moving to whatever a "PeopleSoft built on WebSphere" would have been significant." · "No executive buy-in. This is related to the previous point, but it's worth calling out separately. If Oracle had walked away and the deal with IBM had gone through, and PeopleSoft customers got put through the wringer as part of WebSphere move, all of the PeopleSoft project teams would be put in the awkward position of explaining to their management why these additional costs and headaches were happening. Essentially they would need to "sell" the partnership internally to their own management team. That's not a fun conversation to have." I'm not surprised that something like this was in the works. But I did find the inside scoop and Heller's perspective on the challenges particularly interesting. Especially the advantages of aligning development of applications and infrastructure development under one roof. Here's a link to the whole blog entry.

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Sun Fire X4800 M2 Delivers World Record TPC-C for x86 Systems

- by Brian

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server equipped with eight 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 chips obtained a result of 5,055,888 tpmC on the TPC-C benchmark. This result is a world record for x86 servers. Oracle demonstrated this world record database performance running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivered a new x86 TPC-C world record of 5,055,888 tpmC with a price performance of $0.89/tpmC using Oracle Database 11g Release 2. This configuration is available 06/26/12. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivers 3.0x times better performance than the next 8-processor result, an IBM System p 570 equipped with POWER6 processors. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 3.1x times better price/performance than the 8-processor 4.7GHz POWER6 IBM System p 570. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 1.6x times better performance than the 4-processor IBM x3850 X5 system equipped with Intel Xeon processors. This is the first TPC-C result on any system using eight Intel Xeon Processor E7-8800 Series chips. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server is the first x86 system to get over 5 million tpmC. The Oracle solution utilized Oracle Linux operating system and Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 2 with Partitioning to produce the x86 world record TPC-C benchmark performance. Performance Landscape Select TPC-C results (sorted by tpmC, bigger is better) System p/c/t tpmC Price/tpmC Avail Database MemorySize Sun Fire X4800 M2 8/80/160 5,055,888 0.89 USD 6/26/2012 Oracle 11g R2 4 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/40/80 3,014,684 0.59 USD 7/11/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 3 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/32/64 2,308,099 0.60 USD 5/20/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 1.5 TB IBM System p 570 8/16/32 1,616,162 3.54 USD 11/21/2007 DB2 9.0 2 TB p/c/t - processors, cores, threads Avail - availability date Oracle and IBM TPC-C Response times System tpmC Response Time (sec) New Order 90th% Response Time (sec) New Order Average Sun Fire X4800 M2 5,055,888 0.210 0.166 IBM x3850 X5 3,014,684 0.500 0.272 Ratios - Oracle Better 1.6x 1.4x 1.3x Oracle uses average new order response time for comparison between Oracle and IBM. Graphs of Oracle's and IBM's response times for New-Order can be found in the full disclosure reports on TPC's website TPC-C Official Result Page. Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: Server Sun Fire X4800 M2 server 8 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 4 TB memory 8 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS internal disks 8 x Dual port 8 Gbs FC HBA Data Storage 10 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 10 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array storage (1.92 TB each) 1 x Brocade 5300 switches Redo Storage 2 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 11 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks Clients 8 x Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers, each with 2 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processors 48 GB memory 2 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS disks Software Configuration: Oracle Linux (Sun Fire 4800 M2) Oracle Solaris 11 Express (COMSTAR for Sun Fire X4270 M2) Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 (Sun Fire X4170 M2) Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning Oracle iPlanet Web Server 7.0 U5 Tuxedo CFS-R Tier 1 Results: System: Sun Fire X4800 M2 tpmC: 5,055,888 Price/tpmC: 0.89 USD Available: 6/26/2012 Database: Oracle Database 11g Cluster: no New Order Average Response: 0.166 seconds Benchmark Description TPC-C is an OLTP system benchmark. It simulates a complete environment where a population of terminal operators executes transactions against a database. The benchmark is centered around the principal activities (transactions) of an order-entry environment. These transactions include entering and delivering orders, recording payments, checking the status of orders, and monitoring the level of stock at the warehouses. Key Points and Best Practices Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning scales easily to this high level of performance. COMSTAR (Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target) is the software framework that enables an Oracle Solaris host to serve as a SCSI Target platform. COMSTAR uses a modular approach to break the huge task of handling all the different pieces in a SCSI target subsystem into independent functional modules which are glued together by the SCSI Target Mode Framework (STMF). The modules implementing functionality at SCSI level (disk, tape, medium changer etc.) are not required to know about the underlying transport. And the modules implementing the transport protocol (FC, iSCSI, etc.) are not aware of the SCSI-level functionality of the packets they are transporting. The framework hides the details of allocation providing execution context and cleanup of SCSI commands and associated resources and simplifies the task of writing the SCSI or transport modules. Oracle iPlanet Web Server middleware is used for the client tier of the benchmark. Each web server instance supports more than a quarter-million users while satisfying the response time requirement from the TPC-C benchmark. See Also Oracle Press Release -- Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Executive Summary tpc.org Complete Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Full Disclosure Report tpc.org Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page Ideas International Benchmark Page Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Linux oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement TPC Benchmark C, tpmC, and TPC-C are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Sun Fire X4800 M2 (8/80/160) with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning, 5,055,888 tpmC, $0.89 USD/tpmC, available 6/26/2012. IBM x3850 X5 (4/40/80) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 3,014,684 tpmC, $0.59 USD/tpmC, available 7/11/2011. IBM x3850 X5 (4/32/64) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 2,308,099 tpmC, $0.60 USD/tpmC, available 5/20/2011. IBM System p 570 (8/16/32) with DB2 9.0, 1,616,162 tpmC, $3.54 USD/tpmC, available 11/21/2007. Source: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc, results as of 7/15/2011.

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