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• Random walk- Brownian Motion

  - by Sam

  I've been assigned the project of creating a simple console app. that models brownian motion in a 2D plane. I wasn't given much information on how to do so (and I'm hoping that it's a pretty popular assignment so that I could get some insight) just that it relies on random number generation. I researched brownian motion for a little bit and saw some formulas that looked complicated, but by the description is just seems to have to move randomly within a certain number interval. Can anyone clarify? Am I to create a program that continually creates a random number in an interval and then modify the particles "x" and "y" coordinate or is there more to it? Thanks for any help.

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• How to mimic an excel spreadsheet on a website in vb.net?

  - by user1439659

  I am building a website to capture data. I have many spreadsheets that are used for data entry or capture. Now I want to mimic these complex spreadsheets on the web forms but I am unsure of the correct control to use. Data entry must be allowed and live calculations also need to be made similar to formulas on normal excel spreadsheets. Later on the data must be captured into an SQL table. What would be the best control to use or method to mimic that functionality, albeit that the spreadsheet component is no longer available in visual studio 2010. Is it a data grid? Thanks

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• How to make large List & Label template?

  - by codymanix

  We want to have a form which contains lots of fields one over another. All of them are passed as parameters to the form. There are many condition formulas which determine whether one element is shown or not. Depending on how many fields are shown the result will get a different number of pages. The problem is, that the designer will only allow us to design on on single page with a fixed height. But we need more space to place fields there, because they are too many of them. Is there a way to enlarge the designer working area? Sure, a possible workaround is to choose a large paper format when in dessiger which will enlarge the working area and then reset it to A4 (Standard paper format), but even this will not be enough for us in some cases. Does nobody know an answer?

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• I'm looking for a blend mode that gives 'realistic' paint colors. (Subtractive)

  - by almosnow

  I've been looking for a blend mode to (well ...) blend two RGB pixels in order to build colors in the samw way that a painter builds them (i.e: subtractive). Here are quick examples of the type of results that I'm expecting: CYAN + MAGENTA = BLUE CYAN + YELLOW = GREEN MAGENTA + YELLOW = RED RED + YELLOW = ORANGE RED + BLUE = PURPLE YELLOW + BLUE = GREEN I'm looking for a formula, like: dest_red = first_red + second_red; dest_green = first_green + second_green; dest_blue = first_blue + second_blue; I've tried with the commonly used 'multiply' formula but it doesn't work; I've tried with custom made formulas but I'm still not able to 'crack' how it should work. And I know already a lot of color theory so please refrain from answers like: Check this link: http://the_difference_betweeen_additive_and_subtractive_lightning.html

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• How to shoot a triangle out of an asteroid which floats all of the way up to the screen?

  - by Holland

  I currently have an asteroid texture loaded as my "test player" for the game I'm writing. What I'm trying to figure out how to do is get a triangle to shoot from the center of the asteroid, and keep going until it hits the top of the screen. What happens in my case (as you'll see from the code I've posted), is that the triangle will show, however it will either be a long line, or it will just be a single triangle which stays in the same location as the asteroid moving around (that disappears when I stop pressing the space bar), or it simply won't appear at all. I've tried many different methods, but I could use a formula here. All I'm trying to do is write a space invaders clone for my final in C#. I know how to code fairly well, my formulas just need work is all. So far, this is what I have: Main Logic Code protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(ClearOptions.Target, Color.Black, 1, 1); mAsteroid.Draw(mSpriteBatch); if (mIsFired) { mPositions.Add(mAsteroid.LastPosition); mRay.Fire(mPositions); mIsFired = false; mRay.Bullets.Clear(); mPositions.Clear(); } base.Draw(gameTime); } Draw Code public void Draw() { VertexPositionColor[] vertices = new VertexPositionColor[3]; int stopDrawing = mGraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / mGraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height; for (int i = 0; i < mRayPos.Length(); ++i) { vertices[0].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X, mRayPos.Y + 5f, 10); vertices[0].Color = Color.Blue; vertices[1].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X - 5f, mRayPos.Y - 5f, 10); vertices[1].Color = Color.White; vertices[2].Position = new Vector3(mRayPos.X + 5f, mRayPos.Y - 5f, 10); vertices[2].Color = Color.Red; mShader.CurrentTechnique.Passes[0].Apply(); mGraphicsDevice.DrawUserPrimitives<VertexPositionColor>(PrimitiveType.TriangleStrip, vertices, 0, 1); mRayPos += new Vector2(0, 1f); mGraphicsDevice.ReferenceStencil = 1; } }

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• Ball bouncing at a certain angle and efficiency computations

  - by X Y

  I would like to make a pong game with a small twist (for now). Every time the ball bounces off one of the paddles i want it to be under a certain angle (between a min and a max). I simply can't wrap my head around how to actually do it (i have some thoughts and such but i simply cannot implement them properly - i feel i'm overcomplicating things). Here's an image with a small explanation . One other problem would be that the conditions for bouncing have to be different for every edge. For example, in the picture, on the two small horizontal edges i do not want a perfectly vertical bounce when in the middle of the edge but rather a constant angle (pi/4 maybe) in either direction depending on the collision point (before the middle of the edge, or after). All of my collisions are done with the Separating Axes Theorem (and seem to work fine). I'm looking for something efficient because i want to add a lot of things later on (maybe polygons with many edges and such). So i need to keep to a minimum the amount of checking done every frame. The collision algorithm begins testing whenever the bounding boxes of the paddle and the ball intersect. Is there something better to test for possible collisions every frame? (more efficient in the long run,with many more objects etc, not necessarily easy to code). I'm going to post the code for my game: Paddle Class public class Paddle : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.DrawableGameComponent { #region Private Members private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private ContentManager contentManager; private bool keybEnabled; private bool isLeftPaddle; private Texture2D paddleSprite; private Vector2 paddlePosition; private float paddleSpeedY; private Vector2 paddleScale = new Vector2(1f, 1f); private const float DEFAULT_Y_SPEED = 150; private Vector2[] Normals2Edges; private Vector2[] Vertices = new Vector2[4]; private List<Vector2> lst = new List<Vector2>(); private Vector2 Edge; #endregion #region Properties public float Speed { get {return paddleSpeedY; } set { paddleSpeedY = value; } } public Vector2[] Normal2EdgesVector { get { NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); return Normals2Edges; } } public Vector2[] VertexVector { get { return Vertices; } } public Vector2 Scale { get { return paddleScale; } set { paddleScale = value; NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); } } public float X { get { return paddlePosition.X; } set { paddlePosition.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return paddlePosition.Y; } set { paddlePosition.Y = value; } } public float Width { get { return (Scale.X == 1f ? (float)paddleSprite.Width : paddleSprite.Width * Scale.X); } } public float Height { get { return ( Scale.Y==1f ? (float)paddleSprite.Height : paddleSprite.Height*Scale.Y ); } } public Texture2D GetSprite { get { return paddleSprite; } } public Rectangle Boundary { get { return new Rectangle((int)paddlePosition.X, (int)paddlePosition.Y, (int)this.Width, (int)this.Height); } } public bool KeyboardEnabled { get { return keybEnabled; } } #endregion private void NormalsToEdges(bool isLeftPaddle) { Normals2Edges = null; Edge = Vector2.Zero; lst.Clear(); for (int i = 0; i < Vertices.Length; i++) { Edge = Vertices[i + 1 == Vertices.Length ? 0 : i + 1] - Vertices[i]; if (Edge != Vector2.Zero) { Edge.Normalize(); //outer normal to edge !! (origin in top-left) lst.Add(new Vector2(Edge.Y, -Edge.X)); } } Normals2Edges = lst.ToArray(); } public float[] ProjectPaddle(Vector2 axis) { if (Vertices.Length == 0 || axis == Vector2.Zero) return (new float[2] { 0, 0 }); float min, max; min = Vector2.Dot(axis, Vertices[0]); max = min; for (int i = 1; i < Vertices.Length; i++) { float p = Vector2.Dot(axis, Vertices[i]); if (p < min) min = p; else if (p > max) max = p; } return (new float[2] { min, max }); } public Paddle(Game game, bool isLeftPaddle, bool enableKeyboard = true) : base(game) { contentManager = new ContentManager(game.Services); keybEnabled = enableKeyboard; this.isLeftPaddle = isLeftPaddle; } public void setPosition(Vector2 newPos) { X = newPos.X; Y = newPos.Y; } public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); this.Speed = DEFAULT_Y_SPEED; X = 0; Y = 0; NormalsToEdges(this.isLeftPaddle); } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); paddleSprite = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"Content\pongBar"); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { //vertices array Vertices[0] = this.paddlePosition; Vertices[1] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(this.Width, 0); Vertices[2] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(this.Width, this.Height); Vertices[3] = this.paddlePosition + new Vector2(0, this.Height); // Move paddle, but don't allow movement off the screen if (KeyboardEnabled) { float moveDistance = Speed * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; KeyboardState newKeyState = Keyboard.GetState(); if (newKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down) && Y + paddleSprite.Height + moveDistance <= Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { Y += moveDistance; } else if (newKeyState.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up) && Y - moveDistance >= 0) { Y -= moveDistance; } } else { if (this.Y + this.Height > this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height) { this.Y = this.Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - this.Height - 1; } } base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.Texture,null); spriteBatch.Draw(paddleSprite, paddlePosition, null, Color.White, 0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } Ball Class public class Ball : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.DrawableGameComponent { #region Private Members private SpriteBatch spriteBatch; private ContentManager contentManager; private const float DEFAULT_SPEED = 50; private float speedIncrement = 0; private Vector2 ballScale = new Vector2(1f, 1f); private const float INCREASE_SPEED = 50; private Texture2D ballSprite; //initial texture private Vector2 ballPosition; //position private Vector2 centerOfBall; //center coords private Vector2 ballSpeed = new Vector2(DEFAULT_SPEED, DEFAULT_SPEED); //speed #endregion #region Properties public float DEFAULTSPEED { get { return DEFAULT_SPEED; } } public Vector2 ballCenter { get { return centerOfBall; } } public Vector2 Scale { get { return ballScale; } set { ballScale = value; } } public float SpeedX { get { return ballSpeed.X; } set { ballSpeed.X = value; } } public float SpeedY { get { return ballSpeed.Y; } set { ballSpeed.Y = value; } } public float X { get { return ballPosition.X; } set { ballPosition.X = value; } } public float Y { get { return ballPosition.Y; } set { ballPosition.Y = value; } } public Texture2D GetSprite { get { return ballSprite; } } public float Width { get { return (Scale.X == 1f ? (float)ballSprite.Width : ballSprite.Width * Scale.X); } } public float Height { get { return (Scale.Y == 1f ? (float)ballSprite.Height : ballSprite.Height * Scale.Y); } } public float SpeedIncreaseIncrement { get { return speedIncrement; } set { speedIncrement = value; } } public Rectangle Boundary { get { return new Rectangle((int)ballPosition.X, (int)ballPosition.Y, (int)this.Width, (int)this.Height); } } #endregion public Ball(Game game) : base(game) { contentManager = new ContentManager(game.Services); } public void Reset() { ballSpeed.X = DEFAULT_SPEED; ballSpeed.Y = DEFAULT_SPEED; ballPosition.X = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2 - ballSprite.Width / 2; ballPosition.Y = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - ballSprite.Height / 2; } public void SpeedUp() { if (ballSpeed.Y < 0) ballSpeed.Y -= (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); else ballSpeed.Y += (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); if (ballSpeed.X < 0) ballSpeed.X -= (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); else ballSpeed.X += (INCREASE_SPEED + speedIncrement); } public float[] ProjectBall(Vector2 axis) { if (axis == Vector2.Zero) return (new float[2] { 0, 0 }); float min, max; min = Vector2.Dot(axis, this.ballCenter) - this.Width/2; //center - radius max = min + this.Width; //center + radius return (new float[2] { min, max }); } public void ChangeHorzDirection() { ballSpeed.X *= -1; } public void ChangeVertDirection() { ballSpeed.Y *= -1; } public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); ballPosition.X = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2 - ballSprite.Width / 2; ballPosition.Y = Game.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - ballSprite.Height / 2; } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); ballSprite = contentManager.Load<Texture2D>(@"Content\ball"); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { if (this.Y < 1 || this.Y > GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height - this.Height - 1) this.ChangeVertDirection(); centerOfBall = new Vector2(ballPosition.X + this.Width / 2, ballPosition.Y + this.Height / 2); base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(ballSprite, ballPosition, null, Color.White, 0f, Vector2.Zero, Scale, SpriteEffects.None, 0); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } Main game class public class gameStart : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; public gameStart() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; this.Window.Title = "Pong game"; } protected override void Initialize() { ball = new Ball(this); paddleLeft = new Paddle(this,true,false); paddleRight = new Paddle(this,false,true); Components.Add(ball); Components.Add(paddleLeft); Components.Add(paddleRight); this.Window.AllowUserResizing = false; this.IsMouseVisible = true; this.IsFixedTimeStep = false; this.isColliding = false; base.Initialize(); } #region MyPrivateStuff private Ball ball; private Paddle paddleLeft, paddleRight; private int[] bit = { -1, 1 }; private Random rnd = new Random(); private int updates = 0; enum nrPaddle { None, Left, Right }; private nrPaddle PongBar = nrPaddle.None; private ArrayList Axes = new ArrayList(); private Vector2 MTV; //minimum translation vector private bool isColliding; private float overlap; //smallest distance after projections private Vector2 overlapAxis; //axis of overlap #endregion protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); paddleLeft.setPosition(new Vector2(0, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - paddleLeft.Height / 2)); paddleRight.setPosition(new Vector2(this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width - paddleRight.Width, this.GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2 - paddleRight.Height / 2)); paddleLeft.Scale = new Vector2(1f, 2f); //scale left paddle } private bool ShapesIntersect(Paddle paddle, Ball ball) { overlap = 1000000f; //large value overlapAxis = Vector2.Zero; MTV = Vector2.Zero; foreach (Vector2 ax in Axes) { float[] pad = paddle.ProjectPaddle(ax); //pad0 = min, pad1 = max float[] circle = ball.ProjectBall(ax); //circle0 = min, circle1 = max if (pad[1] <= circle[0] || circle[1] <= pad[0]) { return false; } if (pad[1] - circle[0] < circle[1] - pad[0]) { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(-pad[1] + circle[0])) { overlap = -pad[1] + circle[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } else { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { overlap = circle[1] - pad[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } } if (overlapAxis != Vector2.Zero) { MTV = overlapAxis * overlap; } return true; } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { updates += 1; float ftime = 5 * (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; if (updates == 1) { isColliding = false; int Xrnd = bit[Convert.ToInt32(rnd.Next(0, 2))]; int Yrnd = bit[Convert.ToInt32(rnd.Next(0, 2))]; ball.SpeedX = Xrnd * ball.SpeedX; ball.SpeedY = Yrnd * ball.SpeedY; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; } else { updates = 100; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; } //autorun :) paddleLeft.Y = ball.Y; //collision detection PongBar = nrPaddle.None; if (ball.Boundary.Intersects(paddleLeft.Boundary)) { PongBar = nrPaddle.Left; if (!isColliding) { Axes.Clear(); Axes.AddRange(paddleLeft.Normal2EdgesVector); //axis from nearest vertex to ball's center Axes.Add(FORMULAS.NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(paddleLeft.VertexVector, ball.ballCenter)); } } else if (ball.Boundary.Intersects(paddleRight.Boundary)) { PongBar = nrPaddle.Right; if (!isColliding) { Axes.Clear(); Axes.AddRange(paddleRight.Normal2EdgesVector); //axis from nearest vertex to ball's center Axes.Add(FORMULAS.NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(paddleRight.VertexVector, ball.ballCenter)); } } if (PongBar != nrPaddle.None && !isColliding) switch (PongBar) { case nrPaddle.Left: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleLeft, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; ball.ChangeHorzDirection(); } break; case nrPaddle.Right: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; ball.ChangeHorzDirection(); } break; default: break; } if (!ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball) && !ShapesIntersect(paddleLeft, ball)) isColliding = false; ball.X += ftime * ball.SpeedX; ball.Y += ftime * ball.SpeedY; //check ball movement if (ball.X > paddleRight.X + paddleRight.Width + 2) { //IncreaseScore(Left); ball.Reset(); updates = 0; return; } else if (ball.X < paddleLeft.X - 2) { //IncreaseScore(Right); ball.Reset(); updates = 0; return; } base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Aquamarine); spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront, BlendState.AlphaBlend); spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } And one method i've used: public static Vector2 NormAxisFromCircle2ClosestVertex(Vector2[] vertices, Vector2 circle) { Vector2 temp = Vector2.Zero; if (vertices.Length > 0) { float dist = (circle.X - vertices[0].X) * (circle.X - vertices[0].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[0].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[0].Y); for (int i = 1; i < vertices.Length;i++) { if (dist > (circle.X - vertices[i].X) * (circle.X - vertices[i].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y)) { temp = vertices[i]; //memorize the closest vertex dist = (circle.X - vertices[i].X) * (circle.X - vertices[i].X) + (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y) * (circle.Y - vertices[i].Y); } } temp = circle - temp; temp.Normalize(); } return temp; } Thanks in advance for any tips on the 4 issues. EDIT1: Something isn't working properly. The collision axis doesn't come out right and the interpolation also seems to have no effect. I've changed the code a bit: private bool ShapesIntersect(Paddle paddle, Ball ball) { overlap = 1000000f; //large value overlapAxis = Vector2.Zero; MTV = Vector2.Zero; foreach (Vector2 ax in Axes) { float[] pad = paddle.ProjectPaddle(ax); //pad0 = min, pad1 = max float[] circle = ball.ProjectBall(ax); //circle0 = min, circle1 = max if (pad[1] < circle[0] || circle[1] < pad[0]) { return false; } if (Math.Abs(pad[1] - circle[0]) < Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(-pad[1] + circle[0])) { overlap = -pad[1] + circle[0]; overlapAxis = ax * (-1); } //to get the proper axis } else { if (Math.Abs(overlap) > Math.Abs(circle[1] - pad[0])) { overlap = circle[1] - pad[0]; overlapAxis = ax; } } } if (overlapAxis != Vector2.Zero) { MTV = overlapAxis * Math.Abs(overlap); } return true; } And part of the Update method: if (ShapesIntersect(paddleRight, ball)) { isColliding = true; if (MTV != Vector2.Zero) { ball.X += MTV.X; ball.Y += MTV.Y; } //test if (overlapAxis.X == 0) //collision with horizontal edge { } else if (overlapAxis.Y == 0) //collision with vertical edge { float factor = Math.Abs(ball.ballCenter.Y - paddleRight.Y) / paddleRight.Height; if (factor > 1) factor = 1f; if (overlapAxis.X < 0) //left edge? ball.Speed = ball.DEFAULTSPEED * Vector2.Normalize(Vector2.Reflect(ball.Speed, (Vector2.Lerp(new Vector2(-1, -3), new Vector2(-1, 3), factor)))); else //right edge? ball.Speed = ball.DEFAULTSPEED * Vector2.Normalize(Vector2.Reflect(ball.Speed, (Vector2.Lerp(new Vector2(1, -3), new Vector2(1, 3), factor)))); } else //vertex collision??? { ball.Speed = -ball.Speed; } } What seems to happen is that "overlapAxis" doesn't always return the right one. So instead of (-1,0) i get the (1,0) (this happened even before i multiplied with -1 there). Sometimes there isn't even a collision registered even though the ball passes through the paddle... The interpolation also seems to have no effect as the angles barely change (or the overlapAxis is almost never (-1,0) or (1,0) but something like (0.9783473, 0.02743843)... ). What am i missing here? :(

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• 2D camera perspective projection from 3D coordinates -- HOW?

  - by Jack

  I am developing a camera for a 2D game with a top-down view that has depth. It's almost a 3D camera. Basically, every object has a Z even though it is in 2D, and similarly to parallax layers their position, scale and rotation speed vary based on their Z. I guess this would be a perspective projection. But I am having trouble converting the objects' 3D coordinates into the 2D space of the screen so that everything has correct perspective and scale. I never learned matrices though I did dig the topic a bit today. I tried without using matrices thanks to this article but every attempt gave awkward results. I'm using ActionScript 3 and Flash 11+ (Starling), where the screen coordinates work like this: Left-handed coordinates system illustration I can explain further what I did if you want to help me sort out what's wrong, or you can directly tell me how you would do it properly. In case you prefer the former, read on. These are images showing the formulas I used: upload.wikimedia.org/math/1/c/8/1c89722619b756d05adb4ea38ee6f62b.png upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/4/0/d4069770c68cb8f1aa4b5cfc57e81bc3.png (Sorry new users can't post images, but both are from the wikipedia article linked above, section "Perspective projection". That's where you'll find what all variables mean, too) The long formula is greatly simplified because I believe a normal top-down 2D camera has no X/Y/Z rotation values (correct ?). Then it becomes d = a - c. Still, I can't get it to work. Maybe you could explain what numbers I should put in a(xyz), c(xyz), theta(xyz), and particularly, e(xyz) ? I don't quite get how e is different than c in my case. c.z is also an issue to me. If the Z of the camera's target object is 0, should the camera's Z be something like -600 ? ( = focal length of 600) Whatever I do, it's wrong. I only got it to work when I used arbitrary calculations that "looked" right, like most cameras with parallax layers seem to do, but that's fake! ;) If I want objects to travel between Z layers I might as well do it right. :) Thanks a lot for your help!

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• How do I know if I am using Scrum methodologies?

  - by Jake

  When I first started at my current job, my purpose was to rewrite a massive excel-VBA workbook-application to C# Winforms because it was thought that the new C# app will fix all existing problems and have all the new features for a perfect world. If it were a direct port, in theory it would be easy as i just need to go through all the formulas, conditional formatting, validations, VBA etc. to understand it. However, that was not the case. Many of the new features are tightly dependant on business logic which I am unfamiliar with. As a solo programmer, the first year was spent solely on deciphering the excel workbook and writing the C# app. In theory, I had the business people to "help" me specify requirements, how GUI looks and work, and testing of the app etc; but in practice it is like a contant tsunami of feature creep. At the beginning of the second year I managed to convince the management that this is not going anywhere. I made them start from scratch with the excel-VBA. I have this "issue log" saved on the network, each time they found something they didn't like about the excel-VBA app, they will write it in there. I check the log daily and consolidate issues (in my mind) mainly into 2 groups: (1) requires massive change. (2) can be fixed in current version. For massive change issues, I make a copy of the latest excel-VBA and give it a new version number, then work on it whenever I can. For current version fixes, I make the changes in a few days to a week, and then immediately release it. I also ensure I update the same change in any in-progress massive change future versions. This has gone on for about 4 months and I feel it works great. I made many releases and solved many real issues, also understood the business logic more and more. However, my boss (non-IT trained) thinks what I am doing are just adhoc changes and that i am not looking at the "bigger picture". I am struggling to convince my boss that this works. So I hope to formalise my approach and maybe borrow a buzzword to confuse him. Incidentally, I read about Agile and SCRUM, about backlog and sprints. But it's all very vague to me still. QUESTION (finally): I want to tell him that this is SCRUM! But I want to hold my breath first and ask whether my current approach is considered SCRUM or SCRUM-like? How can I make it more SCRUM-like? Note that I have only myself, there's no project leader or teams.

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• Can Anything be Done to Make Improv (a 1993 Win 3.1 App) handle larger Files?

  - by user75185

  My very favorite spradsheet is Improv, a 1993 Windows 3.1 application. It still puts Excel to shame for building spreadsheets and writing formulas. The only problem is because Improv was written when 1 Meg of RAM was state of the art, it becomes unstable when working with larger spreadsheets and often crashes and/or corrupts the data file. I am working on a project that greatly exceeds Improv's limits. Although it will ultimately require more robust databasing capability, I could save a lot of critical time if I could delay that headache and continue working in Improv for now. To that end, I moved to the only product I could find that comes close, Quantrix, which is nothing more than Improv updated to handle large spreadsheets and utilize today's technologies. The problems with Quantrix are its speed (significantly slower than Improv) and its $1000 price (which I cannot afford). I have already had 3 15 day extensions after the initial 30 day trial, so my time to use Quantrix as a bridge is at its end. Searches for Improv over the years have gotten me nowhere and, not surprisingly after reading some posts on this site, I got nothing for the money and time invested to find a programmer to write code to "fix" this problem. Improv is freely available as "abandonware" at http://vetusware.com/download/LotusImprov2.1/?id=5797 , and the best background info can be found on Wikipedia and at "Moose's Greatest Software Products of All Time - Lotus Improv" http://moosevalley.fhost.com.au/mooses_review_page_lotus_improv.html It is critically urgent for me to focus on analyzing the data asap. Working in a stable Improv would, without question, be the fastest route. To that end, I am looking for answers to the following questions and anything else that might be helpful: 1) Is it lawful to hire someone to fix Improv for my own use? If so, 2) About how much should it cost? 3) About how long should it take? 4) What skills should I be looking for &/or how should a post be worded? 5) Is there a niche site where it should it be posted? 6) What questions can I ask to quickly screen candidates? Since I am not a programmer, I need questions the answers to which leave no room to confuse me, whether intentional or not. For example, what tools or players should someone with an acceptable competency level have knowledge of?

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• Find a non-case-sensitive text string within a range of cells

  - by Iszi

  I've got a bit of a problem to solve in Excel, and I'm not quite sure how to go about doing it. I've done a few searches online, and haven't really found any formulas that seem to be useful. Here's the situation (simplified just a bit, for the purpose of this question): I have data in columns A-E. I need to match data in the cells in A and B, with data in C-E, and return TRUE or FALSE to column F. Return TRUE if: - The string in A is found within any string in C-E. OR - The string in B is found within any string in C-E. Otherwise, return FALSE. The strings must be exact matches for whole or partial strings within the range, but the matching function must be case-insensitive. I've taken a screenshot of an example sheet for reference. I'm fairly sure I'll need to use IF or on the outermost layer of the formula, probably followed by OR. Then, for the arguments to OR, I'm expecting there will be some use of IFERROR involved. But what I'm at a loss for is the function I could most efficiently use to handle the text string searches. VLOOKUP is very limited in this regard, I think. It may be workable to do whole-string against whole-string comparisons, but I'm fairly certain it won't return accurate results for partial string matches. FIND and SEARCH appear limited to only single-target searches, and are also case-sensitive. I suppose I could use UPPER or LOWER to force case-insensitivity in the search, but I still need something that can do accurate partial matching and search a specified range of cells. Is there any function, or combination of functions, that could work here? Ideally, I want to do this with a straight Excel formula. I'm not at all familiar with VBScript or similar tools, nor do I have time to learn it for this project.

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• How flexible is the 'indirect' function?

  - by Chuck

  My curiosity pushes me to ask this question. If I were to have a series of functions that referenced a different column in a worksheet but all ended on the same row of data is there a way to point the 'row' part of a cell reference to a blank cell and use it has a variable to show the results of the functions up to a desired row simultaneously? Example: =Average('worksheet 1'.$A$1:'worksheet 1'.$A100) =Max('worksheet 1'.$B$1:'worksheet 1'.$B100) =Min('worksheet 1'.$C$1:'worksheet 1'.$C100) =Sum('worksheet 1'.$D$1:'worksheet 1'.$D100) Pseudo formulas... =Average('worksheet 1'.$A$1:'worksheet 1'.$A*('worksheet 2'.$A$1)*) =Max('worksheet 1'.$B$1:'worksheet 1'.$B*('worksheet 2'.$A$1)*) =Min('worksheet 1'.$C$1:'worksheet 1'.$C*('worksheet 2'.$A$1)*) =Sum('worksheet 1'.$D$1:'worksheet 1'.$D*('worksheet 2'.$A$1)*) Where 'worksheet 2'.$A$1 would only contain a number corresponding to a row in 'worksheet 1'. After stumbling upon and playing with the indirect() function I have only been able to replace the entire cell reference (Column and Row) with any success. The formula so far =SUM('worksheet 1'.C3:INDIRECT(A1)) Where A1 is on 'worksheet 2' and contains a full cell reference pointing to 'worksheet 1'. Any pointers?

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• How to calculate unweighted averages in Excel PivotTable?

  - by yonatron

  I often make PivotTables in which each row contains a number of per-person average measures. I then want to look at the unweighted column average for each measure, and usually make some kind of chart from these. Because my individual cells are often averaged from different numbers of data points, the Grand Total row ends up being a weighted average, which I’m not interested in. So I usually make my own average row a few rows above the table to use for my charts. That’s not too much work, but there’s another problem. I often add a few more people’s worth of data to the PivotTables’ source, then refresh the tables. This means my average row needs to be updated to encompass more rows from the PivotTable. Not a huge deal with one table, but when I have lots of them across lots of sheets, I have to do find/replace on a whole bunch of formulas. So: is there a way to automatically get unweighted column averages in a PivotTable, such that when the table is refreshed, the averages don’t change locations and encompass the newly added (or removed) data Thanks

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• Turn Excel spreadsheet into a formula

  - by ?????? ??????????

  I have an Excel spreadsheet that has a complex computation that is not trivial to turn into a macro or a single-cell formula. The spreadsheet has a about 10 different inputs (values a human enters in different cells of the spreadsheet) and then it outputs 5 independent calculations (in different 5 cells) based on that input. There calculation is using some pre-entered data in the spreadsheet (about 100 different constants) and doing some look-ups on them. Now I would like to use this whole spreadsheet as a formula on a different spreadsheet to calculate a set of input values and produce the corresponding set of output values. Imagine this as creating different table with 10 columns for the input variables and 5 columns for the outputs, then copying each input into the other spreadsheet and copying back the output in the results table. For instance: - A1, A2, A3,... A10 are cells where someone enters values - through a series of calculations B1, B2, B3, B4 and B5 are updated with some formulas Can I use the whole series of calculations from A1..A10 into B1..B5 without creating one massive huge formula or a VBA macro? I want to have a set of input values in 100 rows from A100, B100, C100,... J100 onward. Then do some Excel magic that will: 1. copy the values from A100...J100 into A1 to A10 2. wait for the result to appear in B1 to B5 3. copy the values from B1 to B5 into K100 to O100 4. repeat steps 1 to 3 for all rows from 100 to 150

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• How best to manage my growing data in Excel?

  - by Mike

  This isn't a question about formulas or features in Excel. I'm debating the correct/best way to manage the growing amount of data 'I have to' manage in Excel (I produce PIVOT tables/reports for my management). DATA: I record the number of publications we order: cost, date ordered, start and end of subscription, who requested it, when they ordered it, when I ordered it, will it be cancelled next year, etc, etc, etc. DILEMMA: Obviously we re-order a lot of the same publications, so depending on how I manage the data I could be duplicating all over the place. OPTION 1: So, do I use ROWs = publication name in Row 1 and all the related columns for each financial year are copied and pasted after each financial year ready for the new FY information? This will lead to me going to column ZZ. OPTION 2: Or, do I use COLUMNs = each row has only one FY information for each publication and if we re-order or cancel a publication I re-type the publication name in a row below and fill in appropriate columns? This will lead to a long list of publications down to row 10000, and potential for misspelling of repeat ordered publication names. IDEAS: What's the best way - thinking in terms of pivot table best practice, being able to sum or count easy, report formatting, etc. Any best practices much appreciated.

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• Spreadsheet application that can handle big data OS X

  - by Peter

  I've been working with Excel for quite a while for some statistical analysis that I do regularly. The size of the data that I'm working with has gotten much larger as of late, however. The layout of the databases in question is quite simple, usually just three rows which includes a UNIX timestamp, and EST value, a proprietary numeric value and finally an average of the rows that have a timestamp +/- 1000 that row's timestamp (little AVERAGEIFS() formula). That formula and the EST conversion are the only formulas in the sheet. I'm beginning to work with files with 500,000+ rows. Running the average formula down the entire row takes forever. The end result is the production of print-worthy graphs. I'm looking for either a UNIX CL utility or separate spreadsheet/database application that can handle this amount of data without melting my CPU or making me wait an hour. Is there anything out there? TL;DR: Simple excel sheet with over half a million rows is getting too slow to work with. OS X alternatives?

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• How do I count the times each number appears in columns of numbers?

  - by Andy C.

  I am sure this must be easy, but I am inexperienced. About the best way to think of my problem is to think of it as trying to sort and then count lottery numbers. To stay simple, let's do a Pick 3 game. Let's look at 10 drawings. I would split each drawn number into a separate column: DATE BALL#1 BALL#2 BALL#3 3/1 1 3 5 3/2 3 7 8 3/3 2 2 1 3/4 5 7 6 3/5 2 3 1 3/6 0 5 9 3/7 3 7 0 3/8 6 8 4 3/9 2 4 3 3/10 7 1 2 I would like to be able to build formulas into cells that would tell me how many times each number appeared overall, and how many times each number appeared in the position it occurred. Like this (using the above example): Number Overall Count Ball#1 Count Ball#2 Count Ball#3 Count 0 2 1 0 1 1 4 1 1 2 (That is, The number zero appears twice overall, and came up once as the first number drawn; zero times as the middle ball; and once as the third ball. Likewise, the number 1 was drawn four times in our 10-day period. It was the first ball once, the second ball once and the third ball twice.) And so on. All help appreciated. I have access to Excel and Microsoft Works, or of course if there is a Google Docs way to handle this All thanks for any help.

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• standard deviation on excel

  - by user270692

  so I have 3 data sets, which all came from the first data set using the excel program. all consisted of random numbers from =randbetween(0,100) starting from A2:A102 which is 100 integers. for data set b I had to enter=SUM(A2+5) press enter and drag it down to get the integers for cells B2:B102 and for C I had to do multiplication t get it. I did =PRODUCT(A2:A102*5). so everything was taken from data set A. now I did the formulas needed to do sample standard dev and mean(average) . for data set a and b the standard deviations were the same but the mean was larger in data set B of course because I added 5 to each cell in set A. my question is why wouldn't the standard deviation be the same for data set C also? if im using the info from data set A? and how do I calculate the standard deviation (sample) by hand so I can explain why the standard dev doesn't change but the mean does. I don't know what numbers to include in the formula for sample standard deviation.

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• In which order does Excel process its formulae?

  - by dwwilson66

  I've got a fairly large spreadsheet with major calculations going on, and it's starting to slow down every time a value that's part of a calculated field is modified. I'm in the process of optimizing the file, adding arrays where I can, and seeing where I can shave off a few milliseconds here and there. Let's say there's data in Columns A-H. Column H is set based on relationships between values in Columns A, B and C, which change dynamically from an outside program. Users enter the data in Column F. Formulas in D & E calculate relationships between F & H and H & D, respectively. How does Excel manage formulae in the case, for instance, where they're dependent on data further into the sheet? Will my value in H be available the first time that the formulae in D & E calculate? or, will D & E calculate based on an old value for H, because H's update hasn't happened yet? Are there any efficiencies to be gained by positioning dependencies in particular rows or columns in the speadsheet? Do positions above and left the current position get processed sooner than things below and to the right?

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• How to calculate unweighted averages in Excel PivotTable?

  - by yonatron

  I often make PivotTables in which each row contains a number of per-person average measures. I then want to look at the unweighted column average for each measure, and usually make some kind of chart from these. Because my individual cells are often averaged from different numbers of data points, the Grand Total row ends up being a weighted average, which I’m not interested in. So I usually make my own average row a few rows above the table to use for my charts. That’s not too much work, but there’s another problem. I often add a few more people’s worth of data to the PivotTables’ source, then refresh the tables. This means my average row needs to be updated to encompass more rows from the PivotTable. Not a huge deal with one table, but when I have lots of them across lots of sheets, I have to do find/replace on a whole bunch of formulas. So: is there a way to automatically get unweighted column averages in a PivotTable, such that when the table is refreshed, the averages don’t change locations and encompass the newly added (or removed) data Thanks

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• Prevent 'Run-time error '7' out of memory' error in Excel when using macro

  - by MasterJedi

  I keep getting this error whenever I run a macro in my excel file. Is there any way I can prevent this? My code is below. Debugging highlights the following line as the issue: ActiveSheet.Shapes.SelectAll My macro: Private Sub Save() Dim sh As Worksheet ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("Report").Copy 'Create new workbook with Sheets("Report"(2)) as only sheet. Set sh = ActiveWorkbook.Sheets(1) 'Set the new sheet to a variable. New workbook is now active workbook. sh.Name = sh.Range("B9") & "_" & Format(Date, "mmyyyy") 'Rename the new sheet to B9 value + date. With sh.UsedRange.Cells .Value = .Value 'eliminate all formulas .Validation.Delete 'remove all validation .FormatConditions.Delete 'remove all conditional formatting ActiveSheet.Buttons.Delete ActiveSheet.Shapes.SelectAll Selection.Delete lrow = Range("I" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row 'select rows from bottom up to last containing data in column I Rows(lrow + 1 & ":" & Rows.Count).Delete 'delete rows with no data in column I Application.ScreenUpdating = False .Range("A410:XFD1048576").Delete Shift:=xlUp 'delete all cells outwith report range Application.ScreenUpdating = True Dim counter Dim nameCount nameCount = ActiveWorkbook.Names.Count counter = nameCount Do While counter > 0 ActiveWorkbook.Names(counter).Delete counter = counter - 1 Loop 'remove named ranges from workbook End With ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs "\\Marko\Report\" & sh.Name & ".xlsx" 'Save new workbook using same name as new sheet. ActiveWorkbook.Close False 'Close the new workbook. MsgBox ("Export complete. Choose the next ADP in cell B9 and click 'Calculate'.") 'Display message box to inform user that report has been saved. End Sub Not sure how to make this more efficient or to prevent this error.

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• What's New in ASP.NET 4

  - by Navaneeth

  The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included in the upcoming release. This topic contains the following sections: ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data ASP.NET Chart Control Visual Web Developer Enhancements Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage. Extensible Output Caching Since the time that ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application. ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines. Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers. You create a custom output-cache provider as a class that derives from the OutputCacheProvider type. You can then configure the provider in the Web.config file by using the new providers subsection of the outputCache element For more information and for examples that show how to configure the output cache, see outputCache Element for caching (ASP.NET Settings Schema). For more information about the classes that support caching, see the documentation for the OutputCache and OutputCacheProvider classes. By default, in ASP.NET 4, all HTTP responses, rendered pages, and controls use the in-memory output cache. The defaultProvider attribute for ASP.NET is AspNetInternalProvider. You can change the default output-cache provider used for a Web application by specifying a different provider name for defaultProvider attribute. In addition, you can select different output-cache providers for individual control and for individual requests and programmatically specify which provider to use. For more information, see the HttpApplication.GetOutputCacheProviderName(HttpContext) method. The easiest way to choose a different output-cache provider for different Web user controls is to do so declaratively by using the new providerName attribute in a page or control directive, as shown in the following example: <%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="None" providerName="DiskCache" %> Preloading Web Applications Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file. To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic. To use the application preload manager, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <applicationPools> <add name="MyApplicationPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <sites> <site name="MySite" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PrewarmMyCache" > <!-- Additional content --> </application> </site> </sites> <!-- Additional content --> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PrewarmMyCache" type="MyNamespace.CustomInitialization, MyLibrary" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications have to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for preload, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the serviceAutoStartProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point. You create a managed preload type that has the required entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example: public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // Perform initialization. } } After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and after the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests. Permanently Redirecting a Page Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines. In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip. ASP.NET 4 adds a RedirectPermanent helper method that makes it easy to issue HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) responses, as in the following example: RedirectPermanent("/newpath/foroldcontent.aspx"); Search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects will store the new URL that is associated with the content, which eliminates the unnecessary round trip made by the browser for temporary redirects. Session State Compression By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large. ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data. You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStreamclass. The following example shows how to set this attribute. <sessionState mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=dbserver;Initial Catalog=aspnetstate" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true" /> ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following: The ability to set meta tags. More control over view state. Support for recently introduced browsers and devices. Easier ways to work with browser capabilities. Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms. More control over generated IDs. The ability to persist selected rows in data controls. More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls. Filtering support for data source controls. Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Properties Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties represent corresponding meta tags in the HTML rendered for a page, as shown in the following example: <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2' /> <meta name="description" content="Description of my page" /> </head> These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive. For more information, see Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription. Enabling View State for Individual Controls A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state. View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it. For more information, see Control.ViewStateMode. Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated. For more information, see How to: Upgrade an ASP.NET Web Application to ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities. The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list: •blackberry.browser •chrome.browser •Default.browser •firefox.browser •gateway.browser •generic.browser •ie.browser •iemobile.browser •iphone.browser •opera.browser •safari.browser A New Way to Define Browser Capabilities ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities. In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database. For more information about the new browser capabilities provider, see the What's New for ASP.NET 4 White Paper. Routing in ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in your application might look like the following example: http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12 By using routing, you can use the following URL to render the same information: http://website/products/software The second URL lets the user know what to expect and can result in significantly improved rankings in search engine results. the new features include the following: The PageRouteHandler class is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. You no longer have to write a custom route handler. The HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData properties make it easier to access information that is passed in URL parameters. The RouteUrl expression provides a simple way to create a routed URL in markup. The RouteValue expression provides a simple way to extract URL parameter values in markup. The RouteParameter class makes it easier to pass URL parameter values to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter). You no longer have to change the Web.config file to enable routing. For more information about routing, see the following topics: ASP.NET Routing Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Routing in a Web Forms Application How to: Define Routes for Web Forms Applications How to: Construct URLs from Routes How to: Access URL Parameters in a Routed Page Setting Client IDs The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page. Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup. ASP.NET 4 adds two new algorithms for generating id attributes. These algorithms can generate id attributes that are easier to work with in client script because they are more predictable and that are easier to work with because they are simpler. For more information about how to use the new algorithms, see the following topics: ASP.NET Web Server Control Identification Walkthrough: Making Data-Bound Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript Walkthrough: Making Controls Located in Web User Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript How to: Access Controls from JavaScript by ID Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature in the GridView control, for example, by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown in the following example: <asp:GridView id="GridView2" runat="server" PersistedSelection="true"> </asp:GridView> FormView Control Enhancements The FormView control is enhanced to make it easier to style the content of the control with CSS. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the FormView control rendered it contents using an item template. This made styling more difficult in the markup because unexpected table row and table cell tags were rendered by the control. The FormView control supports RenderOuterTable, a property in ASP.NET 4. When this property is set to false, as show in the following example, the table tags are not rendered. This makes it easier to apply CSS style to the contents of the control. <asp:FormView ID="FormView1" runat="server" RenderTable="false"> For more information, see FormView Web Server Control Overview. ListView Control Enhancements The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID. The following markup shows a typical example of how to use the ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5. <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="ItemPlaceHolder" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> In ASP.NET 4, the ListView control does not require a layout template. The markup shown in the previous example can be replaced with the following markup: <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> For more information, see ListView Web Server Control Overview. Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database. To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender. The QueryExtender control supports a variety of filter options. The following lists QueryExtender filter options. Term Definition SearchExpression Searches a field or fields for string values and compares them to a specified string value. RangeExpression Searches a field or fields for values in a range specified by a pair of values. PropertyExpression Compares a specified value to a property value in a field. If the expression evaluates to true, the data that is being examined is returned. OrderByExpression Sorts data by a specified column and sort direction. CustomExpression Calls a function that defines custom filter in the page. For more information, see QueryExtenderQueryExtender Web Server Control Overview. Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions. For details about how the HTML that is rendered by each control meets accessibility standards, see ASP.NET Controls and Accessibility. CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element. For example, the following markup creates a Label control that is disabled: <asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server"   Text="Test" Enabled="false" /> In ASP.NET 3.5, the previous control settings generate the following HTML: <span id="Label1" disabled="disabled">Test</span> In HTML 4.01, the disabled attribute is not considered valid on span elements. It is valid only on input elements because it specifies that they cannot be accessed. On display-only elements such as span elements, browsers typically support rendering for a disabled appearance, but a Web page that relies on this non-standard behavior is not robust according to accessibility standards. For display-only elements, you should use CSS to indicate a disabled visual appearance. Therefore, by default ASP.NET 4 generates the following HTML for the control settings shown previously: <span id="Label1" class="aspNetDisabled">Test</span> You can change the value of the class attribute that is rendered by default when a control is disabled by setting the DisabledCssClass property. CSS for Validation Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. For example, the following markup creates a RequiredFieldValidator control: <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server"   ErrorMessage="Required Field" ControlToValidate="RadioButtonList1" /> ASP.NET 3.5 renders the following HTML for the validator control: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style="color:Red;visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> By default, ASP.NET 4 does not render an inline style to set the color to red. An inline style is used only to hide or show the validator, as shown in the following example: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style"visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red. For information about how to use CSS to specify a visual style for a validation control, see Validating User Input in ASP.NET Web Pages. CSS for the Hidden Fields Div Element ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others. The new classvalue is shown in the following example: <div class="aspNetHidden"> CSS for the Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0). The following example shows HTML that is generated by the Table control in ASP.NET 3.5: <table id="Table2" border="0"> The Image control and the ImageButton control also do this. Because this is not necessary and provides visual formatting information that should be provided by using CSS, the attribute is not generated in ASP.NET 4. CSS for the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTMLelements that they render. In ASP.NET 4 these controls have been changed to accept expando attributes, as shown in the following example: <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" class="myStyle"> </asp:UpdatePanel> The following HTML is rendered for this markup: <div id="ctl00_MainContent_UpdatePanel1" class="expandoclass"> </div> Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control: FormView Login PasswordRecovery ChangePassword If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false. Layout Templates for Wizard Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.) For more information, see the Wizard.LayoutTemplate property. New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration: UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table. OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table. For examples of HTML that is rendered for the new options, see the RepeatLayout enumeration. Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default. CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways: The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements). CSS is used for visual formatting. The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items. (For information about ARIA, see Accessibility in Visual Studio and ASP.NET.) ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.) Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated. Valid XHTML for the HtmlForm Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4. Maintaining Backward Compatibility in Control Rendering An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site. To do so, you can set the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to "3.5" in the Web.config file of an ASP.NET 4 Web site, as shown in the following example: <system.web>   <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"/> </system.web> If this setting is omitted, the default value is the same as the version of ASP.NET that the Web site targets. (For information about multi-targeting in ASP.NET, see .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects.) ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD). Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation). For tutorials, walkthroughs, conceptual content, code samples, and a complete API reference, see ASP.NET MVC 2. Dynamic Data Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following: A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site. Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model. The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project. For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. For more information, see ASP.NET Dynamic Data Content Map. Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits: Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control. Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model. Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Enabling Dynamic Data in ASP.NET Data-Bound Controls. New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks. The following example shows how to mark fields. [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public object HomeEmail { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.Url)] public object Website { get; set; } Creating Links with the DynamicHyperLink Control Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site. For information, see How to: Create Table Action Links in Dynamic Data Support for Inheritance in the Data Model Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables. For more information, see Walkthrough: Mapping Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance in Dynamic Data. Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only) The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships. For more information, see Working with Many-to-Many Data Relationships in Dynamic Data. New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input). The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration. Enhanced Support for Filters Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed. An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden. For more information, see Walkthrough: Filtering Rows in Tables That Have a Parent-Child Relationship and QueryableFilterRepeater. ASP.NET Chart Control The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features: Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more. Data binding. Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering. Statistical formulas and financial formulas. Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective. Events and customizations. Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax. Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications. For more information, see Chart Web Server Control Overview. Visual Web Developer Enhancements The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express. The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript. Improved CSS Compatibility The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio. HTML and JScript Snippets In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat="server") and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text). You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks. For more information on HTML snippets, see Walkthrough: Using HTML Snippets. JScript IntelliSense Enhancements In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense. Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated: Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings. Copying files to the destination computer. Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment. Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application. For more information about Web application deployment, see ASP.NET Deployment Content Map. Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown. For more information about multi-targeting, see the following topics: .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution Overview How to: Host Web Applications That Use Different Versions of the .NET Framework on the Same Server How to: Deploy Web Site Projects Targeted for Earlier Versions of the .NET Framework

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• Sector bancario, un reto de transformación tecnológica

  - by Fabian Gradolph

  El sector financiero se encuentra en un momento clave. No sólo por la coyuntura económica actual, sino también por cuestiones estructurales y normativas que obligan a las entidades bancarias -normalmente a la cabeza de la innovación tecnológica, por cierto- a seguir dando pasos hacia el futuro, manteniendo la tecnología en el corazón de su estrategia de negocio. Así se ha puesto de manifiesto en el encuentro que se ha celebrado hoy en Madrid: Oracle in Banking, donde expertos de Oracle, clientes de la compañía y analistas han puesto sobre la mesa algunos de los desafíos a los que se enfrenta el sector e ideas para aprovechar al máximo la tecnología en la resolución de estos desafíos. El evento ha sido todo un éxito, con asistencia masiva de clientes y partners. En la imagen que ilustra este artículo pueden verse, por este orden: una panorámica de la sala, Modesto Villajos, Regional Sales Manager de Oracle, quien ejerció de maestro de ceremonias. Leopoldo Boado, Country Manager de Oracle España, quien realizó la introducción, Alex Kwiatkowski, de IDC, quien expuso los prinicipales desafíos a los que se enfrenta la banca, y Máximo Díez, Senior Director Financial Services de Oracle, que planteó las diferentes estrategias de transformación que pueden emprender los bancos. El evento se completó con intervenciones de clientes de Oracle (Banco Espírito Santo -BES- de Portugal; y BBVA, de España), y presentaciones y demostraciones técnicas.  De particular interés fue la intervención de Alex Kwiatkowski. De acuerdo con su punto de vista hay cuatro áreas esenciales a las que se enfrenta el sector. La primera de ellas es el marco regulatorio. El sector financiero está sometido a una constante presión normativa (probablemente acrecentada en estos tiempos de incertidumbre), no sólo a nivel nacional, sino también a nivel europeo y global. El cumplimiento exquisito de todas estas normas es esencial para el buen funcionamiento del sistema. La segunda área crítica es la necesidad de ofrecer una experiencia de usuario multicanal satisfactoria, de forma que se potencie la retención de clientes. A veces es difícil darnos cuenta, pero hoy en día nuestras interacciones con el banco han alcanzado una gran diversidad de canales (sucursal, ATM, Internet, banca telefónica, banca móvil...). Esto supone un permanente desafío tecnológico y de procesos para las entidades financieras. El tercer elemento crítico es el del incremento de la eficiencia de las operaciones, manteniendo los costes bajo control o incluso reduciéndolos aún más. Por último, las entidades bancarias tienen ante sí el reto de encontrar nuevas fuentes de ingresos, de forma que el foco deje de estar únicamente en la reducción de costes y la minimización de riesgos. Lo cierto es que en la actualidad, la atención principal se centra en estos dos puntos, pero como mencionó Alex Kwiatkowski "los CIO`s de los bancos se van a plantar en la mesa del CEO con la necesidad de realizar renovaciones completas de los sistemas de core banking y la necesidad de invertir en el desarrollo de nuevos canales". Máximo Díez también enfatizó esta necesidad en su presentación. Los bancos tienen la obligación de econtrar nuevas fórmulas para impulsar el crecimiento, pero la implementación de estrategias en este sentido presenta fuertes desafíos a causa de las limitaciones de los sistemas IT existentes. No hay duda de que se presenta un futuro muy interesante en el ámbito tecnológico para el sector financiero. Lo que Oracle puede hacer y ofrece a las entidades financieras puede encontrarse en este enlace: Financial Services.

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• Agile Manifesto, Revisited

  - by GeekAgilistMercenary

  Again, conversations give me a zillion things to write about.  The recent conversation that has cropped up again is my various viewpoints of the Agile Manifesto.  Not all the processes that came after the manifesto was written, but just the core manifesto itself.  Just for context, here is the manifesto in all the glory. We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Several of the key signatories at the time went on to write some of the core books that really gave Agile Software Development traction.  If you check out the Agile Manifesto Site and do a search for any of those people, you will find a treasure trove of software development information. My 2 Cents First off, I agree with a few people out there.  Agile is not Scrum for instance.  Do NOT get these things confused when checking out Agile, or pushing forward with Scrum.  As David Starr points out in his blog entry, "About 35 minutes into this discussion, I realized I hadn?t heard a question or comment that wasn?t related to Scrum. I asked the room, ?How many people are on an agile team that is NOT using Scrum?? 5 hands. Seriously, out of about 150 people of so. 5 hands." So know, as this is one of my biggest pet peves these days, that Scrum is not Agile.  Another quote David writes, "I assure you, dear reader, 2 week time boxes does not an agile team make." This is the exact problem.  Take a look at the actual manifesto above.  First ideal, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  There are a couple of meanings in this ideal, just as there are in the other written ideals.  But this one has a lot of contention with a set practice such as Scrum.  There are other formulas, namely XP (eXtreme) and Kanban are two that come to mind often.  But none of these are Agile, but instead a process based on the ideals of Agile. Some of you may be thinking, "that?s the same thing".  Well, no, it is not.  This type of differentiation is vitally important.  Agile is a set of ideals.  Processes are nice, but they can change, they may work for some and not others.  The Agile Manifesto covers the ideals behind what is intended, that intention being to learn and find new ways to build better software. Ideals, not processes.  Definition versus implementation.  Class versus object.  The ideals are of utmost importance, the processes are secondary, the first ideal is what really lays this out for me "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".  Yes, we need tools but we need the individuals and their interactions more. For those coming into a development team, I hope you take this to mind.  It is of utmost importance that this differentiation is known and fought for.  The second the process becomes more important than the individuals and interactions, the team will effectively lose the advantages of Agile Ideals. This is just one of my first thoughts on the topic of Agile.  I will be writing more in the near future about each of the ideals.  I will make a point to outline more of my thoughts, my opinions, and experience with the ideals of Agile and the various processes that are out there.  Maybe, I may stumble upon something new with the help of my readers?  It would be a grand overture to the ideals I hold. For the original entry, check out my personal blog with other juicy tech tidbits, rants, raves, and the like. Agilist Mercenary

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• Essbase BSO Data Fragmentation

  - by Ann Donahue

  Essbase BSO Data Fragmentation Data fragmentation naturally occurs in Essbase Block Storage (BSO) databases where there are a lot of end user data updates, incremental data loads, many lock and send, and/or many calculations executed.  If an Essbase database starts to experience performance slow-downs, this is an indication that there may be too much fragmentation.  See Chapter 54 Improving Essbase Performance in the Essbase DBA Guide for more details on measuring and eliminating fragmentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/esb_dbag/daprcset.html Fragmentation is likely to occur in the following situations: Read/write databases that users are constantly updating data Databases that execute calculations around the clock Databases that frequently update and recalculate dense members Data loads that are poorly designed Databases that contain a significant number of Dynamic Calc and Store members Databases that use an isolation level of uncommitted access with commit block set to zero There are two types of data block fragmentation Free space tracking, which is measured using the Average Fragmentation Quotient statistic. Block order on disk, which is measured using the Average Cluster Ratio statistic. Average Fragmentation Quotient The Average Fragmentation Quotient ratio measures free space in a given database.  As you update and calculate data, empty spaces occur when a block can no longer fit in its original space and will either append at the end of the file or fit in another empty space that is large enough.  These empty spaces take up space in the .PAG files.  The higher the number the more empty spaces you have, therefore, the bigger the .PAG file and the longer it takes to traverse through the .PAG file to get to a particular record.  An Average Fragmentation Quotient value of 3.174765 means the database is 3% fragmented with free space. Average Cluster Ratio Average Cluster Ratio describes the order the blocks actually exist in the database. An Average Cluster Ratio number of 1 means all the blocks are ordered in the correct sequence in the order of the Outline.  As you load data and calculate data blocks, the sequence can start to be out of order.  This is because when you write to a block it may not be able to place back in the exact same spot in the database that it existed before.  The lower this number the more out of order it becomes and the more it affects performance.  An Average Cluster Ratio value of 1 means no fragmentation.  Any value lower than 1 i.e. 0.01032828 means the data blocks are getting further out of order from the outline order. Eliminating Data Block Fragmentation Both types of data block fragmentation can be removed by doing a dense restructure or export/clear/import of the data.  There are two types of dense restructure: 1. Implicit Restructures Implicit dense restructure happens when outline changes are done using EAS Outline Editor or Dimension Build. Essbase restructures create new .PAG files restructuring the data blocks in the .PAG files. When Essbase restructures the data blocks, it regenerates the index automatically so that index entries point to the new data blocks. Empty blocks are NOT removed with implicit restructures. 2. Explicit Restructures Explicit dense restructure happens when a manual initiation of the database restructure is executed. An explicit dense restructure is a full restructure which comprises of a dense restructure as outlined above plus the removal of empty blocks Empty Blocks vs. Fragmentation The existence of empty blocks is not considered fragmentation.  Empty blocks can be created through calc scripts or formulas.  An empty block will add to an existing database block count and will be included in the block counts of the database properties.  There are no statistics for empty blocks.  The only way to determine if empty blocks exist in an Essbase database is to record your current block count, export the entire database, clear the database then import the exported data.  If the block count decreased, the difference is the number of empty blocks that had existed in the database.

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• Get More Value From Your Oracle Premier Support Investment

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document The Return on Investment in Support Training I’m a typical software user. I’ve been using spreadsheets almost daily for the past 10 years or so. I know how to enter simple formulas, format cells, import files, and I can sort and filter. Sometimes I even use a pivot table. I never attended training. I learnt everything I know on the fly. Sometimes it was intuitive and easy, other times I had to spend minutes and even hours searching for a solution. Yet when I see what some other people can do with their spreadsheets, I know I’m utilizing maybe 15% of the functionality. Pity, one day I really have to sign up for training. Why haven’t I done it yet? Ah, you know, I’m a busy person, I have work to do. And if I need to use a feature that I am unfamiliar with, I’ll spend time on it only when I really need it. Now wait. When I recall how much time I spent trying to figure how things work compared to time I spent doing the productive work, I realize it was not insignificant. I’m unable to sum up all the time I spent ‘learning’ on the fly, but I’m sure it’s been days or even weeks. And after all this time, I’ve mastered 15% of its features. If only I had attended training years ago. That investment would have paid back 10 times! Working with My Oracle Support is no different. Our customers typically use simple search, create service requests, and download patches. They think they know how to use My Oracle Support. And they’re right. They know something but often they’re utilizing only a fragment of My Oracle Support’s potential. For the investment that has been made, using only a small subset of the capabilities offered in My Oracle Support leaves value on the table. There is much more available in My Oracle Support. Dozens of diagnostic tools and proactive health checks will keep verifying your Oracle environments against best practices that Oracle gathers every day thanks to our comprehensive knowledge management process. Automated patch recommendations will help prevent known issues, and upgrade planning and more is included in My Oracle Support. Why are you not utilizing all of these best practices, capabilities and tools? Is it because you don’t have time to invest 2-3 hours of your time to learn about the features? Simply because you think you can learn on the fly like I thought I could? Does learning on the fly how to properly use the Service Request escalation process when you already have critical issue sound like a good idea? My advice is: Invest your time now to learn how My Oracle Support can help you prevent issues on your systems. Learn how to find answers faster and resolve problems more efficiently. Understand how to properly complete a service request. Invest in Support training, offered at no additional cost to Oracle Premier Support customers. It will pay back quicker than you think. It will bring you more value than you think. Discover your advantage with Oracle Premier Support's Proactive Portfolio.

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