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• Commercial Drupal Modules & Themes

  - by Ravish

  A discussion at Drupal.org forums prompted me to give my input about commercial ecosystem around Open Source Content Management Systems. WordPress and Joomla have been growing rapidly since past few years. But, growth rate of Drupal seems to be almost flat. Despite being the most powerful CMS around, Drupal is still not being adopted by masses. Many people will argue that Drupal is not targeted towards masses, but developers. I agree, Drupal is more of a development platform than a consumer CMS. Drupal is ‘many things to many people’, and I can build almost any type of website with it. Drupal is being used for building blogs, corporate websites, Intranet portals, social networking and even a project management system. Looking at the wide array of Drupal implementations, it deserves to be the most widely adopted CMS. I believe there are few challenges that Drupal community needs to overcome. To understand these challenges, I surveyed some webmasters who use Joomla or WordPress but not Drupal. I asked them why they don’t want to use Drupal, following are the responses I got from them: Drupal is too complicated, takes time to learn. Drupal is great, but its admin panel is overwhelming. I couldn’t find any nice themes for Drupal. There is no WYSIWYG editor in Drupal. Most Drupal modules do not work out of the box. There aren’t enough modules like Ubercart which provides any out of the box functionality. I tried modules like CCK, Views and Panels. After wasting several hours struggling with them, I decided to give up on Drupal. I don’t use Drupal because of pushbutton and Garland theme. I had hard time trying to customize Garland and it messed up the whole layout. There are no premium modules and themes for Drupal. Joomla has tons of awesome themes and modules. I don’t want a million hacks like CCK, Views, Tokens, Pathauto, ImageCache and CTools just to run a simple website. Most of the complaints from users are related to the learning and development curve involved with Drupal, and the lack of ecosystem. While most of the problems will be gone in Drupal 7, ecosystem is something that needs to be built by the Drupal community. Drupal distributions are a great step forward. There are few awesome Drupal distributions available like Open Publish, Open Atrium and Drupal Commons. I predict, there will be a wave of many powerful Drupal distributions after Drupal 7 release. Many of them will be user-friendly and commercial supported. Following is my post at Drupal.org forums: Quote from: http://drupal.org/node/863776#comment-3313836 Brian Gardner (StudioPress) and Woo Themes launched premium WordPress themes in 2007, the developer community did not accept it at first. Moreover, they were not even GPL licensed. There was an outcry in WordPress community against them. Following that, most premium theme providers switched to GPL licensing. Despite controversies, users voted for premium theme and plugins by buying them. Inspired by their success, hundreds of other developers started to sell premium themes and plugins. It is now the acceptable and in fact most popular business model among WordPress community. Matt Mullenweg once told me, they would not support premium themes. If he supported, developers would no more give out free GPL themes & plugins. He pointed me towards Joomla, there were hardly any nice free themes & modules available. Now two years forward, premium products are not just accepted but embraced by the WordPress community – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/ The quality and number of themes & modules has increased, even the free ones. This also helped to boost the adoption and ecosystem of WordPress. Today, state of Drupal is like WordPress was in 2007. There are hardly any out of the box solutions available for Drupal. Ubercart, Open Publish and Open Atrium are the only ones I can think of. Many of the popular Drupal modules are patches and hole-fillers. Thankfully, these hole-filler modules are going to be in Drupal 7 core. Drupal 7 and distributions will spawn a new array of solutions built upon Drupal. Soon, we will have more like Ubercarts and Open Atriums. If commercial solutions can help fuel this ecosystem and growth, Drupal community will accept them eventually. This debate will not stop your customers from buying your product. If your product is awesome, they will vote for you by buying your product.

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• Building a Distributed Commerce Infrastructure in the Cloud using Azure and Commerce Server

  - by Lewis Benge

  One of the biggest questions I routinely get asked is how scalable Commerce Server is. Of course the text book answer is the product has been around for 10 years, powers some of the largest e-Commerce websites in the world, so it scales horizontally extremely well. One argument however though is what if you can't predict the growth of demand required of your Commerce Platform, or need the ability to scale up during busy seasons such as Christmas for a retail environment but are hesitant on maintaining the infrastructure on a year-round basis? The obvious answer is to utilise the many elasticated cloud infrastructure providers that are establishing themselves in the ever-growing market, the problem however is Commerce Server is still product which has a legacy tightly coupled dependency on Windows and IIS components. Commerce Server 2009 codename "R2" however introduced to the concept of an n-tier deployment of Microsoft Commerce Server, meaning you are no longer tied to core objects API but instead have serializable Commerce Entity objects, and business logic allowing for Commerce Server to now be built into a WCF-based SOA architecture. Presentation layers no-longer now need to remain on the same physical machine as the application server, meaning you can now build the user experience into multiple-technologies and host them in multiple places – leveraging the transport benefits that a WCF service may bring, such as message queuing, security, and multiple end-points. All of this logic will still need to remain in your internal infrastructure, for two reasons. Firstly cloud based computing infrastructure does not support PCI security requirements, and secondly even though many of the legacy Commerce Server dependencies have been abstracted away within this version of the application, it is still not a fully supported to be deployed exclusively into the cloud. If you do wish to benefit from the scalability of the cloud however, you can still achieve a great Commerce Server and Azure setup by utilising both the Azure App Fabric in terms of the service bus, and authentication services and Windows Azure to host any online presence you may require. The architecture would be something similar to this: This setup would allow you to construct your Commerce Services as part of your on-site infrastructure. These services would contain all of the channels custom business logic, and provide the overall interface back into the underlying Commerce Server components. It would be recommended that services are constructed around the specific business domain of the application, which based on your business model would usually consist of separate services around Catalogue, Orders, Search, Profiles, and Marketing. The App Fabric service bus is then used to abstract and aggregate further the services, making them available to the cloud and subsequently secured by App Fabrics authentication services. These services are now available for consumption by any client, using any supported technology – not just .NET. Thus meaning you are now able to construct apps for IPhone, integrate with Java based POS Devices, and any many other potential uses. This aggregation is useful, and forms the basis of the further strategy around diversifying and enhancing the e-Commerce experience, but also provides the foundation for the scalability we want to gain from utilising a cloud-based application platform. The Windows Azure application platform is Microsoft solution to benefiting from the true economies of scale in terms of the elasticity of the cloud. Just before the launch of the Azure Platform – Domino's pizza actually managed to run their whole SuperBowl operation from the scalability of Windows Azure, and simply switching back to their traditional operation the next day with no residual infrastructure costs. The platform also natively can subscribe to services and messages exposed within the AppFabric service bus, making it an ideal solution to build and deploy a presentation layer which will need to support of scalable infrastructure – such as a high demand public facing e-Commerce portal, or a promotion element of a brand. Windows Azure has excellent support for ASP.NET, including its own caching providers meaning expensive operations such as catalogue queries can persist in memory on the application server, reducing the demand on internal infrastructure and prioritising it for more business critical operations such as receiving orders and processing payments. Windows Azure also supports other languages too, meaning utilising this approach you can technically build a Commerce Server presentation layer in Java, PHP, or Ruby – or equally in ASP.NET or Silverlight without having to change any of the underlying business or Commerce Server implementation. This SOA-style architecture is one of the primary differentiators for Commerce Server as a product in the e-Commerce market, and now with the introduction of a WCF capability in Commerce Server 2009/2009 R2 the opportunities for extensibility of the both the user experience, and integration into third parties, are drastically increased, all with no effect to the underlying channel logic. So if you are looking at deployment options for your e-Commerce application to help support demand in a cost effective way. I would highly recommend you consider looking at Windows Azure, and if you have any questions in-particular about this style of deployment, please feel free to get in touch!

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• Measuring Usability with Common Industry Format (CIF) Usability Tests

  - by Applications User Experience

  Sean Rice, Manager, Applications User Experience A User-centered Research and Design Process The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience was five years in the making. The development of this suite included an extensive and comprehensive user experience design process: ethnographic research, low-fidelity workflow prototyping, high fidelity user interface (UI) prototyping, iterative formative usability testing, development feedback and iteration, and sales and customer evaluation throughout the design cycle. However, this process does not stop when our products are released. We conduct summative usability testing using the ISO 25062 Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports as an organizational framework. CIF tests allow us to measure the overall usability of our released products.  These studies provide benchmarks that allow for comparisons of a specific product release against previous versions of our product and against other products in the marketplace. What Is a CIF Usability Test? CIF refers to the internationally standardized method for reporting usability test findings used by the software industry. The CIF is based on a formal, lab-based test that is used to benchmark the usability of a product in terms of human performance and subjective data. The CIF was developed and is endorsed by more than 375 software customer and vendor organizations led by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a US government entity. NIST sponsored the CIF through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards-making processes. Oracle played a key role in developing the CIF. The CIF report format and metrics are consistent with the ISO 9241-11 definition of usability: “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” Our goal in conducting CIF tests is to measure performance and satisfaction of a representative sample of users on a set of core tasks and to help predict how usable a product will be with the larger population of customers. Why Do We Perform CIF Testing? The overarching purpose of the CIF for usability test reports is to promote incorporation of usability as part of the procurement decision-making process for interactive products. CIF provides a common format for vendors to report the methods and results of usability tests to customer organizations, and enables customers to compare the usability of our software to that of other suppliers. CIF also enables us to compare our current software with previous versions of our software. CIF Testing for Fusion Applications Oracle Fusion Applications comprises more than 100 modules in seven different product families. These modules encompass more than 400 task flows and 400 user roles. Due to resource constraints, we cannot perform comprehensive CIF testing across the entire product suite. Therefore, we had to develop meaningful inclusion criteria and work with other stakeholders across the applications development organization to prioritize product areas for testing. Ultimately, we want to test the product areas for which customers might be most interested in seeing CIF data. We also want to build credibility with customers; we need to be able to make the case to current and prospective customers that the product areas tested are representative of the product suite as a whole. Our goal is to test the top use cases for each product. The primary activity in the scoping process was to work with the individual product teams to identify the key products and business process task flows in each product to test. We prioritized these products and flows through a series of negotiations among the user experience managers, product strategy, and product management directors for each of the primary product families within the Oracle Fusion Applications suite (Human Capital Management, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Financials, Projects, and Procurement). The end result of the scoping exercise was a list of 47 proposed CIF tests for the Fusion Applications product suite.  Figure 1. A participant completes tasks during a usability test in Oracle’s Usability Labs Fusion Supplier Portal CIF Test The first Fusion CIF test was completed on the Supplier Portal application in July of 2011.  Fusion Supplier Portal is part of an integrated suite of Procurement applications that helps supplier companies manage orders, schedules, shipments, invoices, negotiations and payments. The user roles targeted for the usability study were Supplier Account Receivables Specialists and Supplier Sales Representatives, including both experienced and inexperienced users across a wide demographic range.  The test specifically focused on the following functionality and features: Manage payments – view payments Manage invoices – view invoice status and create invoices Manage account information – create new contact, review bank account information Manage agreements – find and view agreement, upload agreement lines, confirm status of agreement lines upload Manage purchase orders (PO) – view history of PO, request change to PO, find orders Manage negotiations – respond to request for a quote, check the status of a negotiation response These product areas were selected to represent the most important subset of features and functionality of the flow, in terms of frequency and criticality of use by customers. A total of 20 users participated in the usability study. The results of the Supplier Portal evaluation were favorable and exceeded our expectations. Figure 2. Fusion Supplier Portal Next Studies We plan to conduct two Fusion CIF usability studies per product family over the next nine months. The next product to be tested will be Self-service Procurement. End users are currently being recruited to participate in this usability study, and the test sessions are scheduled to begin during the last week of November.

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• OpenWorld: Spotlight on Fusion CRM

  - by Tony Berk

  Oracle OpenWorld is less than 2 weeks away, so you need to start figuring out how you are going to maximize your week. I don't want to discourage you, but I'm pretty sure it is impossible to attend all 2000+ sessions. So you need to focus on what's important to you. Many of our CRM customers will be interested in Fusion CRM, since they have already started Fusion implementations or determining when to start. If that's you, or you are just looking for an overview of Fusion CRM, we've got you covered! Let's start at the top! For an overview of what is in Fusion CRM and where it is going, you should attend the general session and roadmap session: General Session: Oracle Fusion CRM—Improving Sales Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Ease of Use (Session ID: GEN9674) - Oct 2, 11:45 AM. Anthony Lye, Senior VP, Oracle leads this general session focused on Oracle Fusion CRM. Oracle Fusion CRM optimizes territories, combines quota management and incentive compensation, integrates sales and marketing, and cleanses and enriches data—all within a single application platform. Oracle Fusion can be configured, changed, and extended at runtime by end users, business managers, IT, and developers. Oracle Fusion CRM can be used from the Web, from a smartphone, from Microsoft Outlook, or from an iPad. Deloitte, sponsor of the CRM Track, will also present key concepts on CRM implementations. Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Overview/Strategy/Customer Experiences/Roadmap (CON9407) - Oct 1, 3:15PM. In this session, learn how Oracle Fusion CRM enables companies to create better sales plans, generate more quality leads, and achieve higher win rates and find out why customers are adopting Oracle Fusion CRM. Gain a deeper understanding of the unique capabilities only Oracle Fusion CRM provides, and learn how Oracle’s commitment to CRM innovation is driving a wide range of future enhancements. There is also a General Session for all Fusion Applications providing insight into the current strategy of the full product line and a high-level roadmap for each product area: Oracle Fusion Applications—Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap (GEN9433) - Oct 1, 10:45AM. This session will be repeated on Oct 3, 10:15AM. Now, if you want to drill down into some more detail, there are a lot more sessions with Oracle product management and customers. I'll highlight a few, but suggest you review the Fusion CRM Focus On document, or the search in the Content Catalog or Session Builder.  Driving Sales Performance with Oracle Fusion CRM (CON9744) - Oct 3, 10:15AM. Demonstrates how sales executives can gain instant visibility into their business, deliver pervasive coaching to their reps, maximize their sales pipeline, and drive team alignment. The result is increased sales performance that enables sales executives to deliver more revenue without increasing their resources or expenses. Maximize Your Revenue Potential with Oracle Fusion CRM Sales Planning (CON9751) - Oct 2, 1:15PM. Learn how Oracle Fusion CRM helps companies intelligently optimize sales planning and manage sales performance including the ability to predict their future sales opportunities and use those predictions in conjunction with past sales data to optimally define their sales territories, sales quotas, and incentive compensation plans. Boost Marketing’s Contribution to Revenue with Oracle Fusion CRM Marketing (CON9746) - Oct 3, 11:45AM. Learn how Oracle Fusion CRM can help your organization integrate sales and marketing, using one CRM platform. See how Oracle Fusion CRM can help your organization learn where to invest its precious marketing dollars; drive more revenue with cross-channel marketing and prospecting capabilities, including and not limited to e-mail, Web, and social media; improve lead conversion with integrated lead management functionality; and do more with less by automating many manual tasks. Oracle Fusion CRM: Social Marketing (CON11559) - Oct 1, 3:15PM. Learn how Oracle’s acquisition of Collective Intellect, Vitrue, and Involver extends Oracle Fusion Marketing as a world-class social marketing solution. Oracle Fusion Social CRM Strategy and Roadmap: Future of Collaboration and Social Engagement (CON9750) - Oct 4, 11:15AM. Hear how Oracle can help you know your customers better, encourage brand affinity, and improve collaboration within your ecosystem. This session reviews Oracle's social media solution and shows how you can discover hidden insights buried in your enterprise and social data. Also learn how Oracle Social Network revolutionizes how enterprise users work, collaborate, and share to achieve successful outcomes. Of course, we recommend you hear from the current Fusion CRM customers too. So, don't miss Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management: Customer Adoption and Experiences (CON9415) on Oct 3 at 10:15AM for panel of customers discussing implementation experiences, best practices and benefits.  After listening to all of this great information, you are probably going to have questions. Well, the experts will be on hand to help answer your questions and plan how your organization can get going with Fusion CRM. Be sure to head down to the DEMOgrounds and CRM Pavilion in the Moscone West Exhibit Hall. And finally, there is the always popular Meet the Experts session focused on Fusion CRM (MTE9658) on Oct 2 at 5PM (pre-registration via Schedule Builder is recommended.) In addition, there are more sessions on Mobility, Extensibility, Incentive Compensation, Fusion Customer Hub and other key components of the Fusion Applications infrastructure, Oracle Cloud and much, much more! For a full list, utilize the Fusion CRM Focus On document and Content Catalog. Enjoy!

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• Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, Part 2

  - by [email protected]

  In my last post, Deploying Data Mining Models using Model Export and Import, we explored using DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL and DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL to enable moving a model from one system to another. In this post, we'll look at two distributed scenarios that make use of this capability and a tip for easily moving models from one machine to another using only Oracle Database, not an external file transport mechanism, such as FTP. The first scenario, consider a company with geographically distributed business units, each collecting and managing their data locally for the products they sell. Each business unit has in-house data analysts that build models to predict which products to recommend to customers in their space. A central telemarketing business unit also uses these models to score new customers locally using data collected over the phone. Since the models recommend different products, each customer is scored using each model. This is depicted in Figure 1.Figure 1: Target instance importing multiple remote models for local scoring In the second scenario, consider multiple hospitals that collect data on patients with certain types of cancer. The data collection is standardized, so each hospital collects the same patient demographic and other health / tumor data, along with the clinical diagnosis. Instead of each hospital building it's own models, the data is pooled at a central data analysis lab where a predictive model is built. Once completed, the model is distributed to hospitals, clinics, and doctor offices who can score patient data locally.Figure 2: Multiple target instances importing the same model from a source instance for local scoring Since this blog focuses on model export and import, we'll only discuss what is necessary to move a model from one database to another. Here, we use the package DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER, which can move files between Oracle databases. The script is fairly straightforward, but requires setting up a database link and directory objects. We saw how to create directory objects in the previous post. To create a database link to the source database from the target, we can use, for example: create database link SOURCE1_LINK connect to <schema> identified by <password> using 'SOURCE1'; Note that 'SOURCE1' refers to the service name of the remote database entry in your tnsnames.ora file. From SQL*Plus, first connect to the remote database and export the model. Note that the model_file_name does not include the .dmp extension. This is because export_model appends "01" to this name.  Next, connect to the local database and invoke DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE and import the model. Note that "01" is eliminated in the target system file name.  connect <source_schema>/<password>@SOURCE1_LINK; BEGIN  DBMS_DATA_MINING.EXPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                                 'name =''MY_MINING_MODEL'''); END; connect <target_schema>/<password>; BEGIN  DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER.GET_FILE ('MY_SOURCE_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '01.dmp',                               'SOURCE1_LINK',                               'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT',                               'EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp' );  DBMS_DATA_MINING.IMPORT_MODEL ('EXPORT_FILE_NAME' || '.dmp',                                 'MY_TARGET_DIR_OBJECT'); END; To clean up afterward, you may want to drop the exported .dmp file at the source and the transferred file at the target. For example, utl_file.fremove('&directory_name', '&model_file_name' || '.dmp');

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• Short Season, Long Models - Dealing with Seasonality

  - by Michel Adar

  Accounting for seasonality presents a challenge for the accurate prediction of events. Examples of seasonality include: ·         Boxed cosmetics sets are more popular during Christmas. They sell at other times of the year, but they rise higher than other products during the holiday season. ·         Interest in a promotion rises around the time advertising on TV airs ·         Interest in the Sports section of a newspaper rises when there is a big football match There are several ways of dealing with seasonality in predictions. Time Windows If the length of the model time windows is short enough relative to the seasonality effect, then the models will see only seasonal data, and therefore will be accurate in their predictions. For example, a model with a weekly time window may be quick enough to adapt during the holiday season. In order for time windows to be useful in dealing with seasonality it is necessary that: The time window is significantly shorter than the season changes There is enough volume of data in the short time windows to produce an accurate model An additional issue to consider is that sometimes the season may have an abrupt end, for example the day after Christmas. Input Data If available, it is possible to include the seasonality effect in the input data for the model. For example the customer record may include a list of all the promotions advertised in the area of residence. A model with these inputs will have to learn the effect of the input. It is possible to learn it specific to the promotion – and by the way learn about inter-promotion cross feeding – by leaving the list of ads as it is; or it is possible to learn the general effect by having a flag that indicates if the promotion is being advertised. For inputs to properly represent the effect in the model it is necessary that: The model sees enough events with the input present. For example, by virtue of the model lifetime (or time window) being long enough to see several “seasons” or by having enough volume for the model to learn seasonality quickly. Proportional Frequency If we create a model that ignores seasonality it is possible to use that model to predict how the specific person likelihood differs from average. If we have a divergence from average then we can transfer that divergence proportionally to the observed frequency at the time of the prediction. Definitions: Ft = trailing average frequency of the event at time “t”. The average is done over a suitable period of to achieve a statistical significant estimate. F = average frequency as seen by the model. L = likelihood predicted by the model for a specific person Lt = predicted likelihood proportionally scaled for time “t”. If the model is good at predicting deviation from average, and this holds over the interesting range of seasons, then we can estimate Lt as: Lt = L * (Ft / F) Considering that: L = (L – F) + F Substituting we get: Lt = [(L – F) + F] * (Ft / F) Which simplifies to: (i)                  Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F)  +  Ft This latest expression can be understood as “The adjusted likelihood at time t is the average likelihood at time t plus the effect from the model, which is calculated as the difference from average time the proportion of frequencies”. The formula above assumes a linear translation of the proportion. It is possible to generalize the formula using a factor which we will call “a” as follows: (ii)                Lt = (L – F) * (Ft / F) * a  +  Ft It is also possible to use a formula that does not scale the difference, like: (iii)               Lt = (L – F) * a  +  Ft While these formulas seem reasonable, they should be taken as hypothesis to be proven with empirical data. A theoretical analysis provides the following insights: The Cumulative Gains Chart (lift) should stay the same, as at any given time the order of the likelihood for different customers is preserved If F is equal to Ft then the formula reverts to “L” If (Ft = 0) then Lt in (i) and (ii) is 0 It is possible for Lt to be above 1. If it is desired to avoid going over 1, for relatively high base frequencies it is possible to use a relative interpretation of the multiplicative factor. For example, if we say that Y is twice as likely as X, then we can interpret this sentence as: If X is 3%, then Y is 6% If X is 11%, then Y is 22% If X is 70%, then Y is 85% - in this case we interpret “twice as likely” as “half as likely to not happen” Applying this reasoning to (i) for example we would get: If (L < F) or (Ft < (1 / ((L/F) + 1)) Then  Lt = L * (Ft / F) Else Lt = 1 – (F / L) + (Ft * F / L)  

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• Global Perspective: Oracle AppAdvantage Does its Stage Debut in the UK

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Global Perspective is a monthly series that brings experiences, business needs and real-world use cases from regions across the globe. This month’s feature is a follow-up from last month’s Global Perspective note from a well known ACE Director based in EMEA. My first contribution to this blog was before Oracle Open World and I was quite excited about where this initiative would take me in my understanding of the value of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Rimi Bewtra from the Oracle AppAdvantage team came as promised to the Oracle ACE Director briefings and explained what this initiative was all about and I then asked the directors to take part in the new survey. The story was really well received and then at the SOA advisory board that many of these ACE Directors already take part in there was a further discussion on how this initiative will help customers understand the benefits of adoption. A few days later Rick Beers launched the program at a lunch of invited customer executives which included one from Pella who talked about their projects (a quick recap on that here). I wasn’t able to stay for the whole event but what really interested me was that these executives who understood the technology but where looking for how they could use them to drive their businesses. Lots of ideas were bubbling up in my head about how we can use this in user groups to help our members, and the timing was fantastic as just three weeks later we had UKOUG_Apps13, our flagship Applications conference in the UK. We had independently working with Oracle marketing in the UK on an initiative called Apps Transformation to help our members look beyond just the application they use today. We have had a Fusion community page but felt the options open are now much wider than Fusion Applications, there are acquired applications, social, mobility and of course the underlying technology, Oracle Fusion Middleware. I was really pleased to be allowed to give the Oracle AppAdvantage story as a session in our conference and we are planning a special Apps Transformation event in March where I hope the Oracle AppAdvantage team will take part and we will have the results of the survey to discuss. But, life also came full circle for me. In my first post, I talked about Andrew Sutherland and his original theory that Oracle Fusion Middleware adoption had technical drivers. Well, Andrew was a speaker at our event and he gave a potted, tech-talk free update on Oracle Open World. Andrew talked about the Prevailing Technology Winds, and what is driving this today and he talked about that in the past it was the move from simply automating processes (ERP etc), through the altering of those processes (SOA) and onto consolidation. The next drivers are around the need to predict, both faster and more accurately; how to better exploit the information that we have available. He went on to talk about The Nexus of Forces: Social, Mobile, Cloud and Information – harnessing these forces of change with Oracle technology. Gartner really likes this concept and if you want to know more you can get their paper here. All this has made me think, and I hope it will make you too. Technology can help us drive our businesses better and understanding your needs can be the first step on your journey, which was the theme of our event in the UK. I spoke to a number of the delegates and I hope to share some of their stories in later posts. If you have a story to share, the survey is at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/P335DD3 About the Author: Debra Lilley, Fujitsu Fusion Champion, UKOUG Board Member, Fusion User Experience Advocate and ACE Director. Debra has 18 years experience with Oracle Applications, with E Business Suite since 9.4.1, moving to Business Intelligence Team Leader and then Oracle Alliance Director. She has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide and posts at debrasoraclethoughts Editor’s Note: Debra has kindly agreed to share her musings and experience in a monthly column on the Fusion Middleware blog so do stay tuned…

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• Agile Executives

  - by Robert May

  Over the years, I have experienced many different styles of software development. In the early days, most of the development was Waterfall development. In the last few years, I’ve become an advocate of Scrum. As I talked about last month, many people have misconceptions about what Scrum really is. The reason why we do Scrum at Veracity is because of the difference it makes in the life of the team doing Scrum. Software is for people, and happy motivated people will build better software. However, not all executives understand Scrum and how to get the information from development teams that use Scrum. I think that these executives need a support system for managing Agile teams. Historical Software Management When Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line, I doubt he realized the impact he’d have on Management through the ages. Historically, management was about managing the process of building things. The people were just cogs in that process. Like all cogs, they were replaceable. Unfortunately, most of the software industry followed this same style of management. Many of today’s senior managers learned how to manage companies before software was a significant influence on how the company did business. Software development is a very creative process, but too many managers have treated it like an assembly line. Idea’s go in, working software comes out, and we just have to figure out how to make sure that the ideas going in are perfect, then the software will be perfect. Lean Manufacturing In the manufacturing industry, Lean manufacturing has revolutionized Henry Ford’s assembly line. Derived from the Toyota process, Lean places emphasis on always providing value for the customer. Anything the customer wouldn’t be willing to pay for is wasteful. Agile is based on similar principles. We’re building software for people, and anything that isn’t useful to them doesn’t add value. Waterfall development would have teams build reams and reams of documentation about how the software should work. Agile development dispenses with this work because excessive documentation doesn’t add value. Instead, teams focus on building documentation only when it truly adds value to the customer. Many other Agile principals are similar. Playing Catch-up Just like in the manufacturing industry, many managers in the software industry have yet to understand the value of the principles of Lean and Agile. They think they can wrap the uncertainties of software development up in a nice little package and then just execute, usually followed by failure. They spend a great deal of time and money trying to exactly predict the future. That expenditure of time and money doesn’t add value to the customer. Managers that understand that Agile know that there is a better way. They will instead focus on the priorities of the near term in detail, and leave the future to take care of itself. They have very detailed two week plans with less detailed quarterly plans. These plans are guided by a general corporate strategy that doesn’t focus on the exact implementation details. These managers also think in smaller features rather than large functionality. This adds a great deal of value to customers, since the features that matter most are the ones that the team focuses on in the near term and then are able to deliver to the customers that are paying for them. Agile managers also realize that stale software is very costly. They know that keeping the technology in their software current is much less expensive and risky than large rewrites that occur infrequently and schedule time in each release for refactoring of the existing software. Agile Executives Even though Agile is a better way, I’ve still seen failures using the Agile process. While some of these failures can be attributed to the team, most of them are caused by managers, not the team. Managers fail to understand what Agile is, how it works, and how to get the information that they need to make good business decisions. I think this is a shame. I’m very pleased that Veracity understands this problem and is trying to do something about it. Veracity is a key sponsor of Agile Executives. In fact, Galen is this year’s acting president for Agile Executives. The purpose of Agile Executives is to help managers better manage Agile teams and see better success. Agile Executives is trying to build a community of executives that range from managers interested in Agile to managers that have successfully adopted Agile. Together, these managers can form a community of support and ideas that will help make Agile teams more successful. Helping Your Team You can help too! Talk with your manager and get them involved in Agile Executives. Help Veracity build the community. If your manager understands Agile better, he’ll understand how to help his teams, which will result in software that adds more value for customers. If you have any questions about how you can be involved, please let me know. Technorati Tags: Agile,Agile Executives

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 14 &ndash; Insuring Integrity &amp; Availability

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Identify the characteristics of a network that keep data safe from loss or damage Protect an enterprise-wide network from viruses Explain network and system level fault tolerance techniques Discuss issues related to network backup and recovery strategies Describe the components of a useful disaster recovery plan and the options for disaster contingencies What are integrity and availability? Integrity – the soundness of a networks programs, data, services, devices, and connections Availability – How consistently and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel A number of phenomena can compromise both integrity and availability including… security breaches natural disasters malicious intruders power flaws human error users etc Although you cannot predict every type of vulnerability, you can take measures to guard against the most damaging events. The following are some guidelines… Allow only network administrators to create or modify NOS and application system users. Monitor the network for unauthorized access or changes Record authorized system changes in a change management system’ Install redundant components Perform regular health checks on the network Check system performance, error logs, and the system log book regularly Keep backups Implement and enforce security and disaster recovery policies These are just some of the basics… Malware Malware refers to any program or piece of code designed to intrude upon or harm a system or its resources. Types of Malware… Boot sector viruses Macro viruses File infector viruses Worms Trojan Horse Network Viruses Bots Malware characteristics Some common characteristics of Malware include… Encryption Stealth Polymorphism Time dependence Malware Protection There are various tools available to protect you from malware called anti-malware software. These monitor your system for indications that a program is performing potential malware operations. A number of techniques are used to detect malware including… Signature Scanning Integrity Checking Monitoring unexpected file changes or virus like behaviours It is important to decide where anti-malware tools will be installed and find a balance between performance and protection. There are several general purpose malware policies that can be implemented to protect your network including… Every compute in an organization should be equipped with malware detection and cleaning software that regularly runs Users should not be allowed to alter or disable the anti-malware software Users should know what to do in case the anti-malware program detects a malware virus Users should be prohibited from installing any unauthorized software on their systems System wide alerts should be issued to network users notifying them if a serious malware virus has been detected. Fault Tolerance Besides guarding against malware, another key factor in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the ability for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected hardware or software malfunction. Fault tolerance can be realized in varying degrees, the optimal level of fault tolerance for a system depends on how critical its services and files are to productivity. Generally the more fault tolerant the system, the more expensive it is. The following describe some of the areas that need to be considered for fault tolerance. Environment (Temperature and humidity) Power Topology and Connectivity Servers Storage Power Typical power flaws include Surges – a brief increase in voltage due to lightening strikes, solar flares or some idiot at City Power Noise – Fluctuation in voltage levels caused by other devices on the network or electromagnetic interference Brownout – A sag in voltage for just a moment Blackout – A complete power loss The are various alternate power sources to consider including UPS’s and Generators. UPS’s are found in two categories… Standby UPS – provides continuous power when mains goes down (brief period of switching over) Online UPS – is online all the time and the device receives power from the UPS all the time (the UPS is charged continuously) Servers There are various techniques for fault tolerance with servers. Server mirroring is an option where one device or component duplicates the activities of another. It is generally an expensive process. Clustering is a fault tolerance technique that links multiple servers together to appear as a single server. They share processing and storage responsibilities and if one unit in the cluster goes down, another unit can be brought in to replace it. Storage There are various techniques available including the following… RAID Arrays NAS (Storage (Network Attached Storage) SANs (Storage Area Networks) Data Backup A backup is a copy of data or program files created for archiving or safekeeping. Many different options for backups exist with various media including… These vary in cost and speed. Optical Media Tape Backup External Disk Drives Network Backups Backup Strategy After selecting the appropriate tool for performing your servers backup, devise a backup strategy to guide you through performing reliable backups that provide maximum data protection. Questions that should be answered include… What data must be backed up At what time of day or night will the backups occur How will you verify the accuracy of the backups Where and for how long will backup media be stored Who will take responsibility for ensuring that backups occurred How long will you save backups Where will backup and recovery documentation be stored Different backup methods provide varying levels of certainty and corresponding labour cost. There are also different ways to determine which files should be backed up including… Full backup – all data on all servers is copied to storage media Incremental backup – Only data that has changed since the last full or incremental backup is copied to a storage medium Differential backup – Only data that has changed since the last backup is coped to a storage medium Disaster Recovery Disaster recovery is the process of restoring your critical functionality and data after an enterprise wide outage has occurred. A disaster recovery plan is for extreme scenarios (i.e. fire, line fault, etc). A cold site is a place were the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exist but they are not appropriately configured. A warm site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists with some appropriately configured devices. A hot site is a place where the computers, devices, and connectivity necessary to rebuild a network exists and all are appropriately configured.

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• World Backup Day

  - by red(at)work

  Here at Red Gate Towers, the SQL Backup development team have been hunkered down in their shed for the last few months, with the toolbox, blowtorch and chamois leather out, upgrading SQL Backup. When we started, autumn leaves were falling. Now we're about to finish, spring flowers are budding. If not quite a gleaming new machine, at the very least a familiar, reliable engine with some shiny new bits on it will trundle magnificently out of the workshop. One of the interesting things I've noticed about working on software development teams is that the team is together for so long 'implementing' stuff - designing, coding, testing, fixing bugs and so on - that you occasionally forget why you're doing what you're doing. Doubt creeps in. It feels like a long time since we launched this project in a fanfare of optimism and enthusiasm, and all that clarity of purpose and mission "yee-haw" has dissipated with the daily pressures of development. Every now and again, we look up from our bunker and notice all those thousands of users out there, with their different configurations and working practices and each with their own set of problems and requirements, and we ask ourselves "does anyone care about what we're doing?" Has the world moved on while we've been busy? Could we have been doing something more useful with the time and talent of all these excellent people we've assembled? In truth, you can research and test and validate all you like, but you never really know if you've done the right thing (or at least, something valuable for some users) until you release. All projects suffer this insecurity. If they don't, maybe you're not worrying enough about what you're building. The two enemies of software development are certainty and complacency. Oh, and of course, rival teams with Nerf guns. The goal of SQL Backup 7 is to make it so easy to schedule regular restores of your backups that you have no excuse not to. Why schedule a restore? Because your data is not as good as your last backup. It's only as good as your last successful restore. If you're not checking your backups by restoring them and running an integrity check on the database, you're only doing half the job. It seems that most DBAs know that this is best practice, but it can be tricky and time-consuming to set up, so it's one of those tasks that can get forgotten in the midst all the other demands on their time. Sometimes, they're just too busy firefighting. But if it was simple to do? That was our inspiration for SQL Backup 7. So it was heartening to read Brent Ozar's blog post the other day about World Backup Day. To be honest, I'd never heard of World Backup Day (Talk Like a Pirate Day, yes, but not this one); however, its emphasis on not just backing up your data but checking the validity of those backups was exactly the same message we had in mind when building SQL Backup 7. It's printed on a piece of A3 above our planning board - "Make backup verification so easy to do that no DBA has an excuse for not doing it" It's the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Simple idea, great concept, useful feature, but, as it turned out, far from straightforward to implement. The problem is the future. As Marty McFly discovered over the course of three movies, the future is uncertain and hard to predict - so when you are scheduling a restore to take place an hour, day, week or month after the backup, there are all kinds of questions that you wouldn't normally have to consider. Where will this backup live? Will it even exist at the time? Will it be split into multiple files? What will the file names be? Will it be encrypted? What files should it be restored to? SQL Backup needs to know what to expect at the time the restore job is actually run. Of course, a DBA will know the answer to all these questions, but to deliver the whole point of version 7, we wanted to make it easy for them to input that information into SQL Backup. We think we've done that. When you create your scheduled backup job, there is now an option to create a "reminder" to follow it up with a scheduled restore to verify the resulting backups. Actually, it's much more than a reminder, as it stores all the relevant data so you can click it and pre-populate the wizard with all the right settings to set up your verification restores. Simple. But, what do you think? We'd love you to try it. Post by Brian Harris

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• IsNumeric() Broken? Only up to a point.

  - by Phil Factor

  In SQL Server, probably the best-known 'broken' function is poor ISNUMERIC() . The documentation says 'ISNUMERIC returns 1 when the input expression evaluates to a valid numeric data type; otherwise it returns 0. ISNUMERIC returns 1 for some characters that are not numbers, such as plus (+), minus (-), and valid currency symbols such as the dollar sign ($).'Although it will take numeric data types (No, I don't understand why either), its main use is supposed to be to test strings to make sure that you can convert them to whatever numeric datatype you are using (int, numeric, bigint, money, smallint, smallmoney, tinyint, float, decimal, or real). It wouldn't actually be of much use anyway, since each datatype has different rules. You actually need a RegEx to do a reasonably safe check. The other snag is that the IsNumeric() function  is a bit broken. SELECT ISNUMERIC(',')This cheerfully returns 1, since it believes that a comma is a currency symbol (not a thousands-separator) and you meant to say 0, in this strange currency.  However, SELECT ISNUMERIC(N'£')isn't recognized as currency.  '+' and  '-' is seen to be numeric, which is stretching it a bit. You'll see that what it allows isn't really broken except that it doesn't recognize Unicode currency symbols: It just tells you that one numeric type is likely to accept the string if you do an explicit conversion to it using the string. Both these work fine, so poor IsNumeric has to follow suit. SELECT  CAST('0E0' AS FLOAT)SELECT  CAST (',' AS MONEY) but it is harder to predict which data type will accept a '+' sign. SELECT  CAST ('+' AS money) --0.00SELECT  CAST ('+' AS INT)   --0SELECT  CAST ('+' AS numeric)/* Msg 8115, Level 16, State 6, Line 4 Arithmetic overflow error converting varchar to data type numeric.*/SELECT  CAST ('+' AS FLOAT)/*Msg 8114, Level 16, State 5, Line 5Error converting data type varchar to float.*/> So we can begin to say that the maybe IsNumeric isn't really broken, but is answering a silly question 'Is there some numeric datatype to which i can convert this string? Almost, but not quite. The bug is that it doesn't understand Unicode currency characters such as the euro or franc which are actually valid when used in the CAST function. (perhaps they're delaying fixing the euro bug just in case it isn't necessary).SELECT ISNUMERIC (N'?23.67') --0SELECT  CAST (N'?23.67' AS money) --23.67SELECT ISNUMERIC (N'£100.20') --1SELECT  CAST (N'£100.20' AS money) --100.20 Also the CAST function itself is quirky in that it cannot convert perfectly reasonable string-representations of integers into integersSELECT ISNUMERIC('200,000')       --1SELECT  CAST ('200,000' AS INT)   --0/*Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 2Conversion failed when converting the varchar value '200,000' to data type int.*/  A more sensible question is 'Is this an integer or decimal number'. This cuts out a lot of the apparent quirkiness. We do this by the '+E0' trick. If we want to include floats in the check, we'll need to make it a bit more complicated. Here is a small test-rig. SELECT  PossibleNumber,         ISNUMERIC(CAST(PossibleNumber AS NVARCHAR(20)) + 'E+00') AS Hack,        ISNUMERIC (PossibleNumber + CASE WHEN PossibleNumber LIKE '%E%'                                          THEN '' ELSE 'E+00' END) AS Hackier,        ISNUMERIC(PossibleNumber) AS RawIsNumericFROM    (SELECT CAST(',' AS NVARCHAR(10)) AS PossibleNumber          UNION SELECT '£' UNION SELECT '.'         UNION SELECT '56' UNION SELECT '456.67890'         UNION SELECT '0E0' UNION SELECT '-'         UNION SELECT '-' UNION SELECT '.'         UNION  SELECT N'?' UNION SELECT N'¢'        UNION  SELECT N'?' UNION SELECT N'?34.56'         UNION SELECT '-345' UNION SELECT '3.332228E+09') AS examples Which gives the result ... PossibleNumber Hack Hackier RawIsNumeric-------------- ----------- ----------- ------------? 0 0 0- 0 0 1, 0 0 1. 0 0 1¢ 0 0 1£ 0 0 1? 0 0 0?34.56 0 0 00E0 0 1 13.332228E+09 0 1 1-345 1 1 1456.67890 1 1 156 1 1 1 I suspect that this is as far as you'll get before you abandon IsNumeric in favour of a regex. You can only get part of the way with the LIKE wildcards, because you cannot specify quantifiers. You'll need full-blown Regex strings like these ..[-+]?\b[0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?\b #INT or REAL[-+]?\b[0-9]{1,3}\b #TINYINT[-+]?\b[0-9]{1,5}\b #SMALLINT.. but you'll get even these to fail to catch numbers out of range.So is IsNumeric() an out and out rogue function? Not really, I'd say, but then it would need a damned good lawyer.

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• Please give the solution of the following programs in R Programming

  - by NEETHU

  Table below gives data concerning the performance of 28 national football league teams in 1976.It is suspected that the no. of yards gained rushing by opponents(x8) has an effect on the no. of games won by a team(y) (a)Fit a simple linear regression model relating games won by y to yards gained rushing by opponents x8. (b)Construct the analysis of variance table and test for significance of regression. (c)Find a 95% CI on the slope. (d)What percent of the total variability in y is explained by this model. (e)Find a 95% CI on the mean number of games won in opponents yards rushing is limited to 2000 yards. Team y x8 1 10 2205 2 11 2096 3 11 1847 4 13 1803 5 10 1457 6 11 1848 7 10 1564 8 11 1821 9 4 2577 10 2 2476 11 7 1984 12 10 1917 13 9 1761 14 9 1709 15 6 1901 16 5 2288 17 5 2072 18 5 2861 19 6 2411 20 4 2289 21 3 2203 22 3 2592 23 4 2053 24 10 1979 25 6 2048 26 8 1786 27 2 2876 28 0 2560 Suppose we would like to use the model developed in problem 1 to predict the no. of games a team will win if it can limit opponents yards rushing to 1800 yards. Find a point estimate of the no. of games won when x8=1800.Find a 905 prediction interval on the no. of games won. The purity of Oxygen produced by a fractionation process is thought to be percentage of Hydrocarbon in the main condenser of the processing unit .20 samples are shown below. Purity(%) Hydrocarbon(%) 86.91 1.02 89.85 1.11 90.28 1.43 86.34 1.11 92.58 1.01 87.33 0.95 86.29 1.11 91.86 0.87 95.61 1.43 89.86 1.02 96.73 1.46 99.42 1.55 98.66 1.55 96.07 1.55 93.65 1.4 87.31 1.15 95 1.01 96.85 0.99 85.2 0.95 90.56 0.98 (a)Fit a simple linear regression model to the data. (b)Test the hypothesis H0:ß=0 (c)Calculate R2 . (d)Find a 95% CI on the slope. (e)Find a 95% CI on the mean purity and the Hydrocarbon % is 1. Consider the Oxygen plant data in Problem3 and assume that purity and Hydrocarbon percentage are jointly normally distributed r.vs (a)What is the correlation between Oxygen purity and Hydrocarbon% (b)Test the hypothesis that ?=0. (c)Construct a 95% CI for ?.

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• Focusable EditText inside ListView

  - by Joe

  I've spent about 6 hours on this so far, and been hitting nothing but roadblocks. The general premise is that there is some row in a ListView (whether it's generated by the adapter, or added as a header view) that contains an EditText widget and a Button. All I want to do is be able to use the jogball/arrows, to navigate the selector to individual items like normal, but when I get to a particular row -- even if I have to explicitly identify the row -- that has a focusable child, I want that child to take focus instead of indicating the position with the selector. I've tried many possibilities, and have so far had no luck. layout: <ListView android:id="@android:id/list" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:layout_width="fill_parent" /> Header view: EditText view = new EditText(this); listView.addHeaderView(view, null, true); Assuming there are other items in the adapter, using the arrow keys will move the selection up/down in the list, as expected; but when getting to the header row, it is also displayed with the selector, and no way to focus into the EditText using the jogball. Note: tapping on the EditText will focus it at that point, however that relies on a touchscreen, which should not be a requirement. ListView apparently has two modes in this regard: 1. setItemsCanFocus(true): selector is never displayed, but the EditText can get focus when using the arrows. Focus search algorithm is hard to predict, and no visual feedback (on any rows: having focusable children or not) on which item is selected, both of which can give the user an unexpected experience. 2. setItemsCanFocus(false): selector is always drawn in non-touch-mode, and EditText can never get focus -- even if you tap on it. To make matters worse, calling editTextView.requestFocus() returns true, but in fact does not give the EditText focus. What I'm envisioning is basically a hybrid of 1 & 2, where rather than the list setting if all items are focusable or not, I want to set focusability for a single item in the list, so that the selector seamlessly transitions from selecting the entire row for non-focusable items, and traversing the focus tree for items that contain focusable children. Any takers?

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• Team matchups for Dota Bot

  - by Dan

  I have a ghost++ bot that hosts games of Dota (a warcraft 3 map that is played 5 players versus 5 players) and I'm trying to come up with good formulas to balance the players going into a match based on their records (I have game history for several thousand games). I'm familear with some of the concepts required to match up players, like confidence based on sample size of the number of games they played, and also perameter approximation and degrees of freedom and thus throwing out any variables that don't contribute enough to the r^2. My bot collects quite a few variables for each player from each game: The Important ones: Win/Lose/Game did not finish # of Player Kills # of Player Deaths # of Kills player assisted The not so important ones: # of enemy creep kills # of creep sneak attacks # of neutral creep kills # of Tower kills # of Rax kills # of courier kills Quick explination: The kills/deaths don't determine who wins, but the gold gained and lost from this usually is enough to tilt the game. Tower/Rax kills are what the goal of the game is (once a team looses all their towers/rax their thrown can be attacked if that is destroyed they lose), but I don't really count these as important because it is pretty random who gets the credit for the tower kill, and chances are if you destroy a tower it is only because some other player is doing well and distracting the otherteam elsewhere on the map. I'm getting a bit confused when trying to deal with the fact that 5 players are on a team, so ultimately each individual isn't that responsible for the team winner or losing. Take a player that is really good at killing and has 40 kills and only 10 deaths, but in their 5 games they've only won 1. Should I give him extra credit for such a high kill score despite losing? (When losing it is hard to keep a positive kill/death ratio) Or should I dock him for losing assuming that despite the nice kill/death ratio he probably plays in a really greedy way only looking out for himself and not helping the team? Ultimately I don't think I have to guess at questions like this because I have so much data... but I don't really know how to look at the data to answer questions like this. Can anyone help me come up with formulas to help team balance and predict the outcome? Thanks, Dan

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• Error using `loess.smooth` but not `loess` or `lowess`

  - by Sandy

  I need to smooth some simulated data, but occasionally run into problems when the simulated ordinates to be smoothed are mostly the same value. Here is a small reproducible example of the simplest case. > x <- 0:50 > y <- rep(0,51) > loess.smooth(x,y) Error in simpleLoess(y, x, w, span, degree, FALSE, FALSE, normalize = FALSE, : NA/NaN/Inf in foreign function call (arg 1) loess(y~x), lowess(x,y), and their analogue in MATLAB produce the expected results without error on this example. I am using loess.smooth here because I need the estimates evaluated at a set number of points. According to the documentation, I believe loess.smooth and loess are using the same estimation functions, but the former is an "auxiliary function" to handle the evaluation points. The error seems to come from a C function: > traceback() 3: .C(R_loess_raw, as.double(pseudovalues), as.double(x), as.double(weights), as.double(weights), as.integer(D), as.integer(N), as.double(span), as.integer(degree), as.integer(nonparametric), as.integer(order.drop.sqr), as.integer(sum.drop.sqr), as.double(span * cell), as.character(surf.stat), temp = double(N), parameter = integer(7), a = integer(max.kd), xi = double(max.kd), vert = double(2 * D), vval = double((D + 1) * max.kd), diagonal = double(N), trL = double(1), delta1 = double(1), delta2 = double(1), as.integer(0L)) 2: simpleLoess(y, x, w, span, degree, FALSE, FALSE, normalize = FALSE, "none", "interpolate", control$cell, iterations, control$trace.hat) 1: loess.smooth(x, y) loess also calls simpleLoess, but with what appears to be different arguments. Of course, if you vary enough of the y values to be nonzero, loess.smooth runs without error, but I need the program to run in even the most extreme case. Hopefully, someone can help me with one and/or all of the following: Understand why only loess.smooth, and not the other functions, produces this error and find a solution for this problem. Find a work-around using loess but still evaluating the estimate at a specified number of points that can differ from the vector x. For example, I might want to use only x <- seq(0,50,10) in the smoothing, but evaluate the estimate at x <- 0:50. As far as I know, using predict with a new data frame will not properly handle this situation, but please let me know if I am missing something there. Handle the error in a way that doesn't stop the program from moving onto the next simulated data set. Thanks in advance for any help on this problem.

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• How to designing a generic databse whos layout may change over time?

  - by mawg

  Here's a tricky one - how do I programatically create and interrogate a database who's contents I can't really foresee? I am implementing a generic input form system. The user can create PHP forms with a WYSIWYG layout and use them for any purpose he wishes. He can also query the input. So, we have three stages: a form is designed and generated. This is a one-off procedure, although the form can be edited later. This designs the database. someone or several people make use of the form - say for daily sales reports, stock keeping, payroll, etc. Their input to the forms is written to the database. others, maybe management, can query the database and generate reports. Since these forms are generic, I can't predict the database structure - other than to say that it will reflect HTML form fields and consist of a the data input from collection of edit boxes, memos, radio buttons and the like. Questions and remarks: A) how can I best structure the database, in terms of tables and columns? What about primary keys? My first thought was to use the control name to identify each column, then I realized that the user can edit the form and rename, so that maybe "name" becomes "employee" or "wages" becomes ":salary". I am leaning towards a unique number for each. B) how best to key the rows? I was thinking of a timestamp to allow me to query and a column for the row Id from A) C) I have to handle column rename/insert/delete. Foe deletion, I am unsure whether to delete the data from the database. Even if the user is not inputting it from the form any more he may wish to query what was previously entered. Or there may be some legal requirements to retain the data. Any gotchas in column rename/insert/delete? D) For the querying, I can have my PHP interrogate the database to get column names and generate a form with a list where each entry has a database column name, a checkbox to say if it should be used in the query and, based on column type, some selection criteria. That ought to be enough to build searches like "position = 'senior salesman' and salary 50k". E) I probably have to generate some fancy charts - graphs, histograms, pie charts, etc for query results of numerical data over time. I need to find some good FOSS PHP for this. F) What else have I forgotten? This all seems very tricky to me, but I am database n00b - maybe it is simple to you gurus?

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• Matlab wont extract first row & column because of matrix dimensions !

  - by ZaZu

  Hey guys, I am tracking an object that is thrown in air, and this object governs a parabolic pattern. Im tracking the object through a series of 30 images. I managed to exclude all the background and keep the object apparent, then used its centroid to get its coordinates and plot them. Now im supposed to predict where the object is going to fall, so I used polyfit & polyval .. the problem is, matlab says ??? Index exceeds matrix dimensions. Now the centroid creates its own structure with a row and 2 columns. Everytime the object moves in the loop, it updates the first row only .. Here is part of the code : For N=1:30 . . . x=centroid(1,1); % extract first row and column for x y=centroid(1,2); % extract secnd row and column for x plot_xy=plot(x,y) set(plot_xy,'XData',x(1:N),'YData',y(1:N)); fitting=polyfit(x(1:N),y(1:N),2); parabola=plot(x,nan(23,1)); evaluate=polyval(fitting,x); set(parabola,'YData',evaluate) . . end The error message I get is ??? Index exceeds matrix dimensions. It seems that (1:N) is causing the problems .. I honestly do not know why .. But when I remove N, the object is plotted along with its points, but polyfitting wont work, it gives me an error saying : Warning: Polynomial is not unique; degree >= number of data points. > In polyfit at 72 If I made it (1:N-1) or something, it plots more points before it starts giving me the same error (not unique ...) . Any ideas why ?? Thanks alot !!

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• How to fine tune FluentNHibernate's auto mapper?

  - by Venemo

  Okay, so yesterday I managed to get the latest trunk builds of NHibernate and FluentNHibernate to work with my latest little project. (I'm working on a bug tracking application.) I created a nice data access layer using the Repository pattern. I decided that my entities are nothing special, and also that with the current maturity of ORMs, I don't want to hand-craft the database. So, I chose to use FluentNHibernate's auto mapping feature with NHibernate's "hbm2ddl.auto" property set to "create". It really works like a charm. I put the NHibernate configuration in my app domain's config file, set it up, and started playing with it. (For the time being, I created some unit tests only.) It created all tables in the database, and everything I need for it. It even mapped my many-to-many relationships correctly. However, there are a few small glitches: All of the columns created in the DB allow null. I understand that it can't predict which properties should allow null and which shouldn't, but at least I'd like to tell it that it should allow null only for those types for which null makes sense in .NET (eg. non-nullable value types shouldn't allow null). All of the nvarchar and varbinary columns it created, have a default length of 255. I would prefer to have them on max instead of that. Is there a way to tell the auto mapper about the two simple rules above? If the answer is no, will it work correctly if I modify the tables it created? (So, if I set some columns not to allow null, and change the allowed length for some other, will it correctly work with them?) EDIT: I managed to achieve the above by using Fluent NHibernate's convention API. Thanks to everyone who helped! However, there is one more thing: after checking out the convention API, I really would like my IDs to be calld "ID", not "Id", but it seems to me that the PrimaryKey.Name.Is(x => "ID") is not working at all. If I add it to the conventions collection and rewrite my entities' properties to "ID" instead of "Id", it throws an exception that there is no primary key mapped. Any thoughts on this?

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• Efficient algorithm to distribute work?

  - by Zwei Steinen

  It's a bit complicated to explain but here we go. We have problems like this (code is pseudo-code, and is only for illustrating the problem. Sorry it's in java. If you don't understand, I'd be glad to explain.). class Problem { final Set<Integer> allSectionIds = { 1,2,4,6,7,8,10 }; final Data data = //Some data } And a subproblem is: class SubProblem { final Set<Integer> targetedSectionIds; final Data data; SubProblem(Set<Integer> targetedSectionsIds, Data data){ this.targetedSectionIds = targetedSectionIds; this.data = data; } } Work will look like this, then. class Work implements Runnable { final Set<Section> subSections; final Data data; final Result result; Work(Set<Section> subSections, Data data) { this.sections = SubSections; this.data = data; } @Override public void run(){ for(Section section : subSections){ result.addUp(compute(data, section)); } } } Now we have instances of 'Worker', that have their own state sections I have. class Worker implements ExecutorService { final Map<Integer,Section> sectionsIHave; { sectionsIHave = {1:section1, 5:section5, 8:section8 }; } final ExecutorService executor = //some executor. @Override public void execute(SubProblem problem){ Set<Section> sectionsNeeded = fetchSections(problem.targetedSectionIds); super.execute(new Work(sectionsNeeded, problem.data); } } phew. So, we have a lot of Problems and Workers are constantly asking for more SubProblems. My task is to break up Problems into SubProblem and give it to them. The difficulty is however, that I have to later collect all the results for the SubProblems and merge (reduce) them into a Result for the whole Problem. This is however, costly, so I want to give the workers "chunks" that are as big as possible (has as many targetedSections as possible). It doesn't have to be perfect (mathematically as efficient as possible or something). I mean, I guess that it is impossible to have a perfect solution, because you can't predict how long each computation will take, etc.. But is there a good heuristic solution for this? Or maybe some resources I can read up before I go into designing? Any advice is highly appreciated!

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• PHP Regex: How to match anything except a pattern between two tags

  - by Ryan

  Hello, I am attempting to match a string which is composed of HTML. Basically it is an image gallery so there is a lot of similarity in the string. There are a lot of <dl> tags in the string, but I am looking to match the last <dl>(.?)+</dl> combo that comes before a </div>. The way I've devised to do this is to make sure that there aren't any <dl's inside the <dl></dl> combo I'm matching. I don't care what else is there, including other tags and line breaks. I decided I had to do it with regular expressions because I can't predict how long this substring will be or anything that's inside it. Here is my current regex that only returns me an array with two NULL indicies: preg_match_all('/<dl((?!<dl).)+<\/dl>(?=<\/div>)/', $foo, $bar) As you can see I use negative lookahead to try and see if there is another <dl> within this one. I've also tried negative lookbehind here with the same results. I've also tried using +? instead of just + to no avail. Keep in mind that there's no pattern <dl><dl></dl> or anything, but that my regex is either matching the first <dl> and the last </dl> or nothing at all. Now I realize . won't match line breaks but I've tried anything I could imagine there and it still either provides me with the NULL indicies or nearly the whole string (from the very first occurance of <dl to </dl></div>, which includes several other occurances of <dl>, exactly what I didn't want). I honestly don't know what I'm doing incorrectly. Thanks for your help! I've spent over an hour just trying to straighten out this one problem and it's about driven me to pulling my hair out.

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• jquery animation problem using stop

  - by Flanders

  Hi! When running a Jquery animation like slideDown(), it looks like a number of element-specific css properties is set to be updated at a specific interval and when the animation is complete these properties are unset and the display property is simply set to auto or whatever. At least in firebug you can't see those temporary properties any more. The problem I've encountered is the scenario where we stop the slide down with stop(). The element is then left with the current temporary css values. Which is fine because it has to, but let us say that I stoped the slidedown because I have decided to slide it back up again a bit prematurely. It would look something like this: $(this).slideDown(2000) //The below events is not in queue but will rather start execute almost simultaneously as the above line. (dont remember the exact syntax) $(this).delay(1000).stop().slideUp(2000) The above code might not make much sense, but the point is: After 1 second of sliding down the animation is stopped and it starts to slide back up. Works like a charm. BUT!!! And here is the problem. Once it it has slid back up the elements css properties are reset to the exact values it had 1000ms into the slideDown() animation (when stop() was called). If we now try to run the following: $(this).slideDown(2000) It will slide down to the very point the prior slideDown was aborted and not further at half the speed (since it uses the same time for approximately half the height). This is because the css properties were saved as I see it. But it is not especially wished for. Of course I want it to slide all the way down this time. Due to UI interaction that is hard to predict everything might soon break. The longer animations we use increases the risk of something like this happening. Is this to be considered a bug, or am I doing something wrong? Or maybe it's just a feature that is not supported? I guess I can use a callback function to reset the css properties, but depending on the animation used, different css properties are used to render it, and covering your back would result in quite a not-so-fancy solution.

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• Advice needed: stay with Java team or move to C++ team?

  - by user68759

  Some background - I have been programming in Java as a professional for the last few years. This is mainly using Java SE. I have also touched bits and pieces of other various Java technologies and have some basic knowledge about them. I consider my self as an intermediate Java programmer. I like Java very much. I think it is only going to get bigger. Recently, my manager asked my opinion on whether I would like to be transferred to another team within the company that is developing a product in C++. This is mainly because my current Java team simply didn't make enough money due to poor sales and the economic downturn. Now, I have never had any experience with C++ nor have I ever coded a single line of code in C++. I have always wanted to learn it and now is my chance. But I really want to make sure I get benefit out of it in the future, in the sense that I will have the skills that will still be on-demand in the future. So, what do you experts think? Is C++ still the language to learn these days to secure yourself for the future? What will I learn more in C++ but not in Java? And are they worthy to learn considering the current and possible future demands in IT industry? (Apart from the obvious more control over memory management and something along that line.) What is a good excuse to refuse the offer in order to stay with the Java team? I don't want to blatantly refuse it because you can never predict the future and I could possibly come back to my manager in the future and ask him to transfer me to the C++ team. How do I say it nicely that I am taking the offer but I would like to still be involved with Java one way or another, such as when there is a new Java project I would like to be considered. I have to admit that I am kind of 50-50 at the moment. I want to learn C++ for the sake of improving my skills and also helping my company to reduce the fund required for the Java team. But it is also hard for me to leave Java because I know Java is going to get bigger, so I am afraid of getting behind when I start concentrating on C++. I could, of course, decide to just join the C++ team, and then spend my free time reading about Java to keep in touch with it, but I thought I would ask anyway in case some people can point out the strong points of either over the other given the current and possibly future circumstances.

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• RAID and Partitions, guidance Needed

  - by beauregarde

  Alright I have a Biostar TA790GX3A2+ Mobo 2x Seagate 750Gb Hard drive (with 2 different speeds) an X4 9750 A GeForce 9800GT and 2GB RAM Hardware Specs link text I want to configure my computer with partitions in various RAID arrays. The Partitions I know i want (disk letters are mostly for reference here) C: XP Boot D: XP Swap E: XP Run F: Games G: Data The Partitions I think I want (repeat caveat) H: small FAT for Win Legacy and DOS I: Linux J: Linux Swap K-?M?: Other Linux /whatever partitions N & O: Attic for D1 and D2 What I'd like to do, is have C: written on Disk 1 (D1),.. D: on D2,.. E: and F: striped on D1 & D2,.. G: mirrored or D1 & D2,.. I: on D2 (so i can just switch disc boot priority to open in Ubuntu),.. J: on D1,.. and H: somewhere low on D1 I am inexperienced with VMs, so i am unsure as to whether those run out of XP, or whether i need to reserve a primary partition for them. However, I think they would be preferable for testing new OS's to scheduling a partition for the same purpose. I'm also not married to XP, but -64 IS pretty important to me. QUestion Time 1) Ignoring the irrationality of it all, is such a configuration possible? If not, can some pseudo-approximation be achieved? 2) My RAID is software, isnt it? 3) How much should I short a 750GB HD? And should i use that space for my attics, or for my attics and something else, or for something else (.iso's perhaps?)? 4) if XP is striped on D1 & D2, will that interfere egregiously with my Swap writes on D2? If so, would striping both XP and Swap relieve (or at least mitigate) that issue? Should XP and Swap just be written normally on 2 different HDs? 5) Should I keep DL's and Drivers on E: (XP Run), F: (Games), or elsewhere? 6) Is 4GB enough for C:? 7) Is 30GB enough (or too much) for E:? 8) How much to reserve for the Linux and sub-Linux partitions? Also, where on the platter do you think i should put them? 9) Am I a fool to use FAT16 instead of FAT32 for H: because I'd rather run 95 than 98SE? If not, do you think 2GB or 4GB? 10) I cant predict what my Max Commit Charge will be, so recommendations for Pagefile size? 5GB? 12GB? 11) VMs, where do I run them? do they exacerbate anything? Would it be better to just emulate Linux, 95, and DOS? EC) What havent I considered that I really should? Notes: computer is mostly for playing games and watching media, though I wouldnt rule out the use of particularly blah-intensive anything.

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• IPv6: Should I have private addresses?

  - by AlReece45

  Right now, we have a rack of servers. Every server right now has at least 2 IP addresses, one for the public interface, another for the private. The servers that have SSL websites on them have more IP addresses. We also have virtual servers, that are configured similarly. Private Network The private range is currently just used for backups and monitoring. Its a gigabit port, the interface usage does not usually get very high. There are other technologies we're considering using that would use this port: iSCSI (implementations usually recommends dedicating an interface to it, which would be yet another IP network), VPN to get access to the private range (something I'd rather avoid) dedicated database servers LDAP centralized configuration (like puppet) centralized logging We don't have any private addresses in our DNS records (only public addresses). For our servers to utilize the correct IP address for the right interface (and not hard code the IP address) probably requires setting up a private DNS server (So now we add 2 different dns entries to 2 different systems). Public Network Our public range has a variety of services include web, email, and ftp. There is a hardware firewall between our network and the "public" network. We have (relatively secure) method to instruct the firewall to open and close administrative access (web interfaces, ssh, etc) for our current IP address. With either solution discussed, the host-based firewalls will be configured as well. The public network currently runs at a dedicated 20Mbps link. There are a couple of legacy servers with fast-ethernet ports, but they are scheduled for decommissioning. All of the other production boxes have at least 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The more traffic-heavy servers have 4-6 available (none is using more than the 2 Gigabit ports right now). IPv6 I want to get an IPv6 prefix from our ISP. So at least every "server" has at least one IPv6 interface. We'll still need to keep the IPv4 addressees up and available for legacy clients (web servers and email at the very least). We have two IP networks right now. Adding the public IPv6 address would make it three. Just use IPv6? I'm thinking about just dumping the private IPv4 range and using the IPv6 range as the primary means of all communications. If an interface starts reaching its capacity, utilize the newly free interfaces to create a trunk. It has the advantage that if either the public or private traffic needs to exceed 1Gbps. The traffic for each interface is already analyzed on a regular basis to predict future bandwidth use. In the rare instances where bandwidth unexpected peaks: utilize QoS to ensure traffic (like our limited SSH access) is prioritized correctly so the problem can be corrected (if possible, our WAN is the bottleneck right now). It also has the advantage of not needing to make an entry for every private address. We may have private DNS (or just LDAP), but it'll be much more limited in scope with less entries to duplicate. Summary I'm trying to make this network as "simple" as possible. At the same time, I want to make sure its reliable, upgradeable, scalable, and (eventually) redundant. Having one IPv6 network, and a legacy IPv4 network seems to be the best solution to me. Regarding using assigned IPv6 addresses for both networks, sharing the available bandwidth on one (more trunked if needed): Are there any technical disadvantages (limitations, buffers, scalability)? Are there any other security considerations (asides from firewalls mentioned above) to consider? Are there regulations or other security requirements (like PCI-DSS) that this doesn't meet? Is there typical software for setting up a Linux network that doesn't have IPv6 support yet? (logging, ldap, puppet) Some other thing I didn't consider?

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