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• MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

  Unfortunately, there was no monthly meetup during May. Which means that it was even more important and interesting to go forward with a great topic for this month. Earlier this year I already spoke to Nayar Joolfoo about doing a presentation on version control systems (VCS), and he gladly agreed since then. It was just about finding the right date for the action. Furthermore, it was also a great coincidence that Avinash Meetoo announced on social media networks that Knowledge 7 is about to have a new training on "Effective git" - which correlates to a book title Avinash is currently working on - all the best with your approach on this and reach out to our MSCC craftsmen for recessions. Once again a big Thank you to Orange Ebene Accelerator on providing the venue for us, and the MSCC members involved on securing the time slot for our event. Unfortunately, it's kind of tough to get an early confirmation for our meetups these days. I'll keep you posted on that one as there are some interesting and exciting options coming up soon. Okay, let's talk about the meeting and version control systems again. As usual, I'm going to put my first impression of the meetup: "Absolutely great topic, questions and discussions on version control systems, like git or VSO. I was also highly pleased by the number of first timers and female IT geeks. Hopefully, we will be able to keep this trend for future get-togethers." And I really have to emphasise the amount of fresh blood coming to our gathering. Also, during the initial phase it was surprising to see that exactly those first-timers, most of them students at various campuses here on the island, had absolutely no idea about version control systems. More about further down... Reactions of other attendees If I counted correctly, we had a total of 17 attendees this month, and I'd like to give you feedback from some of them: "Inspiring. Helped me understand more about GIT." -- Sean on event comments "Joined the meetup today with literally no idea what is a version control system. I have several reasons why I should be starting to use VCS as from NOW in my projects. Thanks Nayar, Jochen and other participants :)" -- Yudish on event comments "Was present today and I'm very satisfied.I was not aware if there was a such tool like git available. Thanks to those who contributed for this meetup.It was great. Learned a lot from this meetup!!" -- Leonardo on event comments "Seriously, I can see how it’s going to ease my task and help me save time. Gone are the issues with files backups.  And since I’ll be doing my dissertation this year, using Git would help me a lot for my backups and I’m grateful to Nayar for the great explanation." -- Swan-Iyah on MSCC meetup : Version Controls Hopefully, I'll be able to get some other sources - personal blogs preferred - on our meeting. Geeks, thank you so much for those encouraging comments. It's really great to experience that we, all members of the MSCC, are doing the right thing to get more IT information out, and to help each other to improve and evolve in our professional careers. Our agenda of the day Honestly, we had a bumpy start... First, I was battling a little bit with the movable room divider in order to maximize the space. I mean, we had 24 RSVPs and usually there might additional people coming along. Then, for what ever reason, we were facing power outages - actually twice in short periods. Not too good for the projector after all, but hey it went smooth for the rest of the time being. And last but not least... our first speaker Nayar got stuck somewhere on the road. ;-) Anyway, not a real show-stopper and we used the time until Nayar's arrival to introduce ourselves a little bit. It is always important for me to get to know the "newbies" a little bit, and as a result we had lots of students of university - first year, second year and recent graduates - among them. Surprisingly, none of them was ever in contact with version control systems at all. I mean, this is a shocking discovery! Similar to the ability of touch-typing I'd say that being able to use (and master) any kind of version control system is compulsory in any job in the IT industry. Seriously, I'm wondering what is being taught during the classes on the campus. All of them have to work on semester assessments or final projects, even in small teams of 2-4 people. That's the perfect occasion to get started with VCS. Already in this phase, we had great input from more experienced VCS users, like Sean, Avinash and myself. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar What a tour! Nayar gave us the full round of git from start to finish, even touching some more advanced techniques. First, he started to explain about the importance of version control systems as an essential tool for software developers, even working alone on a project, and the ability to have a kind of "time machine" that allows you to inspect and revert to a previous version of source code at any time. Then he showed how easy it is to install git on an Ubuntu based system but also mentioned that git is literally available for any operating system, like Windows, Mac OS X and of course other Linux distributions. Next, he showed us how to set the initial configuration values of user name and email address which simplifies the daily usage of the git client while working with your repositories. Then he initialised and added a new repository for some local development of a blogging software. All commands were done using the command line interface (CLI) so that they can be repeated on any system as reference. The syntax and the procedure is always the same, and Nayar clearly mentioned this to the attendees. Now, having a git repository in place it was about time to work on some "important" changes on the blogging software - just for the sake of demonstrating the ease of use and power of git. One interesting question came very early: "How many commands do we have to learn? It looks quite difficult at the moment" - Well, rest assured that during daily development circles you will need less than 10 git commands on a regular base: git add, commit, push, pull, checkout, and merge And Nayar demo'd all of them. Much to the delight of everyone he also showed gitk which is the git repository browser. It's an UI tool to display changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision. Using gitk to display and browse information of a local git repository And last but not least, we took advantage of the internet connectivity and reached out to various online portals offering git hosting for free. Nayar showed us how to push the local repository into a remote system on github. Showing the web-based git browser and history handling, and then also explained and demo'd on how to connect to existing online repositories in order to get access to either your own source code or other people's open source projects. Next to github, we also spoke about bitbucket and gitlab as potential online platforms for your projects. Have a look at the conditions and details about their free service packages and what you can get additionally as a paying customer. Usually, you already get a lot of services for up to five users for free but there might be other important aspects that might have an impact on your decision. Anyways, moving git-based repositories between systems is a piece of cake, and changing online platforms is possible at any stage of your development. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Well, Nayar literally covered all elements of working with git during his session, including the use of external online platforms. So, what would be the advantage of talking about Visual Studio Online (VSO)? First of all, VSO is "just another" online platform for hosting and managing git repositories on remote systems, equivalent to github, bitbucket, or any other web site. At the moment (of writing), Microsoft also provides a free package of up to five users / developers on a git repository but there is more in that package. Of course, it is related to software development on the Windows systems and the bonds are tightened towards the use of Visual Studio but out of experience you are absolutely not restricted to that. Connecting a Linux or Mac OS X machine with a git client or an integrated development environment (IDE) like Eclipse or Xcode works as smooth as expected. So, why should one opt in for VSO? Well, one of the main aspects that I would like to mention here is that VSO integrates the Application Life Cycle Methodology (ALM) of Microsoft in their platform. Meaning that you get agile project management with Backlogs, Sprints, Burn-down charts as well as the ability to track tasks, bug reports and work items next to collaborative team chats. It's the whole package of agile development you'll get. And, something I mentioned briefly during the begin of our meeting, VSO gives you the possibility of an automated continuous integrated (CI) process which builds and can run tests of your source code after each commit of changes. Having a proper CI strategy is also part of the Clean Code Developer practices - on Level Green actually -, and not only simplifies your life as a software developer but also reduces the sources of potential errors. Seamless integration and automated deployment between Microsoft Azure Web Sites and git repository But my favourite feature is the seamless continuous deployment to Microsoft Azure. Especially, while working on web projects it's absolutely astounishing that as soon as you commit your chances it just takes a couple of seconds until your modifications are deployed and available on your Azure-hosted web sites. Upcoming Events and networking Due to the adjusted times, everybody was kind of hungry and we didn't follow up on networking or upcoming events - very unfortunate to my opinion and this will have an impact on future planning of our meetups. Because I rather would like to see more conversations during and at the end of our meetings than everyone just packing their laptops, bags and accessories and rush off to grab some food. I was hoping to get some information regarding this year's Code Challenge - supposedly to be organised during July? Maybe someone could leave a comment on that - but I couldn't get any updates. Well, I'll keep digging... In case that you would like to get more into git and how to use it effectively, please check out Knowledge 7's upcoming course on "Effective git". Thanks Avinash for your vital input into today's conversation and I'm looking forward to get a grip on your book title very soon. My resume of the day Do not work in IT without any kind of version control system! Seriously, without a VCS in place you're doing it wrong. It's like driving a car without seat belts attached or riding your bike without safety helmet. You don't do that! End of discussion. ;-) Nowadays, having access to free (as in cost) tools to install on your machine and numerous online platforms to host your source code for free for up to five users it's a no-brainer to get yourself familiar with VCS. Today's sessions gave a good overview on how to start using git and how to connect to various remote services like github or VSO.

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• [GEEK SCHOOL] Network Security 2: Preventing Disaster with User Account Control

  - by Ciprian Rusen

  In this second lesson in our How-To Geek School about securing the Windows devices in your network, we will talk about User Account Control (UAC). Users encounter this feature each time they need to install desktop applications in Windows, when some applications need administrator permissions in order to work and when they have to change different system settings and files. UAC was introduced in Windows Vista as part of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing” initiative. Basically, UAC is meant to act as a wedge between you and installing applications or making system changes. When you attempt to do either of these actions, UAC will pop up and interrupt you. You may either have to confirm you know what you’re doing, or even enter an administrator password if you don’t have those rights. Some users find UAC annoying and choose to disable it but this very important security feature of Windows (and we strongly caution against doing that). That’s why in this lesson, we will carefully explain what UAC is and everything it does. As you will see, this feature has an important role in keeping Windows safe from all kinds of security problems. In this lesson you will learn which activities may trigger a UAC prompt asking for permissions and how UAC can be set so that it strikes the best balance between usability and security. You will also learn what kind of information you can find in each UAC prompt. Last but not least, you will learn why you should never turn off this feature of Windows. By the time we’re done today, we think you will have a newly found appreciation for UAC, and will be able to find a happy medium between turning it off completely and letting it annoy you to distraction. What is UAC and How Does it Work? UAC or User Account Control is a security feature that helps prevent unauthorized system changes to your Windows computer or device. These changes can be made by users, applications, and sadly, malware (which is the biggest reason why UAC exists in the first place). When an important system change is initiated, Windows displays a UAC prompt asking for your permission to make the change. If you don’t give your approval, the change is not made. In Windows, you will encounter UAC prompts mostly when working with desktop applications that require administrative permissions. For example, in order to install an application, the installer (generally a setup.exe file) asks Windows for administrative permissions. UAC initiates an elevation prompt like the one shown earlier asking you whether it is okay to elevate permissions or not. If you say “Yes”, the installer starts as administrator and it is able to make the necessary system changes in order to install the application correctly. When the installer is closed, its administrator privileges are gone. If you run it again, the UAC prompt is shown again because your previous approval is not remembered. If you say “No”, the installer is not allowed to run and no system changes are made. If a system change is initiated from a user account that is not an administrator, e.g. the Guest account, the UAC prompt will also ask for the administrator password in order to give the necessary permissions. Without this password, the change won’t be made. Which Activities Trigger a UAC Prompt? There are many types of activities that may trigger a UAC prompt: Running a desktop application as an administrator Making changes to settings and files in the Windows and Program Files folders Installing or removing drivers and desktop applications Installing ActiveX controls Changing settings to Windows features like the Windows Firewall, UAC, Windows Update, Windows Defender, and others Adding, modifying, or removing user accounts Configuring Parental Controls in Windows 7 or Family Safety in Windows 8.x Running the Task Scheduler Restoring backed-up system files Viewing or changing the folders and files of another user account Changing the system date and time You will encounter UAC prompts during some or all of these activities, depending on how UAC is set on your Windows device. If this security feature is turned off, any user account or desktop application can make any of these changes without a prompt asking for permissions. In this scenario, the different forms of malware existing on the Internet will also have a higher chance of infecting and taking control of your system. In Windows 8.x operating systems you will never see a UAC prompt when working with apps from the Windows Store. That’s because these apps, by design, are not allowed to modify any system settings or files. You will encounter UAC prompts only when working with desktop programs. What You Can Learn from a UAC Prompt? When you see a UAC prompt on the screen, take time to read the information displayed so that you get a better understanding of what is going on. Each prompt first tells you the name of the program that wants to make system changes to your device, then you can see the verified publisher of that program. Dodgy software tends not to display this information and instead of a real company name, you will see an entry that says “Unknown”. If you have downloaded that program from a less than trustworthy source, then it might be better to select “No” in the UAC prompt. The prompt also shares the origin of the file that’s trying to make these changes. In most cases the file origin is “Hard drive on this computer”. You can learn more by pressing “Show details”. You will see an additional entry named “Program location” where you can see the physical location on your hard drive, for the file that’s trying to perform system changes. Make your choice based on the trust you have in the program you are trying to run and its publisher. If a less-known file from a suspicious location is requesting a UAC prompt, then you should seriously consider pressing “No”. What’s Different About Each UAC Level? Windows 7 and Windows 8.x have four UAC levels: Always notify – when this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions or before you or another user account changes Windows settings like the ones mentioned earlier. When the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This is the most secure and also the most annoying way to set UAC because it triggers the most UAC prompts. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (default) – Windows uses this as the default for UAC. When this level is used, you are notified before desktop applications make changes that require administrator permissions. If you are making system changes, UAC doesn’t show any prompts and it automatically gives you the necessary permissions for making the changes you desire. When a UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is dimmed and you must choose “Yes” or “No” before you can do anything else. This level is slightly less secure than the previous one because malicious programs can be created for simulating the keystrokes or mouse moves of a user and change system settings for you. If you have a good security solution in place, this scenario should never occur. Notify me only when programs/apps try to make changes to my computer (do not dim my desktop) – this level is different from the previous in in the fact that, when the UAC prompt is shown, the desktop is not dimmed. This decreases the security of your system because different kinds of desktop applications (including malware) might be able to interfere with the UAC prompt and approve changes that you might not want to be performed. Never notify – this level is the equivalent of turning off UAC. When using it, you have no protection against unauthorized system changes. Any desktop application and any user account can make system changes without your permission. How to Configure UAC If you would like to change the UAC level used by Windows, open the Control Panel, then go to “System and Security” and select “Action Center”. On the column on the left you will see an entry that says “Change User Account Control settings”. The “User Account Control Settings” window is now opened. Change the position of the UAC slider to the level you want applied then press “OK”. Depending on how UAC was initially set, you may receive a UAC prompt requiring you to confirm this change. Why You Should Never Turn Off UAC If you want to keep the security of your system at decent levels, you should never turn off UAC. When you disable it, everything and everyone can make system changes without your consent. This makes it easier for all kinds of malware to infect and take control of your system. It doesn’t matter whether you have a security suite or antivirus installed or third-party antivirus, basic common-sense measures like having UAC turned on make a big difference in keeping your devices safe from harm. We have noticed that some users disable UAC prior to setting up their Windows devices and installing third-party software on them. They keep it disabled while installing all the software they will use and enable it when done installing everything, so that they don’t have to deal with so many UAC prompts. Unfortunately this causes problems with some desktop applications. They may fail to work after you enable UAC. This happens because, when UAC is disabled, the virtualization techniques UAC uses for your applications are inactive. This means that certain user settings and files are installed in a different place and when you turn on UAC, applications stop working because they should be placed elsewhere. Therefore, whatever you do, do not turn off UAC completely! Coming up next … In the next lesson you will learn about Windows Defender, what this tool can do in Windows 7 and Windows 8.x, what’s different about it in these operating systems and how it can be used to increase the security of your system.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 11, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET MVC Extensions: ASP.NET MVC Extensions is developed on top of ASP.NET MVC extensibility point, which allows your IoC Container to rule everywhere.Best practices in .NET: NMA is a collection of knowledges that I learned from my co-worker and Internet. It's built on Domain Driven Design theories. I used Struture Map,...BioRider: Project participant of the 1st National Award for InteroperabilityBSoft: that's the project for bsoftClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML makes it easier for developers to create OpenXML files for Excel 2007. It provides a nice object oriented way to manipulate the files (si...Dragon Master: A tool for all D&D masters that need to create Dragon NPCsFacturator - Create invoices easy and fast: Windows forms application for creating invoices based on a Word template. Including a simple workflow for send, payed and finished invoices and a q...FreeEPG: An Australian EPG using the Freeview online guide. All Freeview regions are supported and data can be exported in either XMLTV or Microsoft Media ...GreedyRSS: Convert everything to RSS FeedHByte: In honor of the heisenberg uncertainty principle. This is an implementation of a type who has byte semantics, but who's value and location can not...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation - NOT READY YETMjollnir - Supplemental Library for BCL: Mjollnir is Supplements Library for BCL. Mjollnir is Compatible with .NET Framework 4 (or maybe later).Money Spinner: MoneySpinnerMSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: A tool to create Open Extend Dictionary for Microsoft Pinyin IME 2010, it is develped in C#Sharepoint Data Store: This is a small library that lets SharePoint developers store and manage custom application information in SharePoint.SharePointSlim: We are going to use it in conjunction with the PowerSlim projectSSTA: A Tool to Compare SQL Database Schema Versionstbeasy: tbeasyNew Releases8085 Microprocessor simulator: 8085 Instruction Set Simulator with source code: 8085 Instruction set simulator with windows installer plus complete source code and examplesAutoArchive: Site Template...: Slightly off topic, but take a looK!BioRider: Uptiva Dreams IT Entry: ==================================== National Interoperability Award ==================================== TEAM: Uptiva Dreams IT PROJECT: BioRide...C# Developer Utility Library: ScrimpNet.Core Library May 2010: Initial upload of project library. Contains only source files. Recommend adding extracted files to your project as a project reference.Coot: Beta 1: To install the screen saver: Extract the contents of the zip file (all three files) to C:\Windows\System32 Go to screen saver properties, select ...Deploy Workflow Manager: Deploy Workflow Manager v1: Recommend you test on your development environment first before implementing into production. Criteria to run the workflow is assumed to be inclu...Expression Encoder 3 Visual Basic Samples: Encoder 3 VB Samples: Zip file contains the Encoder 3 samples written in Visual Basic.FreeEPG: Debug Release: Initial Release. Run the application from the command line for options. If you choose to run the client as a Windows Service, then you will need t...FSharpChess: Alpha Release 0.197: This is just the latest version of the binaries. Note that there are two excecutables: FSharpChess includes a UI partially written in C# FSharpCh...GreedyRSS: GreedyRSS V2: V2与V1相比： 改进了插件架构 用数据库取代XML配置文件 用Web Services暴露了部分功能Headspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC 2 tips and tricks (code): Contains example app that demonstrates techniques in the Tips & Tricks powerpointHeadspring Labs: ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks PPT: Powerpoint file for the ASP.NET MVC tips and tricks talk.HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls beta 1.0.0.0: HouseFly controls release 1.0.0.0 betaiTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3782: This production release of iTuner 1.2 allows you to synchronize one or more iTunes playlists to a USB MP3 player. It also provides the ability to ...JSON RPC 2.0 - Javascript/.NET Implementation: v0.7: Protocol implemented. Most of the extra features implemented.MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi May 10, 2010: This version fixes a reproject bug where false_easting from .prj files was not being correctly converted into meters when the projection was in feet.Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.7: Version 1.7 fixes a bug that can cause the keys to stick when leaving focus (e.g. opening a VS dialog box).Mouse Zoom - Visual Studio Extension: MouseZoom 1.8: Override mouse wheel scroll functionality to always scroll 25% no matter what zoom level you are on (by default, scrolling with the mouse wheel bec...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...MSPY 2010 Open Extended Dictionary Building Tool: 20100511build2: First release. 1. Installation After you download it to your local disk, create a new folder and unzip it to the new folder, that's it. 2. run ...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.3.2: multiwfn1.3.2NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.1: Warning!There is a problem with the latest version of the program and rev 0 of STS-132 mission schedule. I am looking into the problem when the yea...NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Transfer to Outlook Calendar: NASA Space Shuttle TV Schedule Release v1.4.132.2: This release fixes a problem with rev 0 of the STS-132 mission schedule in recognizing the year of launch. NASA changed the year of launch to a fo...Object/Relational Mapper & Code Generator in Net 2.0 for Relational & XML Schema: 2.8: Switched compliation options to always run in 32-bit mode, to ensure it can connect to MSAccess & MSExcel on 64-bit machines. Updated parameterised...Open NFSe: OpenNFSe-Salvador v1.0.0: Atualização do OpenNFSe-Salvador para o novo schema utilizado pela prefeitura de Salvador.OpenSLIM: OpenSLIM-v373b0-20100509-0: Here is the list of new additions and improvements that this new major release incorporates: Systems Decommissioning Management. Improvements on...Pcap.Net: Pcap.Net 0.6.0 (44468): Pcap.Net - May 2010 Release Pcap.Net is a .NET wrapper for WinPcap written in C++/CLI and C#. It Features almost all WinPcap features and includes ...PowerShell Community Extensions: 2.0 Production: PowerShell Community Extensions 2.0 Release NotesMay 10, 2010 The primary purpose of the Pscx 2.0 release is to convert from the previous approach...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.47921 (.NET 4-TFS 2010): What is new in this release? Minor version over 1.0.0.47911 introducing CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program). This is taking advantage of...Sharepoint Data Store: 1.0: First ReleaseSPVisualDev - SharePoint Developer Tool: Version 2.2.0: Visual Studio 2010 is now supported. Note that this is only intended to be used for MOSS 2007 / WSS 3.0 development and not for SP 2010. Package SP...SQL Server PowerShell Extensions: 2.2.1 Production: Release 2.2 re-implements SQLPSX as PowersShell version 2.0 modules. SQLPSX consists of 9 modules with 133 advanced functions, 2 cmdlets and 7 scri...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30510.2: Automatic drop of latest buildVolumeMaster: Volume Master 2.0 Beta: First release of VolumeMaster. So if you're running Windows Vista / 7 you can have a handy Volume OSD and control your volume with the following sh...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: SPASM2 32-Bit: A test release for SPASM2.Web Camera Shooter: 1.0.0.1: Video capturing: Touchless SDK -> AForge.Video. Main window shown in taskbar and not top most. Native images generated for all assemblies. Sm...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMirror Testing SystemThe Information Literacy Education Learning Environment (ILE)RawrCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightwhiteBlogEngine.NETTweetSharpjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesIonics Isapi Rewrite Filter

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 12, 2012Popular ReleasesAX 2012 Custom Operating Units: AXPOM (beta): This is beta version of the tool. There are some known issues that will be fixed in the next upcoming release.????: ???? 1.0: ????Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office ??? ?????、Unicode IVS?????????????????Unicode IVS???????????????。??、??????????????、?????????????????????????????。EXCEL??、??、????????：DataPie（??MSSQL 2008、ORACLE、ACCESS 2007）: DatePie3.4.2: DatePie3.4.2Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.74: fix for issue #18836 - sometimes throws null-reference errors in ActivationObject.AnalyzeScope method. add back the Context object's 8-parameter constructor, since someone has code that's using it. throw a low-pri warning if an expression statement is == or ===; warn that the developer may have meant an assignment (=). if window.XXXX or window"XXXX" is encountered, add XXXX (as long as it's a valid JavaScript identifier) to the known globals so subsequent references to XXXX won't throw ...Home Access Plus+: v8.3: Changes: Fixed: A odd scroll bar showing up for no reason Changed: Added some code to hopefully sort out the details view when there is a small number of files Fixed: Where the details toolbar shows in the wrong place until you scroll Fixed: Where the Help Desk live tile shows all open tiles, instead of user specific tiles (admins still see all) Added: Powerpoint Files Filter Added: Print style for Booking System Added: Silent check for the logon tracker Updated: Logon Tracker I...Silverlight 4 & 5 Persian DatePicker: Silverlight 4 and 5 Persian DatePicker 1.5: - Improved DateTime Parser.???????: Monitor 2012-11-11: This is the first releaseVidCoder: 1.4.5 Beta: Removed the old Advanced user interface and moved x264 preset/profile/tune there instead. The functionality is still available through editing the options string. Added ability to specify the H.264 level. Added ability to choose VidCoder's interface language. If you are interested in translating, we can get VidCoder in your language! Updated WPF text rendering to use the better Display mode. Updated HandBrake core to SVN 5045. Removed logic that forced the .m4v extension in certain ...ImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework: Partitioned Table Framework Release 1.0: SQL Server 2012 ReleaseSharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeNew Projects.NET C# Wrapper for IQFeed API by Sentinel: An API for DTN IQFeed writtein in C#. Supports: - Historical Data Requests, - Lookup Tables - Level 1 - Level 2 - NewsBaiduMap: ????????API?????Bananagrams: An experimental Java project to find the most efficient strategy of playing Bannagrams, the popular game that I take absolutely no credit for inventing.Cloud Wallet: Don't try to remember every credit card, email, forum and account password of yours. Store them with Cloud Wallet in the skydrive and get them needed.Customer Contact System: System for Local Authorities/Government Bodies to manage enquiries from members of the public in their administrative area.daniel's little electronical bear: Hey, this is Daniel's idea that write her girlfriend a vivid little e-pet. So Daniel is just about to carry on this plan and hopefully fulfill it sooner or later. If you wanna give any advice, please don't hesitate to call me at any time,even ideas is OK!danielzhang0212@gmail.comfacebook page vote and like sample: facebook page vote and like sampleFriendly URL: This application is designed to help large organizations assign simple and memorable URL's to otherwise complicated or non-memorable URL's. GameSDK - Simple Game SDK with events: This game SDK use events for letting know each player through a game board when an events occurs. This is a simple SDK, easily adaptable to your project.GIF o Magic Prototype: GIF o Magic PrototypeHFS+ Driver Installer for Windows: Simple utility to install Read-Only HFS+ Driver to read Mac partitions from Windows.invrt: Simplest-that-could-possibly work inversion of control framework. Written in C#Kwd.Summary: Orchard module to provide alternate summary text for content itemsLogJam: LogJam will provide a modern, efficient, and productive framework for trace logging and metrics logging for all projects. LogJam is currently pre-alpha.Mi-DevEnv: Mi-DevEnv is an integrated set of PowerShell scripts to create virtual machines and populate them with software & tools e.g.: SharePoint,CRM,SQL,Office,K2 & VS.Mltools: mini tools for browser game.More Space Invaders: more then another space invadersMP3 Art Embedder: Embed cover art into MP3 filesMultiple GeoCoder: Serverside geocoding wrapper for various geocoding services. Supports a failover in the event you get throttled.My list: mvc3 project to test some frameworksMyFinalProject_WeamBinjumah: It is a website based on web 2.0 which about sea cruises' experiences with people who love amazing sea cruises. The website will offer most of web 2.0 features.netcached - memcached client for .NET: netcached is a lightweight, high performance .NET client for memcached protocol.paipai: paipaiProjeto Zeus: PROJETO REALIZADO COMO TRABALHO ACADÊMICO.Roy's Tools: Roy's ToolsSuperCotka: SuperCotkaSzoftvertechnológia beadandó: Árva Balázs beadandójának projektvezeto oldalat az ELTE szoftvertechnológia tantárgyára.Twi.Fly: Twi.Fly is designed to change the way that you write most of your code.Coding likes flying, more than twice speed.Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office: "Unicode IVS Add-in for Microsoft Office" makes Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 capable to load, save and edit documents contains Unicode IVS.Uyghur Named Date: Generate Uyghur named date string. ???????? ??? ?????? ????? ????? ?????Windows 8 Camp BH: Projeto contendo conteudo de ajuda para o Windows 8 Camp oferecido pelo Microsoft Inovation Center de Belo Horizonte.???????: ??wpf??????? ?? ??

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• Going Paperless

  - by Jesse

  One year ago I came to work for a company where the entire development team is 100% “remote”; we’re spread over 3 time zones and each of us works from home. This seems to be an increasingly popular way for people to work and there are many articles and blog posts out there enumerating the advantages and disadvantages of working this way. I had read a lot about telecommuting before accepting this job and felt as if I had a pretty decent idea of what I was getting into, but I’ve encountered a few things over the past year that I did not expect. Among the most surprising by-products of working from home for me has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of paper that I use on a weekly basis. Hoarding In The Workplace Prior to my current telecommute job I worked in what most would consider pretty traditional office environments. I sat in cubicles furnished with an enormous plastic(ish) modular desks, had a mediocre (at best) PC workstation, and had ready access to a seemingly endless supply of legal pads, pens, staplers and paper clips. The ready access to paper, countless conference room meetings, and abundance of available surface area on my desk and in drawers created a perfect storm for wasting paper. I brought a pad of paper with me to every meeting I ever attended, scrawled some brief notes, and then tore that sheet off to keep next to my keyboard to follow up on any needed action items. Once my immediate need for the notes was fulfilled, that sheet would get shuffled off into a corner of my desk or filed away in a drawer “just in case”. I would guess that for all of the notes that I ever filed away, I might have actually had to dig up and refer to 2% of them (and that’s probably being very generous). That said, on those rare occasions that I did have to dig something up from old notes, it was usually pretty important and I ended up being very glad that I saved them. It was only when I would leave a job or move desks that I would finally gather all those notes together and take them to shredding bin to be disposed of. When I left my last job the amount of paper I had accumulated over my three years there was absurd, and I knew coworkers who had substance-abuse caliber paper wasting addictions that made my bad habit look like nail-biting in comparison. A Product Of My Environment I always hated using all of this paper, but simply couldn’t bring myself to stop. It would look bad if I showed up to an important conference room meeting without a pad of paper. What if someone said something profound! Plus, everyone else always brought paper with them. If you saw someone walking down the hallway with a pad of paper in hand you knew they must be on their way to a conference room meeting. Some people even had fancy looking portfolio notebook sheaths that gave their legal pads all the prestige of a briefcase. No one ever worried about running out of fresh paper because there was an endless supply, and there certainly was no shortage of places to store and file used paper. In short, the traditional office was setup for using tons and tons of paper; it’s baked into the culture there. For that reason, it didn’t take long for me to kick the paper habit once I started working from home. In my home office, desk and drawer space are at a premium. I don’t have the budget (or the tolerance) for huge modular office furniture in my spare bedroom. I also no longer have access to a bottomless pit of office supplies stock piled in cabinets and closets. If I want to use some paper, I have to go out and buy it. Finally (and most importantly), all of the meetings that I have to attend these days are “virtual”. We use instant messaging, VOIP, video conferencing, and e-mail to communicate with each other. All I need to take notes during a meeting is my computer, which I happen to be sitting right in front of all day. I don’t have any hard numbers for this, but my gut feeling is that I actually take a lot more notes now than I ever did when I worked in an office. The big difference is I don’t have to use any paper to do so. This makes it far easier to keep important information safe and organized. The Right Tool For The Job When I first started working from home I tried to find a single application that would fill the gap left by the pen and paper that I always had at my desk when I worked in an office. Well, there are no silver bullets and I’ve evolved my approach over time to try and find the best tool for the job at hand. Here’s a quick summary of how I take notes and keep everything organized. Notepad++ – This is the first application I turn to when I feel like there’s some bit of information that I need to write down and save. I use Launchy, so opening Notepad++ and creating a new file only takes a few keystrokes. If I find that the information I’m trying to get down requires a more sophisticated application I escalate as needed. The Desktop – By default, I save every file or other bit of information to the desktop. Anyone who has ever had to fix their parents computer before knows that this is a dangerous game (any file my mother has ever worked on is saved directly to the desktop and rarely moves anywhere else). I agree that storing things on the desktop isn’t a great long term approach to keeping organized, which is why I treat my desktop a bit like my e-mail inbox. I strive to keep both empty (or as close to empty as I possibly can). If something is on my desktop, it means that it’s something relevant to a task or project that I’m currently working on. About once a week I take things that I’m not longer working on and put them into my ‘Notes’ folder. The ‘Notes’ Folder – As I work on a task, I tend to accumulate multiple files associated with that task. For example, I might have a bit of SQL that I’m working on to gather data for a new report, a quick C# method that I came up with but am not yet ready to commit to source control, a bulleted list of to-do items in a .txt file, etc. If the desktop starts to get too cluttered, I create a new sub-folder in my ‘Notes’ folder. Each sub-folder’s name is the current date followed by a brief description of the task or project. Then all files related to that task or project go into that sub folder. By using the date as the first part of the folder name, these folders are automatically sorted in reverse chronological order. This means that things I worked on recently will generally be near the top of the list. Using the built-in Windows search functionality I now have a pretty quick and easy way to try and find something that I worked on a week ago or six months ago. Dropbox – Dropbox is a free service that lets you store up to 2GB of files “in the cloud” and have those files synced to all of the different computers that you use. My ‘Notes’ folder lives in Dropbox, meaning that it’s contents are constantly backed up and are always available to me regardless of which computer I’m using. They also have a pretty decent iPhone application that lets you browse and view all of the files that you have stored there. The free 2GB edition is probably enough for just storing notes, but I also pay $99/year for the 50GB storage upgrade and keep all of my music, e-books, pictures, and documents in Dropbox. It’s a fantastic service and I highly recommend it. Evernote – I use Evernote mostly to organize information that I access on a fairly regular basis. For example, my Evernote account has a running grocery shopping list, recipes that my wife and I use a lot, and contact information for people I contact infrequently enough that I don’t want to keep them in my phone. I know some people that keep nearly everything in Evernote, but there’s something about it that I find a bit clunky, so I tend to use it sparingly. Google Tasks – One of my biggest paper wasting habits was keeping a running task-list next to my computer at work. Every morning I would sit down, look at my task list, cross off what was done and add new tasks that I thought of during my morning commute. This usually resulted in having to re-copy the task list onto a fresh sheet of paper when I was done. I still keep a running task list at my desk, but I’ve started using Google Tasks instead. This is a dead-simple web-based application for quickly adding, deleting, and organizing tasks in a simple checklist style. You can quickly move tasks up and down on the list (which I use for prioritizing), and even create sub-tasks for breaking down larger tasks into smaller pieces. Balsamiq Mockups – This is a simple and lightweight tool for creating drawings of user interfaces. It’s great for sketching out a new feature, brainstorm the layout of a interface, or even draw up a quick sequence diagram. I’m terrible at drawing, so Balsamiq Mockups not only lets me create sketches that other people can actually understand, but it’s also handy because you can upload a sketch to a common location for other team members to access. I can honestly say that using these tools (and having limited resources at home) have lead me to cut my paper usage down to virtually none. If I ever were to return to a traditional office workplace (hopefully never!) I’d try to employ as many of these applications and techniques as I could to keep paper usage low. I feel far less cluttered and far better organized now.

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• Solaris: What comes next?

  - by alanc

  As you probably know by now, a few months ago, we released Solaris 11 after years of development. That of course means we now need to figure out what comes next - if Solaris 11 is “The First Cloud OS”, then what do we need to make future releases of Solaris be, to be modern and competitive when they're released? So we've been having planning and brainstorming meetings, and I've captured some notes here from just one of those we held a couple weeks ago with a number of the Silicon Valley based engineers. Now before someone sees an idea here and calls their product rep wanting to know what's up, please be warned what follows are rough ideas, and as I'll discuss later, none of them have any committment, schedule, working code, or even plan for integration in any possible future product at this time. (Please don't make me force you to read the full Oracle future product disclaimer here, you should know it by heart already from the front of every Oracle product slide deck.) To start with, we did some background research, looking at ideas from other Oracle groups, and competitive OS'es. We examined what was hot in the technology arena and where the interesting startups were heading. We then looked at Solaris to see where we could apply those ideas. Making Network Admins into Socially Networking Admins We all know an admin who has grumbled about being the only one stuck late at work to fix a problem on the server, or having to work the weekend alone to do scheduled maintenance. But admins are humans (at least most are), and crave companionship and community with their fellow humans. And even when they're alone in the server room, they're never far from a network connection, allowing access to the wide world of wonders on the Internet. Our solution here is not building a new social network - there's enough of those already, and Oracle even has its own Oracle Mix social network already. What we proposed is integrating Solaris features to help engage our system admins with these social networks, building community and bringing them recognition in the workplace, using achievement recognition systems as found in many popular gaming platforms. For instance, if you had a Facebook account, and a group of admin friends there, you could register it with our Social Network Utility For Facebook, and then your friends might see: Alan earned the achievement Critically Patched (April 2012) for patching all his servers. Matt is only at 50% - encourage him to complete this achievement today! To avoid any undue risk of advertising who has unpatched servers that are easier targets for hackers to break into, this information would be tightly protected via Facebook's world-renowned privacy settings to avoid it falling into the wrong hands. A related form of gamification we considered was replacing simple certfications with role-playing-game-style Experience Levels. Instead of just knowing an admin passed a test establishing a given level of competency, these would provide recruiters with a more detailed level of how much real-world experience an admin has. Achievements such as the one above would feed into it, but larger numbers of experience points would be gained by tougher or more critical tasks - such as recovering a down system, or migrating a service to a new platform. (As long as it was an Oracle platform of course - migrating to an HP or IBM platform would cause the admin to lose points with us.) Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out a good way to prevent (if you will) “gaming” the system. For instance, a disgruntled admin might decide to start ignoring warnings from FMA that a part is beginning to fail or skip preventative maintenance, in the hopes that they'd cause a catastrophic failure to earn more points for bolstering their resume as they look for a job elsewhere, and not worrying about the effect on your business of a mission critical server going down. More Z's for ZFS Our suggested new feature for ZFS was inspired by the worlds most successful Z-startup of all time: Zynga. Using the Social Network Utility For Facebook described above, we'd tie it in with ZFS monitoring to help you out when you find yourself in a jam needing more disk space than you have, and can't wait a month to get a purchase order through channels to buy more. Instead with the click of a button you could post to your group: Alan can't find any space in his server farm! Can you help? Friends could loan you some space on their connected servers for a few weeks, knowing that you'd return the favor when needed. ZFS would create a new filesystem for your use on their system, and securely share it with your system using Kerberized NFS. If none of your friends have space, then you could buy temporary use space in small increments at affordable rates right there in Facebook, using your Facebook credits, and then file an expense report later, after the urgent need has passed. Universal Single Sign On One thing all the engineers agreed on was that we still had far too many "Single" sign ons to deal with in our daily work. On the web, every web site used to have its own password database, forcing us to hope we could remember what login name was still available on each site when we signed up, and which unique password we came up with to avoid having to disclose our other passwords to a new site. In recent years, the web services world has finally been reducing the number of logins we have to manage, with many services allowing you to login using your identity from Google, Twitter or Facebook. So we proposed following their lead, introducing PAM modules for web services - no more would you have to type in whatever login name IT assigned and try to remember the password you chose the last time password aging forced you to change it - you'd simply choose which web service you wanted to authenticate against, and would login to your Solaris account upon reciept of a cookie from their identity service. Pinning notes to the cloud We also all noted that we all have our own pile of notes we keep in our daily work - in text files in our home directory, in notebooks we carry around, on white boards in offices and common areas, on sticky notes on our monitors, or on scraps of paper pinned to our bulletin boards. The contents of the notes vary, some are things just for us, some are useful for our groups, some we would share with the world. For instance, when our group moved to a new building a couple years ago, we had a white board in the hallway listing all the NIS & DNS servers, subnets, and other network configuration information we needed to set up our Solaris machines after the move. Similarly, as Solaris 11 was finishing and we were all learning the new network configuration commands, we shared notes in wikis and e-mails with our fellow engineers. Users may also remember one of the popular features of Sun's old BigAdmin site was a section for sharing scripts and tips such as these. Meanwhile, the online "pin board" at Pinterest is taking the web by storm. So we thought, why not mash those up to solve this problem? We proposed a new BigAddPin site where users could “pin” notes, command snippets, configuration information, and so on. For instance, once they had worked out the ideal Automated Installation manifest for their app server, they could pin it up to share with the rest of their group, or choose to make it public as an example for the world. Localized data, such as our group's notes on the servers for our subnet, could be shared only to users connecting from that subnet. And notes that they didn't want others to see at all could be marked private, such as the list of phone numbers to call for late night pizza delivery to the machine room, the birthdays and anniversaries they can never remember but would be sleeping on the couch if they forgot, or the list of automatically generated completely random, impossible to remember root passwords to all their servers. For greater integration with Solaris, we'd put support right into the command shells — redirect output to a pinned note, set your path to include pinned notes as scripts you can run, or bring up your recent shell history and pin a set of commands to save for the next time you need to remember how to do that operation. Location service for Solaris servers A longer term plan would involve convincing the hardware design groups to put GPS locators with wireless transmitters in future server designs. This would help both admins and service personnel trying to find servers in todays massive data centers, and could feed into location presence apps to help show potential customers that while they may not see many Solaris machines on the desktop any more, they are all around. For instance, while walking down Wall Street it might show “There are over 2000 Solaris computers in this block.” [Note: this proposal was made before the recent media coverage of a location service aggregrator app with less noble intentions, and in hindsight, we failed to consider what happens when such data similarly falls into the wrong hands. We certainly wouldn't want our app to be misinterpreted as “There are over $20 million dollars of SPARC servers in this building, waiting for you to steal them.” so it's probably best it was rejected.] Harnessing the power of the GPU for Security Most modern OS'es make use of the widespread availability of high powered GPU hardware in today's computers, with desktop environments requiring 3-D graphics acceleration, whether in Ubuntu Unity, GNOME Shell on Fedora, or Aero Glass on Windows, but we haven't yet made Solaris fully take advantage of this, beyond our basic offering of Compiz on the desktop. Meanwhile, more businesses are interested in increasing security by using biometric authentication, but must also comply with laws in many countries preventing discrimination against employees with physical limations such as missing eyes or fingers, not to mention the lost productivity when employees can't login due to tinted contacts throwing off a retina scan or a paper cut changing their fingerprint appearance until it heals. Fortunately, the two groups considering these problems put their heads together and found a common solution, using 3D technology to enable authentication using the one body part all users are guaranteed to have - pam_phrenology.so, a new PAM module that uses an array USB attached web cams (or just one if the user is willing to spin their chair during login) to take pictures of the users head from all angles, create a 3D model and compare it to the one in the authentication database. While Mythbusters has shown how easy it can be to fool common fingerprint scanners, we have not yet seen any evidence that people can impersonate the shape of another user's cranium, no matter how long they spend beating their head against the wall to reshape it. This could possibly be extended to group users, using modern versions of some of the older phrenological studies, such as giving all users with long grey beards access to the System Architect role, or automatically placing users with pointy spikes in their hair into an easy use mode. Unfortunately, there are still some unsolved technical challenges we haven't figured out how to overcome. Currently, a visit to the hair salon causes your existing authentication to expire, and some users have found that shaving their heads is the only way to avoid bad hair days becoming bad login days. Reaction to these ideas After gathering all our notes on these ideas from the engineering brainstorming meeting, we took them in to present to our management. Unfortunately, most of their reaction cannot be printed here, and they chose not to accept any of these ideas as they were, but they did have some feedback for us to consider as they sent us back to the drawing board. They strongly suggested our ideas would be better presented if we weren't trying to decipher ink blotches that had been smeared by the condensation when we put our pint glasses on the napkins we were taking notes on, and to that end let us know they would not be approving any more engineering offsites in Irish themed pubs on the Friday of a Saint Patrick's Day weekend. (Hopefully they mean that situation specifically and aren't going to deny the funding for travel to this year's X.Org Developer's Conference just because it happens to be in Bavaria and ending on the Friday of the weekend Oktoberfest starts.) They recommended our research techniques could be improved over just sitting around reading blogs and checking our Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts, such as considering input from alternate viewpoints on topics such as gamification. They also mentioned that Oracle hadn't fully adopted some of Sun's common practices and we might have to try harder to get those to be accepted now that we are one unified company. So as I said at the beginning, don't pester your sales rep just yet for any of these, since they didn't get approved, but if you have better ideas, pass them on and maybe they'll get into our next batch of planning.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 08, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, September 08, 2012Popular ReleasesJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 9: New feature - Added JsonValueConverter Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Ignore not igoring default values of non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed DefaultValueHandling.Populate error with non-nullable properties Fix - Fixed error when writing JSON for a JProperty with no value Fix - Fixed error when calling ToList on empty JObjects and JArrays Fix - Fixed losing decimal precision when writing decimal JValuesfastJSON: v2.0.4: 2.0.4 - fixed null objects -> returns "null" - added sealed keyword to classes - bug fix SerializeNullValues=false and an extra comma at the end - UseExtensions=false will disable global types also - fixed paramerters setting for Parse()Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.66: Just going to bite the bullet and rip off the band-aid... SEMI-BREAKING CHANGE! Well, it's a BREAKING change to those who already adjusted their projects to use the previous breaking change's ill-conceived renamed DLLs (versions 4.61-4.65). For those who had not adapted and were still stuck in this-doesn't-work-please-fix-me mode, this is more like a fixing change. The previous breaking change just broke too many people, I'm sorry to say. Renaming the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 07.00.00 CTP (Not for Production Use): NOTE: New Minimum Requirementshttp://www.dotnetnuke.com/Portals/25/Blog/Files/1/3418/Windows-Live-Writer-1426fd8a58ef_902C-MinimumVersionSupport_2.png Simplified InstallerThe first thing you will notice is that the installer has been updated. Not only have we updated the look and feel, but we also simplified the overall install process. You shouldn’t have to click through a series of screens in order to just get your website running. With the 7.0 installer we have taken an approach that a...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83JQuery SharePoint Autocomplete People Picker: jquery-ui-sppeoplepicker-1.0: This is the first releaes of the jquery sharepoint people picker. Currently it supports searching, selecting and getting selectable value of SharePoint profiles. This version requires the jquery-ui which can be found here: http://jqueryui.com/demosjos .net sdk: 1.0 beta: 1.0 betaWordPress???? on Windows Azure: WordPress 3.4.1 ????: v3.4.1???????????????????????? WordPress?3.4.1????????????? Windows Azure Storage for WordPress?2.0????????????? WordPress 3.4.1 ???? ★updated WP Db Abstraction 1.1.3 Windows Azure Storage for WordPress 2.0 ★updated WP Mail SMTP 0.9.1 ???????????????????、????????????「500 - Internal server error.」??????。（????????????）WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...SharePoint Developers & Admins: SPUserManager - Get users info: IntroductionSP User Manager is a tool that allows you to extract a list of unique users who accessed a certain site collection. The tool will list all available SharePoint Applications and the underlying site collection. You can then choose which Site Collection you are interested to extract their user list. You can then store the extracted list in a comma separated file (*.CSV). If you are interested to see each site collection that users belong to you can get that done by selecting the ch...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...YUGI-AR Project: YUGI-AR 1.0: yugi-ar 1.0GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.New Projects.NET diagnosing toolkit: Contains tools useful for analyzing and collecting .net traces.[ITFA GROUP] Code Gener: Code Gener (For .NET) is a tool to help programmers and system builders in building applications. 2D Rubik Cube Game: 2D Rubik Cube game that challenges the player to arrange a random sequence of numbers from 1 to 8 (inclusive), using a predefined set of transform operations.Automated SQL Index Generator: Automated SQL Index Generator is a utility application for developers working with SQL Server. It is a stand-alone windows application that can be used to generBootstrap .NET Framework 4 Template: Bootstrap .NET Framework 4 Template is an attempt a standardizing the way my software enigneers begin their projects.Bore Holes Manager: Supports CRUD operations on bore hole data via console. Also, draws a visual representation/map of the bore holes, displaying soil type, color & harness.CarrotCake CMS: CMS built in C# + SQL server to leverage jQuery UI and TinyMCECSharpGo: Learn C# by ExamplesDream Cheeky USB Drivers for Webmail Notifier and Stress Button: DreamCheekyUSB provides a Console App and .NET drivers for the Dream Cheeky Webmail Notifier and the Dream Cheeky Iron Man USB Stress Button.EFMetaProvider: Extends the Entity Framework to obtain sql specific columns metadata for linq queriesEstimation Studio: This is a small desktop application to assist developers in estimating projects.Example App: A sample using patterns and practices for trying out techniques to improve cohesion.FIM MA for Salesforce.com: Project providing an Extensible Connectivity 2.0 (ECMA) Connector (previously Management Agent) for Salesforce.com FRC Scout: FIRST Robotics ScoutingHDWebSite: new project for HDWebSiteIconBuild: IconBuild???Windows??????????????，????????，?????。 ??Metro??。 StandUp????????? ?????????。MyAppWithBranch2: MyAppWithBranch2MyTfsProject: dfasdfRomeo: Yet another Othello playing program...Stefano Tempesta: This project is a repository of .NET libraries released as open source under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL).TOOL of COBOL - TOC: Little Tools for COBOLWin Hosts Manager: It's just a simple program that helps people to edit and manage HOSTS file. Read more on Project Page.WPF Mineral Recopilation Simulation: WPF Project that simulate mineral recopilation. It had several wpf useful things.XNA and Level Validation: This project includes code for XNA and Level Validation

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• Want to be part of the most meaningful Customer Experience conversation today?

  - by Tony Berk

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Today's entry is written by Chris Warner, Director, Product Strategy at Oracle. By now you’ve undoubtedly seen the blogs and announcements about Oracle OpenWorld. And perhaps you’ve also seen the news about OpenWorld’s newest sister event: Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Summit @ OpenWorld. Oracle CX Summit was created to be the most meaningful CX event, to be truly unique, to serve as the place to discover what it takes and what it really means to put the customer at the center of your business success. One long-time Oracle customer, when told about the Oracle CX Summit, put it this way: ‘This makes me rethink how I think about Oracle and Customer Experience’. Listen to what she heard and you be the judge. We believe Customer Experience (‘CX’) is a movement, not just the latest ‘IT’ tech trend. CX isn’t something you can simply ‘install’. CX is one of the most strategic initiatives an organization can undertake. Customer Experience is about connecting with an organization’s most important asset, the customer, and the critical role that connection has to an organization’s success. And there’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Take Subaru, for example. The company fully embraced the CX opportunity and their CX leadership will be on stage at the Oracle CX Summit to share their CX journey. They radically changed the way they interact with their customers, empower their employees, and differentiate their brand. And this is a story with a phenomenal happy ending: in a stagnant market and shrinking economy, they GREW their business and outpaced their competition. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} At Oracle CX Summit, you will be surrounded by dozens of CX leaders, visionaries and innovators like Subaru. This three-day event brings together the largest collection of thought leaders and practitioners in Customer Experience ever. Notable presenters include: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Seth Godin - World-renowned blogger and one ‘the World’s Top 21 Speakers’, author of 14 best-selling books like “Permission Marketing”, and founder of dozens of startups such as Squidoo.com (ranked one of the top 125 sites in the US). Kerry Bodine - VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, author of the just-published book “Outside In - The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business”, and renowned author of “The Customer Experience Ecosystem”. Bruce Temkin - Co-founder and Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, revered blogger of “Customer Experience Matters”, former VP Principal Analyst at Forrester for Customer Experience, Founder and Managing Partner of The Temkin Group, a leading Customer Experience research and consulting firm. George Kembel - Executive Director and Co-founder of the Stanford Design School, an established, recognized thought leader in design thinking and innovation, and a Silicon Valley based-CEO, venture capitalist and educator. Gene Alvarez - VP Research Analyst at Gartner and a recognized authority in the Retail and Consumer Goods industry. Gene has been published, featured and referenced in a variety of trade publications for Customer Experience insights. Senior Executives from innovative Customer Experience brands and agencies like AT&T, Intuit, Southwest Airlines, Marriott, Quiksilver, and Sapient. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} But the CX Summit includes much, much more. There are over 30+ role-driven sessions and rountables as well as one-of-a-kind events including: v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} The Customer Experience Innovation Tent featuring hands-on demonstrations of bleeding-edge customer experiences like the Share Happy Ice Cream Machine A hands-on Customer Journey Mapping Workshop that lets you learn design thinking techniques for innovating differentiated experiences that drive cross-functional alignment Access to the Oracle OpenWorld Exhibition Halls and DEMOgrounds as well as a week-long Live Music Festival and the Oracle Appreciation Event featuring Pearl Jam and Kings of Leon Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} At Oracle, we are quite proud of our award-winning suite of CX products, a suite of solutions that can help an organization greatly accelerate their CX journey. But Oracle CX Summit isn’t about products. It’s about how an organization can succeed in its CX initiative. There’s never been a bigger gathering of the smartest CX minds, most successful CX companies, and innovative CX examples than Oracle CX Summit. Come join the Customer Experience Revolution. Register for Oracle CX Summit @ OpenWorld here. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} --

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 09, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 09, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...MySQL Tuner for Windows: 0.3: Welcome to the third beta of MySQL Tuner for Windows! This release fixes bugs in the displaying of numbers, and a crash that occurred due to the program incorrectly closing and disposing of resources, Be warned that there will be bugs in this release, so please do not use on production or critical systems. Do post details of issues found to the issue tracker, and I will endeavour to fix them, when I can. I would love to have your feedback, and if possible your support! Requirements Microso...SharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.GL2DX (OpenGL to DirectX Wrapper Library): GL2DX Release 1: The first release contains all source code for the GL2DX library and source code for the sample project demonstrating how to use the library for a Direct3D / XAML hybrid Windows 8 application.WCF y Net remoting en el famoso ejemplo HOLA MUNDO: Ejemplo: Versión liberadaD3D9Client: D3D9Client R7: New release for Orbiter 2010-P1 - Added horizon/sun angle for night-lights into the configuration file (default 10deg) - Some runway lights related bugs are fixed - Added more configuration options for runway lightsFiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.3: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.3 For detailed release notes check the release notes. TypeScript supportWrite your code in a ...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.7: Changelog for 2.3.7 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Improved performance of MP4 Fast and M4V Fast Profiles (no deinterlacing, removed --decomb) 2. Improved priority handling 3. Added support for Pausing and Resume conversions 4. Added support for fallback to source directory if network destination directory is unavailable 5. MCEBuddy now installs ShowAnalyzer during installation 6. Added support for long description atom in iTunesFoxyXLS: FoxyXLS Releases: Source code and samplesHTML Renderer: HTML Renderer 1.0.0.0 (3): Major performance improvement (http://theartofdev.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/how-i-optimized-html-renderer-and-fell-in-love-with-vs-profiler/) Minor fixes raised in issue tracker and discussions.Window Manager: Window Manager 1.0: First releaseProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...Launchbar: Launchbar 4.2.2.0: This release is the first step in cleaning up the code and using all the latest features of .NET 4.5 Changes 4.2.2 (2012-11-02) Improved handling of left clicks 4.1.0 (2012-10-17) Removed tray icon Assembly renamed and signed with strong name Note When you upgrade, Launchbar will start with the default settings. You can import your previous settings by following these steps: Run Launchbar and just save the settings without configuring anything Shutdown Launchbar Go to the folder %LOCA...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8.8: Releases notes for FluentScript located at http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Release%20Notes&referringTitle=Documentation Fluentscript - 0.9.8.8 - Final ReleaseApplication: FluentScript Version: 0.9.8.8 Build: 0.9.8.8 Changeset: 77368 ( CommonLibrary.NET ) Release date: November 2nd, 2012 Binaries: CommonLibrary.dll Namespace: ComLib.Lang Project site: http://fluentscript.codeplex.com/ Download: http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com/releases/view/90426 Source code: http://common...New Projects.NET Data Export Examples: This project is created to export data in C#,VB.NET from database,listview,command to PDF, Word,Excel,RTF,Html,XML,Access,DBF,SQL Script,SYLK,DIF,CSV,Clipboardb9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfa: b9b18a35-a80a-440c-bb8c-195be0225cfaBudget Monkey: Personal Budgeting and Expense Tracking Application - ASP.Net MVC 4 - LINQ - Sql Server ClassLibrary5: ?0?????ORM ??:http://www.cnblogs.com/wushilonng/archive/2011/11/21/2257657.html ??????????????.CodeTextBox: CodeTextBox is a Windows Forms control for colorizing code while you are typing in the text box.Content Management System: web projectCopperfield: Copperfield is an extensibility framework built around contextual awareness. It is intended to be used in combination with one's DI / IoC framework of choice.Cyfuscator: This project show how create your own obfuscator for application .net, as a protection source codeData Browser: The Data Browser is a Windows 8 application that provides a great way to navigate and explore data (ODATA, RDF, ATOM, RDFa) published on the web. DevTask: Dev Task With MVC 4 and EF5DVB Viewer EPG Update Script: DVB Viewer EPG Update ScriptFcompress: Fcompress est un programme de compression simple, rapide et efficace de texte (mots). Programme conçu pour Eurêmaths, groupe Europole.Fdecompress: Fdecompress sert à décomprimer tout mot ou texte comprimer avec Fcompress.Hiren's Boot CD Program Launcher (Unicode support): Hiren's Boot CD Program Launcher (Unicode support)Image Gallery for WPF: A simple image gallery controlIMDb API: C# Class for grabbing data from the IMDb website.License Migration Live@edu Exchange to Office 365 A2: Only a little help to change the licenses after migration from Live@edu to Office 365MvcMSFootballManager: ASP MVC3 self-trainingNage: .NET Agent-based evolution frameworkOE NIK szakirány féléves: Féléves feladat.Office365 Helper: Office365 Helper is a collection of classes and methods to assist in administering and developing solutions for SharePoint online.Powershell Depo: This a collection of Powershell scripts that are collected and modified from anywhere and everywhere. Feel free to download whatever you need.Proejct13251109: sssProject13271109: sdfgdRemotableViewModel: The RemotableViewModel (RVM) library allows sharing of ViewModels accross process boundaries following the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern.ScriptEngine: ScriptEngine for C#, JavaScript, VB. The ScriptEngine enables perform script snippets/files. In addition, the scripts can be cached.Shibboleth IdP Loader for ADFS: A PowerShell script to load Shibboleth federation IdPs as ADFS trusted claims providerSparklings: Game in which you change sparklings abilities using spots of light to help them reach the exit.Stala - Auto-update essentials: C# library and examples for event driven auto-updates without predefined graphical components/windows. Works with MSI packages and installer over web/intranet.STeaL : stealed functionarities from STL: STeaL is a .NET class library implemented with C# and enables you to use STL functionarities. especially, various of IList<T> extensions included.TechQueue: A series of Projects and code which are described in the blog http://techqueue.wordpress.comtesttom11082012git03: fsatesttom11082012tfs02: dsToyunda Phone: A simple searchable list of the songs available at the Karaoke rooms in the Epitanime event ran by students at the school named Epita in Paris.WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. Win8Controls: This project contains XAML based calendar control for WinRT / Windows Store Style application.WindowsCommonStorage: windows common storage

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• Combined Likelihood Models

  - by Lukas Vermeer

  In a series of posts on this blog we have already described a flexible approach to recording events, a technique to create analytical models for reporting, a method that uses the same principles to generate extremely powerful facet based predictions and a waterfall strategy that can be used to blend multiple (possibly facet based) models for increased accuracy. This latest, and also last, addition to this sequence of increasing modeling complexity will illustrate an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models. The method described here is far from trivial. We therefore would not recommend you apply these techniques in an initial implementation of Oracle Real-Time Decisions. In most cases, basic RTD models or the approaches described before will provide more than enough predictive accuracy and analytical insight. The following is intended as an example of how more advanced models could be constructed if implementation results warrant the increased implementation and design effort. Keep implemented statistics simple! Combining likelihoods Because facet based predictions are based on metadata attributes of the choices selected, it is possible to generate such predictions for more than one attribute of a choice. We can predict the likelihood of acceptance for a particular product based on the product category (e.g. ‘toys’), as well as based on the color of the product (e.g. ‘pink’). Of course, these two predictions may be completely different (the customer may well prefer toys, but dislike pink products) and we will have to somehow combine these two separate predictions to determine an overall likelihood of acceptance for the choice. Perhaps the simplest way to combine multiple predicted likelihoods into one is to calculate the average (or perhaps maximum or minimum) likelihood. However, this would completely forgo the fact that some facets may have a far more pronounced effect on the overall likelihood than others (e.g. customers may consider the product category more important than its color). We could opt for calculating some sort of weighted average, but this would require us to specify up front the relative importance of the different facets involved. This approach would also be unresponsive to changing consumer behavior in these preferences (e.g. product price bracket may become more important to consumers as a result of economic shifts). Preferably, we would want Oracle Real-Time Decisions to learn, act upon and tell us about, the correlations between the different facet models and the overall likelihood of acceptance. This additional level of predictive modeling, where a single supermodel (no pun intended) combines the output of several (facet based) models into a single prediction, is what we call a combined likelihood model. Facet Based Scores As an example, we have implemented three different facet based models (as described earlier) in a simple RTD inline service. These models will allow us to generate predictions for likelihood of acceptance for each product based on three different metadata fields: Category, Price Bracket and Product Color. We will use an Analytical Scores entity to store these different scores so we can easily pass them between different functions. A simple function, creatively named Compute Analytical Scores, will compute for each choice the different facet scores and return an Analytical Scores entity that is stored on the choice itself. For each score, a choice attribute referring to this entity is also added to be returned to the client to facilitate testing. One Offer To Predict Them All In order to combine the different facet based predictions into one single likelihood for each product, we will need a supermodel which can predict the likelihood of acceptance, based on the outcomes of the facet models. This model will not need to consider any of the attributes of the session, because they are already represented in the outcomes of the underlying facet models. For the same reason, the supermodel will not need to learn separately for each product, because the specific combination of facets for this product are also already represented in the output of the underlying models. In other words, instead of learning how session attributes influence acceptance of a particular product, we will learn how the outcomes of facet based models for a particular product influence acceptance at a higher level. We will therefore be using a single All Offers choice to represent all offers in our combined likelihood predictions. This choice has no attribute values configured, no scores and not a single eligibility rule; nor is it ever intended to be returned to a client. The All Offers choice is to be used exclusively by the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for all choices; based solely on the output of the facet based models defined earlier. The Switcheroo In Oracle Real-Time Decisions, models can only learn based on attributes stored on the session. Therefore, just before generating a combined prediction for a given choice, we will temporarily copy the facet based scores—stored on the choice earlier as an Analytical Scores entity—to the session. The code for the Predict Combined Likelihood Event function is outlined below. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores. // (this is the only input for the combined model) session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // predict likelihood of acceptance for All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihoodChoice c = CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers"); Double la = CombinedLikelihoodAcceptance.getChoiceEventLikelihoods(c, "Accepted"); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); // return likelihood. return la; This sleight of hand will allow the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for the All Offers choice using these choice specific scores. After the prediction is made, we will clear the Analytical Scores session attribute to ensure it does not pollute any of the other (facet) models. To guarantee our combined likelihood model will learn based on the facet based scores—and is not distracted by the other session attributes—we will configure the model to exclude any other inputs, save for the instance of the Analytical Scores session attribute, on the model attributes tab. Recording Events In order for the combined likelihood model to learn correctly, we must ensure that the Analytical Scores session attribute is set correctly at the moment RTD records any events related to a particular choice. We apply essentially the same switching technique as before in a Record Combined Likelihood Event function. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores // (this is the only input for the combined model). session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // record input event against All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers").recordEvent(event); // force learn at this moment using the Internal Dock entry point. Application.getPredictor().learn(InternalLearn.modelArray, session(), session(), Application.currentTimeMillis()); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); In this example, Internal Learn is a special informant configured as the learn location for the combined likelihood model. The informant itself has no particular configuration and does nothing in itself; it is used only to force the model to learn at the exact instant we have set the Analytical Scores session attribute to the correct values. Reporting Results After running a few thousand (artificially skewed) simulated sessions on our ILS, the Decision Center reporting shows some interesting results. In this case, these results reflect perfectly the bias we ourselves had introduced in our tests. In practice, we would obviously use a wider range of customer attributes and expect to see some more unexpected outcomes. The facetted model for categories has clearly picked up on the that fact our simulated youngsters have little interest in purchasing the one red-hot vehicle our ILS had on offer. Also, it would seem that customer age is an excellent predictor for the acceptance of pink products. Looking at the key drivers for the All Offers choice we can see the relative importance of the different facets to the prediction of overall likelihood. The comparative importance of the category facet for overall prediction might, in part, be explained by the clear preference of younger customers for toys over other product types; as evident from the report on the predictiveness of customer age for offer category acceptance. Conclusion Oracle Real-Time Decisions' flexible decisioning framework allows for the construction of exceptionally elaborate prediction models that facilitate powerful targeting, but nonetheless provide insightful reporting. Although few customers will have a direct need for such a sophisticated solution architecture, it is encouraging to see that this lies within the realm of the possible with RTD; and this with limited configuration and customization required. There are obviously numerous other ways in which the predictive and reporting capabilities of Oracle Real-Time Decisions can be expanded upon to tailor to individual customers needs. We will not be able to elaborate on them all on this blog; and finding the right approach for any given problem is often more difficult than implementing the solution. Nevertheless, we hope that these last few posts have given you enough of an understanding of the power of the RTD framework and its models; so that you can take some of these ideas and improve upon your own strategy. As always, if you have any questions about the above—or any Oracle Real-Time Decisions design challenges you might face—please do not hesitate to contact us; via the comments below, social media or directly at Oracle. We are completely multi-channel and would be more than glad to help. :-)

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• Highlighting rows and columns in an HTML table using JQuery

  - by nikolaosk

  A friend of mine was seeking some help regarding HTML tables and JQuery. I have decided to write a few posts demonstrating the various techniques I used with JQuery to achieve the desired functionality. ?here are other posts in my blog regarding JQuery.You can find them all here.I have received some comments from visitors of this blog that are "complaining" about the length of the blog posts. I will not write lengthy posts anymore...I mean I will try not to do so..We will demonstrate this with a step by step example. I will use Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate. You can also use Visual Studio 2012 Express Edition. You can also use VS 2010 editions. 1) Launch Visual Studio. Create an ASP.Net Empty Web application. Choose an appropriate name for your application.2) Add a web form, default.aspx page to the application.3) Add a table from the HTML controls tab control (from the Toolbox) on the default.aspx page4) Now we need to download the JQuery library. Please visit the http://jquery.com/ and download the minified version.5) We will add a stylesheet to the application (Style.css)5) Obviously at some point we need to reference the JQuery library and the external stylesheet. In the head section ? add the following lines.   <link href="Style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />       <script src="jquery-1_8_2_min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 6) Now we need to highlight the rows when the user hovers over them.7) First we need to type the HTML markup<body>    <form id="form1" runat="server">    <div>        <h1>Liverpool Legends</h1>        <table style="width: 50%;" border="1" cellpadding="10" cellspacing ="10">            <thead>                <tr><th>Defenders</th><th>MidFielders</th><th>Strikers</th></tr>            </thead>            <tbody>            <tr>                <td>Alan Hansen</td>                <td>Graeme Souness</td>                <td>Ian Rush</td>            </tr>            <tr>                <td>Alan Kennedy</td>                <td>Steven Gerrard</td>                <td>Michael Owen</td>            </tr>            <tr>                <td>Jamie Garragher</td>                <td>Kenny Dalglish</td>                <td>Robbie Fowler</td>            </tr>            <tr>                <td>Rob Jones</td>                <td>Xabi Alonso</td>                <td>Dirk Kuyt</td>            </tr>                </tbody>        </table>            </div>    </form></body>8) Now we need to write the simple rules in the style.css file.body{background-color:#eaeaea;}.hover { background-color:#42709b; color:#ff6a00;} 8) Inside the head section we also write the simple JQuery code.  <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $('tr').hover( function() { $(this).find('td').addClass('hover'); }, function() { $(this).find('td').removeClass('hover'); } ); }); </script>9) Run your application and see the row changing background color and text color every time the user hovers over it. Let me explain how this functionality is achieved.We have the .hover style rule in the style.css file that contains some properties that define the background color value and the color value when the mouse will be hovered on the row.In the JQuery code we do attach the hover() event to the tr elements.The function that is called when the hovering takes place, we search for the td element and through the addClass function we apply the styles defined in the .hover class rule in the style.css file.I remove the .hover rule styles with the removeClass function. Now let's say that we want to highlight only alternate rows of the table.We need to add another rule in the style.css.alternate { background-color:#42709b; color:#ff6a00;} The JQuery code (comment out the previous JQuery code) follows  <script type="text/javascript">        $(document).ready(function() {                     $('table tr:odd').addClass('alternate');        });    </script>  When I run my application through VS I see the following result You can do that with columns as well. You can highlight alternate columns as well.The JQuery code (comment out the previous JQuery code) follows  <script type="text/javascript">        $(document).ready(function() {                      $('td:nth-child(odd)').addClass('alternate');        });    </script>  In this script I use the nth-child() method in the JQuery code.This method retrieves all the elements that are nth children of their parent.Have a look at the picture below to see the resultsYou can also change color to each individual cell when hovered on.The JQuery code (comment out the previous JQuery code) follows    <script type="text/javascript">        $(document).ready(function() {          $('td').hover(                  function() {                 $(this).addClass('hover');               },                function() {                    $(this).removeClass('hover');                }                );        });    </script> Have a look at the picture below to see the results. Hope it helps!!!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 28, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 28, 2012Popular ReleasesDesigning Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML: Chapters 1 - 7 Release Preview: Source code for all examples from Chapters 1 - 7 for the Release PreviewDataBooster - Extension to ADO.NET Data Provider: DataBooster Library for Oracle + SQL Server Beta2: This is a derivative library of dbParallel project http://dbparallel.codeplex.com. All above binaries releases require .NET Framework 4.0 or later. SQL Server support is always build-in (can't be unplugged). The first download (DLL) also requires ODP.NET to connect Oracle; The second download (DLL) also requires DataDirect(3.5) to connect Oracle; The third download (DLL) doesn't support Oracle. Please download the source code if the provider need to be replaced by others. For example ODP.NE...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.57: Fix for issue #18284: evaluating literal expressions in the pattern c1 * (x / c2) where c1/c2 is an integer value (as opposed to c2/c1 being the integer) caused the expression to be destroyed.Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v2 - Visual Studio 2010 (Japanese): Rex Tang (?? ??) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2011/12/08/introducing-the-visual-studio-alm-rangers-rex-tang.aspx, Takaho Yamaguchi (?? ??), Masashi Fujiwara (?? ??), localized and reviewed the Quick Reference Guidance for the Japanese communities, based on http://vsarquickguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/52402. The Japanese guidance is available in AllGuides and Everything packages. The AllGuides package contains guidances in PDF file format, while the Everything packag...Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v1 - Visual Studio 2010 (Japanese): Rex Tang (?? ??) http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2011/12/08/introducing-the-visual-studio-alm-rangers-rex-tang.aspx, Takaho Yamaguchi (?? ??), Hirokazu Higashino (?? ??), localized and reviewed the Branching Guidance for the Japanese communities, based on http://vsarbranchingguide.codeplex.com/releases/view/38849. The Japanese guidance is available in AllGuides and Everything packages. The AllGuides package contains guidances in PDF file format, while the Everything packag...SQL Server FineBuild: Version 3.1.0: Top SQL Server FineBuild Version 3.1.0This is the stable version of FineBuild for SQL Server 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005 Documentation FineBuild Wiki containing details of the FineBuild process Known Issues Limitations with this release FineBuild V3.1.0 Release Contents List of changes included in this release Please DonateFineBuild is free, but please donate what you think FineBuild is worth as everything goes to charity. Tearfund is one of the UK's leading relief and de...EasySL: RapidSL V2: Rewrite RapidSL UI Framework, Using Silverlight 5.0 EF4.1 Code First Ria Service SP2 + Lastest Silverlight Toolkit.SOLID by example: All examples: All solid examplesSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.1726.406): Use of new version of connection controls for a full support of OSDP authentication mechanism for CRM Online.StreamInsight Samples: StreamInsight Product Team Samples V2.1: These samples correspond to the new StreamInsight APIs introduced with V2.1.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.2: Development on Umbraco v5 discontinued After much discussion and consultation with leaders from the Umbraco community it was decided that work on the v5 branch would be discontinued with efforts being refocused on the stable and feature rich v4 branch. For full details as to why this decision was made please watch the CodeGarden 12 Keynote. What about all that hard work?!?? We are not binning everything and it does not mean that all work done on 5 is lost! we are taking all of the best and m...IIS Express Manager: IIS Express 0.31 B: V0.1B - 04 May, 2012 Initiated Project. V0.2B - 05May, 2012 1. Fixed small bug. Threw error when stop button was pressed in an already stopped application. 2. Removed start and stop button. Double clicking on list items will now stop / start the websites. 3. Improved code readability. 4. Changed Orientation of Buttons in UI. V0.3B - 06May, 2012 1. Complete modification of IISEM and process ID handling 2. IISEM is now capable of reflecting the existing IISExpress processes right from startup...CodeGenerate: CodeGenerate Alpha: The Project can auto generate C# code. Include BLL Layer、Domain Layer、IDAL Layer、DAL Layer. Support SqlServer And Oracle This is a alpha program,but which can run and generate code. Generate database table info into MS WordXDA ROM HUB: XDA ROM HUB v0.9: Kernel listing added -- Thanks to iONEx Added scripts installer button. Added "Nandroid On The Go" -- Perform a Nandroid backup without a PC! Added official Android app!ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.8.2: +2012-06-24 v3.1.8 +????Grid???????（???????ExpandUnusedSpace????????）（??）。 -????MinColumnWidth（??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumn，???????????????（ColumnID）（?????ForceFitFirstTime??ForceFitAllTime，??????）。 -????AutoExpandColumnMax?AutoExpandColumnMin。 -????ForceFitFirstTime，????????????，??????????（????????????）。 -????ForceFitAllTime，????????????，??????????（??????????????????）。 -????VerticalScrollWidth，????????（??????????，0?????????????）。 -????grid/grid_forcefit.aspx。 -???????????En...AJAX Control Toolkit: June 2012 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - June 2012 Release Version 60623June 2012 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found here: 11121. - Pages using ...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.5: Version: 2.5.0.5 (Milestone 5): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete WAF: Add IsInDesignMode property to the WafConfiguration class. WAF: Introduce the IModuleController interface. WAF: Add ...Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader: Metro RSS Reader.v7: Updated for Windows 8 Release Preview Changed background and foreground colors Used VariableSizeGrid layout to wrap blog posts with images Sort items with Images first, text-only last Enabled Caching to improve navigation between framesXDesigner.Development: First release: First releaseBlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.5: 2012.06.22 Ver5.6.5 　(1) FTP??????? EPSV ??　EPRT　???????New ProjectsAzure Log Viewer: Simple viewer for Windows Azure Diagnostics logs table.ChsoftDemo: chsoftDemoCodeDDD: CodeDDD is a set of lightweight Application Blocks with the goal of help on the development of Nlayered DDD ApplicationsCOM32: Serial communication componentCustom Email Template SharePoint: This solution customizes the Email text (Subject and the Message) sent to users on granting permssions to various sites.DBD::IngresII: DBD::IngresII is Ingres database driver for Perl.Dure: just for simplifying developments....FormAbstraction: FormAbstration allows you to add data objects to the session variable. You just have to name your fields the same as your properties and you're editing data.HD44780 Protocol Analyzer: HD44780 Protocol Analyzer for the Saleae Logic and Logic 16 analyzers. Supports 8 and 4 bit data transfer modes.IDisposable Azure Service Bus: A utility class that wraps interaction with a ServicBus inside an IDisposable object.IonoWumpus 2012: It's an awesome project! For the Hunt the Wumpus competition!Its My Story: It is All About Me and My Relatives, friends and followers..Kinect Gestures for Mayhem: Kinect Gesture for Mayhem is a module written for Mayhem. It implements hand gestures as events.KinectComposite: Using advanced Image Processing techniques along with environment information collected by Kinect this project attempt to create real-time composites.Lm.Common: aaaaaaOrBUO SVN: OrBUO SA/HS SVN ProjectOutlook Contact Category Correction Tool: Corrects contacts where the categories have been removed and you have a backup of your contacts at a time when your categories were still intact.Persian (Jalali-Shamsi) Calendar for Windows 8: This project is a Persian calendar for Metro UI on windows 8. It is a sample of using live tile on Metro UI.Schwazzle: New activity feed based on MS' famous CMSSDLGmud: ...SimpleWorkflow: Yet another simple workflow in .Net. The primary goal is to provide a quick lightweight dynamically constructed & reusable workflow API. SmartMeterParamSetting: Thread WPF UDPSPWikiTree 0.1.0.a: Purpose: Create an implementation of a JQuery Tree View Derive tree view content from wiki page library NOT rely on installed feature. (Created client-side)Sucdri: This is an Project Management ProjectUltimate Awesomeness, Inc.: It's cool!WallpaperDeleter: Simple program to delete the current background wallpaper image.zwp: wwww

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 08, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 08, 2012Popular ReleasesPlayer Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...P1 & S0 Port monitoring with Netduino Plus: V0.6.1 Beta Netduino Plus Monitoring: Sixth public version V0.6.1 Bugfix in the temperature module (wrong calculation)WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...SQLite for Excel: SQLite for Excel Version 0.9: Added support for sqlite3_open_v2 to allow opening of database as read-only.MySQL Tuner for Windows: 0.3: Welcome to the third beta of MySQL Tuner for Windows! This release fixes bugs in the displaying of numbers, and a crash that occurred due to the program incorrectly closing and disposing of resources, Be warned that there will be bugs in this release, so please do not use on production or critical systems. Do post details of issues found to the issue tracker, and I will endeavour to fix them, when I can. I would love to have your feedback, and if possible your support! Requirements Microso...SharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.D3D9Client: D3D9Client R7: New release for Orbiter 2010-P1 - Added horizon/sun angle for night-lights into the configuration file (default 10deg) - Some runway lights related bugs are fixed - Added more configuration options for runway lightsFiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...PowerComboBox: PowerComboBox VB v1.0: Visual Basic source code class file.Edi: Themable Edi: Completed ExpressionDark theme Improved Error Handling and Reporting feature Refactored all views to be look-less controlsMFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.7: Changelog for 2.3.7 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Improved performance of MP4 Fast and M4V Fast Profiles (no deinterlacing, removed --decomb) 2. Improved priority handling 3. Added support for Pausing and Resume conversions 4. Added support for fallback to source directory if network destination directory is unavailable 5. MCEBuddy now installs ShowAnalyzer during installation 6. Added support for long description atom in iTunesFoxyXLS: FoxyXLS Releases: Source code and samplesProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...Launchbar: Launchbar 4.2.2.0: This release is the first step in cleaning up the code and using all the latest features of .NET 4.5 Changes 4.2.2 (2012-11-02) Improved handling of left clicks 4.1.0 (2012-10-17) Removed tray icon Assembly renamed and signed with strong name Note When you upgrade, Launchbar will start with the default settings. You can import your previous settings by following these steps: Run Launchbar and just save the settings without configuring anything Shutdown Launchbar Go to the folder %LOCA...Mouse Jiggler: MouseJiggle-1.3: This adds the much-requested minimize-to-tray feature to Mouse Jiggler.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0 Release Candidate: This is a Release Candidate, which means that if we do not find any major issues in the next week, we will release this version as the final release of 4.10.0 on November 9th, 2012. The documentation for the MVC bits still lives in the Github version of the docs for now and will be updated on our.umbraco.org with the final release of 4.10.0. Browse the documentation here: https://github.com/umbraco/Umbraco4Docs/tree/4.8.0/Documentation/Reference/Mvc If you want to do only MVC then make sur...Skype Auto Recorder: SkypeAutoRecorder 1.3.4: New icon and images. Reworked settings window. Implemented high-quality sound encoding. Implemented a possibility to produce stereo records. Added buttons with system-wide hot keys for manual starting and canceling of recording. Added buttons for opening folder with records. Added Help button. Fixed an issue when recording is continuing after call end. Fixed an issue when recording doesn't start. Fixed several bugs and improved stability. Major refactoring and optimization...New Projects.Net Streamer: With .Net Streamer you can easily view and download series from watchseries.eu/gorillapod.in You can also download and display subtitles along with the video.Boards And Commissions: In accordance with Va. Code § 2.2-2822(B)(1), VITA has released the code for the CRM OASYS system and the OASYS portal to the public domain on CodePlex. The folcces: Center for Complex Engineering Systems codebase for Kail: Fornt-end code including javascript css html xsltdbSend: Simple tool for uploading large files, such as databases, to a remote SFTP server.DNN Task Manager GOR: Summary.Drive Watcher: Drive Watcher windows application in .net framework 4. watch the chosen path for any changeDSLPed: DSLPed is a framework to design & develop WPF-based projectional editors of custom Domain Specific Lanugages as add-ins into the Visual Studio 2010 designer.FAST Corner Detector: This simple demp app takes the live camera feed, detects the FAST9 corners based on the method by E. Rosten.Inkscape 9-patch extension: This is an extension to Inkscape that makes it easier to create bitmap resources for Android apps at multiple resolutions and in nine-patch format.Inmeta Visual Studio Gallery Service: An ASP.NET Web API service for implementing a Visual Studio Private Extension Gallery.IService001: IServiceissueIT.net - ”I just found the last bug”: issueIT is the best open source web-based issue tracker for .NET. It’s easy to customize to suit your organization. This project is not finished yet - it is only at a very early stageJason WP Tools: this project consists of a number of useful utilities and extensions for developing Windows Phone (both 7 and 8) apps.LeadersGenerator: make an easy way to play Hearts of Iron3MD5FolderVerifier: A project used to verify file md5s inside a folder.Media Center Commander: Media Center Commander allows you to change Live TV channels in Windows Media Center via the command-line (and thus desktop shortcuts).My Sulekha: Its a classified basic website which contains all the data of advertisers & their advertisements Pancake Sorting PANA 2012-2: A university work about the implementation of pancakes sorting.Parallel Cache Handler for Unity: Lightweight Unity Interceptor to introduce generic caching for parallel invocationsQuizzMasterStudio V.2: A software that helps users absorb new material faster through various types of quizzes. The system also includes a mechanism to more effectively learn math.RTSparse: This is a port of CSparse to WinRT runtime component.Share: Share is a new web-based content management system. For more information about this project, please visit http://blog.aphysoft.com.SpeedDial Assistent: No summary available yetspSite.pro - Investigating SharePoint and implementing it's missing parts.: Source code storage for our collective resource about SharePoint.Sql Server Stress / Load Test tool: Some time we need to stress test SQL server. This is simple and flexible Visual Studio load test which can load your SQL server with different type of load.Statuos: Statuos is a customer driven project management solution that supports subtasks.TabManager: TabManager is a simple windows control container control and supports custom tab header sizing. TabManager is written in VB and is a new project.Tagomatique: Permet la gestion de fichiers multimédia (audio, vidéo, image) sur principe des tags, chapitres, signets.Technoera.Common FW2.0: A simple repository that contains some of our "domain-unrelated" application blocks.TestDraw: This is a test project. Written out my own interest to see if it can survive into a better project.testesunnyedm: testesunnyedmTricogolWeb: Tricogol WebWA77696A-9075-44CC-A378-D42A096D5989: Project Codename : WA77696A-9075-44CC-A378-D42A096D5989WCF y Net remoting en el famoso ejemplo HOLA MUNDO: El ejemplo ideal para entender de manera muy facil los componententes implicados en una comunicación WCF y otra .NET Remoting.. En español!Web API Tools: Project enables easy communication with ASP.NET MVC Web API.Web Application Navigator for SharePoint: For SharePoint 2010-13 : Implements a web part that supports consistent navigation across an entire web application. The navigation links are provided by a listWinRDF - RDF made easy!: Welcome to the homepage of the WinRDF project.WP728DC9-1E30-468E-A4AE-5879C6CC5BD6: Project Codename : WP728DC9-1E30-468E-A4AE-5879C6CC5BD6X3D.NET: X3D.NET is a library package providing a simple and easy way handling the Extensible 3D format (X3D) for .NET FrameworkXheis's Game Development: Xheis's game dev of a persistent zombie, waved based action RPG, RTS defenceX-tee.NET: Teeme xtee-ga suhtluse lihtsamaks

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• Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part I

  - by dbayard

  Abstract: This blog post will show how we used Oracle R Enterprise to tackle a customer’s big calculation problem across a big data set. Overview: Databases are great for managing large amounts of data in a central place with rigorous enterprise-level controls.  R is great for doing advanced computations.  Sometimes you need to do advanced computations on large amounts of data, subject to rigorous enterprise-level concerns.  This blog post shows how Oracle R Enterprise enables R plus the Oracle Database enabled us to do some pretty sophisticated calculations across 1 million accounts (each with many detailed records) in minutes. The problem: A financial services customer of mine has a need to calculate the historical internal rate of return (IRR) for its customers’ portfolios.  This information is needed for customer statements and the online web application.  In the past, they had solved this with a home-grown application that pulled trade and account data out of their data warehouse and ran the calculations.  But this home-grown application was not able to do this fast enough, plus it was a challenge for them to write and maintain the code that did the IRR calculation. IRR – a problem that R is good at solving: Internal Rate of Return is an interesting calculation in that in most real-world scenarios it is impractical to calculate exactly.  Rather, IRR is a calculation where approximation techniques need to be used.  In this blog post, we will discuss calculating the “money weighted rate of return” but in the actual customer proof of concept we used R to calculate both money weighted rate of returns and time weighted rate of returns.  You can learn more about the money weighted rate of returns here: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Money-weighted_return First Steps- Calculating IRR in R We will start with calculating the IRR in standalone/desktop R.  In our second post, we will show how to take this desktop R function, deploy it to an Oracle Database, and make it work at real-world scale.  The first step we did was to get some sample data.  For a historical IRR calculation, you have a balances and cash flows.  In our case, the customer provided us with several accounts worth of sample data in Microsoft Excel.      The above figure shows part of the spreadsheet of sample data.  The data provides balances and cash flows for a sample account (BMV=beginning market value. FLOW=cash flow in/out of account. EMV=ending market value). Once we had the sample spreadsheet, the next step we did was to read the Excel data into R.  This is something that R does well.  R offers multiple ways to work with spreadsheet data.  For instance, one could save the spreadsheet as a .csv file.  In our case, the customer provided a spreadsheet file containing multiple sheets where each sheet provided data for a different sample account.  To handle this easily, we took advantage of the RODBC package which allowed us to read the Excel data sheet-by-sheet without having to create individual .csv files.  We wrote ourselves a little helper function called getsheet() around the RODBC package.  Then we loaded all of the sample accounts into a data.frame called SimpleMWRRData. Writing the IRR function At this point, it was time to write the money weighted rate of return (MWRR) function itself.  The definition of MWRR is easily found on the internet or if you are old school you can look in an investment performance text book.  In the customer proof, we based our calculations off the ones defined in the The Handbook of Investment Performance: A User’s Guide by David Spaulding since this is the reference book used by the customer.  (One of the nice things we found during the course of this proof-of-concept is that by using R to write our IRR functions we could easily incorporate the specific variations and business rules of the customer into the calculation.) The key thing with calculating IRR is the need to solve a complex equation with a numerical approximation technique.  For IRR, you need to find the value of the rate of return (r) that sets the Net Present Value of all the flows in and out of the account to zero.  With R, we solve this by defining our NPV function: where bmv is the beginning market value, cf is a vector of cash flows, t is a vector of time (relative to the beginning), emv is the ending market value, and tend is the ending time. Since solving for r is a one-dimensional optimization problem, we decided to take advantage of R’s optimize method (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/stats/html/optimize.html). The optimize method can be used to find a minimum or maximum; to find the value of r where our npv function is closest to zero, we wrapped our npv function inside the abs function and asked optimize to find the minimum.  Here is an example of using optimize: where low and high are scalars that indicate the range to search for an answer.   To test this out, we need to set values for bmv, cf, t, emv, tend, low, and high.  We will set low and high to some reasonable defaults. For example, this account had a negative 2.2% money weighted rate of return. Enhancing and Packaging the IRR function With numerical approximation methods like optimize, sometimes you will not be able to find an answer with your initial set of inputs.  To account for this, our approach was to first try to find an answer for r within a narrow range, then if we did not find an answer, try calling optimize() again with a broader range.  See the R help page on optimize()  for more details about the search range and its algorithm. At this point, we can now write a simplified version of our MWRR function.  (Our real-world version is  more sophisticated in that it calculates rate of returns for 5 different time periods [since inception, last quarter, year-to-date, last year, year before last year] in a single invocation.  In our actual customer proof, we also defined time-weighted rate of return calculations.  The beauty of R is that it was very easy to add these enhancements and additional calculations to our IRR package.)To simplify code deployment, we then created a new package of our IRR functions and sample data.  For this blog post, we only need to include our SimpleMWRR function and our SimpleMWRRData sample data.  We created the shell of the package by calling: To turn this package skeleton into something usable, at a minimum you need to edit the SimpleMWRR.Rd and SimpleMWRRData.Rd files in the \man subdirectory.  In those files, you need to at least provide a value for the “title” section. Once that is done, you can change directory to the IRR directory and type at the command-line: The myIRR package for this blog post (which has both SimpleMWRR source and SimpleMWRRData sample data) is downloadable from here: myIRR package Testing the myIRR package Here is an example of testing our IRR function once it was converted to an installable package: Calculating IRR for All the Accounts So far, we have shown how to calculate IRR for a single account.  The real-world issue is how do you calculate IRR for all of the accounts?This is the kind of situation where we can leverage the “Split-Apply-Combine” approach (see http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/815.html).  Given that our sample data can fit in memory, one easy approach is to use R’s “by” function.  (Other approaches to Split-Apply-Combine such as plyr can also be used.  See http://4dpiecharts.com/2011/12/16/a-quick-primer-on-split-apply-combine-problems/). Here is an example showing the use of “by” to calculate the money weighted rate of return for each account in our sample data set.  Recap and Next Steps At this point, you’ve seen the power of R being used to calculate IRR.  There were several good things: R could easily work with the spreadsheets of sample data we were given R’s optimize() function provided a nice way to solve for IRR- it was both fast and allowed us to avoid having to code our own iterative approximation algorithm R was a convenient language to express the customer-specific variations, business-rules, and exceptions that often occur in real-world calculations- these could be easily added to our IRR functions The Split-Apply-Combine technique can be used to perform calculations of IRR for multiple accounts at once. However, there are several challenges yet to be conquered at this point in our story: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In our next blog post in this series, we will show you how Oracle R Enterprise solved these challenges.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 10, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 10, 2012Popular ReleasesImageGlass: Version 1.5: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc483/phapsuxeko/ImageGlass/1.png v1.5.4401.3015 Thumbnail bar: Increase loading speed Thumbnail image with ratio Support personal customization: mouse up, mouse down, mouse hover, selected item... Scroll to show all items Image viewer Zoom by scroll, or selected rectangle Speed up loading Zoom to cursor point New background design and customization and others... v1.5.4430.483 Thumbnail bar: Auto move scroll bar to selected image Show / Hi...Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML: Full Source Chapters 1 - 10 for Windows 8 Fix 002: This is the full source from all chapters of the book, compiled and tested on Windows 8 RTM. Includes: A fix for the Netflix example from Chapter 6 that was missing a service reference A fix for the ImageHelper issue (images were not being saved) - this was due to the buffer being inadequate and required streaming the writeable bitmap to a buffer first before encoding and savingmyCollections: Version 2.3.2.0: New in this version : Added TheGamesDB.net API for Games and NDS Added Support for Windows Media Center Added Support for myMovies Added Support for XBMC Added Support for Dune HD Added Support for Mede8er Added Support for WD HDTV Added Fast search options Added order by Artist/Album for music You can now create covers and background for games You can now update your ID3 tag with the info of myCollections Fixed several provider Performance improvement New Splash ...Draw: Draw 1.0: Drawing PadPdfReport: PdfReport 1.4: - Added Html Footer Template. - Added a new HeaderTemplate (HtmlHeader) to simplify creating the headers of pages and groups by using HTML. See HtmlHeader/HtmlHeaderPdfReport.cs sample for more info. - Added a new sample (HtmlCellTemplate/HtmlCellTemplatePdfReport.cs) to show how to use the HtmlField template for creating the custom cell templates. - Added transparency setting to DiagonalWatermark. See ProgressReportPdfReport for more info. - Added DynamicCompile/DynamicCompilePdfReport.cs sa...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 (v1.0): IMPORTANT: List of breaking changes from preview 7 Ability to move control panel or individual elements outside media player. more info... New Entertainment app theme for out of the box support for Windows 8 Entertainment app guidelines. more info... VSIX reference names shortened. Allows seeing plugin name from "Add Reference" dialog without resizing. FreeWheel SmartXML now supports new "Standard" event callback type. Other minor misc fixes and improvements ADDITIONAL DOWNLOADSSmo...WebSearch.Net: WebSearch.Net 3.1: WebSearch.Net is an open-source research platform that provides uniform data source access, data modeling, feature calculation, data mining, etc. It facilitates the experiments of web search researchers due to its high flexibility and extensibility. The platform can be used or extended by any language compatible for .Net 2 framework, from C# (recommended), VB.Net to C++ and Java. Thanks to the large coverage of knowledge in web search research, it is necessary to model the techniques and main...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.10.0: NugetNuGet BlogRead the release blog post for 4.10.0. Whats newMVC support New request pipeline Many, many bugfixes (see the issue tracker for a complete list) Read the documentation for the MVC bits. Breaking changesWe have done all we can not to break backwards compatibility, but we had to do some minor breaking changes: Removed graphicHeadlineFormat config setting from umbracoSettings.config (an old relic from the 3.x days) U4-690 DynamicNode ChildrenAsList was fixed, altering it'...MySQL Tuner for Windows: 0.3: Welcome to the third beta of MySQL Tuner for Windows! This release fixes bugs in the displaying of numbers, and a crash that occurred due to the program incorrectly closing and disposing of resources, Be warned that there will be bugs in this release, so please do not use on production or critical systems. Do post details of issues found to the issue tracker, and I will endeavour to fix them, when I can. I would love to have your feedback, and if possible your support! Requirements Microso...SharePoint Manager 2013: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release ver 1.0.12.1106: SharePoint Manager 2013 Release (ver: 1.0.12.1106) is now ready for SharePoint 2013. The new version has an expanded view of the SharePoint object model and has been tested on SharePoint 2013 RTM. As a bonus, the new version is also available for SharePoint 2010 as a separate download.D3D9Client: D3D9Client R7: New release for Orbiter 2010-P1 - Added horizon/sun angle for night-lights into the configuration file (default 10deg) - Some runway lights related bugs are fixed - Added more configuration options for runway lightsFiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.2: Verzija 1.2. je, prije svega, odgovor na novu verziju Tehnicke specifikacije (v1.1.) koja je objavljena prije nekoliko dana. Pored novosti vezanih uz (sitne) izmjene u spomenutoj novoj verziji Tehnicke dokumentacije, projekt smo prošili sa nekim dodatnim feature-ima od kojih je vecina proizašla iz vaših prijedloga - hvala :) Novosti u v1.2. su: - Neusuglašenost zahtjeva (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.com/workitem/645) - Sample projekt - iznosi se množe sa 100 (http://fiskalizacija.codeplex.c...MFCMAPI: October 2012 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1036 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeJayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.3: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.3 For detailed release notes check the release notes. TypeScript supportWrite your code in a ...MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.7: Changelog for 2.3.7 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Improved performance of MP4 Fast and M4V Fast Profiles (no deinterlacing, removed --decomb) 2. Improved priority handling 3. Added support for Pausing and Resume conversions 4. Added support for fallback to source directory if network destination directory is unavailable 5. MCEBuddy now installs ShowAnalyzer during installation 6. Added support for long description atom in iTunesFoxyXLS: FoxyXLS Releases: Source code and samplesWindow Manager: Window Manager 1.0: First releaseProDinner - ASP.NET MVC Sample (EF4.4, N-Tier, jQuery): 8: update to ASP.net MVC Awesome 3.0 udpate to EntityFramework 4.4 update to MVC 4 added dinners grid on homepageASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.0: added Grid helper added XML Documentation added textbox helper added Client Side API for AjaxList removed .SearchButton from AjaxList AjaxForm and Confirm helpers have been merged into the Form helper optimized html output for AjaxDropdown, AjaxList, Autocomplete works on MVC 3 and 4BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.7: Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.7 instructions. If you looking for Web Application Project, ...New ProjectsAuthor-it Variables Report Plug-in: The Variable Information Plug-in is an Author-it plug-in that displays information about all the variables in a library.bobthebuilder: Bob the builderCalendarSite: This webapplicaton is a calendar and appoinement manager app.ControlIP: This project helps users make the control task in a projectDaily Math Training: Daily Math Training app is Windows 8 app for children.Diablo III: This Project will contain several Diablo III related Implementations (a Windows 8 App another API Implementation, maybe some Calculators...)gelform: Ejercicio UTNJHashWin: Calcular hash MD5 SHA1 SHA256 SHA512 de arquivos MultiTask .NET 4.0 C# Marron TFS: Marron TFSMiddle Tennessee State University Robotics Team: Home of the MTSU Raider Robotics team.myexam: examN2F Router: The Zibings, N2Framework, url mapping/router project.NZBMatrix Advanced Feed Reader: This project is simple filter for NZBMatrix website feeds to update user with new movies which falls into the predefined customizable search templates.OpenTrading: Projeto em VB .net 3.5 que utiliza Active Record para mapeamento do banco de dados diretamente na classe das entidades e NHibernate para persistência dos dadosProjeto Parque - PI: Este projeto é resultado de um trabalho que realizamos todos os semestres na faculdade. 4º BSI - Centro Universitário Senac. QuesSys: this project is about examinationsample of inheritance: this project a sample of inheritance between classes at C#SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool: Tool to test and debug the Search REST API in SharePoint 2013. Issue GET and POST search and suggestions queries. Use also against SharePoint Online. SharePoint Metro Grid: SharePoint 2010/2013 web part that displays links in Metro Tile Grid format. Just like Windows 8. Includes 215 images in 7 different sizes. Or use your own.SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework: The SQL Server Partitioned Table Framework (PTF) consists of a set of T-SQL Procedures that ease the maintenance work associated with partitioned tables.String -By GigaPlux Inc.: String OS is a operating system that was developed using C# and is based on the cosmos project .It has a beautiful File System by GRUNT.svu cms: first cms with chat and message between user vConsole for Windows 8: Just a very simple little app to help IT folks stuck in vSphere 5.0 with Win 8 console issues until you get to the next version of vSphereWikiprep#: The Wikiprep program is completely written in C# and based on .Net 4.0 . It processes Wikipedia dumps.Windows 8 Lock Screen: Windows 8 Lock Screen is a app that works like the Windows 8 Lock Screenwsccproject: updates will be made in due time during development

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• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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• Introducing Oracle Multitenant

  - by OracleMultitenant

  0 0 1 1142 6510 Oracle Corporation 54 15 7637 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} The First Database Designed for the Cloud Today Oracle announced the general availability (GA) of Oracle Database 12c, the first database designed for the Cloud. Oracle Multitenant, new with Oracle Database 12c, is a key component of this – a new architecture for consolidating databases and simplifying operations in the Cloud. With this, the inaugural post in the Multitenant blog, my goal is to start the conversation about Oracle Multitenant. We are very proud of this new architecture, which we view as a major advance for Oracle. Customers, partners and analysts who have had previews are very excited about its capabilities and its flexibility. This high level review of Oracle Multitenant will touch on our design considerations and how we re-architected our database for the cloud. I’ll briefly describe our new multitenant architecture and explain it’s key benefits. Finally I’ll mention some of the major use cases we see for Oracle Multitenant. Industry Trends We always start by talking to our customers about the pressures and challenges they’re facing and what trends they’re seeing in the industry. Some things don’t change. They face the same pressures and the same requirements as ever: Pressure to do more with less; be faster, leaner, cheaper, and deliver services 24/7. Big companies have achieved scale. Now they want to realize economies of scale. As ever, DBAs are faced with the challenges of patching and upgrading large numbers of databases, and provisioning new ones.  Requirements are familiar: Performance, scalability, reliability and high availability are non-negotiable. They need ever more security in this threatening climate. There’s no time to stop and retool with new applications. What’s new are the trends. These are the techniques to use to respond to these pressures within the constraints of the requirements. With the advent of cloud computing and availability of massively powerful servers – even engineered systems such as Exadata – our customers want to consolidate many applications into fewer larger servers. There’s a move to standardized services – even self-service. Consolidation Consolidation is not new; companies have tried various different approaches to consolidation of databases in the cloud. One approach is to partition a powerful server between several virtual machines, one per application. A downside of this is that you have the resource and management overheads of OS and RDBMS per VM – that is, per application. Another is that you have replaced physical sprawl with virtual sprawl and virtual sprawl is still expensive to manage. In the dedicated database model, we have a single physical server supporting multiple databases, one per application. So there’s a shared OS overhead, but RDBMS process and memory overhead are replicated per application. Let's think about our traditional Oracle Database architecture. Every time we create a database, be it a production database, a development or a test database, what do we do? We create a set of files, we allocate a bunch of memory for managing the data, and we kick off a series of background processes. This is replicated for every one of the databases that we create. As more and more databases are fired up, these replicated overheads quickly consume the available server resources and this limits the number of applications we can run on any given server. In Oracle Database 11g and earlier the highest degree of consolidation could be achieved by what we call schema consolidation. In this model we have one big server with one big database. Individual applications are installed in separate schemas or table-owners. Database overheads are shared between all applications, which affords maximum consolidation. The shortcomings are that application changes are often required. There is no tenant isolation. One bad apple can spoil the whole batch. New Architecture & Benefits In Oracle Database 12c, we have a new multitenant architecture, featuring pluggable databases. This delivers all the resource utilization advantages of schema consolidation with none of the downsides. There are two parts to the term “pluggable database”: "pluggable", which is new, and "database", which is familiar.  Before we get to the exciting new stuff let’s discuss what hasn’t changed. A pluggable database is a fully functional Oracle database. It’s not watered down in any way. From the perspective of an application or an end user it hasn’t changed at all. This is very important because it means that no application changes are required to adopt this new architecture. There are many thousands of applications built on Oracle databases and they are all ready to run on Oracle Multitenant. So we have these self-contained pluggable databases (PDBs), and as their name suggests, they are plugged into a multitenant container database (CDB). The CDB behaves as a single database from the operations point of view. Very much as we had with the schema consolidation model, we only have a single set of Oracle background processes and a single, shared database memory requirement. This gives us very high consolidation density, which affords maximum reduction in capital expenses (CapEx). By performing management operations at the CDB level – “managing many as one” – we can achieve great reductions in operating expenses (OpEx) as well, but we retain granular control where appropriate. Furthermore, the “pluggability” capability gives us portability and this adds a tremendous amount of agility. We can simply unplug a PDB from one CDB and plug it into another CDB, for example to move it from one SLA tier to another. I'll explore all these new capabilities in much more detail in a future posting.  Use Cases We can identify a number of use cases for Oracle Multitenant. Here are a few of the major ones. 0 0 1 113 650 Oracle Corporation 5 1 762 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} Development / Testing where individual engineers need rapid provisioning and recycling of private copies of a few "master test databases" Consolidation of disparate applications using fewer, more powerful servers Software as a Service deploying separate copies of identical applications to individual tenants Database as a Service typically self-service provisioning of databases on the private cloud Application Distribution from ISV / Installation by Customer Eliminating many typical installation steps (create schema, import seed data, import application code PL/SQL…) - just plug in a PDB! High volume data distribution literally via disk drives in envelopes distributed by truck! - distribution of things like GIS or MDM master databases …various others! Benefits Previous approaches to consolidation have involved a trade-off between reductions in Capital Expenses (CapEx) and Operating Expenses (OpEx), and they’ve usually come at the expense of agility. With Oracle Multitenant you can have your cake and eat it: Minimize CapEx More Applications per server Minimize OpEx Manage many as one Standardized procedures and services Rapid provisioning Maximize Agility Cloning for development and testing Portability through pluggability Scalability with RAC Ease of Adoption Applications run unchanged It’s a pure deployment choice. Neither the database backend nor the application needs to be changed. In future postings I’ll explore various aspects in more detail. However, if you feel compelled to devour everything you can about Oracle Multitenant this very minute, have no fear. Visit the Multitenant page on OTN and explore the various resources we have available there. Among these, Oracle Distinguished Product Manager Bryn Llewellyn has written an excellent, thorough, and exhaustively detailed White Paper about Oracle Multitenant, which is available here.  Follow me  I tweet @OraclePDB #OracleMultitenant

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• Android "java.lang.noclassdeffounderror" exception

  - by wpbnewbie

  Hello, I have a android webservice client application. I am trying to use the java standard WS library support. I have stripped the application down to the minimum, as shown below, to try and isolate the issue. Below is the applicaiton, package fau.edu.cse; import android.app.Activity; import android.os.Bundle; import android.widget.TextView; public class ClassMap extends Activity { TextView displayObject; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { // Build Screen Display String String screenString = "Program Started\n\n"; // Set up the display super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); displayObject = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.TextView01); screenString = screenString + "Inflate Disaplay\n\n"; try { // Set up Soap Service TempConvertSoap service = new TempConvert().getTempConvertSoap(); // Successful Soap Object Build screenString = screenString + "SOAP Object Correctly Build\n\n"; // Display Response displayObject.setText(screenString); } catch(Throwable e){ e.printStackTrace(); displayObject.setText(screenString +"Try Error...\n" + e.toString()); } } } The classes tempConvert and tempConvertSoap are in the package fau.edu.cse. I have included the java SE javax libraries in the java build pasth. When the android application tries to create the "service" object I get a "java.lang.noclassdeffounderror" exception. The two classes tempConvertSoap and TempConvet() are generated by wsimport. I am also using several libraries from javax.jws.. and javax.xml.ws.. Of course the application compiles without error and loads correctly. I know the application is running becouse my "try/catch" routine is successfully catching the error and printing it out. Here is what is in the logcat says (notice that it cannot find TempConvert), 06-12 22:58:39.340: WARN/dalvikvm(200): Unable to resolve superclass of Lfau/edu/cse/TempConvert; (53) 06-12 22:58:39.340: WARN/dalvikvm(200): Link of class 'Lfau/edu/cse/TempConvert;' failed 06-12 22:58:39.340: ERROR/dalvikvm(200): Could not find class 'fau.edu.cse.TempConvert', referenced from method fau.edu.cse.ClassMap.onCreate 06-12 22:58:39.340: WARN/dalvikvm(200): VFY: unable to resolve new-instance 21 (Lfau/edu/cse/TempConvert;) in Lfau/edu/cse/ClassMap; 06-12 22:58:39.340: DEBUG/dalvikvm(200): VFY: replacing opcode 0x22 at 0x0027 06-12 22:58:39.340: DEBUG/dalvikvm(200): Making a copy of Lfau/edu/cse/ClassMap;.onCreate code (252 bytes) 06-12 22:58:39.490: DEBUG/dalvikvm(30): GC freed 2 objects / 48 bytes in 273ms 06-12 22:58:39.530: DEBUG/ddm-heap(119): Got feature list request 06-12 22:58:39.620: WARN/Resources(200): Converting to string: TypedValue{t=0x12/d=0x0 a=2 r=0x7f050000} 06-12 22:58:39.620: WARN/System.err(200): java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: fau.edu.cse.TempConvert 06-12 22:58:39.830: WARN/System.err(200): at fau.edu.cse.ClassMap.onCreate(ClassMap.java:26) 06-12 22:58:39.830: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047) 06-12 22:58:39.830: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2459) 06-12 22:58:39.830: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:2512) 06-12 22:58:39.830: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2200(ActivityThread.java:119) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1863) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4363) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:860) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:618) 06-12 22:58:39.880: WARN/System.err(200): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) ...bla...bla...bla It would be great if someone just had an answer, however I am looking at debug strategies. I have taken this same application and created a standard java client application and it works fine -- of course with all of the android stuff taken out. What would be a good debug strategy? What methods and techniques would you recommend I try and isolate the problem? I am thinking that there is some sort of Dalvik VM incompatibility that is causing the TempConvert class not to load. TempConvert is an interface class that references a lot of very tricky webservice attributes. Any help with debug strategies would be gladly appreciated. Thanks for the help, Steve

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• Java Generics, JPA 2, J2EE, JSF 2, GWT, Ajax, Oracle's Java Strategies, Flex, iPhone, Agile ALM, Gra

  - by Kim Won

  Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 – India's Biggest Polyglot Conference and Workshops for IT Software Professionals Bangalore, April 9, 2010: The GIDS.Java Conference and Workshops has announced the complete program of over 50 sessions on the present and future of the Java language and VM, how they are evolving to meet the community's ever-changing needs, and some of the cutting-edge tools, technologies & techniques used for building robust enterprise Java applications today. The GIDs.Java track at Great Indian Developer Summit takes place 22 and 23 April 2010, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.Java at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. During 22 and 23 April 2010, GIDS.Java offers a multi-track conference, workshops, expo show floor, and networking opportunities. The first keynote at GIDS.Java "Pointy Haired Bosses and Pragmatic Programmers" is led by Dr. Venkat Subramaniam. He speaks about how each of us has a professional responsibility to be objective and make decisions that will help us and our teams be productive and deliver results. Venkat will pick on some fallacies, lay down facts, and discuss how to stay professional and objective in our daily efforts. The second keynote of the day explains the practical features that make the Cloud so interesting, and why everyone should start using it in their everyday life. Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Services Technology Evangelist, will detail technical examples, business details all mixed with a lot of Italian humor to ensure audience enjoy this talk without a single line of code. The third keynote of the day gives an exciting overview of directions in the Java space for Oracle, featuring concrete signs of Oracles heavy investment, a clear concise strategy overview, and deep dives into some of the most interesting pieces of technology being developed in the Java Platform Group today; such as JavaEE, JDK7, JavaFX, and our exciting new visual tools. Featuring demos by a Java evangelism team star, Simon Ritter, this talk takes you top to bottom in Java Technology. Featured talks at GID.Web include: Good, Bad, and Ugly of Java Generics, Venkat Subramaniam Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0, Marty Hall How JPA 2.0 Makes a Good Thing Even Better, Mike Keith Building Enterprise RIAs with Adobe Flex and Java, Sujit Reddy G Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0, Marty Hall Design Patterns in Java and Groovy, Venkat Subramaniam A Gentle Introduction to iPhone and Obj-C for Java Developers, Matthew McCullough Cloud Computing: Azure for Java Developers, Janakiram MSV Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library, Marty Hall First steps to IT Heaven Through the Cloud. Part III: .Java, Simone Brunozi Building Web 2.0 User Interfaces for Web Service Models using JSF, Frank Nimphius and Jobinesh P Acceptance Test Driven Development, John Tobin and Mohammed Mohsinali Architecting Your Java Applications for the Cloud, Praveen Srivatsa Effective Java, Venkat Subramaniam The Amazing Groovy Weight-loss Plan, Scott Davis Enterprise Modeling - from Conceptual Planning to Technical Blueprints, J Sripad Java Collections Renaissance, Donald Raab and Vlad Zakharov Power 7 and IBM J9VM, Himanshu Goyal A Whistle-stop Tour of Maven 3.0, Matthew McCullough Mass Volume Opportunities for Java Developers, Jouko Nuottila Emerging Technology Complex Event Processing, Duvvuri Srinivas Agile ALM for Distributed Development, Karthi Swaminathan Dim Sum Grails - A Sampler of Practical Non Database-Driven Grails Applications, Scott Davis Diagnosing Performance Bottlenecks in J2EE, Deepak Kaul Business Driven Identity Management, Suneet Agera Combining Java EE with OSGi using Eclipse Gemini, Mike Keith Workshop: Essence of Functional Programming, Venkat Subramaniam Workshop: Agile Development, Tools, and Teams and Scrum Certification, Stephen Forte Workshop: Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine, Matthew McCullough Workshop: Building Your First Amazon App, Simone Brunozzi Workshop: The 180-min AJAX and JSON Spike Class, Scott Davis Workshop: PHP + Adobe Flex = Killer RIA, Shyamprasad P Workshop: User Expereince Evaluation Model Walkthrough, Sanna Häiväläinen Workshop: Building Data Centric Applications using Adobe Flex and Java, Prashant Singh Workshop: Monetizing your Apps with PayPal X Payments Platform, Khurram Khan, Praveen Alavilli Sponsors of Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 include: Platinum sponsors Microsoft, Oracle Forum Nokia and Adobe; Gold sponsors Intel and SAP; Silver sponsors Quest Software, PayPal, Telerik and AMT. About Great Indian Developer Summit Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore. At GIDS you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world. For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/ A Saltmarch Media Press Release E: [email protected] Ph: +91 80 4005 1000

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• Advice on my jQuery Ajax Function

  - by NessDan

  So on my site, a user can post a comment on 2 things: a user's profile and an app. The code works fine in PHP but we decided to add Ajax to make it more stylish. The comment just fades into the page and works fine. I decided I wanted to make a function so that I wouldn't have to manage 2 (or more) blocks of codes in different files. Right now, the code is as follows for the two pages (not in a separate .js file, they're written inside the head tags for the pages.): // App page $("input#comment_submit").click(function() { var comment = $("#comment_box").val(); $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "app.php?id=<?php echo $id; ?>", data: {comment: comment}, success: function() { $("input#comment_submit").attr("disabled", "disabled").val("Comment Submitted!"); $("textarea#comment_box").attr("disabled", "disabled") $("#comments").prepend("<div class=\"comment new\"></div>"); $(".new").prepend("<a href=\"profile.php?username=<?php echo $_SESSION['username']; ?>\" class=\"commentname\"><?php echo $_SESSION['username']; ?></a><p class=\"commentdate\"><?php echo date("M. d, Y", time()) ?> - <?php echo date("g:i A", time()); ?></p><p class=\"commentpost\">" + comment + "</p>").hide().fadeIn(1000); } }); return false; }); And next up, // Profile page $("input#comment_submit").click(function() { var comment = $("#comment_box").val(); $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: "profile.php?username=<?php echo $user; ?>", data: {comment: comment}, success: function() { $("input#comment_submit").attr("disabled", "disabled").val("Comment Submitted!"); $("textarea#comment_box").attr("disabled", "disabled") $("#comments").prepend("<div class=\"comment new\"></div>"); $(".new").prepend("<a href=\"profile.php?username=<?php echo $_SESSION['username']; ?>\" class=\"commentname\"><?php echo $_SESSION['username']; ?></a><p class=\"commentdate\"><?php echo date("M. d, Y", time()) ?> - <?php echo date("g:i A", time()); ?></p><p class=\"commentpost\">" + comment + "</p>").hide().fadeIn(1000); } }); return false; }); Now, on each page the box names will always be the same (comment_box and comment_submit) so what do you guys think of this function (Note, the postComment is in the head tag on the page.): // On the page, (profile.php) $(function() { $("input#comment_submit").click(function() { postComment("profile", "<?php echo $user ?>", "<?php echo $_SESSION['username']; ?>", "<?php echo date("M. d, Y", time()) ?>", "<?php echo date("g:i A", time()); ?>"); }); }); Which leads to this function (which is stored in a separate file called functions.js): function postComment(page, argvalue, username, date, time) { if (page == "app") { var arg = "id"; } if (page == "profile") { var arg = "username"; } var comment = $("#comment_box").val(); $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: page + ".php?" + arg + "=" + argvalue, data: {comment: comment}, success: function() { $("textarea#comment_box").attr("disabled", "disabled") $("input#comment_submit").attr("disabled", "disabled").val("Comment Submitted!"); $("#comments").prepend("<div class=\"comment new\"></div>"); $(".new").prepend("<a href=\"" + page + ".php?" + arg + "=" + username + "\" class=\"commentname\">" + username + "</a><p class=\"commentdate\">" + date + " - " + time + "</p><p class=\"commentpost\">" + nl2br(comment) + "</p>").hide().fadeIn(1000); } }); return false; } That's what I came up with! So, some problems: When I hit the button the page refreshes. What fixed this was taking the return false from the function and putting it into the button click. Any way to keep it in the function and have the same effect? But my real question is this: Can any coders out there that are familiar to jQuery tell me techniques, coding practices, or ways to write my code more efficiently/elegantly? I've done a lot of work in PHP but I know that echoing the date may not be the most efficient way to get the date and time. So any tips that can really help me streamline this function and also make me better with writing jQuery are very welcome!

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• What does Ruby have that Python doesn't, and vice versa?

  - by Lennart Regebro

  There is a lot of discussions of Python vs Ruby, and I all find them completely unhelpful, because they all turn around why feature X sucks in language Y, or that claim language Y doesn't have X, although in fact it does. I also know exactly why I prefer Python, but that's also subjective, and wouldn't help anybody choosing, as they might not have the same tastes in development as I do. It would therefore be interesting to list the differences, objectively. So no "Python's lambdas sucks". Instead explain what Ruby's lambdas can do that Python's can't. No subjectivity. Example code is good! Don't have several differences in one answer, please. And vote up the ones you know are correct, and down those you know are incorrect (or are subjective). Also, differences in syntax is not interesting. We know Python does with indentation what Ruby does with brackets and ends, and that @ is called self in Python. UPDATE: This is now a community wiki, so we can add the big differences here. Ruby has a class reference in the class body In Ruby you have a reference to the class (self) already in the class body. In Python you don't have a reference to the class until after the class construction is finished. An example: class Kaka puts self end self in this case is the class, and this code would print out "Kaka". There is no way to print out the class name or in other ways access the class from the class definition body in Python. All classes are mutable in Ruby This lets you develop extensions to core classes. Here's an example of a rails extension: class String def starts_with?(other) head = self[0, other.length] head == other end end Ruby has Perl-like scripting features Ruby has first class regexps, $-variables, the awk/perl line by line input loop and other features that make it more suited to writing small shell scripts that munge text files or act as glue code for other programs. Ruby has first class continuations Thanks to the callcc statement. In Python you can create continuations by various techniques, but there is no support built in to the language. Ruby has blocks With the "do" statement you can create a multi-line anonymous function in Ruby, which will be passed in as an argument into the method in front of do, and called from there. In Python you would instead do this either by passing a method or with generators. Ruby: amethod { |here| many=lines+of+code goes(here) } Python: def function(here): many=lines+of+code goes(here) amethod(function) Interestingly, the convenience statement in Ruby for calling a block is called "yield", which in Python will create a generator. Ruby: def themethod yield 5 end themethod do |foo| puts foo end Python: def themethod(): yield 5 for foo in themethod: print foo Although the principles are different, the result is strikingly similar. Python has built-in generators (which are used like Ruby blocks, as noted above) Python has support for generators in the language. In Ruby you could use the generator module that uses continuations to create a generator from a block. Or, you could just use a block/proc/lambda! Moreover, in Ruby 1.9 Fibers are, and can be used as, generators. docs.python.org has this generator example: def reverse(data): for index in range(len(data)-1, -1, -1): yield data[index] Contrast this with the above block examples. Python has flexible name space handling In Ruby, when you import a file with require, all the things defined in that file will end up in your global namespace. This causes namespace pollution. The solution to that is Rubys modules. But if you create a namespace with a module, then you have to use that namespace to access the contained classes. In Python, the file is a module, and you can import its contained names with from themodule import *, thereby polluting the namespace if you want. But you can also import just selected names with from themodule import aname, another or you can simply import themodule and then access the names with themodule.aname. If you want more levels in your namespace you can have packages, which are directories with modules and an __init__.py file. Python has docstrings Docstrings are strings that are attached to modules, functions and methods and can be introspected at runtime. This helps for creating such things as the help command and automatic documentation. def frobnicate(bar): """frobnicate takes a bar and frobnicates it >>> bar = Bar() >>> bar.is_frobnicated() False >>> frobnicate(bar) >>> bar.is_frobnicated() True """ Python has more libraries Python has a vast amount of available modules and bindings for libraries. Python has multiple inheritance Ruby does not ("on purpose" -- see Ruby's website, see here how it's done in Ruby). It does reuse the module concept as a sort of abstract classes. Python has list/dict comprehensions Python: res = [x*x for x in range(1, 10)] Ruby: res = (0..9).map { |x| x * x } Python: >>> (x*x for x in range(10)) <generator object <genexpr> at 0xb7c1ccd4> >>> list(_) [0, 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81] Ruby: p = proc { |x| x * x } (0..9).map(&p) Python: >>> {x:str(y*y) for x,y in {1:2, 3:4}.items()} {1: '4', 3: '16'} Ruby: >> Hash[{1=>2, 3=>4}.map{|x,y| [x,(y*y).to_s]}] => {1=>"4", 3=>"16"} Python has decorators Things similar to decorators can be created in Ruby, and it can also be argued that they aren't as necessary as in Python.

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• improving conversions to binary and back in C#

  - by Saad Imran.

  I'm trying to write a general purpose socket server for a game I'm working on. I know I could very well use already built servers like SmartFox and Photon, but I wan't to go through the pain of creating one myself for learning purposes. I've come up with a BSON inspired protocol to convert the the basic data types, their arrays, and a special GSObject to binary and arrange them in a way so that it can be put back together into object form on the client end. At the core, the conversion methods utilize the .Net BitConverter class to convert the basic data types to binary. Anyways, the problem is performance, if I loop 50,000 times and convert my GSObject to binary each time it takes about 5500ms (the resulting byte[] is just 192 bytes per conversion). I think think this would be way too slow for an MMO that sends 5-10 position updates per second with a 1000 concurrent users. Yes, I know it's unlikely that a game will have a 1000 users on at the same time, but like I said earlier this is supposed to be a learning process for me, I want to go out of my way and build something that scales well and can handle at least a few thousand users. So yea, if anyone's aware of other conversion techniques or sees where I'm loosing performance I would appreciate the help. GSBitConverter.cs This is the main conversion class, it adds extension methods to main datatypes to convert to the binary format. It uses the BitConverter class to convert the base types. I've shown only the code to convert integer and integer arrays, but the rest of the method are pretty much replicas of those two, they just overload the type. public static class GSBitConverter { public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this short value) { return BitConverter.GetBytes(value); } public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<short> value) { List<byte> bytes = new List<byte>(); short length = (short)value.Count(); bytes.AddRange(length.ToGSBinary()); for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) bytes.AddRange(value.ElementAt(i).ToGSBinary()); return bytes.ToArray(); } public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this bool value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<bool> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<byte> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this int value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<int> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this long value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<long> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this float value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<float> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this double value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<double> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this string value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<string> value); public static string GetHexDump(this IEnumerable<byte> value); } Program.cs Here's the the object that I'm converting to binary in a loop. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { GSObject obj = new GSObject(); obj.AttachShort("smallInt", 15); obj.AttachInt("medInt", 120700); obj.AttachLong("bigInt", 10900800700); obj.AttachDouble("doubleVal", Math.PI); obj.AttachStringArray("muppetNames", new string[] { "Kermit", "Fozzy", "Piggy", "Animal", "Gonzo" }); GSObject apple = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Apple"); apple.AttachString("color", "red"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)1.5); GSObject lemon = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Lemon"); apple.AttachString("color", "yellow"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", false); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)0.8); GSObject apricoat = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Apricoat"); apple.AttachString("color", "orange"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)1.9); GSObject kiwi = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Kiwi"); apple.AttachString("color", "green"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)2.3); GSArray fruits = new GSArray(); fruits.AddGSObject(apple); fruits.AddGSObject(lemon); fruits.AddGSObject(apricoat); fruits.AddGSObject(kiwi); obj.AttachGSArray("fruits", fruits); Stopwatch w1 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < 50000; i++) { byte[] b = obj.ToGSBinary(); } w1.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(BitConverter.IsLittleEndian ? "Little Endian" : "Big Endian"); Console.WriteLine(w1.ElapsedMilliseconds + "ms"); } Here's the code for some of my other classes that are used in the code above. Most of it is repetitive. GSObject GSArray GSWrappedObject

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• PHP MVC Framework Structure

  - by bigstylee

  I am sorry about the amount of code here. I have tried to show enough for understanding while avoiding confusion (I hope). I have included a second copy of the code at Pastebin. (The code does execute without error/notice/warning.) I am currently creating a Content Management System while trying to implement the idea of Model View Controller. I have only recently come across the concept of MVC (within the last week) and trying to implement this into my current project. One of the features of the CMS is dynamic/customisable menu areas and each feature will be represented by a controller. Therefore there will be multiple versions of the Controller Class, each with specific extended functionality. I have looked at a number of tutorials and read some open source solutions to the MVC Framework. I am now trying to create a lightweight solution for my specific requirements. I am not interested in backwards compatibility, I am using PHP 5.3. An advantage of the Base class is not having to use global and can directly access any loaded class using $this->Obj['ClassName']->property/function();. Hoping to get some feedback using the basic structure outlined (with performance in mind). Specifically; a) Have I understood/implemented the concept of MVC correctly? b) Have I understood/implemented Object Orientated techniques with PHP 5 correctly? c) Should the class propertise of Base be static? d) Improvements? Thank you very much in advance! <?php /* A "Super Class" that creates/stores all object instances */ class Base { public static $Obj = array(); // Not sure this is the correct use of the "static" keyword? public static $var; static public function load_class($directory, $class) { echo count(self::$Obj)."\n"; // This does show the array is getting updated and not creating a new array :) if (!isset(self::$Obj[$class]) && !is_object(self::$Obj[$class])) //dont want to load it twice { /* Locate and include the class file based upon name ($class) */ return self::$Obj[$class] = new $class(); } return TRUE; } } /* Loads general configuration objects into the "Super Class" */ class Libraries extends Base { public function __construct(){ $this->load_class('library', 'Database'); $this->load_class('library', 'Session'); self::$var = 'Hello World!'; //testing visibility /* Other general funciton classes */ } } class Database extends Base { /* Connects to the the database and executes all queries */ public function query(){} } class Session extends Base { /* Implements Sessions in database (read/write) */ } /* General functionality of controllers */ abstract class Controller extends Base { protected function load_model($class, $method) { /* Locate and include the model file */ $this->load_class('model', $class); call_user_func(array(self::$Obj[$class], $method)); } protected function load_view($name) { /* Locate and include the view file */ #include('views/'.$name.'.php'); } } abstract class View extends Base { /* ... */ } abstract class Model extends Base { /* ... */ } class News extends Controller { public function index() { /* Displays the 5 most recent News articles and displays with Content Area */ $this->load_model('NewsModel', 'index'); $this->load_view('news', 'index'); echo $this->var; } public function menu() { /* Displays the News Title of the 5 most recent News articles and displays within the Menu Area */ $this->load_model('news/index'); $this->load_view('news/index'); } } class ChatBox extends Controller { /* ... */ } /* Lots of different features extending the controller/view/model class depending upon request and layout */ class NewsModel extends Model { public function index() { echo $this->var; self::$Obj['Database']->query(/*SELECT 5 most recent news articles*/); } public function menu() { /* ... */ } } $Libraries = new Libraries; $controller = 'News'; // Would be determined from Query String $method = 'index'; // Would be determined from Query String $Content = $Libraries->load_class('controller', $controller); //create the controller for the specific page if (in_array($method, get_class_methods($Content))) { call_user_func(array($Content, $method)); } else { die('Bad Request'. $method); } $Content::$var = 'Goodbye World'; echo $Libraries::$var . ' - ' . $Content::$var; ?> /* Ouput */ 0 1 2 3 Goodbye World! - Goodbye World

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• HTG Reviews the CODE Keyboard: Old School Construction Meets Modern Amenities

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the smooth and crisp action of a well built keyboard. If you’re tired of  mushy keys and cheap feeling keyboards, a well-constructed mechanical keyboard is a welcome respite from the $10 keyboard that came with your computer. Read on as we put the CODE mechanical keyboard through the paces. What is the CODE Keyboard? The CODE keyboard is a collaboration between manufacturer WASD Keyboards and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (the guy behind the Stack Exchange network and Discourse forum software). Atwood’s focus was incorporating the best of traditional mechanical keyboards and the best of modern keyboard usability improvements. In his own words: The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys. That’s why I originally contacted Weyman Kwong of WASD Keyboards way back in early 2012. I told him that the state of keyboards was unacceptable to me as a geek, and I proposed a partnership wherein I was willing to work with him to do whatever it takes to produce a truly great mechanical keyboard. Even the ardent skeptic who questions whether Atwood has indeed created a truly great mechanical keyboard certainly can’t argue with the position he starts from: there are so many agonizingly crappy keyboards out there. Even worse, in our opinion, is that unless you’re a typist of a certain vintage there’s a good chance you’ve never actually typed on a really nice keyboard. Those that didn’t start using computers until the mid-to-late 1990s most likely have always typed on modern mushy-key keyboards and never known the joy of typing on a really responsive and crisp mechanical keyboard. Is our preference for and love of mechanical keyboards shining through here? Good. We’re not even going to try and hide it. So where does the CODE keyboard stack up in pantheon of keyboards? Read on as we walk you through the simple setup and our experience using the CODE. Setting Up the CODE Keyboard Although the setup of the CODE keyboard is essentially plug and play, there are two distinct setup steps that you likely haven’t had to perform on a previous keyboard. Both highlight the degree of care put into the keyboard and the amount of customization available. Inside the box you’ll find the keyboard, a micro USB cable, a USB-to-PS2 adapter, and a tool which you may be unfamiliar with: a key puller. We’ll return to the key puller in a moment. Unlike the majority of keyboards on the market, the cord isn’t permanently affixed to the keyboard. What does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious need to plug it in yourself, it makes it dead simple to repair your own keyboard cord if it gets attacked by a pet, mangled in a mechanism on your desk, or otherwise damaged. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the cable routing channels in on the underside of the keyboard to  route your cable exactly where you want it. While we’re staring at the underside of the keyboard, check out those beefy rubber feet. By peripherals standards they’re huge (and there is six instead of the usual four). Once you plunk the keyboard down where you want it, it might as well be glued down the rubber feet work so well. After you’ve secured the cable and adjusted it to your liking, there is one more task  before plug the keyboard into the computer. On the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard, you’ll find a small recess in the plastic with some dip switches inside: The dip switches are there to switch hardware functions for various operating systems, keyboard layouts, and to enable/disable function keys. By toggling the dip switches you can change the keyboard from QWERTY mode to Dvorak mode and Colemak mode, the two most popular alternative keyboard configurations. You can also use the switches to enable Mac-functionality (for Command/Option keys). One of our favorite little toggles is the SW3 dip switch: you can disable the Caps Lock key; goodbye accidentally pressing Caps when you mean to press Shift. You can review the entire dip switch configuration chart here. The quick-start for Windows users is simple: double check that all the switches are in the off position (as seen in the photo above) and then simply toggle SW6 on to enable the media and backlighting function keys (this turns the menu key on the keyboard into a function key as typically found on laptop keyboards). After adjusting the dip switches to your liking, plug the keyboard into an open USB port on your computer (or into your PS/2 port using the included adapter). Design, Layout, and Backlighting The CODE keyboard comes in two flavors, a traditional 87-key layout (no number pad) and a traditional 104-key layout (number pad on the right hand side). We identify the layout as traditional because, despite some modern trapping and sneaky shortcuts, the actual form factor of the keyboard from the shape of the keys to the spacing and position is as classic as it comes. You won’t have to learn a new keyboard layout and spend weeks conditioning yourself to a smaller than normal backspace key or a PgUp/PgDn pair in an unconventional location. Just because the keyboard is very conventional in layout, however, doesn’t mean you’ll be missing modern amenities like media-control keys. The following additional functions are hidden in the F11, F12, Pause button, and the 2×6 grid formed by the Insert and Delete rows: keyboard illumination brightness, keyboard illumination on/off, mute, and then the typical play/pause, forward/backward, stop, and volume +/- in Insert and Delete rows, respectively. While we weren’t sure what we’d think of the function-key system at first (especially after retiring a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard with a huge and easily accessible volume knob on it), it took less than a day for us to adapt to using the Fn key, located next to the right Ctrl key, to adjust our media playback on the fly. Keyboard backlighting is a largely hit-or-miss undertaking but the CODE keyboard nails it. Not only does it have pleasant and easily adjustable through-the-keys lighting but the key switches the keys themselves are attached to are mounted to a steel plate with white paint. Enough of the light reflects off the interior cavity of the keys and then diffuses across the white plate to provide nice even illumination in between the keys. Highlighting the steel plate beneath the keys brings us to the actual construction of the keyboard. It’s rock solid. The 87-key model, the one we tested, is 2.0 pounds. The 104-key is nearly a half pound heavier at 2.42 pounds. Between the steel plate, the extra-thick PCB board beneath the steel plate, and the thick ABS plastic housing, the keyboard has very solid feel to it. Combine that heft with the previously mentioned thick rubber feet and you have a tank-like keyboard that won’t budge a millimeter during normal use. Examining The Keys This is the section of the review the hardcore typists and keyboard ninjas have been waiting for. We’ve looked at the layout of the keyboard, we’ve looked at the general construction of it, but what about the actual keys? There are a wide variety of keyboard construction techniques but the vast majority of modern keyboards use a rubber-dome construction. The key is floated in a plastic frame over a rubber membrane that has a little rubber dome for each key. The press of the physical key compresses the rubber dome downwards and a little bit of conductive material on the inside of the dome’s apex connects with the circuit board. Despite the near ubiquity of the design, many people dislike it. The principal complaint is that dome keyboards require a complete compression to register a keystroke; keyboard designers and enthusiasts refer to this as “bottoming out”. In other words, the register the “b” key, you need to completely press that key down. As such it slows you down and requires additional pressure and movement that, over the course of tens of thousands of keystrokes, adds up to a whole lot of wasted time and fatigue. The CODE keyboard features key switches manufactured by Cherry, a company that has manufactured key switches since the 1960s. Specifically the CODE features Cherry MX Clear switches. These switches feature the same classic design of the other Cherry switches (such as the MX Blue and Brown switch lineups) but they are significantly quieter (yes this is a mechanical keyboard, but no, your neighbors won’t think you’re firing off a machine gun) as they lack the audible click found in most Cherry switches. This isn’t to say that they keyboard doesn’t have a nice audible key press sound when the key is fully depressed, but that the key mechanism isn’t doesn’t create a loud click sound when triggered. One of the great features of the Cherry MX clear is a tactile “bump” that indicates the key has been compressed enough to register the stroke. For touch typists the very subtle tactile feedback is a great indicator that you can move on to the next stroke and provides a welcome speed boost. Even if you’re not trying to break any word-per-minute records, that little bump when pressing the key is satisfying. The Cherry key switches, in addition to providing a much more pleasant typing experience, are also significantly more durable than dome-style key switch. Rubber dome switch membrane keyboards are typically rated for 5-10 million contacts whereas the Cherry mechanical switches are rated for 50 million contacts. You’d have to write the next War and Peace  and follow that up with A Tale of Two Cities: Zombie Edition, and then turn around and transcribe them both into a dozen different languages to even begin putting a tiny dent in the lifecycle of this keyboard. So what do the switches look like under the classicly styled keys? You can take a look yourself with the included key puller. Slide the loop between the keys and then gently beneath the key you wish to remove: Wiggle the key puller gently back and forth while exerting a gentle upward pressure to pop the key off; You can repeat the process for every key, if you ever find yourself needing to extract piles of cat hair, Cheeto dust, or other foreign objects from your keyboard. There it is, the naked switch, the source of that wonderful crisp action with the tactile bump on each keystroke. The last feature worthy of a mention is the N-key rollover functionality of the keyboard. This is a feature you simply won’t find on non-mechanical keyboards and even gaming keyboards typically only have any sort of key roller on the high-frequency keys like WASD. So what is N-key rollover and why do you care? On a typical mass-produced rubber-dome keyboard you cannot simultaneously press more than two keys as the third one doesn’t register. PS/2 keyboards allow for unlimited rollover (in other words you can’t out type the keyboard as all of your keystrokes, no matter how fast, will register); if you use the CODE keyboard with the PS/2 adapter you gain this ability. If you don’t use the PS/2 adapter and use the native USB, you still get 6-key rollover (and the CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT don’t count towards the 6) so realistically you still won’t be able to out type the computer as even the more finger twisting keyboard combos and high speed typing will still fall well within the 6-key rollover. The rollover absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re a slow hunt-and-peck typist, but if you’ve read this far into a keyboard review there’s a good chance that you’re a serious typist and that kind of quality construction and high-number key rollover is a fantastic feature.  The Good, The Bad, and the Verdict We’ve put the CODE keyboard through the paces, we’ve played games with it, typed articles with it, left lengthy comments on Reddit, and otherwise used and abused it like we would any other keyboard. The Good: The construction is rock solid. In an emergency, we’re confident we could use the keyboard as a blunt weapon (and then resume using it later in the day with no ill effect on the keyboard). The Cherry switches are an absolute pleasure to type on; the Clear variety found in the CODE keyboard offer a really nice middle-ground between the gun-shot clack of a louder mechanical switch and the quietness of a lesser-quality dome keyboard without sacrificing quality. Touch typists will love the subtle tactile bump feedback. Dip switch system makes it very easy for users on different systems and with different keyboard layout needs to switch between operating system and keyboard layouts. If you’re investing a chunk of change in a keyboard it’s nice to know you can take it with you to a different operating system or “upgrade” it to a new layout if you decide to take up Dvorak-style typing. The backlighting is perfect. You can adjust it from a barely-visible glow to a blazing light-up-the-room brightness. Whatever your intesity preference, the white-coated steel backplate does a great job diffusing the light between the keys. You can easily remove the keys for cleaning (or to rearrange the letters to support a new keyboard layout). The weight of the unit combined with the extra thick rubber feet keep it planted exactly where you place it on the desk. The Bad: While you’re getting your money’s worth, the $150 price tag is a shock when compared to the $20-60 price tags you find on lower-end keyboards. People used to large dedicated media keys independent of the traditional key layout (such as the large buttons and volume controls found on many modern keyboards) might be off put by the Fn-key style media controls on the CODE. The Verdict: The keyboard is clearly and heavily influenced by the needs of serious typists. Whether you’re a programmer, transcriptionist, or just somebody that wants to leave the lengthiest article comments the Internet has ever seen, the CODE keyboard offers a rock solid typing experience. Yes, $150 isn’t pocket change, but the quality of the CODE keyboard is so high and the typing experience is so enjoyable, you’re easily getting ten times the value you’d get out of purchasing a lesser keyboard. Even compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market, like the Das Keyboard, you’re still getting more for your money as other mechanical keyboards don’t come with the lovely-to-type-on Cherry MX Clear switches, back lighting, and hardware-based operating system keyboard layout switching. If it’s in your budget to upgrade your keyboard (especially if you’ve been slogging along with a low-end rubber-dome keyboard) there’s no good reason to not pickup a CODE keyboard. Key animation courtesy of Geekhack.org user Lethal Squirrel.       

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