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• Webcor Builders Coordinates Construction Schedules and Mitigates Potential Delays More Efficiently with Integrated Project Management

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  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:"Times New Roman","serif";} With more than 40 years of commercial construction experience, Webcor Builders is a leading builder of distinguished, high-profile projects, including high-rise condominiums and hotels, laboratories, healthcare centers, and public works projects. Webcor is also known for its award-winning concrete, interior construction, historic restoration, and seismic renovation work. The company has completed more than 50 million square feet of projects to date. Considering the variety and complexity of the construction projects Webcor undertakes, an integrated project management solution is critical to ensuring optimal efficiency and completing client projects on time and on budget. The company previously used a number of scheduling systems for its various building projects. These packages provided different levels of schedule detail and required schedulers, engineers, and other employees to learn multiple systems. From an IT cost and complexity perspective, the company had to manage multiple scheduling systems and pay for multiple sets of licenses. The company looked to standardize on an enterprise project management system, and selected Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management. Webcor uses the solution’s advanced capabilities to schedule complex projects, analyze delays, model and propose multiple scenarios to demonstrate and mitigate delays and cost overruns, and process that information efficiently to deliver the scheduling precision that public and private projects require. In fact, the solution was instrumental in helping the company’s expansion into public sector projects during the recent economic downturn, and with Primavera P6 in place, it can deliver the precise schedule reporting required for large public projects. With Primavera P6 in place, the company could deliver the precise scheduling and milestone reporting capabilities required for large public projects. The solution is in managing the high-profile University of California – Berkeley Memorial Stadium project. Webcor was hired as construction manager and general contractor for the stadium renovation project, which is a fast-paced project located near the seismically active Hayward Fault Zone. Due to the University of California’s football schedule, meeting the Universities deadline for the coming season placed Webcor in a situation where risk awareness and early warnings of issues would be paramount. Webcor and the extended project team needed a solution that could instantly analyze alternate scenarios to mitigate potential delays; Primavera would deliver those answers.The team would also need to enable multiple stakeholders to use an internet-based platform to access the schedule from various locations, and model complicated sequencing requirements where swift decisions would be made to keep the project on track. The schedule is an integral part of Webcor’s construction management process for the stadium project. Rather than providing the client with the industry-standard monthly update, Webcor updates the critical path method (CPM) schedule on a weekly basis. The project team also reviews the schedule and updates weekly to confirm that progress and forecasted performance are accurate. Hired by the University for their ability to deliver in high risk environments The Webcor team was hit recently with a design supplement that could have added up to 70 days to the project. Using Oracle Primavera P6 the team sprung into action analyzing multiple “what if” scenarios to review mitigation means and methods.  Determined to make sure the Bears could take the field in the coming season the project team nearly eliminated the impact with their creative analysis in working the schedule. The total time from the issuance of the final design supplement to an agreed mitigation response was less than one week; leveraging the Oracle Primavera solution Webcor was able to deliver superior customer value With the ability to efficiently manage projects and schedules, Webcor can ensure it completes its projects on time and on budget, as well as inform clients about what changes to plans will mean in terms of delays and additional costs. Read the complete customer case study at :  http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/webcor-builders-1-primavera-ss-1639886.html

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• In centralized version control, is it always good to update often?

  - by janos

  Assuming that: You are in a team developing some software. Your team is using centralized version control in the development process. You are working on a new feature which will surely take several days to complete, and you won't be able to commit before that because it would break the build. Your team members commit something every day that affects some of the files you're working with for your fancy new feature. Since this is centralized version control, you will have to update your local checkout at some point: at least once right before committing the new feature. If you update only once right before your commit, then there might be a lot of conflicts due to the many other changes by your teammates, which could be a world of pain to resolve all at once. Or, you could update often, and even if there are a few conflicts to resolve day by day, it should be easier to do, little by little. Can we say that it is always a good idea to update often?

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• ultrasn0w Unlocks iOS 4.2.1

  - by Gopinath

  iPhone dev team who always succeeds in jailbreaking  iPhones and other iOS devices has done it again. They are able to unlock all iPhones running on iOS 4.2 except iPhone 4. MuscleNerd, a member of iPhone Dev team tweeted Finally got ultrasn0w working fully on 4.2.1. Apple inadvertently(!) broke ultrasn0w via aggressive compiler optimization The jailbreak tool for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS will be released soon(may be tomorrow) even though they are still trying to figure out a way to unlock iPhone 4. Read more details on this at dev team blog. This article titled,ultrasn0w Unlocks iOS 4.2.1, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• How to implement the setup rules like Clash of Clan?

  - by user25959

  Now I'm already implement the setup build rules which the building could move by unit grid width and height. But the validation detection is poor efficiency. The algorithm cost me 10~12(ms) in average when I move the building. Here is my approach to that: 1.Basic Grid, it is a two dimensional array. Grid[row][column], so that I can save info for each grid. Like whether is it in occupied or excluded. 2.Exclude Space, this is a space which limit same building numbers in space.

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• How to Convince management that a specific product training is important to QA?

  - by Rahul

  I am leading a QA team of 10 people. we have been received the request for a training of a ETL dataware housing tool for QA, Support and Development. But however the management does not feel that it is important for QA to be involved in such a training as it is support and development team who will be involved ih developing or fixing the issues in the product. How do I convince the management that this training is very important from the QA perspective as this is the team that will find bugs and which will reduce the maintainance cost?

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• Live Security Talk Webcast: Using Standards-Based Internet Explorer Features to Protect Apps (Level

  If you are building mashups and other web applications, what do you need to know to make sure that you are building secure applications that don't expose security vulnerabilities? What do you need to consider when building your applications using features from HTML 5, HTML 4.01, and important features of the browser? Attend this webcast to learn how to use standards-based Windows Internet Explorer features to protect the applications you develop....Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Speaking in Omaha: December 7, 2011

  - by Bill Graziano

  I’m presenting in Omaha on Writing Faster SQL at 6PM on December 7th.  You can find meeting details on the Omaha SQL Server User Group page. The meeting location requires an RSVP so building security has a list of attendees. The presentation is a series of suggestions on improving performance.  It ranges from simple things like comparing indexed columns to scalar values up to tips for reducing query compiles and asynchronous processing patterns.  Nearly all of these come from specific issues I’ve encountered working on poorly performing SQL Servers.

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• Perform Better with Microsoft Project 2007 and Visio 2007. Now 20% OFF!

  To increase productivity, it is essential that your employees have easy access to productivity tools that make the best use of their resources. Microsoft Office Project 2007 and Microsoft Visio 2007 now work Better Together by: · Reducing repetitive tasks with diagrams that refresh automatically with Data Refresh and Data Connect · Tracking the source of issues quickly with the Track Drivers feature · Tracking budgets with the new Costs Resources field · Building ready-to-use reports with the Visual reports engine · Share and manage documents on collaborative workspaces with Windows SharePoint Services For a limited time, you can now license Microsoft Office Project 2007 system and Microsoft Office Visio 2007 system under the No Better Time offer at a 20% discount for Open Value and a 15% discount for Desktop SKUs. Hurry, there’s No Better Time for you to buy Microsoft Office Project 2007 and Microsoft Office Visio 2007. Click here to view the Terms and Conditions. span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Environment Award for AgroSense Java Farm Management System

  - by Geertjan

  Beating IBM's energy information system and Evoswitch's modular data central hall, Ordina's AgroSense, a farm management system for precision agriculture, received the prestigious IT Environment Award in the Netherlands yesterday. AgroSense is an agricultural services platform created in Java on the NetBeans Platform. It looks like this: Among other things, the team has been investigating whether and how to integrate JavaFX games into the AgroSense platform, as well as other JavaFX-oriented effects. Here's a pic of the red tulip award that the team received yesterday at a black tie award ceremony: The original announcement of the nominations for this competition in English can be read here. On Twitter, you can follow the AgroSense project here: @AgroSense Congratulations, AgroSense team, for this fantastic achievement!

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• The SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux is Available!

  - by The Official Microsoft IIS Site

  The first beta release of the SQL Server ODBC Driver for Linux is available for download! As announced in October , the “Multiplatform Team” (a.k.a. the “MPlat Team”) has released a preview version of a driver that will provide first-class access to SQL Server from applications running on Linux operating systems. The team is looking for feedback on this release to incorporate into their production-ready release, so try it out and let us know what you think. Here are the important...(read more)

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• Custom Request Templates

  - by Seth P.

  What kind of information do you require from the project management team before you can proceed on a project? Is there a certain format they utilize on Programming Requests which helps you to understand exactly how the development team can succeed with this project. Example: I always like it when project managers mock up forms. It helps significantly to know how they are visualizing the UI for many tasks. Any suggestions on how we can assist the Project Management team in issuing Programming Requests that are as clear as day will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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• The 5 stages reviewing bad TSQL

  - by Mike Femenella

  I'm working with an app team that is light on TSQL expertise this week and couldn't help but draw a parallel to the 5 stages of grieving. Denial: There’s nothing wrong with the code SQL Server has a bug in it. There is a network problem. Anger: You’re doing what in your code?! Why on earth are you doing that? That’s crazy. Bargaining: Fine you can keep your cursor but let’s speed things up a bit. Depression: Ugh, this is so horrible I’m never going to be able to fix all of it. Acceptance: Ok, we’re screwed and we know we’re screwed. This is going to hurt…

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• @Microsoft: please provide universal and professional concepts

  - by Marko Apfel

  Why such constructs are included in the csproj-Files? <CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories>;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\\Rule Sets</CodeAnalysisRuleSetDirectories> <CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories>;c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Team Tools\Static Analysis Tools\FxCop\\Rules</CodeAnalysisRuleDirectories> So it every projects needs some manual steps to clean the project file so the solution could be build on a continuous integration server. That annoying! And also in a Visual Studio mixed editions team that’s too specific for the ultimate edition. As good as Visual Studio in most cases is, sometimes it is really far away from professional coding fundamentals and best practices.

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• Why CoffeeScript is an issue

  - by Renso

  Other than some obvious concerns, my main concern is support in the open source community. "anon" from the CoffeeScript team sent this to me after I requested input from the team to concerns I raised and wanted to get others' take on it:"Thanks for confirming that only idiots willingly program in Java and C#"or the following from the same person:"Oh and finally, you should definitely create jShort. Even though I know you will fail before you even start, I would love to laugh at your attempts and it would be perfect for you since you ride the short bus. "This kind of comment reflects badly on the CoffeeScript team and hence not an option for us as a company to consider. Another example of why some open-source community projects get no traction.

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• Overview of the agile process that I can apply to a startup

  - by Pete2k

  I need to provide a quote to an external client for some software. I'm looking to use agile just for initial requirements building (which I'm experienced in from a developer perspective) but I need to do everything this is just a one man job. The client are having a hard time working out what there requirements are and the value I can add will be to sit down with them and work out what they want using user stories etc, I basically need to be a BA for a little bit. I am looking for good overview of the procedures to go through in the agile process for building requirements, and the continuing process a bit for further down the line. For example the initial inception through to elaboration of epics and building user stories (or not) just need to read a bit about it before the meeting so I know the best way to proceed if I spend a day with them. Having additional resources to provide to the client so that we are all on the same page would be useful too.

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• Plagued by multithreaded bugs

  - by koncurrency

  On my new team that I manage, the majority of our code is platform, TCP socket, and http networking code. All C++. Most of it originated from other developers that have left the team. The current developers on the team are very smart, but mostly junior in terms of experience. Our biggest problem: multi-threaded concurrency bugs. Most of our class libraries are written to be asynchronous by use of some thread pool classes. Methods on the class libraries often enqueue long running taks onto the thread pool from one thread and then the callback methods of that class get invoked on a different thread. As a result, we have a lot of edge case bugs involving incorrect threading assumptions. This results in subtle bugs that go beyond just having critical sections and locks to guard against concurrency issues. What makes these problems even harder is that the attempts to fix are often incorrect. Some mistakes I've observed the team attempting (or within the legacy code itself) includes something like the following: Common mistake #1 - Fixing concurrency issue by just put a lock around the shared data, but forgetting about what happens when methods don't get called in an expected order. Here's a very simple example: void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } So now we have a bug in which Shutdown could get called while OnHttpNetworkRequestComplete is occuring on. A tester finds the bug, captures the crash dump, and assigns the bug to a developer. He in turn fixes the bug like this. void Foo::OnHttpRequestComplete(statuscode status) { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->DoSomethingImportant(status); } void Foo::Shutdown() { AutoLock lock(m_cs); m_pBar->Cleanup(); delete m_pBar; m_pBar=nullptr; } The above fix looks good until you realize there's an even more subtle edge case. What happens if Shutdown gets called before OnHttpRequestComplete gets called back? The real world examples my team has are even more complex, and the edge cases are even harder to spot during the code review process. Common Mistake #2 - fixing deadlock issues by blindly exiting the lock, wait for the other thread to finish, then re-enter the lock - but without handling the case that the object just got updated by the other thread! Common Mistake #3 - Even though the objects are reference counted, the shutdown sequence "releases" it's pointer. But forgets to wait for the thread that is still running to release it's instance. As such, components are shutdown cleanly, then spurious or late callbacks are invoked on an object in an state not expecting any more calls. There are other edge cases, but the bottom line is this: Multithreaded programming is just plain hard, even for smart people. As I catch these mistakes, I spend time discussing the errors with each developer on developing a more appropriate fix. But I suspect they are often confused on how to solve each issue because of the enormous amount of legacy code that the "right" fix will involve touching. We're going to be shipping soon, and I'm sure the patches we're applying will hold for the upcoming release. Afterwards, we're going to have some time to improve the code base and refactor where needed. We won't have time to just re-write everything. And the majority of the code isn't all that bad. But I'm looking to refactor code such that threading issues can be avoided altogether. One approach I am considering is this. For each significant platform feature, have a dedicated single thread where all events and network callbacks get marshalled onto. Similar to COM apartment threading in Windows with use of a message loop. Long blocking operations could still get dispatched to a work pool thread, but the completion callback is invoked on on the component's thread. Components could possibly even share the same thread. Then all the class libraries running inside the thread can be written under the assumption of a single threaded world. Before I go down that path, I am also very interested if there are other standard techniques or design patterns for dealing with multithreaded issues. And I have to emphasize - something beyond a book that describes the basics of mutexes and semaphores. What do you think? I am also interested in any other approaches to take towards a refactoring process. Including any of the following: Literature or papers on design patterns around threads. Something beyond an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. We don't need massive parallelism either, just ways to design an object model so as to handle asynchronous events from other threads correctly. Ways to diagram the threading of various components, so that it will be easy to study and evolve solutions for. (That is, a UML equivalent for discussing threads across objects and classes) Educating your development team on the issues with multithreaded code. What would you do?

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• Helloooooooooooo, is anybody here?

  - by The Official Microsoft IIS Site

  Well, to start off with, we got a great response to our PHP survey and …. But wait, first things first, let us start off with introductions. I joined the team recently as the Program Manager for this driver. I’ve worked on several technologies in my career and very excited to be a part of this great team and look forward to working with you all, the PHP developer community! PHP and its ecosystem is new to me, so I’ve been ramping up over the last few months as well as helping the team as best I can...(read more)

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• Removing the last digits in string [migrated]

  - by Ruriko

  I have a string that looks like this: [APPLE PIE] Sei Shoujo Sentai Lakers 3 Battle Team Lakers 3 (100% FULL-PIC)_20121104_032834 I want to remove the digits at the end of the string, basically the 16 digits at the end of the string. In the end it should look like this: [APPLE PIE] Sei Shoujo Sentai Lakers 3 Battle Team Lakers 3 (100% FULL-PIC) This is my code that I have written so far var str="[APPLE PIE] Sei Shoujo Sentai Lakers 3 Battle Team Lakers 3 (100% FULL-PIC)_20121104_032834"; var n=str.substr(1,74); document.write(n); The problem is the string will be different so each will have different amount of characters. So how I remove the digits at the end of the string in javascript?

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• Another transition&hellip;

  After spending a year and a half working on M, Ive decided to make another change in what Im doing and and move over to the SQL Server Programmability team. Thats the team responsible for things like the T-SQL language and runtime in SQL Server. Working on M was a lot of fun and the team was great, but after spending a good, long while down in the bowels of a GLR parser, I decided that that was enough and that it was time to do something else. Working on SQL Server programmability is, in some ways,...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• log in to web-app through less secure website [on hold]

  - by martijnve

  We are worried about the security of our website containing the login-button to our saas-application. Security measures put in place for our application won't do us much good if the website is hacked. The login button could be redirected to some malicious copy of our app. The product website is maintained by people outside the dev team. Those people are not too knowledgable concerning security. We (dev-team) could mantain the website ourselves but that would be a large burden on our small team. How is this usually handled?

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• Primavera P6 Cloud ??!P6 R8.3.2????!

  - by hhata

  ????Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) ????? 8.3.2???????????????????????????(SaaS)????????P6????????????????????SaaS???????????????????????P6??????????????????????????·???????????????????????????TCO(Total Cost of Ownership)???????????????OS?????????????????????Primavera?????????P6??????????????????? ??????PPM????????????????????????????? [????] ??????????????????????????????????????????????? [???] TCO????????????PPM????????????????????????????? [??] ?????????????????????????????????????????? [????] HW????????????????P6???????????????????????????? Primavera P6 ????????????????????????: Primavera P6 EPPM Primavera P6 Professional Primavera EPPM Web Services Primavera P6 Team Member Primavera Team Member for iPhone and iPad Primavera P6 Email Statusing Primavera P6 Progress Reporter Document Management BI Publisher WebLogic Application Server P6 Cloud Connect Primavera P6 Professional ????????????????????????????????P6??????????????P6 Cloud Connect???P6??????????????????P6????????????? ???iPad?iPhone???????Team Member?????????????????P6 Cloud??????????????????????????????????P6 Cloud?????Primavera Unifier??????????????????????? P6 Cloud?????????1???????1???????????????????????????????(????)???????????? ????????????Primavera ????????Primavera ????·?????????:??(03-6834-5241/[email protected])?????????????

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• Cisco VPN Client dropping connection

  - by IT Team

  Using Windows XP and Cisco VPN client version 5.0.4.xxx to connect to a remote customer site. We are able to establish the connection and start an RDP session, but within 1-2 minutes the connection drops and the VPN connection disconnects. The PC making the connection is on a DMZ which is NATed to a public IP address. If we move the PC directly onto the internet without being on the DMZ the connection works and we don't encounter any disconnects. We use a PIX 515E running 7.2.4 and don't have any problems with similar setups connecting to other customer sites from the DMZ. The VPN setup on the client side is pretty basic, using IPSec over TCP port 10000. Not sure what device they are using on the peer, but my guess would be an ASA. Any idea as to what the problem would be? Below is the logs from the VPN client when the problem occurs. The real IP address has been changed to: RemotePeerIP. 4 14:39:30.593 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 CM/0x63100024 Attempt connection with server "RemotePeerIP" 5 14:39:30.593 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 CM/0x6310002F Allocated local TCP port 1942 for TCP connection. 6 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x63700008 IPSec driver successfully started 7 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x63700014 Deleted all keys 8 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IPSEC/0x6370002C Sent 256 packets, 0 were fragmented. 9 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IPSEC/0x63700020 TCP SYN sent to RemotePeerIP, src port 1942, dst port 10000 10 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IPSEC/0x6370001C TCP SYN-ACK received from RemotePeerIP, src port 10000, dst port 1942 11 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IPSEC/0x63700021 TCP ACK sent to RemotePeerIP, src port 1942, dst port 10000 12 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Warning/3 IPSEC/0xA370001C Bad cTCP trailer, Rsvd 26984, Magic# 63697672h, trailer len 101, MajorVer 13, MinorVer 10 13 14:39:30.796 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 CM/0x63100029 TCP connection established on port 10000 with server "RemotePeerIP" 14 14:39:31.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 CM/0x63100024 Attempt connection with server "RemotePeerIP" 15 14:39:31.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IKE/0x6300003B Attempting to establish a connection with RemotePeerIP. 16 14:39:31.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000013 SENDING ISAKMP OAK AG (SA, KE, NON, ID, VID(Xauth), VID(dpd), VID(Frag), VID(Unity)) to RemotePeerIP 17 14:39:36.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000021 Retransmitting last packet! 18 14:39:36.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000013 SENDING ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission) to RemotePeerIP 19 14:39:41.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000021 Retransmitting last packet! 20 14:39:41.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000013 SENDING ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission) to RemotePeerIP 21 14:39:46.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000021 Retransmitting last packet! 22 14:39:46.296 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000013 SENDING ISAKMP OAK AG (Retransmission) to RemotePeerIP 23 14:39:51.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000017 Marking IKE SA for deletion (I_Cookie=AEFC3FFF0405BBD6 R_Cookie=0000000000000000) reason = DEL_REASON_PEER_NOT_RESPONDING 24 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x6300004B Discarding IKE SA negotiation (I_Cookie=AEFC3FFF0405BBD6 R_Cookie=0000000000000000) reason = DEL_REASON_PEER_NOT_RESPONDING 25 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 CM/0x63100014 Unable to establish Phase 1 SA with server "RemotePeerIP" because of "DEL_REASON_PEER_NOT_RESPONDING" 26 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/5 CM/0x63100025 Initializing CVPNDrv 27 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 CM/0x6310002D Resetting TCP connection on port 10000 28 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 CM/0x63100030 Removed local TCP port 1942 for TCP connection. 29 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 CM/0x63100046 Set tunnel established flag in registry to 0. 30 14:39:51.828 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IKE/0x63000001 IKE received signal to terminate VPN connection 31 14:39:52.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/6 IPSEC/0x63700023 TCP RST sent to RemotePeerIP, src port 1942, dst port 10000 32 14:39:52.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x63700014 Deleted all keys 33 14:39:52.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x63700014 Deleted all keys 34 14:39:52.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x63700014 Deleted all keys 35 14:39:52.328 09/23/09 Sev=Info/4 IPSEC/0x6370000A IPSec driver successfully stopped Thank you for any help you can provide.

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• Unable to Mange DNS via MMC

  - by IT Helpdesk Team Manager

  When trying to access the DNS service on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Build 3790) domain controller/schema master via the MMC DNS snap in or locally via the DNS MMC from Administrative tools I'm getting a red "X" through the icon for the DNS Server. The inability to access DNS management via MMC happens on all domain controllers as well. We've looked at items such as the DHCP client not being started, incorrect DNS setup ( the machine points at itself and another DC ), the DNS service not running ( it is and all DNS queries via NSLOOKUP work correctly ), dslint returns the correct information and functions as expected. There is the following entry in the DNS event log: The DNS server could not initialize the remote procedure call (RPC) service. If it is not running, start the RPC service or reboot the computer. The event data is the error code. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. 0000: 0000051b dnscmd fails with RPC server unavailable yet RPC is started: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator.DOMAIN>dnscmd /Info Info query failed status = 1722 (0x000006ba) Command failed: RPC_S_SERVER_UNAVAILABLE 1722 (000006ba) DCDIAG /TEST:DNS /V /E produces the following errors: Warning: no DNS RPC connectivity (error or non Microsoft DNS server is running) [Error details: 1753 (Type: Win32 - Description: There are no more endpoints available from the endpoint mapper.)] Warning: no DNS RPC connectivity (error or non Microsoft DNS server is running) [Error details: 1722 (Type: Win32 - Description: The RPC server is unavailable.)] The DNS server could not initialize the remote procedure call (RPC) service. If it is not running, start the RPC service or reboot the computer. The event data is the error code. A DNS query for _ldap._tcp.dc._msdcs. returns the correct results. All domain and ADS related activities are working except that I can't manage my DNS via MMC or dnscmd. Any thoughts or solutions would be greatly appreciated. EDIT: Adding Registry export per request: Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 10/18/2012 - 2:29 PM Value 0 Name: DCOM Protocols Type: REG_MULTI_SZ Data: ncacn_ip_tcp Value 1 Name: UuidSequenceNumber Type: REG_DWORD Data: 0xb19bd0f Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\ClientProtocols Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 3/9/2007 - 12:11 PM Value 0 Name: ncacn_np Type: REG_SZ Data: rpcrt4.dll Value 1 Name: ncacn_ip_tcp Type: REG_SZ Data: rpcrt4.dll Value 2 Name: ncadg_ip_udp Type: REG_SZ Data: rpcrt4.dll Value 3 Name: ncacn_http Type: REG_SZ Data: rpcrt4.dll Value 4 Name: ncacn_at_dsp Type: REG_SZ Data: rpcrt4.dll Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\NameService Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 2/20/2006 - 4:48 PM Value 0 Name: DefaultSyntax Type: REG_SZ Data: 3 Value 1 Name: Endpoint Type: REG_SZ Data: \pipe\locator Value 2 Name: NetworkAddress Type: REG_SZ Data: \\. Value 3 Name: Protocol Type: REG_SZ Data: ncacn_np Value 4 Name: ServerNetworkAddress Type: REG_SZ Data: \\. Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\NetBios Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 2/20/2006 - 4:48 PM Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\RpcProxy Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 3/9/2007 - 12:11 PM Value 0 Name: Enabled Type: REG_DWORD Data: 0x1 Value 1 Name: ValidPorts Type: REG_SZ Data: pdc:100-5000 Key Name: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Rpc\SecurityService Class Name: <NO CLASS> Last Write Time: 2/20/2006 - 4:48 PM Value 0 Name: 9 Type: REG_SZ Data: secur32.dll Value 1 Name: 10 Type: REG_SZ Data: secur32.dll Value 2 Name: 14 Type: REG_SZ Data: schannel.dll Value 3 Name: 16 Type: REG_SZ Data: secur32.dll Value 4 Name: 1 Type: REG_SZ Data: secur32.dll Value 5 Name: 18 Type: REG_SZ Data: secur32.dll Value 6 Name: 68 Type: REG_SZ Data: netlogon.dll

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• Windows Azure: General Availability of Web Sites + Mobile Services, New AutoScale + Alerts Support, No Credit Card Needed for MSDN

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a major set of updates to Windows Azure.  These updates included: Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites with SLA Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services with SLA Auto-Scale: New automatic scaling support for Web Sites, Cloud Services and Virtual Machines Alerts/Notifications: New email alerting support for all Compute Services (Web Sites, Mobile Services, Cloud Services, and Virtual Machines) MSDN: No more credit card requirement for sign-up All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note: some are still in preview).  Below are more details about them. Web Sites: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Web Sites I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Web Sites. The Windows Azure Web Sites service is perfect for hosting a web presence, building customer engagement solutions, and delivering business web apps.  Today’s General Availability release means we are taking off the “preview” tag from the Free and Standard (formerly called reserved) tiers of Windows Azure Web Sites.  This means we are providing: A 99.9% monthly SLA (Service Level Agreement) for the Standard tier Microsoft Support available on a 24x7 basis (with plans that range from developer plans to enterprise Premier support) The Free tier runs in a shared compute environment and supports up to 10 web sites. While the Free tier does not come with an SLA, it works great for rapid development and testing and enables you to quickly spike out ideas at no cost. The Standard tier, which was called “Reserved” during the preview, runs using dedicated per-customer VM instances for great performance, isolation and scalability, and enables you to host up to 500 different Web sites within them.  You can easily scale your Standard instances on-demand using the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can adjust VM instance sizes from a Small instance size (1 core, 1.75GB of RAM), up to a Medium instance size (2 core, 3.5GB of RAM), or Large instance (4 cores and 7 GB RAM).  You can choose to run between 1 and 10 Standard instances, enabling you to easily scale up your web backend to 40 cores of CPU and 70GB of RAM: Today’s release also includes general availability support for custom domain SSL certificate bindings for web sites running using the Standard tier. Customers will be able to utilize certificates they purchase for their custom domains and use either SNI or IP based SSL encryption. SNI encryption is available for all modern browsers and does not require an IP address.  SSL certificates can be used for individual sites or wild-card mapped across multiple sites (we charge extra for the use of a SSL cert – but the fee is per-cert and not per site which means you pay once for it regardless of how many sites you use it with).  Today’s release also includes the following new features: Auto-Scale support Today’s Windows Azure release adds preview support for Auto-Scaling web sites.  This enables you to setup automatic scale rules based on the activity of your instances – allowing you to automatically scale down (and save money) when they are below a CPU threshold you define, and automatically scale up quickly when traffic increases.  See below for more details. 64-bit and 32-bit mode support You can now choose to run your standard tier instances in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode (previously they only ran in 32-bit mode).  This enables you to address even more memory within individual web applications. Memory dumps Memory dumps can be very useful for diagnosing issues and debugging apps. Using a REST API, you can now get a memory dump of your sites, which you can then use for investigating issues in Visual Studio Debugger, WinDbg, and other tools. Scaling Sites Independently Prior to today’s release, all sites scaled up/down together whenever you scaled any site in a sub-region. So you may have had to keep your proof-of-concept or testing sites in a separate sub-region if you wanted to keep them in the Free tier. This will no longer be necessary.  Windows Azure Web Sites can now mix different tier levels in the same geographic sub-region. This allows you, for example, to selectively move some of your sites in the West US sub-region up to Standard tier when they require the features, scalability, and SLA of the Standard tier. Full pricing details on Windows Azure Web Sites can be found here.  Note that the “Shared Tier” of Windows Azure Web Sites remains in preview mode (and continues to have discounted preview pricing).  Mobile Services: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Mobile Services I’m incredibly excited to announce the General Availability release of Windows Azure Mobile Services.  Mobile Services is perfect for building scalable cloud back-ends for Windows 8.x, Windows Phone, Apple iOS, Android, and HTML/JavaScript applications.  Customers We’ve seen tremendous adoption of Windows Azure Mobile Services since we first previewed it last September, and more than 20,000 customers are now running mobile back-ends in production using it.  These customers range from startups like Yatterbox, to university students using Mobile Services to complete apps like Sly Fox in their spare time, to media giants like Verdens Gang finding new ways to deliver content, and telcos like TalkTalk Business delivering the up-to-the-minute information their customers require.  In today’s Build keynote, we demonstrated how TalkTalk Business is using Windows Azure Mobile Services to deliver service, outage and billing information to its customers, wherever they might be. Partners When we unveiled the source control and Custom API features I blogged about two weeks ago, we enabled a range of new scenarios, one of which is a more flexible way to work with third party services.  The following blogs, samples and tutorials from our partners cover great ways you can extend Mobile Services to help you build rich modern apps: New Relic allows developers to monitor and manage the end-to-end performance of iOS and Android applications connected to Mobile Services. SendGrid eliminates the complexity of sending email from Mobile Services, saving time and money, while providing reliable delivery to the inbox. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud that you can use with Mobile Services to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into your mobile apps. Xamarin provides a Mobile Services add on to make it easy building cross-platform connected mobile aps. Pusher allows quickly and securely add scalable real-time messaging functionality to Mobile Services-based web and mobile apps. Visual Studio 2013 and Windows 8.1 This week during //build/ keynote, we demonstrated how Visual Studio 2013, Mobile Services and Windows 8.1 make building connected apps easier than ever. Developers building Windows 8 applications in Visual Studio can now connect them to Windows Azure Mobile Services by simply right clicking then choosing Add Connected Service. You can either create a new Mobile Service or choose existing Mobile Service in the Add Connected Service dialog. Once completed, Visual Studio adds a reference to Mobile Services SDK to your project and generates a Mobile Services client initialization snippet automatically. Add Push Notifications Push Notifications and Live Tiles are a key to building engaging experiences. Visual Studio 2013 and Mobile Services make it super easy to add push notifications to your Windows 8.1 app, by clicking Add a Push Notification item: The Add Push Notification wizard will then guide you through the registration with the Windows Store as well as connecting your app to a new or existing mobile service. Upon completion of the wizard, Visual Studio will configure your mobile service with the WNS credentials, as well as add sample logic to your client project and your mobile service that demonstrates how to send push notifications to your app. Server Explorer Integration In Visual Studio 2013 you can also now view your Mobile Services in the the Server Explorer. You can add tables, edit, and save server side scripts without ever leaving Visual Studio, as shown on the image below: Pricing With today’s general availability release we are announcing that we will be offering Mobile Services in three tiers – Free, Standard, and Premium.  Each tier is metered using a simple pricing model based on the # of API calls (bandwidth is included at no extra charge), and the Standard and Premium tiers are backed by 99.9% monthly SLAs.  You can elastically scale up or down the number of instances you have of each tier to increase the # of API requests your service can support – allowing you to efficiently scale as your business grows. The following table summarizes the new pricing model (full pricing details here):   You can find the full details of the new pricing model here. Build Conference Talks The //BUILD/ conference will be packed with sessions covering every aspect of developing connected applications with Mobile Services. The best part is that, even if you can’t be with us in San Francisco, every session is being streamed live. Be sure not to miss these talks: Mobile Services – Soup to Nuts — Josh Twist Building Cross-Platform Apps with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner Connected Windows Phone Apps made Easy with Mobile Services — Yavor Georgiev Build Connected Windows 8.1 Apps with Mobile Services — Nick Harris Who’s that user? Identity in Mobile Apps — Dinesh Kulkarni Building REST Services with JavaScript — Nathan Totten Going Live and Beyond with Windows Azure Mobile Services — Kirill Gavrylyuk , Paul Batum Protips for Windows Azure Mobile Services — Chris Risner AutoScale: Dynamically scale up/down your app based on real-world usage One of the key benefits of Windows Azure is that you can dynamically scale your application in response to changing demand. In the past, though, you have had to either manually change the scale of your application, or use additional tooling (such as WASABi or MetricsHub) to automatically scale your application. Today, we’re announcing that AutoScale will be built-into Windows Azure directly.  With today’s release it is now enabled for Cloud Services, Virtual Machines and Web Sites (Mobile Services support will come soon). Auto-scale enables you to configure Windows Azure to automatically scale your application dynamically on your behalf (without any manual intervention) so you can achieve the ideal performance and cost balance. Once configured it will regularly adjust the number of instances running in response to the load in your application. Currently, we support two different load metrics: CPU percentage Storage queue depth (Cloud Services and Virtual Machines only) We’ll enable automatic scaling on even more scale metrics in future updates. When to use Auto-Scale The following are good criteria for services/apps that will benefit from the use of auto-scale: The service/app can scale horizontally (e.g. it can be duplicated to multiple instances) The service/app load changes over time If your app meets these criteria, then you should look to leverage auto-scale. How to Enable Auto-Scale To enable auto-scale, simply navigate to the Scale tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal for the app/service you wish to enable.  Within the scale tab turn the Auto-Scale setting on to either CPU or Queue (for Cloud Services and VMs) to enable Auto-Scale.  Then change the instance count and target CPU settings to configure the Auto-Scale ranges you want to maintain. The image below demonstrates how to enable Auto-Scale on a Windows Azure Web-Site.  I’ve configured the web-site so that it will run using between 1 and 5 VM instances.  The exact # used will depend on the aggregate CPU of the VMs using the 40-70% range I’ve configured below.  If the aggregate CPU goes above 70%, then Windows Azure will automatically add new VMs to the pool (up to the maximum of 5 instances I’ve configured it to use).  If the aggregate CPU drops below 40% then Windows Azure will automatically start shutting down VMs to save me money: Once you’ve turned auto-scale on, you can return to the Scale tab at any point and select Off to manually set the number of instances. Using the Auto-Scale Preview With today’s update you can now, in just a few minutes, have Windows Azure automatically adjust the number of instances you have running  in your apps to keep your service performant at an even better cost. Auto-scale is being released today as a preview feature, and will be free until General Availability. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 separate auto-scale rules across all of the resources they have (Web sites, Cloud services or Virtual Machines). If you hit the 10 limit, you can disable auto-scale for any resource to enable it for another. Alerts and Notifications Starting today we are now providing the ability to configure threshold based alerts on monitoring metrics. This feature is available for compute services (cloud services, VM, websites and mobiles services). Alerts provide you the ability to get proactively notified of active or impending issues within your application.  You can define alert rules for: Virtual machine monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (CPU percentage, network in/out, disk read bytes/sec and disk write bytes/sec) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Cloud service monitoring metrics that are collected from the host operating system (same as VM), monitoring metrics from the guest VM (from performance counters within the VM) and on monitoring metrics from monitoring web endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. For Web Sites and Mobile Services, alerting rules can be configured on monitoring metrics from monitoring endpoint urls (response time and uptime) that you have configured. Creating Alert Rules You can add an alert rule for a monitoring metric by navigating to the Setting -> Alerts tab in the Windows Azure Management Portal. Click on the Add Rule button to create an alert rule. Give the alert rule a name and optionally add a description. Then pick the service which you want to define the alert rule on: The next step in the alert creation wizard will then filter the monitoring metrics based on the service you selected:   Once created the rule will show up in your alerts list within the settings tab: The rule above is defined as “not activated” since it hasn’t tripped over the CPU threshold we set.  If the CPU on the above machine goes over the limit, though, I’ll get an email notifying me from an Windows Azure Alerts email address ([email protected]). And when I log into the portal and revisit the alerts tab I’ll see it highlighted in red.  Clicking it will then enable me to see what is causing it to fail, as well as view the history of when it has happened in the past. Alert Notifications With today’s initial preview you can now easily create alerting rules based on monitoring metrics and get notified on active or impending issues within your application that require attention. During preview, each subscription is limited to 10 alert rules across all of the services that support alert rules. No More Credit Card Requirement for MSDN Subscribers Earlier this month (during TechEd 2013), Windows Azure announced that MSDN users will get Windows Azure Credits every month that they can use for any Windows Azure services they want. You can read details about this in my previous Dev/Test blog post. Today we are making further updates to enable an easier Windows Azure signup for MSDN users. MSDN users will now not be required to provide payment information (e.g. no credit card) during sign-up, so long as they use the service within the included monetary credit for the billing period. For usage beyond the monetary credit, they can enable overages by providing the payment information and remove the spending limit. This enables a super easy, one page sign-up experience for MSDN users.  Simply sign-up for your Windows Azure trial using the same Microsoft ID that you use to manage your MSDN account, then complete the one page sign-up form below and you will be able to spend your free monthly MSDN credits (up to $150 each month) on any Windows Azure resource for dev/test:   This makes it trivially easy for every MDSN customer to start using Windows Azure today.  If you haven’t signed up yet, I definitely recommend checking it out. Summary Today’s release includes a ton of great features that enable you to build even better cloud solutions.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• SQLAuthority News – Job Interviewing the Right Way (and for the Right Reasons) – Guest Post by Feodor Georgiev

  - by pinaldave

  Feodor Georgiev is a SQL Server database specialist with extensive experience of thinking both within and outside the box. He has wide experience of different systems and solutions in the fields of architecture, scalability, performance, etc. Feodor has experience with SQL Server 2000 and later versions, and is certified in SQL Server 2008. Feodor has written excellent article on Job Interviewing the Right Way. Here is his article in his own language. A while back I was thinking to start a blog post series on interviewing and employing IT personnel. At that time I had just read the ‘Smart and gets things done’ book (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/05.html) and I was hyped up on some debatable topics regarding finding and employing the best people in the branch. I have no problem with hiring the best of the best; it’s just the definition of ‘the best of the best’ that makes things a bit more complicated. One of the fundamental books one can read on the topic of interviewing is the one mentioned above. If you have not read it, then you must do so; not because it contains the ultimate truth, and not because it gives the answers to most questions on the subject, but because the book contains an extensive set of questions about interviewing and employing people. Of course, a big part of these questions have different answers, depending on location, culture, available funds and so on. (What works in the US may not necessarily work in the Nordic countries or India, or it may work in a different way). The only thing that is valid regardless of any external factor is this: curiosity. In my belief there are two kinds of people – curious and not-so-curious; regardless of profession. Think about it – professional success is directly proportional to the individual’s curiosity + time of active experience in the field. (I say ‘active experience’ because vacations and any distractions do not count as experience :)  ) So, curiosity is the factor which will distinguish a good employee from the not-so-good one. But let’s shift our attention to something else for now: a few tips and tricks for successful interviews. Tip and trick #1: get your priorities straight. Your status usually dictates your priorities; for example, if the person looking for a job has just relocated to a new country, they might tend to ignore some of their priorities and overload others. In other words, setting priorities straight means to define the personal criteria by which the interview process is lead. For example, similar to the following questions can help define the criteria for someone looking for a job: How badly do I need a (any) job? Is it more important to work in a clean and quiet environment or is it important to get paid well (or both, if possible)? And so on… Furthermore, before going to the interview, the candidate should have a list of priorities, sorted by the most importance: e.g. I want a quiet environment, x amount of money, great helping boss, a desk next to a window and so on. Also it is a good idea to be prepared and know which factors can be compromised and to what extent. Tip and trick #2: the interview is a two-way street. A job candidate should not forget that the interview process is not a one-way street. What I mean by this is that while the employer is interviewing the potential candidate, the job seeker should not miss the chance to interview the employer. Usually, the employer and the candidate will meet for an interview and talk about a variety of topics. In a quality interview the candidate will be presented to key members of the team and will have the opportunity to ask them questions. By asking the right questions both parties will define their opinion about each other. For example, if the candidate talks to one of the potential bosses during the interview process and they notice that the potential manager has a hard time formulating a question, then it is up to the candidate to decide whether working with such person is a red flag for them. There are as many interview processes out there as there are companies and each one is different. Some bigger companies and corporates can afford pre-selection processes, 3 or even 4 stages of interviews, small companies usually settle with one interview. Some companies even give cognitive tests on the interview. Why not? In his book Joel suggests that a good candidate should be pampered and spoiled beyond belief with a week-long vacation in New York, fancy hotels, food and who knows what. For all I can imagine, an interview might even take place at the top of the Eifel tower (right, Mr. Joel, right?) I doubt, however, that this is the optimal way to capture the attention of a good employee. The ‘curiosity’ topic What I have learned so far in my professional experience is that opinions can be subjective. Plus, opinions on technology subjects can also be subjective. According to Joel, only hiring the best of the best is worth it. If you ask me, there is no such thing as best of the best, simply because human nature (well, aside from some physical limitations, like putting your pants on through your head :) ) has no boundaries. And why would it have boundaries? I have seen many curious and interesting people, naturally good at technology, though uninterested in it as one  can possibly be; I have also seen plenty of people interested in technology, who (in an ideal world) should have stayed far from it. At any rate, all of this sums up at the end to the ‘supply and demand’ factor. The interview process big-bang boils down to this: If there is a mutual benefit for both the employer and the potential employee to work together, then it all sorts out nicely. If there is no benefit, then it is much harder to get to a common place. Tip and trick #3: word-of-mouth is worth a thousand words Here I would just mention that the best thing a job candidate can get during the interview process is access to future team members or other employees of the new company. Nowadays the world has become quite small and everyone knows everyone. Look at LinkedIn, look at other professional networks and you will realize how small the world really is. Knowing people is a good way to become more approachable and to approach them. Tip and trick #4: Be confident. It is true that for some people confidence is as natural as breathing and others have to work hard to express it. Confidence is, however, a key factor in convincing the other side (potential employer or employee) that there is a great chance for success by working together. But it cannot get you very far if it’s not backed up by talent, curiosity and knowledge. Tip and trick #5: The right reasons What really bothers me in Sweden (and I am sure that there are similar situations in other countries) is that there is a tendency to fill quotas and to filter out candidates by criteria different from their skill and knowledge. In job ads I see quite often the phrases ‘positive thinker’, ‘team player’ and many similar hints about personality features. So my guess here is that discrimination has evolved to a new level. Let me clear up the definition of discrimination: ‘unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice’. And prejudice is the ‘partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation’. In other words, there is not much difference whether a job candidate is filtered out by race, gender or by personality features – it is all a bad habit. And in reality, there is no proven correlation between the technology knowledge paired with skills and the personal features (gender, race, age, optimism). It is true that a significantly greater number of Darwin awards were given to men than to women, but I am sure that somewhere there is a paper or theory explaining the genetics behind this. J This topic actually brings to mind one of my favorite work related stories. A while back I was working for a big company with many teams involved in their processes. One of the teams was occupying 2 rooms – one had the team members and was full of light, colorful posters, chit-chats and giggles, whereas the other room was dark, lighted only by a single monitor with a quiet person in front of it. Later on I realized that the ‘dark room’ person was the guru and the ultimate problem-solving-brain who did not like the chats and giggles and hence was in a separate room. In reality, all severe problems which the chatty and cheerful team members could not solve and all emergencies were directed to ‘the dark room’. And thus all worked out well. The moral of the story: Personality has nothing to do with technology knowledge and skills. End of story. Summary: I’d like to stress the fact that there is no ultimately perfect candidate for a job, and there is no such thing as ‘best-of-the-best’. From my personal experience, the main criteria by which I measure people (co-workers and bosses) is the curiosity factor; I know from experience that the more curious and inventive a person is, the better chances there are for great achievements in their field. Related stories: (for extra credit) 1) Get your priorities straight. A while back as a consultant I was working for a few days at a time at different offices and for different clients, and so I was able to compare and analyze the work environments. There were two different places which I compared and recently I asked a friend of mine the following question: “Which one would you prefer as a work environment: a noisy office full of people, or a quiet office full of faulty smells because the office is rarely cleaned?” My friend was puzzled for a while, thought about it and said: “Hmm, you are talking about two different kinds of pollution… I will probably choose the second, since I can clean the workplace myself a bit…” 2) The interview is a two-way street. One time, during a job interview, I met a potential boss that had a hard time phrasing a question. At that particular time it was clear to me that I would not have liked to work under this person. According to my work religion, the properly asked question contains at least half of the answer. And if I work with someone who cannot ask a question… then I’d be doing double or triple work. At another interview, after the technical part with the team leader of the department, I was introduced to one of the team members and we were left alone for 5 minutes. I immediately jumped on the occasion and asked the blunt question: ‘What have you learned here for the past year and how do you like your job?’ The team member looked at me and said ‘Nothing really. I like playing with my cats at home, so I am out of here at 5pm and I don’t have time for much.’ I was disappointed at the time and I did not take the job offer. I wasn’t that shocked a few months later when the company went bankrupt. 3) The right reasons to take a job: personality check. A while back I was asked to serve as a job reference for a coworker. I agreed, and after some weeks I got a phone call from the company where my colleague was applying for a job. The conversation started with the manager’s question about my colleague’s personality and about their social skills. (You can probably guess what my internal reaction was… J ) So, after 30 minutes of pouring common sense into the interviewer’s head, we finally agreed on the fact that a shy or quiet personality has nothing to do with work skills and knowledge. Some years down the road my former colleague is taking the manager’s position as the manager is demoted to a different department. Reference: Feodor Georgiev, Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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