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  • Accessing loop iteration in a sub-function?

    - by DisgruntledGoat
    I'm using the Google Maps API to plot several points on a map. However, in the click event function below, i is always set to 4, i.e. its value after iterating the loop: // note these are actual addresses in the real page var addresses = new Array( "addr 1", "addr 2", "addr 3", "addr 4" ); for (var i = 0; i < addresses.length; i++) { geocoder.getLatLng(addresses[i], function(point) { if (point) { var marker = new GMarker(point); map.addOverlay(marker); map.setCenter(point, 13); GEvent.addListener(marker, "click", function() { // here, i=4 marker.openInfoWindowHtml("Address: <b>" + addresses[i] + "</b>"); }); } }); } So when the marker displays it's using addresses[4] which is undefined. How do I pass the correct value of i to the function?

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  • SQL SERVER Spatial Data

    - by Sam
    Hi All, I am struggeling finding an effectient way to find a distance between a Point that interetcts a polygon and the border of that polygon. I was able to use the STDistance comparing the point to every point that made up the polygon but that is taking a lot of time. Using SPatial indexed wasnt much helpful because the STDistance is not part of any constraint and even when I did put the constraint, the index didnt help much. I appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

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  • How to attach a line to a moving object?

    - by snow-spur
    Hello i have designed a maze and i want to draw a path between the cells as the 'person' moves from one cell to the next. So each time i move the cell a line is drawn I have done this so far but do not want to show my full code However i get an error saying Circle has no attribute center my circle which is my cell center = Point(15, 15) c = Circle(center, 12) c.setFill('blue') c.setOutline('yellow') c.draw(win) p1 = Point(c.center().getx(), c.center().gety()) this bit is in my loop p2 = Point(getx(), gety()) line = graphics.Line(p1, p2)

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  • Release Notes for 8/23/2012

    Below are the release notes from today's deployment. Improved the inline diff load performance for large diff sets Fixed a few issues related to sending and saving comments within a Pull Request Improved stability of the notification service Fixed an issue when directly linking to a file in the source browser, selected file was not being shown in the tree view Have ideas on how to improve CodePlex? Please visit our suggestions page! Vote for existing ideas or submit a new one. As always you can reach out to the CodePlex team on Twitter @codeplex or reach me directly @mgroves84

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  • Variable-step update() in game loop is falling behind, how can I get around this?

    - by ThatsGobbles
    I'm working on a minimal game engine for my next game. I'm using the delta update method like shown: void update(double delta) { // Update code that uses `delta` goes here } I have a deep hierarchy of updatable objects, with a root updatable that contains several updatables, each of which contains more updatables, etc. Normally I'd just iterate through each of the root's children and update each one, which would then do the same for its children, and so on. However, passing a fixed value of delta to the root means that by the time the leaf updatables are reached, it's been longer since delta seconds that have elapsed. This is causing noticable desyncing in my game, and time synchronization is very important in my case (I'm working on a rhythm game). Any ideas on how I should tackle this? I've considered using StopWatches and a global readable timer, but any advice would be helpful. I'm also open to moving to fixed timesteps as opposed to variable.

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  • What is wrong with my version of strchr?

    - by Eduard Saakashvili
    My assignment is to write my own version of strchr, yet it doesn't seem to work. Any advice would be much appreciated. Here it is: char *strchr (const char *s, int c) //we are looking for c on the string s { int dog; //This is the index on the string, initialized as 0 dog = 0; int point; //this is the pointer to the location given by the index point = &s[dog]; while ((s[dog] != c) && (s[dog] != '\0')) { //it keeps adding to dog until it stumbles upon either c or '\0' dog++; } if (s[dog]==c) { return point; //at this point, if this value is equal to c it returns the pointer to that location } else { return NULL; //if not, this means that c is not on the string } }

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  • Find the end/finish coordinates you a UISwipeGestureRecognizer

    - by Code
    I can find the start coordinates of where a swipe starts by doing the following - (void)oneFingerSwipeUp:(UISwipeGestureRecognizer *)recognizer { CGPoint point = [recognizer locationInView:[self view]]; NSLog(@"Swipe up - start location: %f,%f", point.x, point.y); } Is it possible to find the coordinates where the swipe ended? I looked into the docs and its not mentioned. Is there some work around for this? Many Thanks, -Code

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  • Variable-step update() in game loop is falling behind, how can I get around this?

    - by ThatsGobbles
    I'm working on a minimal game engine for my next game. I'm using the delta update method like shown: void update(double delta) { // Update code that uses `delta` goes here } I have a deep hierarchy of updatable objects, with a root updatable that contains several updatables, each of which contains more updatables, etc. Normally I'd just iterate through each of the root's children and update each one, which would then do the same for its children, and so on. However, passing a fixed value of delta to the root means that by the time the leaf updatables are reached, it's been longer since delta seconds that have elapsed. This is causing noticable desyncing in my game, and time synchronization is very important in my case (I'm working on a rhythm game). Any ideas on how I should tackle this? I've considered using StopWatches and a global readable timer, but any advice would be helpful. I'm also open to moving to fixed timesteps as opposed to variable.

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  • Release Note for 3/30/2012

    We have been pretty busy working on a new UI for CodePlex, I will have a preview post coming shortly. Here are the notes from today’s release: Updated source code tab to show Author and Committer for Git (Thanks to Brad Wilson for reporting) Fixed issue where pagination did not work correctly in topic view Fixed issue where additional comments on a given line of code would get overridden for Git project Have ideas on how to improve CodePlex? Visit our ideas page! Vote for your favorite ideas or submit a new one. Got Twitter? Follow us and keep apprised of the latest releases and service status at @codeplex.

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  • Calculating percent "x/y * 100" always results in 0?

    - by Patrick Beninga
    In my assignment i have to make a simple version of Craps, for some reason the percentage assignments always produce 0 even when both variables are non 0, here is the code. import java.util.Random; Header, note the variables public class Craps { private int die1, die2,myRoll ,myBet,point,myWins,myLosses; private double winPercent,lossPercent; private Random r = new Random(); Just rolls two dies and produces their some. public int roll(){ die1 = r.nextInt(6)+1; die2 = r.nextInt(6)+1; return(die1 + die2); } The Play method, this just loops through the game. public void play(){ myRoll = roll(); point = 0; if(myRoll == 2 ||myRoll == 3 || myRoll == 12){ System.out.println("You lose!"); myLosses++; }else if(myRoll == 7 || myRoll == 11){ System.out.println("You win!"); myWins++; }else{ point = myRoll; do { myRoll = roll(); }while(myRoll != 7 && myRoll != point); if(myRoll == point){ System.out.println("You win!"); myWins++; }else{ System.out.println("You lose!"); myLosses++; } } } This is where the bug is, this is the tester method. public void tester(int howMany){ int i = 0; while(i < howMany){ play(); i++; } bug is right here in these assignments statements winPercent = myWins/i * 100; lossPercent = myLosses/i* 100; System.out.println("program ran "+i+" times "+winPercent+"% wins "+ lossPercent+"% losses with "+myWins+" wins and "+myLosses+" losses"); } }

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  • value types in the vm

    - by john.rose
    value types in the vm p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 14.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Courier} p.p6 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Courier; min-height: 17.0px} p.p7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p8 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; text-indent: -36.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} p.p10 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; color: #000000} li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times} li.li7 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Times; min-height: 18.0px} span.s1 {font: 14.0px Courier} span.s2 {color: #000000} span.s3 {font: 14.0px Courier; color: #000000} ol.ol1 {list-style-type: decimal} Or, enduring values for a changing world. Introduction A value type is a data type which, generally speaking, is designed for being passed by value in and out of methods, and stored by value in data structures. The only value types which the Java language directly supports are the eight primitive types. Java indirectly and approximately supports value types, if they are implemented in terms of classes. For example, both Integer and String may be viewed as value types, especially if their usage is restricted to avoid operations appropriate to Object. In this note, we propose a definition of value types in terms of a design pattern for Java classes, accompanied by a set of usage restrictions. We also sketch the relation of such value types to tuple types (which are a JVM-level notion), and point out JVM optimizations that can apply to value types. This note is a thought experiment to extend the JVM’s performance model in support of value types. The demonstration has two phases.  Initially the extension can simply use design patterns, within the current bytecode architecture, and in today’s Java language. But if the performance model is to be realized in practice, it will probably require new JVM bytecode features, changes to the Java language, or both.  We will look at a few possibilities for these new features. An Axiom of Value In the context of the JVM, a value type is a data type equipped with construction, assignment, and equality operations, and a set of typed components, such that, whenever two variables of the value type produce equal corresponding values for their components, the values of the two variables cannot be distinguished by any JVM operation. Here are some corollaries: A value type is immutable, since otherwise a copy could be constructed and the original could be modified in one of its components, allowing the copies to be distinguished. Changing the component of a value type requires construction of a new value. The equals and hashCode operations are strictly component-wise. If a value type is represented by a JVM reference, that reference cannot be successfully synchronized on, and cannot be usefully compared for reference equality. A value type can be viewed in terms of what it doesn’t do. We can say that a value type omits all value-unsafe operations, which could violate the constraints on value types.  These operations, which are ordinarily allowed for Java object types, are pointer equality comparison (the acmp instruction), synchronization (the monitor instructions), all the wait and notify methods of class Object, and non-trivial finalize methods. The clone method is also value-unsafe, although for value types it could be treated as the identity function. Finally, and most importantly, any side effect on an object (however visible) also counts as an value-unsafe operation. A value type may have methods, but such methods must not change the components of the value. It is reasonable and useful to define methods like toString, equals, and hashCode on value types, and also methods which are specifically valuable to users of the value type. Representations of Value Value types have two natural representations in the JVM, unboxed and boxed. An unboxed value consists of the components, as simple variables. For example, the complex number x=(1+2i), in rectangular coordinate form, may be represented in unboxed form by the following pair of variables: /*Complex x = Complex.valueOf(1.0, 2.0):*/ double x_re = 1.0, x_im = 2.0; These variables might be locals, parameters, or fields. Their association as components of a single value is not defined to the JVM. Here is a sample computation which computes the norm of the difference between two complex numbers: double distance(/*Complex x:*/ double x_re, double x_im,         /*Complex y:*/ double y_re, double y_im) {     /*Complex z = x.minus(y):*/     double z_re = x_re - y_re, z_im = x_im - y_im;     /*return z.abs():*/     return Math.sqrt(z_re*z_re + z_im*z_im); } A boxed representation groups component values under a single object reference. The reference is to a ‘wrapper class’ that carries the component values in its fields. (A primitive type can naturally be equated with a trivial value type with just one component of that type. In that view, the wrapper class Integer can serve as a boxed representation of value type int.) The unboxed representation of complex numbers is practical for many uses, but it fails to cover several major use cases: return values, array elements, and generic APIs. The two components of a complex number cannot be directly returned from a Java function, since Java does not support multiple return values. The same story applies to array elements: Java has no ’array of structs’ feature. (Double-length arrays are a possible workaround for complex numbers, but not for value types with heterogeneous components.) By generic APIs I mean both those which use generic types, like Arrays.asList and those which have special case support for primitive types, like String.valueOf and PrintStream.println. Those APIs do not support unboxed values, and offer some problems to boxed values. Any ’real’ JVM type should have a story for returns, arrays, and API interoperability. The basic problem here is that value types fall between primitive types and object types. Value types are clearly more complex than primitive types, and object types are slightly too complicated. Objects are a little bit dangerous to use as value carriers, since object references can be compared for pointer equality, and can be synchronized on. Also, as many Java programmers have observed, there is often a performance cost to using wrapper objects, even on modern JVMs. Even so, wrapper classes are a good starting point for talking about value types. If there were a set of structural rules and restrictions which would prevent value-unsafe operations on value types, wrapper classes would provide a good notation for defining value types. This note attempts to define such rules and restrictions. Let’s Start Coding Now it is time to look at some real code. Here is a definition, written in Java, of a complex number value type. @ValueSafe public final class Complex implements java.io.Serializable {     // immutable component structure:     public final double re, im;     private Complex(double re, double im) {         this.re = re; this.im = im;     }     // interoperability methods:     public String toString() { return "Complex("+re+","+im+")"; }     public List<Double> asList() { return Arrays.asList(re, im); }     public boolean equals(Complex c) {         return re == c.re && im == c.im;     }     public boolean equals(@ValueSafe Object x) {         return x instanceof Complex && equals((Complex) x);     }     public int hashCode() {         return 31*Double.valueOf(re).hashCode()                 + Double.valueOf(im).hashCode();     }     // factory methods:     public static Complex valueOf(double re, double im) {         return new Complex(re, im);     }     public Complex changeRe(double re2) { return valueOf(re2, im); }     public Complex changeIm(double im2) { return valueOf(re, im2); }     public static Complex cast(@ValueSafe Object x) {         return x == null ? ZERO : (Complex) x;     }     // utility methods and constants:     public Complex plus(Complex c)  { return new Complex(re+c.re, im+c.im); }     public Complex minus(Complex c) { return new Complex(re-c.re, im-c.im); }     public double abs() { return Math.sqrt(re*re + im*im); }     public static final Complex PI = valueOf(Math.PI, 0.0);     public static final Complex ZERO = valueOf(0.0, 0.0); } This is not a minimal definition, because it includes some utility methods and other optional parts.  The essential elements are as follows: The class is marked as a value type with an annotation. The class is final, because it does not make sense to create subclasses of value types. The fields of the class are all non-private and final.  (I.e., the type is immutable and structurally transparent.) From the supertype Object, all public non-final methods are overridden. The constructor is private. Beyond these bare essentials, we can observe the following features in this example, which are likely to be typical of all value types: One or more factory methods are responsible for value creation, including a component-wise valueOf method. There are utility methods for complex arithmetic and instance creation, such as plus and changeIm. There are static utility constants, such as PI. The type is serializable, using the default mechanisms. There are methods for converting to and from dynamically typed references, such as asList and cast. The Rules In order to use value types properly, the programmer must avoid value-unsafe operations.  A helpful Java compiler should issue errors (or at least warnings) for code which provably applies value-unsafe operations, and should issue warnings for code which might be correct but does not provably avoid value-unsafe operations.  No such compilers exist today, but to simplify our account here, we will pretend that they do exist. A value-safe type is any class, interface, or type parameter marked with the @ValueSafe annotation, or any subtype of a value-safe type.  If a value-safe class is marked final, it is in fact a value type.  All other value-safe classes must be abstract.  The non-static fields of a value class must be non-public and final, and all its constructors must be private. Under the above rules, a standard interface could be helpful to define value types like Complex.  Here is an example: @ValueSafe public interface ValueType extends java.io.Serializable {     // All methods listed here must get redefined.     // Definitions must be value-safe, which means     // they may depend on component values only.     List<? extends Object> asList();     int hashCode();     boolean equals(@ValueSafe Object c);     String toString(); } //@ValueSafe inherited from supertype: public final class Complex implements ValueType { … The main advantage of such a conventional interface is that (unlike an annotation) it is reified in the runtime type system.  It could appear as an element type or parameter bound, for facilities which are designed to work on value types only.  More broadly, it might assist the JVM to perform dynamic enforcement of the rules for value types. Besides types, the annotation @ValueSafe can mark fields, parameters, local variables, and methods.  (This is redundant when the type is also value-safe, but may be useful when the type is Object or another supertype of a value type.)  Working forward from these annotations, an expression E is defined as value-safe if it satisfies one or more of the following: The type of E is a value-safe type. E names a field, parameter, or local variable whose declaration is marked @ValueSafe. E is a call to a method whose declaration is marked @ValueSafe. E is an assignment to a value-safe variable, field reference, or array reference. E is a cast to a value-safe type from a value-safe expression. E is a conditional expression E0 ? E1 : E2, and both E1 and E2 are value-safe. Assignments to value-safe expressions and initializations of value-safe names must take their values from value-safe expressions. A value-safe expression may not be the subject of a value-unsafe operation.  In particular, it cannot be synchronized on, nor can it be compared with the “==” operator, not even with a null or with another value-safe type. In a program where all of these rules are followed, no value-type value will be subject to a value-unsafe operation.  Thus, the prime axiom of value types will be satisfied, that no two value type will be distinguishable as long as their component values are equal. More Code To illustrate these rules, here are some usage examples for Complex: Complex pi = Complex.valueOf(Math.PI, 0); Complex zero = pi.changeRe(0);  //zero = pi; zero.re = 0; ValueType vtype = pi; @SuppressWarnings("value-unsafe")   Object obj = pi; @ValueSafe Object obj2 = pi; obj2 = new Object();  // ok List<Complex> clist = new ArrayList<Complex>(); clist.add(pi);  // (ok assuming List.add param is @ValueSafe) List<ValueType> vlist = new ArrayList<ValueType>(); vlist.add(pi);  // (ok) List<Object> olist = new ArrayList<Object>(); olist.add(pi);  // warning: "value-unsafe" boolean z = pi.equals(zero); boolean z1 = (pi == zero);  // error: reference comparison on value type boolean z2 = (pi == null);  // error: reference comparison on value type boolean z3 = (pi == obj2);  // error: reference comparison on value type synchronized (pi) { }  // error: synch of value, unpredictable result synchronized (obj2) { }  // unpredictable result Complex qq = pi; qq = null;  // possible NPE; warning: “null-unsafe" qq = (Complex) obj;  // warning: “null-unsafe" qq = Complex.cast(obj);  // OK @SuppressWarnings("null-unsafe")   Complex empty = null;  // possible NPE qq = empty;  // possible NPE (null pollution) The Payoffs It follows from this that either the JVM or the java compiler can replace boxed value-type values with unboxed ones, without affecting normal computations.  Fields and variables of value types can be split into their unboxed components.  Non-static methods on value types can be transformed into static methods which take the components as value parameters. Some common questions arise around this point in any discussion of value types. Why burden the programmer with all these extra rules?  Why not detect programs automagically and perform unboxing transparently?  The answer is that it is easy to break the rules accidently unless they are agreed to by the programmer and enforced.  Automatic unboxing optimizations are tantalizing but (so far) unreachable ideal.  In the current state of the art, it is possible exhibit benchmarks in which automatic unboxing provides the desired effects, but it is not possible to provide a JVM with a performance model that assures the programmer when unboxing will occur.  This is why I’m writing this note, to enlist help from, and provide assurances to, the programmer.  Basically, I’m shooting for a good set of user-supplied “pragmas” to frame the desired optimization. Again, the important thing is that the unboxing must be done reliably, or else programmers will have no reason to work with the extra complexity of the value-safety rules.  There must be a reasonably stable performance model, wherein using a value type has approximately the same performance characteristics as writing the unboxed components as separate Java variables. There are some rough corners to the present scheme.  Since Java fields and array elements are initialized to null, value-type computations which incorporate uninitialized variables can produce null pointer exceptions.  One workaround for this is to require such variables to be null-tested, and the result replaced with a suitable all-zero value of the value type.  That is what the “cast” method does above. Generically typed APIs like List<T> will continue to manipulate boxed values always, at least until we figure out how to do reification of generic type instances.  Use of such APIs will elicit warnings until their type parameters (and/or relevant members) are annotated or typed as value-safe.  Retrofitting List<T> is likely to expose flaws in the present scheme, which we will need to engineer around.  Here are a couple of first approaches: public interface java.util.List<@ValueSafe T> extends Collection<T> { … public interface java.util.List<T extends Object|ValueType> extends Collection<T> { … (The second approach would require disjunctive types, in which value-safety is “contagious” from the constituent types.) With more transformations, the return value types of methods can also be unboxed.  This may require significant bytecode-level transformations, and would work best in the presence of a bytecode representation for multiple value groups, which I have proposed elsewhere under the title “Tuples in the VM”. But for starters, the JVM can apply this transformation under the covers, to internally compiled methods.  This would give a way to express multiple return values and structured return values, which is a significant pain-point for Java programmers, especially those who work with low-level structure types favored by modern vector and graphics processors.  The lack of multiple return values has a strong distorting effect on many Java APIs. Even if the JVM fails to unbox a value, there is still potential benefit to the value type.  Clustered computing systems something have copy operations (serialization or something similar) which apply implicitly to command operands.  When copying JVM objects, it is extremely helpful to know when an object’s identity is important or not.  If an object reference is a copied operand, the system may have to create a proxy handle which points back to the original object, so that side effects are visible.  Proxies must be managed carefully, and this can be expensive.  On the other hand, value types are exactly those types which a JVM can “copy and forget” with no downside. Array types are crucial to bulk data interfaces.  (As data sizes and rates increase, bulk data becomes more important than scalar data, so arrays are definitely accompanying us into the future of computing.)  Value types are very helpful for adding structure to bulk data, so a successful value type mechanism will make it easier for us to express richer forms of bulk data. Unboxing arrays (i.e., arrays containing unboxed values) will provide better cache and memory density, and more direct data movement within clustered or heterogeneous computing systems.  They require the deepest transformations, relative to today’s JVM.  There is an impedance mismatch between value-type arrays and Java’s covariant array typing, so compromises will need to be struck with existing Java semantics.  It is probably worth the effort, since arrays of unboxed value types are inherently more memory-efficient than standard Java arrays, which rely on dependent pointer chains. It may be sufficient to extend the “value-safe” concept to array declarations, and allow low-level transformations to change value-safe array declarations from the standard boxed form into an unboxed tuple-based form.  Such value-safe arrays would not be convertible to Object[] arrays.  Certain connection points, such as Arrays.copyOf and System.arraycopy might need additional input/output combinations, to allow smooth conversion between arrays with boxed and unboxed elements. Alternatively, the correct solution may have to wait until we have enough reification of generic types, and enough operator overloading, to enable an overhaul of Java arrays. Implicit Method Definitions The example of class Complex above may be unattractively complex.  I believe most or all of the elements of the example class are required by the logic of value types. If this is true, a programmer who writes a value type will have to write lots of error-prone boilerplate code.  On the other hand, I think nearly all of the code (except for the domain-specific parts like plus and minus) can be implicitly generated. Java has a rule for implicitly defining a class’s constructor, if no it defines no constructors explicitly.  Likewise, there are rules for providing default access modifiers for interface members.  Because of the highly regular structure of value types, it might be reasonable to perform similar implicit transformations on value types.  Here’s an example of a “highly implicit” definition of a complex number type: public class Complex implements ValueType {  // implicitly final     public double re, im;  // implicitly public final     //implicit methods are defined elementwise from te fields:     //  toString, asList, equals(2), hashCode, valueOf, cast     //optionally, explicit methods (plus, abs, etc.) would go here } In other words, with the right defaults, a simple value type definition can be a one-liner.  The observant reader will have noticed the similarities (and suitable differences) between the explicit methods above and the corresponding methods for List<T>. Another way to abbreviate such a class would be to make an annotation the primary trigger of the functionality, and to add the interface(s) implicitly: public @ValueType class Complex { … // implicitly final, implements ValueType (But to me it seems better to communicate the “magic” via an interface, even if it is rooted in an annotation.) Implicitly Defined Value Types So far we have been working with nominal value types, which is to say that the sequence of typed components is associated with a name and additional methods that convey the intention of the programmer.  A simple ordered pair of floating point numbers can be variously interpreted as (to name a few possibilities) a rectangular or polar complex number or Cartesian point.  The name and the methods convey the intended meaning. But what if we need a truly simple ordered pair of floating point numbers, without any further conceptual baggage?  Perhaps we are writing a method (like “divideAndRemainder”) which naturally returns a pair of numbers instead of a single number.  Wrapping the pair of numbers in a nominal type (like “QuotientAndRemainder”) makes as little sense as wrapping a single return value in a nominal type (like “Quotient”).  What we need here are structural value types commonly known as tuples. For the present discussion, let us assign a conventional, JVM-friendly name to tuples, roughly as follows: public class java.lang.tuple.$DD extends java.lang.tuple.Tuple {      double $1, $2; } Here the component names are fixed and all the required methods are defined implicitly.  The supertype is an abstract class which has suitable shared declarations.  The name itself mentions a JVM-style method parameter descriptor, which may be “cracked” to determine the number and types of the component fields. The odd thing about such a tuple type (and structural types in general) is it must be instantiated lazily, in response to linkage requests from one or more classes that need it.  The JVM and/or its class loaders must be prepared to spin a tuple type on demand, given a simple name reference, $xyz, where the xyz is cracked into a series of component types.  (Specifics of naming and name mangling need some tasteful engineering.) Tuples also seem to demand, even more than nominal types, some support from the language.  (This is probably because notations for non-nominal types work best as combinations of punctuation and type names, rather than named constructors like Function3 or Tuple2.)  At a minimum, languages with tuples usually (I think) have some sort of simple bracket notation for creating tuples, and a corresponding pattern-matching syntax (or “destructuring bind”) for taking tuples apart, at least when they are parameter lists.  Designing such a syntax is no simple thing, because it ought to play well with nominal value types, and also with pre-existing Java features, such as method parameter lists, implicit conversions, generic types, and reflection.  That is a task for another day. Other Use Cases Besides complex numbers and simple tuples there are many use cases for value types.  Many tuple-like types have natural value-type representations. These include rational numbers, point locations and pixel colors, and various kinds of dates and addresses. Other types have a variable-length ‘tail’ of internal values. The most common example of this is String, which is (mathematically) a sequence of UTF-16 character values. Similarly, bit vectors, multiple-precision numbers, and polynomials are composed of sequences of values. Such types include, in their representation, a reference to a variable-sized data structure (often an array) which (somehow) represents the sequence of values. The value type may also include ’header’ information. Variable-sized values often have a length distribution which favors short lengths. In that case, the design of the value type can make the first few values in the sequence be direct ’header’ fields of the value type. In the common case where the header is enough to represent the whole value, the tail can be a shared null value, or even just a null reference. Note that the tail need not be an immutable object, as long as the header type encapsulates it well enough. This is the case with String, where the tail is a mutable (but never mutated) character array. Field types and their order must be a globally visible part of the API.  The structure of the value type must be transparent enough to have a globally consistent unboxed representation, so that all callers and callees agree about the type and order of components  that appear as parameters, return types, and array elements.  This is a trade-off between efficiency and encapsulation, which is forced on us when we remove an indirection enjoyed by boxed representations.  A JVM-only transformation would not care about such visibility, but a bytecode transformation would need to take care that (say) the components of complex numbers would not get swapped after a redefinition of Complex and a partial recompile.  Perhaps constant pool references to value types need to declare the field order as assumed by each API user. This brings up the delicate status of private fields in a value type.  It must always be possible to load, store, and copy value types as coordinated groups, and the JVM performs those movements by moving individual scalar values between locals and stack.  If a component field is not public, what is to prevent hostile code from plucking it out of the tuple using a rogue aload or astore instruction?  Nothing but the verifier, so we may need to give it more smarts, so that it treats value types as inseparable groups of stack slots or locals (something like long or double). My initial thought was to make the fields always public, which would make the security problem moot.  But public is not always the right answer; consider the case of String, where the underlying mutable character array must be encapsulated to prevent security holes.  I believe we can win back both sides of the tradeoff, by training the verifier never to split up the components in an unboxed value.  Just as the verifier encapsulates the two halves of a 64-bit primitive, it can encapsulate the the header and body of an unboxed String, so that no code other than that of class String itself can take apart the values. Similar to String, we could build an efficient multi-precision decimal type along these lines: public final class DecimalValue extends ValueType {     protected final long header;     protected private final BigInteger digits;     public DecimalValue valueOf(int value, int scale) {         assert(scale >= 0);         return new DecimalValue(((long)value << 32) + scale, null);     }     public DecimalValue valueOf(long value, int scale) {         if (value == (int) value)             return valueOf((int)value, scale);         return new DecimalValue(-scale, new BigInteger(value));     } } Values of this type would be passed between methods as two machine words. Small values (those with a significand which fits into 32 bits) would be represented without any heap data at all, unless the DecimalValue itself were boxed. (Note the tension between encapsulation and unboxing in this case.  It would be better if the header and digits fields were private, but depending on where the unboxing information must “leak”, it is probably safer to make a public revelation of the internal structure.) Note that, although an array of Complex can be faked with a double-length array of double, there is no easy way to fake an array of unboxed DecimalValues.  (Either an array of boxed values or a transposed pair of homogeneous arrays would be reasonable fallbacks, in a current JVM.)  Getting the full benefit of unboxing and arrays will require some new JVM magic. Although the JVM emphasizes portability, system dependent code will benefit from using machine-level types larger than 64 bits.  For example, the back end of a linear algebra package might benefit from value types like Float4 which map to stock vector types.  This is probably only worthwhile if the unboxing arrays can be packed with such values. More Daydreams A more finely-divided design for dynamic enforcement of value safety could feature separate marker interfaces for each invariant.  An empty marker interface Unsynchronizable could cause suitable exceptions for monitor instructions on objects in marked classes.  More radically, a Interchangeable marker interface could cause JVM primitives that are sensitive to object identity to raise exceptions; the strangest result would be that the acmp instruction would have to be specified as raising an exception. @ValueSafe public interface ValueType extends java.io.Serializable,         Unsynchronizable, Interchangeable { … public class Complex implements ValueType {     // inherits Serializable, Unsynchronizable, Interchangeable, @ValueSafe     … It seems possible that Integer and the other wrapper types could be retro-fitted as value-safe types.  This is a major change, since wrapper objects would be unsynchronizable and their references interchangeable.  It is likely that code which violates value-safety for wrapper types exists but is uncommon.  It is less plausible to retro-fit String, since the prominent operation String.intern is often used with value-unsafe code. We should also reconsider the distinction between boxed and unboxed values in code.  The design presented above obscures that distinction.  As another thought experiment, we could imagine making a first class distinction in the type system between boxed and unboxed representations.  Since only primitive types are named with a lower-case initial letter, we could define that the capitalized version of a value type name always refers to the boxed representation, while the initial lower-case variant always refers to boxed.  For example: complex pi = complex.valueOf(Math.PI, 0); Complex boxPi = pi;  // convert to boxed myList.add(boxPi); complex z = myList.get(0);  // unbox Such a convention could perhaps absorb the current difference between int and Integer, double and Double. It might also allow the programmer to express a helpful distinction among array types. As said above, array types are crucial to bulk data interfaces, but are limited in the JVM.  Extending arrays beyond the present limitations is worth thinking about; for example, the Maxine JVM implementation has a hybrid object/array type.  Something like this which can also accommodate value type components seems worthwhile.  On the other hand, does it make sense for value types to contain short arrays?  And why should random-access arrays be the end of our design process, when bulk data is often sequentially accessed, and it might make sense to have heterogeneous streams of data as the natural “jumbo” data structure.  These considerations must wait for another day and another note. More Work It seems to me that a good sequence for introducing such value types would be as follows: Add the value-safety restrictions to an experimental version of javac. Code some sample applications with value types, including Complex and DecimalValue. Create an experimental JVM which internally unboxes value types but does not require new bytecodes to do so.  Ensure the feasibility of the performance model for the sample applications. Add tuple-like bytecodes (with or without generic type reification) to a major revision of the JVM, and teach the Java compiler to switch in the new bytecodes without code changes. A staggered roll-out like this would decouple language changes from bytecode changes, which is always a convenient thing. A similar investigation should be applied (concurrently) to array types.  In this case, it seems to me that the starting point is in the JVM: Add an experimental unboxing array data structure to a production JVM, perhaps along the lines of Maxine hybrids.  No bytecode or language support is required at first; everything can be done with encapsulated unsafe operations and/or method handles. Create an experimental JVM which internally unboxes value types but does not require new bytecodes to do so.  Ensure the feasibility of the performance model for the sample applications. Add tuple-like bytecodes (with or without generic type reification) to a major revision of the JVM, and teach the Java compiler to switch in the new bytecodes without code changes. That’s enough musing me for now.  Back to work!

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  • Why did MAC-Adress Cloning Fix My Router?

    - by FranticPedantic
    I have a Belkin router, and about a year ago, I suddenly lost my internet connectivity from Comcast. The internet worked fine when I plugged it right into my laptop, so I just ignored it. When I moved to another apartmnet I eventually took the dive and called tech support. The tech told me to clone my MAC address which completely fixed the issue. Now I know what a MAC address is and I've read what MAC cloning is. What has bothered me since is that I don't see how this fixed the issue. As I have understood MAC address cloning, it has the router pretend it has the same MAC address as my computer. Here is why I don't understand why this fixes my issue: I have used several different computers with this router. Cloning the MAC address fixed it for ALL of my computers. The laptop I first used with my ISP was not the one that I eventually had connected when I cloned the address. Furthermore, I didn't have any problems for quite some time after I stopped using the first computer. It wasn't like the internet suddenly stopped working when I changed which laptop I was using Now it occurred to me that maybe there was some sort of expiration? Except... Which MAC address did it clone? It was just an option in the router administration page. Did it just pick whichever computer was connected to it? If my ISP still wanted the MAC of my first computer, how did some other computer's fix it? As mentioned earlier, why did this problem seemingly stem from nowhere? Anyway, I don't have any current problems so this is more just out of general curiosity. If anybody can explain it, it would be appreciated!

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  • What causes "A disk read error occurred, Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart"?

    - by Mehrdad
    I have a virtual machine containing Windows XP SP3. When I resized the VHD file (and the embedded partition), and tried booting, I got: A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart Some notes: FixBoot and FixMBR don't help. ChkDsk doesn't help. The partition is indeed active. The partition starts at sector 63 (it also did so before the problem) of cylinder 1, head 1, and is marked as type 0x07 (NTFS) My host OS reads the VHD and the partition completely fine I'm interested in knowing the cause rather than the fix. So "re-format the disk", "reinstall Windows", etc. aren't valid solutions. It's a virtual machine after all... I have nothing to lose, so I don't care about fixing it. I just want to know what's causing this problem, in case I run into it again on a physical machine (which I have done before). More info: The layout of the original, dynamic VHD (which works correctly): +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ¦ Disk: 3 MBR/GPT: MBR ¦ ¦ Size: 127.00GB CHS: 16578 255 63 ¦ ¦ Sectors: 266338304 Disk Signature: 0xEE3EEE3E ¦ ¦ Partitions: 1 Partition Order: 1 ¦ ¦ Media Type: Fixed Interface: SCSI ¦ ¦ Description: Msft Virtual Disk ¦ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------¦ ¦Pos Idx Type/Name Size Boot Hide Start Sector Total Sectors DL Vol Label ¦ +--- --- --------- ---- ---- ---- -------------- -------------- -- -----------¦ ¦ 1 1 07-NTFS 1.5G Yes No 63 3,148,677 F: <None> ¦ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The layout of the resized, fixed-size VHD (which doesn't work): +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ¦ Disk: 3 MBR/GPT: MBR ¦ ¦ Size: 1.50GB CHS: 196 255 63 ¦ ¦ Sectors: 3149824 Disk Signature: 0xEE3EEE3E ¦ ¦ Partitions: 1 Partition Order: 1 ¦ ¦ Media Type: Fixed Interface: SCSI ¦ ¦ Description: Msft Virtual Disk ¦ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------¦ ¦Pos Idx Type/Name Size Boot Hide Start Sector Total Sectors DL Vol Label ¦ +--- --- --------- ---- ---- ---- -------------- -------------- -- -----------¦ ¦ 1 1 07-NTFS 1.5G Yes No 63 3,148,677 F: <None> ¦ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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  • Why won't dhclient use the static IP I'm telling it to request?

    - by mike
    Here's my /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf: request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers, domain-name, domain-name-servers, domain-search, host-name, netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu; timeout 60; reject 192.168.1.27; alias { interface "eth0"; fixed-address 192.168.1.222; } lease { interface "eth0"; fixed-address 192.168.1.222; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; option broadcast-address 255.255.255.255; option routers 192.168.1.254; option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.254; } When I run "dhclient eth0", I get this: There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 6511 killed old client process, removed PID file Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1 Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/ wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801 wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801 Listening on LPF/eth0/00:1c:25:97:82:20 Sending on LPF/eth0/00:1c:25:97:82:20 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.1.27 on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 DHCPACK of 192.168.1.27 from 192.168.1.254 bound to 192.168.1.27 -- renewal in 1468 seconds. I used strace to make sure that dhclient really is reading that conf file. Why isn't it paying attention to my "reject 192.168.1.27" and "fixed-address 192.168.1.222" lines?

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  • How can I get VirtualBox to run at 1366x768?

    - by Joe White
    I'm trying to run Windows 8 in VirtualBox. My laptop's display is exactly 1366x768. Windows 8 disables some of its features if the resolution is less than 1366x768, so I need to run the guest OS fullscreen. The problem is, VirtualBox refuses to run the guest at 1366x768. When VirtualBox is "fullscreen", the guest is only 1360x768 -- six pixels too narrow. So there's a three-pixel black bar at the left and right sides of the display. This user had the same problem, but the accepted answer is "install the Guest Additions", which I've already done; that got me to 1360, but not to 1366. According to the VirtualBox ticket tracker, there used to be a bug where the guest's screen width would be rounded down to the nearest multiple of 8, but they claim to have fixed the bug in version 3.2.12. I'm using version 4.1.18 and seeing the same problem they claim to have fixed, so either they broke it again, they were wrong about ever having fixed it, or my problem is something else entirely. This answer suggested giving the VM 128MB of video memory, and claimed no problems getting 1366x768 afterward. When I created the VM, its display memory was already defaulted to 128 MB. I tried increasing it to 256MB, but with no effect: the guest is still six pixels too narrow. My host OS is Windows 7 64-bit, and I'm running VirtualBox 4.1.18. How can I get VirtualBox to run my guest OS fullscreen at my display's native resolution of 1366x768?

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  • Windows 7 using llt for ipv6

    - by Seoman
    The question asked below is based on the specific implementations of the Os not the RFC. Looking on a way to be able to assign a fixed ip address to a host, before it boots I found that Centos 6 works fine with no modifications and Windows 7 does not work at all. As defined in enter link description here exists 3 valid ways of generate a DUID: 1 Link-layer address plus time 2 Vendor-assigned unique ID based on Enterprise Number 3 Link-layer address Looking at the centos, that works fine, I can see the following autogenerated DUID: option dhcp6.client-id 0:1:0:1:19:60:25:f1:52:54:0:6b:b9:9e; and the MAC address for this host is: ifconfig eth1 | grep HWaddr eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 52:54:00:6B:B9:9E As you can see, the DUID containts the MAC address. I can assign a fixed ip address to this host by including an entry on my dhcp server similar to: host vm { hardware ethernet 52:54:00:6B:B9:9E; fixed-address6 2001:db8:0:1::200; if packet(0,1) = 1 { log(debug,"VM Request match!"); } } And the Centos 6 gets his ip. On the windows side, I faced a common problem explained on this other link enter link description here As summary, Win7 uses the option 2 of the DUID generation or a variation of this one. On the link explains how to move it to a llt (link layer + time) but is not working fine. If I modify the DUID to one that looks like the one generated on Centos (but with the right MAC) it works as expected. Question 1 How Can I change the DUID generation for Windows 7 to be based on MAC as Centos 6 does? Thanks

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  • Did the Community Lose It’s Focus, or Did I?

    - by Jonathan Kehayias
    Late Thursday night, ok it was actually very early Friday morning, I wrote a blog post that stirred a bit of a controversy in the community.  While the outcome of the discussion that was sparked by that post in the community has been good, it is definitely a case where the end isn’t justified by the means.   Hindsight is always 20/20, and while I stand by the point I was trying to make with that post, there are a number of ways I could have gone about making that point without risking...(read more)

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  • Laser Beam End Points Problems

    - by user36159
    I am building a game in XNA that features colored laser beams in 3D space. The beams are defined as: Segment start position Segment end position Line width For rendering, I am using 3 quads: Start point billboard End point billboard Middle section quad whose forward vector is the slope of the line and whose normal points to the camera The problem is that using additive blending, the end points and middle section overlap, which looks quite jarring. However, I need the endpoints in case the laser is pointing towards the camera! See the blue laser in particular:

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  • Drawing an arrow cursor on user dragging in XNA/MonoGame

    - by adrin
    I am writing a touch enabled game in MonoGame (XNA-like API) and would like to display a an arrow 'cursor' as user is making a drag gesture from point A to point B. I am not sure on how to correctly approach this problem. It seems that its best to just draw a sprite from A to B and scale it as required. This would however mean it gets stretched as user continues dragging gesture in one direction. Or maybe its better to dynamically render the arrow so it looks better?

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  • CNBC Exclusive: Mark Hurd On BT Win, Oracle Growth, And Investing In The Cloud

    - by Roxana Babiciu
    CNBC Europe recently interviewed Mark Hurd on Oracle's growth strategy and cloud investments, using our BT HCM Cloud win as a jumping-off point. When the CNBC panel misstated that cloud is “a new line for Oracle,” Mark responded, "Larry has been driving at this longer than anybody, and it shows in the products and the portfolio we have today." Case in point? Our BT win. Share this wide-ranging interview with partners today.

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  • Livre Blanc : « Les outils de recensement et d'audit open-source », Smile revient sur l'utilité d'analyser son « patrimoine logiciel »

    Livre Blanc : « Les outils de recensement et d'audit open-source » Smile revient sur l'utilité d'analyser son « patrimoine logiciel » Pour Smile, le recensement est le point de départ d'une politique open source : « il s'agit de faire l'état des lieux des logiciels open source utilisés dans l'entreprise ou entrant dans la composition d'un programme donné ». Le but est d'optimiser et d'accompagner l'analyse d'un « patrimoine de logiciel », (identifier les composants open source utilisés, les licences, etc.). Pour faire le point sur les différents outils du marché (Blackduck Software, Protecode, Palamida, OpenLogic, ou le français Antepedia) Smile vien...

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  • BizTalk ESB Toolkit: Core Components and Examples

    - by Rajesh Charagandla
    The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provides a stable and powerful platform for services that can change as fast as your business needs. The main purpose of an enterprise service bus (ESB) to is to provide a common mediation layer (the “bus”) through which all services connect. By doing so, not only can many of the problems of point-to-point service connectivity be resolved, but a new level of agile service delivery can be achieved. Author: Jon Flanders This Document can be download from here.

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  • Laser Beam End Points Problems (XNA)

    - by user36159
    I am building a game in XNA that features colored laser beams in 3D space. The beams are defined as: Segment start position Segment end position Line width For rendering, I am using 3 quads: Start point billboard End point billboard Middle section quad whose forward vector is the slope of the line and whose normal points to the camera The problem is that using additive blending, the end points and middle section overlap, which looks quite jarring. However, I need the endpoints in case the laser is pointing towards the camera! See the blue laser in particular:

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  • Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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