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• Methods and practices for managing a network that has no internet connection

  - by FaultyJuggler

  Originally asked in Super User but realized this belongs here. Long story short, I am setting up a network with 32 servers of varying specs that will be used for testing and development. We will be using RedHat Linux, we also do not have a router as of yet and were looking into making one of the servers act as our router/DHCP etc. The small cluster will be on an isolated network with no internet. I can use external harddrives and discs to transfer anything from external sources into machines on the network, so this isn't a locked down secure network, it just won't have a direct connection to the outside world. I've worked on such setups before, but always long after they were setup. So I'm reaching out to see what everyone knows as far as how groups have handled initial setup and maintenance of such a situation. What is the best way to get them all configured and up to date? What are the best ways to automate updates, network wide installs, etc. With the only given that I have large multi-terabyte external hard drives that would be used to drop whatever files are needed onto a central server, how do i then distribute those files and install their contents? I've done perl scripting, some teammates have played with puppet, so we aren't completely in the dark, I just wanted to avoid reinventing the wheel since this is a common challenge.

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• Global Email Forwarding with EXIM?

  - by Dexirian

  Been trying to find a solution to this for a while without success so here i go : I was given the task to build a High-Availability Load-Balanced Network Cluster for our 2 linux servers. I did some workaround and managed to get a DNS + SQL + Web Folders + Mails synchronisation going between both. Now i would like my server 2 to only do mailing and server 1 to only do web hosting. I transfered all the accounts for 1 to 2 using the WHM built-in account transfert feature. I created 2 different rsync jobs that sync, update, and delete the files for mail and websites. Now i was able to successfully transfer 1 mail accounts from 1 to 2, and the server 2 works flawlessly. All i had to do was change the MX entries to point to the new server and bingo. Now my problem is, some clients have their mail softwares configured so that they point to oldserver.domain.com. I cant make the (A) entry of oldserver.domain.com point to the new server for obvious reasons. I thought of using .foward files and add them to the home directories of the concerned users but that would be very difficult. So my question is : Is there a way to configure exim so that it will only foward mails to the new server? I need to change all the users so they use their mail on server 2 without them doing anything. Thanks! EDIT : TO CLARIFY MY PROBLEM Some clients have their mail point to oldserver.xyz instead of mail.olderserver.xyz I want to know if i can do something to prevent modifying the clients configuration I would also like to know is there is a way to find out what clients aren't properly configured

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• Can't connect to FTP server from a specific location

  - by wv_pip

  Last week while uploading website files to our server via FTP, the transfer failed. Ever since then, I haven't been able to connect to the server from work. I can connect just fine from home, or by using an FTP app on my cell phone as long as I'm on the cell network. I can't access the server from any machine on my work network. It's not a credential issue, either. The error message that I always get says that a connection cannot be established, and I am never prompted for my credentials. I have changed absolutely nothing on our domain controller or our firewall/router. I've contacted our ISP (who hosts the website/FTP server) and they can't find anything wrong on their end. They insist that it must be something here at the office that is blocking access. I've also tested access to other FTP servers (ea.com, nvidia.com, etc.) so I know that port 21 is not being blocked. I'm totally stumped. Any help is much appreciated. EDIT: wireshark info here: http://www.cloudshark.org/captures/85a118ae9296?filter=ip.dst%3D%3D66.118.64.208

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• SSH very slow when connecting from external [closed]

  - by wnstnsmth

  Possible Duplicate: ssh delay when connecting We have a CentOS server that we use for internal testing purposes, which has sshd enabled. When I (as a developer) am at the company, I use ssh [email protected] to connect to it - and it works flawlessly. Now, in order to work from home, accessing the server via the company's static IP, we set up another port for ssh, 2020. So I execute ssh -p 2020 [email protected] and am immediately granted for a password. After entering the password, it takes up to 30 seconds until I can access the server. Same is with SFTP (i.e. uploading files takes about 30 seconds until it begins to transfer). As you can imagine, if you have to regularly upload files to a webserver via SFTP, this is very tedious. So I looked at similar questions and thus edited the sshd_config file on the server, setting UseDNS to "no" and GSSAPIAuthentication to "no" (this one also in ssh_config on the client) - it did not work.. Please have a look at the -vvv output when externally accessing the server: ssh -p 2020 -vvv [email protected] PasteBin: ssh What could it be? Do you need more info?

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• Need guidance on a Google Map application that has to show 250 000 polylines.

  - by lucian.jp

  I am looking for advice for an application I am developing that uses Google Map. Summary: A user has a list of criteria for searching a street segment that fulfills the criteria. The street segments will be colored with 3 colors for showing those below average, average and over average. Then the user clicks on the street segment to see an information window showing the properties of that specific segment hiding those not selected until he/she closes the window and other polyline becomes visible again. This looks quite like the Monopoly City Streets game Hasbro made some month ago the difference being I do not use Flash, I can’t use Open Street Map because it doesn’t list street segment (if it does the IDs won’t be the same anyway) and I do not have to show Google sketch building over. Information: I have a database of street segments with IDs, polyline points and centroid. The database has 6,000,000 street segment records in it. To narrow the generated data a bit we focus on city. The largest city we must show has 250,000 street segments. This means 250,000 line segment polyline to show. Our longest polyline uses 9600 characters which is stored in two 8000 varchar columns in SQL Server 2008. We need to use the API v3 because it is faster than the API v2 and the application will be ported to iPhone. For now it's an ASP.NET 3.5 with SQl Server 2008 application. Performance is a priority. Problems: Most of the demo projects that do this are made with API v2. So besides tutorial on the Google API v3 reference page I have nothing to compare performance or technology use to achieve my goal. There is no available .NET wrapper for the API v3 yet. Generating a 250,000 line segment polyline creates a heavy file which takes time to transfer and parse. (I have found a demo of one polyline of 390,000 points. I think the encoder would be far less efficient with more polylines with less points since there will be less rounding.) Since streets segments are shown based on criteria, polylines must be dynamically created and cache can't be used. Some thoughts: KML/KMZ: Pros: Since it is a standard we can easily load Bing maps, Yahoo! maps, Google maps, Google Earth, with the same KML file. The data generation would be the same. Cons: LineString in KML cannot be encoded polyline like the Google map API can handle. So it would probably be bigger and slower to display. Zipping the file at the size it will take more processing time and require the client side to uncompress the data and I am not quite sure with 250,000 data how an iPhone would handle this and how a server would handle 40 users browsing at the same time. JavaScript file: Pros: JavaScript file can have encoded polyline and would significantly reduce the file to transfer. Cons: Have to create my own stripped version of API v3 to add overlays, create polyline, etc. It is more complex than just create a KML file and point to the source. GeoRSS: This option isn't adapted for my needs I think, but I could be wrong. MapServer: I saw some post suggesting using MapServer to generate overlays. Not quite sure for the connection with our database and the performance it would give. Plus it requires a plugin for generating KML. It seems to me that it wouldn't allow me to do better than creating my own KML or JavaScript file. Maintenance would be simpler without. Monopoly City Streets: The game is now over, but for those who know what I am talking about Monopoly City Streets was showing at max zoom level only the streets that the centroid was inside the Bounds of the window. Moving the map was sending request to the server for the new streets to show. While I think this was ingenious, I have no idea how to implement something similar. The only thing I thought about was to compare if the long was inside the bound of map area X and same with Y. While this could improve performance significantly at high zoom level, this would give nothing when showing a whole city. Clustering: While cluster is awesome for marker, it seems we cannot cluster polylines. I would have liked something like MarkerClusterer for polylines and be able to cluster by my 3 polyline colors. This will probably stay as a “would have been freaking awesome but forget it”. Arrow: I will have in a future version to show a direction for the polyline and will have to show an arrow at the centroid. Loading an image or marker will only double my data so creating a custom overlay will probably be my only option. I have found that demo for something similar I would like to achieve. Unfortunately, the demo is very slow, but I only wish to show 1 arrow per polyline and not multiple like the demo. This functionality will depend on the format of data since I don't think KML support custom overlays. Criteria: While the application is done with ASP.NET 3.5, the port to the iPhone won't use the web to show the application and be limited in screen size for selecting the criteria. This is why I was more orienting on a service or page generating the file based on criteria passed in parameters. The service would than generate the file I need to display the polylines on the map. I could also create an aspx page that does this. The aspx page is more documented than the service way. There should be a reason. Questions: Should I create a web service to returns the street segments file or create an aspx page that return the file? Should I create a JavaScript file with encoded polyline or a KML with longitude/latitude based on the fact that maximum longitude/latitude polyline have 9600 characters and I have to render maximum 250,000 line segment polyline. Or should I go with a MapServer that generate the overlay? Will I be able to display simple arrow on the polyline on the next version. In case of KML generation is it faster to create the file with XDocument, XmlDocument, XmlWriter and this manually or just serialize the street segment in the stream? This is more a brainstorming Stack Overflow question than an actual code problem. Any answer helping narrow the possibilities is as good as someone having all the knowledge to point me out a better choice.

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• PHP mail with multiple attachments and message in HTML format [closed]

  - by Jason

  I am new to PHP, so please don't mind if my question is silly. I would to like to make a PHP to send email with numerous attachments and the message of the email will be in HTML format. <html> <body> <form action="mail.php" method="post"> <table> <tr> <td><label>Name:</label></td> <td><input type="text" name="name" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td><label>Your Email:</label></td> <td><input type="text" name="email" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td><label>Attachment:</label></td> <td><input type="file" name="Attach" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td><input type="submit" value="Submit" /></td> </tr> </table> </form> <script language="javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $("form").submit(function(){ $.ajax({ type: "POST", url: 'mail.php', dataType: 'json', data: { name: $('#name').val(), email: $('#email').val(), Attach: $('#Attach').val(), }, success: function(json){ $(".error, .success").remove(); if (json['error']){ $("form").after(json['error']); } if (json['success']){ $("form").remove(); $(".leftColWrap").append(json['success']); } } }); return false; }); }); </script> </body> </html> This is my HTML for filing in the information. And below is the mail.php <?php session_cache_limiter('nocache'); header('Expires: ' . gmdate('r', 0)); header('Content-type: application/json'); $timeout = time()+60*60*24*30; setcookie(Form, date("F jS - g:i a"), $timeout); $name=$_POST['name']; $email=$_POST['email']; $to="[email protected]"; //*** Uniqid Session ***// $Sid = md5(uniqid(time())); $headers = ""; $headers .= "From: $email \n"; $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"; $headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$Sid."\"\n\n"; $headers .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\n"; $headers .= "--".$Sid."\n"; $headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n"; $headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n\n"; //*** Attachment ***// if($_FILES["fileAttach"]["name"] != "") { $FilesName = $_FILES["fileAttach"]["name"]; $Content = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($_FILES["fileAttach"]["tmp_name"]))); $headers .= "--".$Sid."\n"; $headers .= "Content-Type: application/octet-eam; name=\"".$FilesName."\"\n"; $headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n"; $headers .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$FilesName."\"\n\n"; $headers .= $Content."\n\n"; } $message_to=" <html><body> <table class='page-head' align='center' width='100%'> <tr> <td class='left'> <h1>ABC</h1></td> <td class='right' width='63'> <img src='http://xxx/images/logo.png' /></td> </tr> </table><br /><br /> $name ($email) has just sent you an e-mail. </body></html>"; $message_from="<html><body> <table class='page-head' align='center' width='100%'> <tr> <td class='left'> <h1>ABC</h1></td> <td class='right' width='63'> <img src='http://xxx/images/logo.png' /></td> </tr> </table><br /><br /> Thanks for sending the email. </body></html>"; if ($name == "" || $email == "") { $error = "<font color=\"red\">Please fill in all the required fields.</font>"; } elseif (isset($_COOKIE['Form'])) { $error = "You have already sent the email. Please try again later."; } else { mail($to,"A new email from: $name",$message_to,$headers); mail($email,"Thank you for send the email",$message_from,$headers); $success = "Emai sent successfully!"; } $json = array('error' => $error, 'success' => $success); print(json_encode($json)); ?> May someone give some advises on the code? Thanks a lot.

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• Search Alternative Search Engines from within Bing’s Search Page

  - by Asian Angel

  So you love using Bing Search but may still be curious to see what another search engine will provide if used. Now you can search using another search engine from within the Bing Search page and enjoy numbered results using two simple user scripts. Note: These user scripts may also be added to other browsers as well (i.e. Iron, Opera, etc.). Before Bing Search does nicely on searches but what if you would like to try the same search with another search engine? Having to manually open a new tab, navigate to the appropriate website, and then start a new search is not too convenient. Another possible frustration for some people may be knowing just how many search results that they have looked through. Well, both of these small problems are easy to fix with two wonderful user scripts. Installing the Scripts The first script that we installed (you may do either one first) was for adding alternative search engine links. Click “Install” to get started… Note: For our example we had the Greasemonkey extension installed. When the confirmation window pops up click on “Install” to finish adding the user script to Firefox. Repeating the same procedure as above add your second script to Firefox. Confirm the second user script installation and you are ready to enjoy nicer Bing Search results. After As you can see there are two small unobtrusive differences in our search results. The alternative search engine links are conveniently located at the top of the page and now you can easily know just how many search results that you have looked through. The results when we decided to try the search in a transfer over to Yahoo. Our search transferred to Ask Search. The alternative search links can be very helpful if Bing is not providing the kind of search results that you are hoping for. Still going very nicely past the 100 mark… Conclusion If you have been wanting a small booster to searching with Bing then these two scripts will get you on your way. Using Opera Browser? See our how-to for adding user scripts to Opera here. Links Install the Bing (Alternate Search Engine Links) User Script Install the Bing Numbered Search Results User Script Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Download the Stylish extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Organize Your Firefox Search Engines Into FoldersFix for Slow "Instant Search" In Outlook 2007Gain Access to a Search Box in Google ChromeManage Web Searches In SafariModify Firefox’s Search Bar Behavior with SearchLoad Options TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Heaven & Hell Finder Icon Using TrueCrypt to Secure Your Data Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain

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• Announcing the new Oracle Retail Workspace, A Configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail

  - by Oracle Retail Documentation Team

  For the Oracle Retail 13.2.x enterprise, Oracle Retail Workspace 13.2.4 replaces previous versions of Oracle Retail Workspace. Oracle Retail Workspace 13.2.4 is a supported configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail. Supported Product Overview In order to provide a next-generation Oracle user engagement platform for the retail industry, Oracle Retail Workspace leverages WebCenter Spaces. Oracle Retail Workspace is not a licensed retail application with any code. Instead, retailers purchase the underlying technology and then leverage the Oracle Retail Workspace Implementation Guide to configure a portal utilizing Oracle WebCenter Spaces. Oracle Retail Workspace has been repositioned as a configuration of Oracle WebCenter Spaces for the following reasons: The Oracle Retail Workspace configuration utilizes the external application functionality and the application navigator taskflow of the Oracle WebCenter Framework to configure Oracle Retail applications in Oracle WebCenter Spaces. The Oracle WebCenter Framework improves IT development cycle times by blending Web 2.0 services, processes, business intelligence, and transactions in an integrated JSF framework. The Oracle WebCenter Spaces 11g offers features provided by the previous versions of Oracle Retail Workspace that enable retailers to leverage a productive portal-based environment. List of Documents The following are included in Workspace 13.2.4, A Configuration of WebCenter Spaces 11.1.1.5 for Oracle Retail Oracle Retail Workspace Release Notes Oracle Retail Workspace Implementation Guide Workspace Retail Library—Unsupported The Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library is comprised of previously-published accelerator documents and sample code downloads hosted on My Oracle Support. They are not supported, nor are they associated with the support lifecycle of the Workspace application. Doc ID: 1461281.1: Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library Oracle Retail Workspace Retail Library Reference GuideA set of Micro-Applications that can be used to perform some of the operations of Oracle Retail Merchandising System (RMS) from outside the application. This document describes the functional and technical design details of the Micro-Applications available in this release, including the following and more: Create Regular Item Create Purchase Order Item Transfer Update Vendor Oracle Retail Fashion Planning Bundle Reports documentationThe Oracle Retail Fashion Planning Bundle Reports package includes role-based Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Edition (EE) reports and dashboards that provide an illustrative overview highlighting the Fashion Planning Bundle solutions. These dashboards can be leveraged out-of-the-box or can be used along with the other dashboards and reports that may have already been created to support a specific solution or organizational needs. This package includes dashboards for the Assortment Planning, Item Planning, Item Planning Configured for COE, Merchandise Financial Planning Retail Accounting, and Merchandise Financial Planning Cost Accounting applications. Oracle Retail Accelerators for WebLogic Server 11g Micro-Applications Development TutorialThis tutorial describes how you can create a Micro-Application for the Create a Regular Item task in the Retail Merchandising System (RMS) application using Oracle JDeveloper and ADF. Retail Accelerators: Developing ADF Reports for RPASThis document illustrates how you can use the Oracle Application Development Framework 11g (ADF) to generate reports that provide insights from the Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server (RPAS) based applications. Oracle Retail Accelerators Guide for WebCenter 11gOracle Retail Accelerators Guide for WebCenter 11g describes how you can integrate Oracle Retail applications with Oracle WebCenter Spaces and customize WebCenter Spaces to include custom-developed content. Oracle Retail Accelerators, Developing Oracle BI EE reports on RPAS Domain DataThis document illustrates how you can set up the integration between BI EE and RPAS domains to generate BI EE reports and dashboards for RPAS. Oracle Retail Accelerators, Developing Oracle BI EE Reports on RPAS WorkbooksThis document outlines a process to create real-time Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) Enterprise Edition reports against RPAS workbooks dynamically, as opposed to directly going against the RPAS domain for the data. 

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• GPGPU

  WhatGPU obviously stands for Graphics Processing Unit (the silicon powering the display you are using to read this blog post). The extra GP in front of that stands for General Purpose computing.So, altogether GPGPU refers to computing we can perform on GPU for purposes beyond just drawing on the screen. In effect, we can use a GPGPU a bit like we already use a CPU: to perform some calculation (that doesn’t have to have any visual element to it). The attraction is that a GPGPU can be orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.WhyWhen I was at the SuperComputing conference in Portland last November, GPGPUs were all the rage. A quick online search reveals many articles introducing the GPGPU topic. I'll just share 3 here: pcper (ignoring all pages except the first, it is a good consumer perspective), gizmodo (nice take using mostly layman terms) and vizworld (answering the question on "what's the big deal").The GPGPU programming paradigm (from a high level) is simple: in your CPU program you define functions (aka kernels) that take some input, can perform the costly operation and return the output. The kernels are the things that execute on the GPGPU leveraging its power (and hence execute faster than what they could on the CPU) while the host CPU program waits for the results or asynchronously performs other tasks.However, GPGPUs have different characteristics to CPUs which means they are suitable only for certain classes of problem (i.e. data parallel algorithms) and not for others (e.g. algorithms with branching or recursion or other complex flow control). You also pay a high cost for transferring the input data from the CPU to the GPU (and vice versa the results back to the CPU), so the computation itself has to be long enough to justify the overhead transfer costs. If your problem space fits the criteria then you probably want to check out this technology.HowSo where can you get a graphics card to start playing with all this? At the time of writing, the two main vendors ATI (owned by AMD) and NVIDIA are the obvious players in this industry. You can read about GPGPU on this AMD page and also on this NVIDIA page. NVIDIA's website also has a free chapter on the topic from the "GPU Gems" book: A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs.If you followed the links above, then you've already come across some of the choices of programming models that are available today. Essentially, AMD is offering their ATI Stream technology accessible via a language they call Brook+; NVIDIA offers their CUDA platform which is accessible from CUDA C. Choosing either of those locks you into the GPU vendor and hence your code cannot run on systems with cards from the other vendor (e.g. imagine if your CPU code would run on Intel chips but not AMD chips). Having said that, both vendors plan to support a new emerging standard called OpenCL, which theoretically means your kernels can execute on any GPU that supports it. To learn more about all of these there is a website: gpgpu.org. The caveat about that site is that (currently) it completely ignores the Microsoft approach, which I touch on next.On Windows, there is already a cross-GPU-vendor way of programming GPUs and that is the DirectX API. Specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the DirectX 11 API offers a dedicated subset of the API for GPGPU programming: DirectCompute. You use this API on the CPU side, to set up and execute the kernels that run on the GPU. The kernels are written in a language called HLSL (High Level Shader Language). You can use DirectCompute with HLSL to write a "compute shader", which is the term DirectX uses for what I've been referring to in this post as a "kernel". For a comprehensive collection of links about this (including tutorials, videos and samples) please see my blog post: DirectCompute.Note that there are many efforts to build even higher level languages on top of DirectX that aim to expose GPGPU programming to a wider audience by making it as easy as today's mainstream programming models. I'll mention here just two of those efforts: Accelerator from MSR and Brahma by Ananth. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• I’m a Phoenix… and I’m miffed

  - by Stan Spotts

  For personal reasons, almost 30 years ago I left school to enter the workforce. I decided late 2008 to go back to school and finish my degree. After the expected loss of credits for a transfer, from Temple University to University of Phoenix, I'm now about 75% done. The experience has been interesting. Classes are time compressed, only 5 weeks each. Because I have a family and a full time job, I'm taking one at a time. Even so, I've written more papers in these classes than I ever wrote at Temple. My own papers are one thing, but the team papers give me heartburn since I can't completely control what goes into them. Not a big deal except that they make up 30% of our grade. In any case, most of the class facilitators have been great. I had great ones for Accounting, Finance, and frankly most others. I've had a few (4, maybe) cases where I was less than 2 points from an A, and asked the facilitator if I could get any of my work reviewed to see if I could get those extra points. I figured it was worth a shot, and there were no extenuating circumstances to help make my case. I think that only one facilitator decided after a review of one paper that my interpretation was good, just not what he expected, and gave me another point, which gave me an A. So while none are pushovers, they've all been open to discussion, which is as much as I should expect. Overall, good experience. That is, until my last class. On the second week, the day I was due to hand in my personal assignment for the week, I was in an accident. An SUV creamed my little Ford Focus, and totaled it (estimated repair over $11K). I was pretty banged up, especially my left shoulder. I was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery for two weeks later, and getting hit against the door really made it worse. After dealing with the police, the EMT, the tow truck, and the Percocet and Flexeril for the pain, I crashed for the night and didn't get to upload my paper until the next day. The instructor took 30% off for it being late, even after I supplied photos of the car, my arm (huge bruises), and offered to supply the police report number. I figured I'd be okay since that's 2.7 points, and I could lose up to 5 before jeopardizing an A grade. Well, that wasn't the case as we lost more points than I expected on our team paper in Week 5. I ended up with a 94.3. Yes, 7/10 of a point from an A. Of course I asked the instructor to review the issue with the accident and give me just the 0.7 points I needed for the A. That got me a short response of "I have received your emails and review your work over the last five weeks. Your current grade will stand. If you would like to dispute your grade then please feel free to contact your academic advisor. I wish you much success in your professional and academic career." Brrrr….! So I asked my academic advisor to file a dispute. If it wasn't that a pretty bad car accident was the cause, I wouldn't have. Without the grade reduction, I would have had a 97 for the class, so I'll argue that I was performing at the A level throughout the class. Why her purported "review" of my work didn't then warrant such a minor adjustment, I don't know. An A- drops my GPA, and this ticked me off. Now I have to wait and see what the school says about the grade dispute.

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• SQL SERVER – List of All the Samples Database Available to Download for FREE

  - by Pinal Dave

  It is pretty much very common to have a sample database for any database product. Different companies keep on improving their product and keep on coming up with innovation in their product. To demonstrate the capability of their new enhancements they need the sample database. Microsoft have various sample database available for free download for their SQL Server Product. I have collected them here in a single blog post. Download an AdventureWorks Database The AdventureWorks OLTP database supports standard online transaction processing scenarios for a fictitious bicycle manufacturer (Adventure Works Cycles). Scenarios include Manufacturing, Sales, Purchasing, Product Management, Contact Management, and Human Resources. Coconut Dal Coconut Dal is a lightweight data access layer, for use in projects where the Entity Framework cannot be used or Microsoft’s Enterprise Library Data Block is unsuitable. Anyone who is handwriting ADO.NET should use a library instead and Coconut Dal might be the answer.  DataBooster – Extension to ADO.NET Data Provider The dbParallel DataBooster library is a high-performance extension to ADO.NET Data Provider, includes two aspects: 1) A slimmed down API encapsulation which simplified the most common data access operations (DbConnection -> DbCommand -> DbParameter -> DbDataReader) into a single class DbAccess, to help application with a clean DAL, avoid over-packing and redundant-copy of data transfer. 2) A booster for writing mass data onto database. Base on a rational utilization of database concurrency and a effective utilization of network bandwidth. Tabular AMO 2012 The sample is made of two project parts. The first part is a library of functions to manage tabular models -AMO2Tabular V2-. The second part is a sample to build a tabular model -AdventureWorks Tabular AMO 2012- using the AMO2Tabular library; the created model is similar to the ‘AdventureWorks Tabular Model 2012. SQL Server Analysis Services Product Samples SQL Server Analysis Services provides, a unified and integrated view of all your business data as the foundation for all of your traditional reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) scorecards, and data mining. Analysis Services Samples for SQL Server 2008 R2 This release is dedicated to the samples that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. For many of these samples you will also need to download the AdventureWorks family of databases. SQL Server Reporting Services Product Samples This project contains Reporting Services samples released with Microsoft SQL Server product. These samples are in the following five categories: Application Samples, Extension Samples, Model Samples, Report Samples, and Script Samples. If you are interested in contributing Reporting Services samples, please let us know by posting in the developers’ forum. Reporting Services Samples for SQL Server 2008 R2 This release is dedicated to the samples that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 PCU1. For many of these samples you will also need to download the AdventureWorks family of databases. SQL Server Integration Services Product Samples This project contains Integration Services samples released with Microsoft SQL Server product. These samples are in the following two categories: Package Samples and Programming Samples. If you are interested in contributing Integration Services samples, please let us know by posting in the developers’ forum. Integration Services Samples for SQL Server 2008 R2 This release is dedicated to the samples that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. For many of these samples you will also need to download the AdventureWorks family of databases. Windows Azure SQL Reporting Admin Sample The SQLReportingAdmin sample for Windows Azure SQL Reporting demonstrates the usage of SQL Reporting APIs, and manages (add/update/delete) permissions of SQL Reporting users. Windows Azure SQL Reporting ReportViewer-SOAP API usage sample These sample projects demonstrate how to embed a Microsoft ReportViewer control that points to reports hosted on SQL Reporting report servers and how to use SQL Reporting SOAP APIs in your Windows Azure Web application. Enterprise Library 5.0 – Integration Pack for Windows Azure This NuGet package contains a zip file with the source code for the Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Sample Database

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• How do NTP Servers Manage to Stay so Accurate?

  - by Akemi Iwaya

  Many of us have had the occasional problem with our computers and other devices retaining accurate time settings, but a quick sync with an NTP server makes all well again. But if our own devices can lose accuracy, how do NTP servers manage to stay so accurate? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. Photo courtesy of LEOL30 (Flickr). The Question SuperUser reader Frank Thornton wants to know how NTP servers are able to remain so accurate: I have noticed that on my servers and other machines, the clocks always drift so that they have to sync up to remain accurate. How do the NTP server clocks keep from drifting and always remain so accurate? How do the NTP servers manage to remain so accurate? The Answer SuperUser contributor Michael Kjorling has the answer for us: NTP servers rely on highly accurate clocks for precision timekeeping. A common time source for central NTP servers are atomic clocks, or GPS receivers (remember that GPS satellites have atomic clocks onboard). These clocks are defined as accurate since they provide a highly exact time reference. There is nothing magical about GPS or atomic clocks that make them tell you exactly what time it is. Because of how atomic clocks work, they are simply very good at, having once been told what time it is, keeping accurate time (since the second is defined in terms of atomic effects). In fact, it is worth noting that GPS time is distinct from the UTC that we are more used to seeing. These atomic clocks are in turn synchronized against International Atomic Time or TAI in order to not only accurately tell the passage of time, but also the time. Once you have an exact time on one system connected to a network like the Internet, it is a matter of protocol engineering enabling transfer of precise times between hosts over an unreliable network. In this regard a Stratum 2 (or farther from the actual time source) NTP server is no different from your desktop system syncing against a set of NTP servers. By the time you have a few accurate times (as obtained from NTP servers or elsewhere) and know the rate of advancement of your local clock (which is easy to determine), you can calculate your local clock’s drift rate relative to the “believed accurate” passage of time. Once locked in, this value can then be used to continuously adjust the local clock to make it report values very close to the accurate passage of time, even if the local real-time clock itself is highly inaccurate. As long as your local clock is not highly erratic, this should allow keeping accurate time for some time even if your upstream time source becomes unavailable for any reason. Some NTP client implementations (probably most ntpd daemon or system service implementations) do this, and others (like ntpd’s companion ntpdate which simply sets the clock once) do not. This is commonly referred to as a drift file because it persistently stores a measure of clock drift, but strictly speaking it does not have to be stored as a specific file on disk. In NTP, Stratum 0 is by definition an accurate time source. Stratum 1 is a system that uses a Stratum 0 time source as its time source (and is thus slightly less accurate than the Stratum 0 time source). Stratum 2 again is slightly less accurate than Stratum 1 because it is syncing its time against the Stratum 1 source and so on. In practice, this loss of accuracy is so small that it is completely negligible in all but the most extreme of cases. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.

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• Prepping the Raspberry Pi for Java Excellence (part 1)

  - by HecklerMark

  I've only recently been able to begin working seriously with my first Raspberry Pi, received months ago but hastily shelved in preparation for JavaOne. The Raspberry Pi and other diminutive computing platforms offer a glimpse of the potential of what is often referred to as the embedded space, the "Internet of Things" (IoT), or Machine to Machine (M2M) computing. I have a few different configurations I want to use for multiple Raspberry Pis, but for each of them, I'll need to perform the following common steps to prepare them for their various tasks: Load an OS onto an SD card Get the Pi connected to the network Load a JDK I've been very happy to see good friend and JFXtras teammate Gerrit Grunwald document how to do these things on his blog (link to article here - check it out!), but I ran into some issues configuring wi-fi that caused me some needless grief. Not knowing if any of the pitfalls were caused by my slightly-older version of the Pi and not being able to find anything specific online to help me get past it, I kept chipping away at it until I broke through. The purpose of this post is to (hopefully) help someone else recognize the same issues if/when they encounter them and work past them quickly. There is a great resource page here that covers several ways to get the OS on an SD card, but here is what I did (on a Mac): Plug SD card into reader on/in Mac Format it (FAT32) Unmount it (diskutil unmountDisk diskn, where n is the disk number representing the SD card) Transfer the disk image for Debian to the SD card (dd if=2012-08-08-wheezy-armel.img of=/dev/diskn bs=1m) Eject the card from the Mac (diskutil eject diskn) There are other ways, but this is fairly quick and painless, especially after you do it several times. Yes, I had to do that dance repeatedly (minus formatting) due to the wi-fi issues, as it kept killing the ability of the Pi to boot. You should be able to dramatically reduce the number of OS loads you do, though, if you do a few things with regard to your wi-fi. Firstly, I strongly recommend you purchase the Edimax EW-7811Un wi-fi adapter. This adapter/chipset has been proven with the Raspberry Pi, it's tiny, and it's cheap. Avoid unnecessary aggravation and buy this one! Secondly, visit this page for a script and instructions regarding how to configure your new wi-fi adapter with your Pi. Here is the rub, though: there is a missing step. At least for my combination of Pi version, OS version, and uncanny gift of timing and luck there was. :-) Here is the sequence of steps I used to make the magic happen: Plug your newly-minted SD card (with OS) into your Pi and connect a network cable (for internet connectivity) Boot your Pi. On the first boot, do the following things: Opt to have it use all space on the SD card (will require a reboot eventually) Disable overscan Set your timezone Enable the ssh server Update raspi-config Reboot your Pi. This will reconfigure the SD to use all space (see above). After you log in (UID: pi, password: raspberry), upgrade your OS. This was the missing step for me that put a merciful end to the repeated SD card re-imaging and made the wi-fi configuration trivial. To do so, just type sudo apt-get upgrade and give it several minutes to complete. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and congratulate yourself on the time you've just saved.  ;-) With the OS upgrade finished, now you can follow Mr. Engman's directions (to the letter, please see link above), download his script, and let it work its magic. One aside: I plugged the little power-sipping Edimax directly into the Pi and it worked perfectly. No powered hub needed, at least in my configuration. To recap, that OS upgrade (at least at this point, with this combination of OS/drivers/Pi version) is absolutely essential for a smooth experience. Miss that step, and you're in for hours of "fun". Save yourself! I'll pick up next time with more of the Java side of the RasPi configuration, but as they say, you have to cross the moat to get into the castle. Hopefully, this will help you do just that. Until next time! All the best, Mark 

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• BlueTooth not working on my HP Probook 4720s

  - by mtrento

  the blue tooth on my ubuntu 11.10 does not work. When i try to ad a device it scans indefinitely and never find anything. Wireless is working perfeclty and with windows 7 it is detected. As i read somewhere , the bluetooth is not listed in the usb devices. Is it supported under ubuntu? here are the output of the various debug command i tested : hciconfig -a hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB BD Address: E0:2A:82:7A:8B:04 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN RX bytes:1895 acl:0 sco:0 events:70 errors:0 TX bytes:1986 acl:0 sco:0 commands:64 errors:0 Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x59 0x83 Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT Name: 'PC543host-0' Class: 0x5a0100 Service Classes: Networking, Capturing, Object Transfer, Telephony Device Class: Computer, Uncategorized HCI Version: 2.1 (0x4) Revision: 0x149c LMP Version: 2.1 (0x4) Subversion: 0x149c Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10) hcitool scan hcitool scan Scanning ... lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1ac Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 003: ID 413c:3010 Dell Computer Corp. Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 002 Device 004: ID 148f:1000 Ralink Technology, Corp. lsmod | grep -i bluetooth bluetooth 166112 23 bnep,rfcomm,btusb dmesg | grep -i bluetooth [ 18.543947] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 18.544017] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 18.544020] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 18.544021] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 18.545469] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 18.548890] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6 [ 30.204776] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 30.204782] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 30.204784] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 30.247291] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 30.247295] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series] 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] 44:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe 45:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

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• Do we still have a case against the goto statement? [closed]

  - by FredOverflow

  Possible Duplicate: Is it ever worthwhile using goto? In a recent article, Andrew Koenig writes: When asked why goto statements are harmful, most programmers will say something like "because they make programs hard to understand." Press harder, and you may well hear something like "I don't really know, but that's what I was taught." For that reason, I'd like to summarize Dijkstra's arguments. He then shows two program fragments, one without a goto and and one with a goto: if (n < 0) n = 0; Assuming that n is a variable of a built-in numeric type, we know that after this code, n is nonnegative. Suppose we rewrite this fragment: if (n >= 0) goto nonneg; n = 0; nonneg: ; In theory, this rewrite should have the same effect as the original. However, rewriting has changed something important: It has opened the possibility of transferring control to nonneg from anywhere else in the program. I emphasized the part that I don't agree with. Modern languages like C++ do not allow goto to transfer control arbitrarily. Here are two examples: You cannot jump to a label that is defined in a different function. You cannot jump over a variable initialization. Now consider composing your code of tiny functions that adhere to the single responsibility principle: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n >= 0) goto n_is_not_negative: n = 0; n_is_not_negative: return n; } The classic argument against the goto statement is that control could have transferred from anywhere inside your program to the label n_is_not_negative, but this simply is not (and was never) true in C++. If you try it, you will get a compiler error, because labels are scoped. The rest of the program doesn't even see the name n_is_not_negative, so it's just not possible to jump there. This is a static guarantee! Now, I'm not saying that this version is better then the one without the goto, but to make the latter as expressive as the first one, we would at least have to insert a comment, or even better yet, an assertion: int clamp_to_zero(int n) { if (n < 0) n = 0; // n is not negative at this point assert(n >= 0); return n; } Note that you basically get the assertion for free in the goto version, because the condition n >= 0 is already written in line 1, and n = 0; satisfies the condition trivially. But that's just a random observation. It seems to me that "don't use gotos!" is one of those dogmas like "don't use multiple returns!" that stem from a time where the real problem were functions of hundreds or even thousand of lines of code. So, do we still have a case against the goto statement, other than that it is not particularly useful? I haven't written a goto in at least a decade, but it's not like I was running away in terror whenever I encountered one. 1 Ideally, I would like to see a strong and valid argument against gotos that still holds when you adhere to established programming principles for clean code like the SRP. "You can jump anywhere" is not (and has never been) a valid argument in C++, and somehow I don't like teaching stuff that is not true. 1: Also, I have never been able to resurrect even a single velociraptor, no matter how many gotos I tried :(

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• Taking Your Business Scorecard Golfing

  - by tobyehatch

  Our workplace world is definitely changing. Not only are we taking work home, but we are working during odd hours in some very strange places.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacques Vigeant, Product Strategy Manager for Oracle Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management, on a Podcast, and he enlightened me about how our mobile devices and business scorecards are enabling us to be more accountable and keep a watchful eye on business – even while on the golf course.Business scorecards have been around for many years - so I asked Jacques if he felt they had changed significantly due to technology. His answer was, “Yes, and no.”  Jacques agreed that scorecard enthusiasts are still passionate about executing the company strategy and monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but scorecards and Business Intelligence (BI) as a whole have changed.  He explained that five to six years ago, people did BI work at the office and, for the most part, disconnected from their computer and workplace when they went home – with the exception of checking email and making a phone call or two. But now, that is no longer the case. People are virtually always connected with work and, more importantly, expect their BI and scorecards to be ‘always on,’ regardless of whether they are at their desk or somewhere else.Basically, the BI paradigm has changed from a 'pull' model, where employees are at their desks querying or pulling information from the system, to a 'push' model where employees expect their BI and scorecard systems to reach out (or push information) to them when there is something of note to learn or something on which they need to take action. I found this very interesting. However mobile devices do have their limitations with respect to screen sizes – does it really make sense to look at your strategy/scorecard on tiny devices? What kind of scorecard activities can you really expect to be able to do? Jacques’ answer was very logical. “When you think of a scorecard, it is really comprised of an organization of KPIs that are aligned with the strategic objectives of your company. KPIs are the heart of how you will execute your strategy. So, if you decompose that a little more, each KPI is well defined with the thresholds that you should keep an eye on and who is responsible for them. When we talk about scorecarding on a phone, we aren’t talking about surfing the strategy and exploring the strategy map like we do on the desktop. In a scorecarding context, we use the phone more as an alerting mechanism or simple monitoring device for your KPIs.”Jacques gave a great example of an inventory manager who took part of an afternoon off to go golfing before winter finally hit, and while on the front nine holes, his phone vibrated. His scorecard was alerting him that the inventory levels for one of the products was below some threshold that he had set.  From his phone, he had set up three options within Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (OSSM) for this type of situation:  1. Contact the warehouse manager directly by phone and work it out (standard phone function)  2. Tap/hold the KPI and add an annotation to the KPI in OSSM using the dictation capabilities of the phone and deal with it more fully when he gets back to the office  3. Tap/hold the KPI and invoke a business process from OSSM to transfer product from another warehouse with higher stock levels to the one that needs it  Being on a phone should still give you options to quickly deal with situations as needed, but mobile phones are not designed for nor should try to replicate the full desktop experience. We covered other interesting subjects in the interview, including how Oracle is keeping pace with mobile innovation and new devices such as Google Glasses, Galaxy Gear, Pebble Watches and more, and how Oracle is handling mobile security– which is great news for our mobile workforce. To listen to the entire Podcast, click here.To learn more about Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, click here.

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• Oracle Tutor: XPDL conversion (and why you should care)

  - by mary.keane

  You may have noticed that the Oracle Business Process Converter feature in Tutor 14 supports "XPDL" conversion to Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite (BPA), Oracle Business Process Management Suite (BPM), and Oracle Tutor, and you may have briefly wondered "what is XPDL?" before you moved on to the Visio import feature (a very popular feature in Tutor 14). This posting is for those who do not yet understand (or care) about XPDL and process modeling. Many of us (and I'm including myself) have spent years working in the process definition arena: we've written procedures, designed systems and software to help others write procedures, and have been responsible for embedding policies and procedures into training material for employees. We've worked with tools such as Oracle Tutor, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Word, and UPK. Most of us have never worked with "modeling tools" before, and we certainly never had to understand BPMN. It's a brave new world in this arena, and companies desperately need people with policy and procedural system expertise to be able to work with system analysts so there is a seamless transfer of knowledge from IT to employees. When working with applications, a picture is worth a thousand words, so eventually you're going to need to understand and be able to work with business process models. XPDL is an acronym for XML Process Definition Language, and it is an interchange format for business process models. It allows you to take a BPMN model that was developed in one workflow application such as BizAgi and import it into another workflow application or a true BPMN management system such as Oracle BPM. Specifically, the XPDL format contains the graphical information of a model as well as any executable information. By using a common format, models can be moved from a basic modeling application used by business owners to applications used by system architects. Over 80 applications support the XPDL format, including MetaStorm ProVision, BEA ALBPM, BizAgi, and Tibco. I mention these applications because we have provided XSLT mapping files specifically for these vendors. Oracle Business Process Converter was designed with user extensibility in mind, and thus users can add their own XML files so that additional XPDL models from other vendors can be converted to BPM, BPA, and Oracle Tutor. Instructions on how to add your own files can be found in Appendix 4 of the Oracle Business Converter manual. Let's take a visual look at how this works. Here is an example of a model devloped in BizAgi: This model can be created by the average business user without a large learning curve, and it's a good start for the system analyst who will be adding web services as well as for the business manager who manages the process described in the model. By exporting this model as XPDL, the information can be converted into Oracle BPA and Oracle BPM as well as converted to Oracle Tutor to become the framework for a procedure. Through this conversion feature, one graphic illustration of a business process can be used by a system analyst, business analyst, business manager, and employee, as seen below. Model Converted to Tutor Procedure Below is the task section of the procedure after conversion from an XPDL file. Model converted to BPA Model converted to BPM End users still want step by step instructions on how to perform their jobs, so procedures (Oracle Tutor) and application simulations (UPK) are still a critical piece of the solution. But IT professionals need graphic descriptions of how the applications work, regardless of whether there are any tasks involving humans. Now there is a way to convert procedures (Oracle Tutor docx files) and basic models (XPDL files) so that business managers and system analysts can share process information. References Wikipedia XPDL. Workflow Management Coalition, XPDL Support and Resources Oracle Business Process Converter manual, Oracle Tutor 14 Oracle Business Process Management 11g If you have any XPDL conversion stories to share, we'd love to hear from you. Best wishes for the coming new year, Mary Keane, Senior Development Manager, Oracle Tutor and BPM

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• WebCenter Innovation Award Winners

  - by Michael Snow

  Of course, here on our WebCenter blog – we’d like to highlight and brag about our great WebCenter winners. The 2012 WebCenter Innovation Award Winners University of Louisville Location: Louisville, KY, USA Industry: Higher Education Fusion Middleware Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, WebLogic, Oracle BI, Oracle IdM University of Louisville is a state supported research university Statewide Informatics Network to improve public health The University of Louisville has implemented WebCenter as part of the LOUI (Louisville Informatics Institute) Initiative, a Statewide Informatics Network, which will improve public healthcare and lower cost through the use of novel technology and next generation analytics, decision support and innovative outcomes-based payment systems. ---------- News Limited Country/Region: Australia Industry: News/Media FMW Products: WebCenter Sites Single platform running websites for 50% of Australia's newspapers News Corp is running half of Australia's newspaper websites on this shared platform powered by Oracle WebCenter Sites and have overtaken their nearest competitors and are now leading in terms of monthly page impressions. At peak they have over 250 editors on the system publishing in real-time.Sites include: www.newsspace.com.au, www.news.com.au, www.theaustralian.com.au and many others ------ Life Technologies Corp. Country/Region: Carlsbad, CA, USAIndustry: Life SciencesFMW Products: WebCenter Portal, SOA Suite Life Technologies Corp. is a global biotechnology tools company dedicated to improving the human condition with innovative life science products. They were awarded an innovation award for their solution utilizing WebCenter Portal for remotely monitoring & repairing biotech instruments. They deployed WebCenter as a portal that accesses Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired.  The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers.  The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. ----- China Mobile Jiangsu China Mobile Jiangsu is one of the biggest subsidiaries of China Mobile. It has over 25,000 employees and 40 million mobile subscribers. Country/Region: Jiangsu, China Industry: Telecommunications FMW Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, SOA Suite, IdM They were awarded an Innovation Award for their new employee platform powered by WebCenter Portal is designed to serve their 25,000+ employees and help them drive collaboration & productivity. JSMCC (Chian Mobile Jiangsu) Employee Enterprise Portal and Collaboration Platform. It is one of the China Mobile’s most important IT innovation projects. The new platform is designed to serve for JSMCC’s 25000+ employees and to help them improve the working efficiency, changing their traditional working mode to social ways, encouraging employees on business collaboration and innovation. The solution is built on top of Oracle WebCenter Portal Framework and WebCenter Spaces while also leveraging Weblogic Server, UCM, OID, OAM, SES, IRM and Oracle Database 11g. By providing rich collaboration services, knowledge management services, sensitive document protection services, unified user identity management services, unified information search services and personalized information integration capabilities, the working efficiency of JSMCC employees has been greatly improved. Main Functionality : Information portal, office automation integration, personal space, group space, team collaboration with web2.0 services, unified search engine for multiple data sources, document management and protection. SSO for multiple platforms. -------- LADWP – Los Angeles Department for Water and Power Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the largest public utility company in United States with over 1.6 Million customers. LADWP provides water and power for millions of residential & commercial customers in Southern California. LADWP also bills most of these customers for sanitation services provided by another city department. Country/Region: US – Los Angeles, CA Industry: Public Utility FMW Products: WebCenter Portal, WebCenter Content, JDeveloper, SOA Suite, IdM The new infrastructure consists of: Oracle WebCenter Portal including mobile portal Oracle WebCenter Content for Content Management and Digital Asset Management (DAM) Oracle OAM (IDM, OVD, OAM) integrated with AD for enterprise identity management Oracle Siebel for CRM Oracle DB Oracle SOA Suite for integration of various subsystems and back end systems  The new portal's features include: Complete Graphical redesign based on best practices in UI Design for high usability Customer Self Service implemented through MyAccount (Bill Pay, Payment History, Bill History, Usage Analysis, Service Request Management) Financial Assistance Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Customer Rebate Programs (CRM, WebCenter) Turn On/Off/Transfer of services (Commercial & Residential) Outage Reporting eNotification (SMS, email) Multilingual (English & Spanish) – using WebCenter multi-language support Section 508 (ADA) Compliant Search – Using WebCenter SES (Secured Enterprise Search) Distributed Authorship in WebCenter Content Mobile Access (any Mobile Browser)

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• Browser Specific Extensions of HttpClient

  - by imran_ku07

          Introduction:                     REpresentational State Transfer (REST) causing/leaving a great impact on service/API development because it offers a way to access a service without requiring any specific library by embracing HTTP and its features. ASP.NET Web API makes it very easy to quickly build RESTful HTTP services. These HTTP services can be consumed by a variety of clients including browsers, devices, machines, etc. With .NET Framework 4.5, we can use HttpClient class to consume/send/receive RESTful HTTP services(for .NET Framework 4.0, HttpClient class is shipped as part of ASP.NET Web API). The HttpClient class provides a bunch of helper methods(for example, DeleteAsync, PostAsync, GetStringAsync, etc.) to consume a HTTP service very easily. ASP.NET Web API added some more extension methods(for example, PutAsJsonAsync, PutAsXmlAsync, etc) into HttpClient class to further simplify the usage. In addition, HttpClient is also an ideal choice for writing integration test for a RESTful HTTP service. Since a browser is a main client of any RESTful API, it is also important to test the HTTP service on a variety of browsers. RESTful service embraces HTTP headers and different browsers send different HTTP headers. So, I have created a package that will add overloads(with an additional Browser parameter) for almost all the helper methods of HttpClient class. In this article, I will show you how to use this package.           Description:                     Create/open your test project and install ImranB.SystemNetHttp.HttpClientExtensions NuGet package. Then, add this using statement on your class, using ImranB.SystemNetHttp;                     Then, you can start using any HttpClient helper method which include the additional Browser parameter. For example,  var client = new HttpClient(myserver); var task = client.GetAsync("http://domain/myapi", Browser.Chrome); task.Wait(); var response = task.Result; .                     Here is the definition  of Browser, public enum Browser { Firefox = 0, Chrome = 1, IE10 = 2, IE9 = 3, IE8 = 4, IE7 = 5, IE6 = 6, Safari = 7, Opera = 8, Maxthon = 9, }                     These extension methods will make it very easy to write browser specific integration test. It will also help HTTP service consumer to mimic the request sending behavior of a browser. This package source is available on github. So, you can grab the source and add some additional behavior on the top of these extensions.         Summary:                     Testing a REST API is an important aspect of service development and today, testing with a browser is crucial. In this article, I showed how to write integration test that will mimic the browser request sending behavior. I also showed an example. Hopefully you will enjoy this article too.

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• Sunshine after the iCloud release?

  - by Laila

  "Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators.  It is wonderful what a rename can do.  Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and  iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere.  I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe.  It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as  June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly  a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn.  On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Phil Factor

  Around twenty-five years ago, I was trying to solve the problem of recruiting suitable developers for a large business. I visited the local University (it was a Technical College then). My mission was to remind them that we were a large, local employer of technical people and to suggest that, as they were in the business of educating young people for a career in IT, we should work together. I anticipated a harmonious chat where we could suggest to them the idea of mentioning our name to some of their graduates. It didn’t go well. The academic staff displayed a degree of revulsion towards the whole topic of IT in the world of commerce that surprised me; tweed met charcoal-grey, trainers met black shoes. However, their antipathy to commerce was something we could have worked around, since few of their graduates were destined for a career as university lecturers. They asked me what sort of language skills we needed. I tried ducking the invidious task of naming computer languages, since I wanted recruits who were quick to adapt and learn, with a broad understanding of IT, including development methodologies, technologies, and data. However, they pressed the point and I ended up saying that we needed good working knowledge of C and BASIC, though FORTRAN and COBOL were, at the time, still useful. There was a ghastly silence. It was as if I’d recommended the beliefs and practices of the Bogomils of Bulgaria to a gathering of Cardinals. They stared at me severely, like owls, until the head of department broke the silence, informing me in clipped tones that they taught only Modula 2. Now, I wouldn’t blame you if at this point you hurriedly had to look up ‘Modula 2′ on Wikipedia. Based largely on Pascal, it was a specialist language for embedded systems, but I’ve never ever come across it in a commercial business application. Nevertheless, it was an excellent teaching language since it taught modules, scope control, multiprogramming and the advantages of encapsulating a set of related subprograms and data structures. As long as the course also taught how to transfer these skills to other, more useful languages, it was not necessarily a problem. I said as much, but they gleefully retorted that the biggest local employer, a defense contractor specializing in Radar and military technology, used nothing but Modula 2. “Why teach any other programming language when they will be using Modula 2 for all their working lives?” said a complacent lecturer. On hearing this, I made my excuses and left. There could be no meeting of minds. They were providing training in a specific computer language, not an education in IT. Twenty years later, I once more worked nearby and regularly passed the long-deserted ‘brownfield’ site of the erstwhile largest local employer; the end of the cold war had led to lean times for defense contractors. A digger was about to clear the rubble of the long demolished factory along with the accompanying growth of buddleia and thistles, in order to lay the infrastructure for ‘affordable housing’. Modula 2 was a distant memory. Either those employees had short working lives or they’d retrained in other languages. The University, by contrast, was thriving, but I wondered if their erstwhile graduates had ever cursed the narrow specialization of their training in IT, as they struggled with the unexpected variety of their subsequent careers.

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• Type of computer for a developer on the road

  - by nabucosound

  Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

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• Observing flow control idle time in TCP

  - by user12820842

  Previously I described how to observe congestion control strategies during transmission, and here I talked about TCP's sliding window approach for handling flow control on the receive side. A neat trick would now be to put the pieces together and ask the following question - how often is TCP transmission blocked by congestion control (send-side flow control) versus a zero-sized send window (which is the receiver saying it cannot process any more data)? So in effect we are asking whether the size of the receive window of the peer or the congestion control strategy may be sub-optimal. The result of such a problem would be that we have TCP data that we could be transmitting but we are not, potentially effecting throughput. So flow control is in effect: when the congestion window is less than or equal to the amount of bytes outstanding on the connection. We can derive this from args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna, i.e. the difference between the next sequence number to send and the lowest unacknowledged sequence number; and when the window in the TCP segment received is advertised as 0 We time from these events until we send new data (i.e. args[4]-tcp_seq = snxt value when window closes. Here's the script: #!/usr/sbin/dtrace -s #pragma D option quiet tcp:::send / (args[3]-tcps_snxt - args[3]-tcps_suna) = args[3]-tcps_cwnd / { cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = avg(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = stddev(timestamp - cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @numclosed["cwnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); cwndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; cwndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } tcp:::receive / args[4]-tcp_window == 0 && (args[4]-tcp_flags & (TH_SYN|TH_RST|TH_FIN)) == 0 / { swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = timestamp; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = args[3]-tcps_snxt; @numclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_saddr, args[4]-tcp_dport] = count(); } tcp:::send / swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] && args[4]-tcp_seq = swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] / { @meantimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = avg(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); @stddevtimeclosed["swnd", args[2]-ip_daddr, args[4]-tcp_sport] = stddev(timestamp - swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid]); swndclosed[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; swndsnxt[args[1]-cs_cid] = 0; } END { printf("%-6s %-20s %-8s %-25s %-8s %-8s\n", "Window", "Remote host", "Port", "TCP Avg WndClosed(ns)", "StdDev", "Num"); printa("%-6s %-20s %-8d %@-25d %@-8d %@-8d\n", @meantimeclosed, @stddevtimeclosed, @numclosed); } So this script will show us whether the peer's receive window size is preventing flow ("swnd" events) or whether congestion control is limiting flow ("cwnd" events). As an example I traced on a server with a large file transfer in progress via a webserver and with an active ssh connection running "find / -depth -print". Here is the output: ^C Window Remote host Port TCP Avg WndClosed(ns) StdDev Num cwnd 10.175.96.92 80 86064329 77311705 125 cwnd 10.175.96.92 22 122068522 151039669 81 So we see in this case, the congestion window closes 125 times for port 80 connections and 81 times for ssh. The average time the window is closed is 0.086sec for port 80 and 0.12sec for port 22. So if you wish to change congestion control algorithm in Oracle Solaris 11, a useful step may be to see if congestion really is an issue on your network. Scripts like the one posted above can help assess this, but it's worth reiterating that if congestion control is occuring, that's not necessarily a problem that needs fixing. Recall that congestion control is about controlling flow to prevent large-scale drops, so looking at congestion events in isolation doesn't tell us the whole story. For example, are we seeing more congestion events with one control algorithm, but more drops/retransmission with another? As always, it's best to start with measures of throughput and latency before arriving at a specific hypothesis such as "my congestion control algorithm is sub-optimal".

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• Learn Many Languages

  - by Jeff Foster

  My previous blog, Deliberate Practice, discussed the need for developers to “sharpen their pencil” continually, by setting aside time to learn how to tackle problems in different ways. However, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, a contested and somewhat-controversial concept from language theory, seems to hold reasonably true when applied to programming languages. It states that: “The structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers conceptualize their world.” If you’re constrained by a single programming language, the one that dominates your day job, then you only have the tools of that language at your disposal to think about and solve a problem. For example, if you’ve only ever worked with Java, you would never think of passing a function to a method. A good developer needs to learn many languages. You may never deploy them in production, you may never ship code with them, but by learning a new language, you’ll have new ideas that will transfer to your current “day-job” language. With the abundant choices in programming languages, how does one choose which to learn? Alan Perlis sums it up best. “A language that doesn‘t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing“ With that in mind, here’s a selection of languages that I think are worth learning and that have certainly changed the way I think about tackling programming problems. Clojure Clojure is a Lisp-based language running on the Java Virtual Machine. The unique property of Lisp is homoiconicity, which means that a Lisp program is a Lisp data structure, and vice-versa. Since we can treat Lisp programs as Lisp data structures, we can write our code generation in the same style as our code. This gives Lisp a uniquely powerful macro system, and makes it ideal for implementing domain specific languages. Clojure also makes software transactional memory a first-class citizen, giving us a new approach to concurrency and dealing with the problems of shared state. Haskell Haskell is a strongly typed, functional programming language. Haskell’s type system is far richer than C# or Java, and allows us to push more of our application logic to compile-time safety. If it compiles, it usually works! Haskell is also a lazy language – we can work with infinite data structures. For example, in a board game we can generate the complete game tree, even if there are billions of possibilities, because the values are computed only as they are needed. Erlang Erlang is a functional language with a strong emphasis on reliability. Erlang’s approach to concurrency uses message passing instead of shared variables, with strong support from both the language itself and the virtual machine. Processes are extremely lightweight, and garbage collection doesn’t require all processes to be paused at the same time, making it feasible for a single program to use millions of processes at once, all without the mental overhead of managing shared state. The Benefits of Multilingualism By studying new languages, even if you won’t ever get the chance to use them in production, you will find yourself open to new ideas and ways of coding in your main language. For example, studying Haskell has taught me that you can do so much more with types and has changed my programming style in C#. A type represents some state a program should have, and a type should not be able to represent an invalid state. I often find myself refactoring methods like this… void SomeMethod(bool doThis, bool doThat) { if (!(doThis ^ doThat)) throw new ArgumentException(“At least one arg should be true”); if (doThis) DoThis(); if (doThat) DoThat(); } …into a type-based solution, like this: enum Action { DoThis, DoThat, Both }; void SomeMethod(Action action) { if (action == Action.DoThis || action == Action.Both) DoThis(); if (action == Action.DoThat || action == Action.Both) DoThat(); } At this point, I’ve removed the runtime exception in favor of a compile-time check. This is a trivial example, but is just one of many ideas that I’ve taken from one language and implemented in another.

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• Test your internet connection - Emtel Fixed Broadband

  Already at the begin of April, I had a phone conversation with my representative at Emtel Ltd. about some upcoming issues due to the ongoing construction work in my neighbourhood. Unfortunately, they finally raised the house two levels above ours, and of course this has to have a negative impact on the visibility between the WiMAX outdoor unit on the roof and the aimed access point at Medine. So, today I had a technical team here to do a site survey and to come up with potential solutions. Short version: It doesn't look good after all. The site survey Well, the two technicians did their work properly, even re-arranged the antenna to check the connection with another end point down at La Preneuse. But no improvements. Looks like we are out of luck since the construction next door hasn't finished yet and at the moment, it even looks like they are planning to put at least one more level on top. I really wonder about the sanity of the responsible bodies at the local district council. But that's another story. Anyway, the outdoor unit was once again pointed towards Medine and properly fixed with new cable guides (air from the sea and rust...). Both of them did a good job and fine-tuned the reception signal to a mere 3 over 9; compared to the original 7 over 9 I had before the daily terror started. The site survey has been done, and now it's up to Emtel to come up with (better) solutions. Well, I wouldn't mind to have an unlimited, symmetric 3G/UMTS or even LTE connection. Let's see what they can do... Testing the connection There are several online sites available which offer you to check certain aspects of your internet connection. Personally, I'm used to speedtest.net and it works very well. I think it is good and necessary to check your connection from time to time, and only a couple of days ago, I posted the following on Emtel's wall at Facebook (21.05.2013 - 14:06 hrs): Dear Emtel, could you eventually provide an answer on the miserable results of SpeedTest? I chose Rose Hill (Hosted by Emtel Ltd.) as testing endpoint... Sadly, no response to this. Seems that the marketing department is not willing to deal with customers on Facebook. Okay, over at speedtest.net you can use their Flash-based test suite to check your connection to quite a number of servers of different providers world-wide. It's actually very interesting to see the results for different end points and to compare them to each other. The results Following are the results of Rose Hill (hosted by Emtel) and respectively Frankfurt, Germany (hosted by Vodafone DE): Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Rose Hill, Mauritius (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Speedtest.net result of 30.05.2013 between Flic en Flac and Frankfurt, Germany (Emtel - Fixed Broadband) Luckily, the results are quite similar in terms of connection speed; which is good. I'm currently on a WiMAX tariff called 'Classic Browsing 2', or Fixed Broadband as they call it now, which provides a symmetric line of 768 Kbps (or roughly 0.75 Mbps). In terms of downloads or uploads this means that I would be able to transfer files in either direction with approximately 96 KB/s. Frankly speaking, thanks to compression, my choice of browser and operating system I usually exceed this value and I have download rates up to 120 KB/s - not too bad after all. Only the ping times are a little bit of concern. Due to the difference in distance, or better said based on the number of hubs between the endpoints, they indicate the amount of time that it takes to send a package from your machine to the remote server and get a response back. A lower value is better, and usually the ping is less than 300 ms between Mauritius and Europe. The alternatives in Mauritius Not sure whether I should note this done because for my requirements there are no alternatives to Emtel WiMAX at the moment. It would be great to have your opinion on the situation of internet connectivity in Mauritius. Are there really alternatives? And if so, what are the conditions?

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