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  • Can't Miss Event: Oracle Coherence 12c Launch Webcast

    - by jeckels
    We're super-excited around here about the impending launch of Oracle Coherence 12c as part of the Cloud Application Foundation launch this month! We want you to join us for the Cloud Application Foundation launch event to learn more about Coherence's ability to deliver applications with a mission-critical cloud platform, enhance deployment options for high availability and simplify operations with integrated products and management. Scale your applications to meet mobile and cloud demands! Oracle Cloud Application Foundation Launch Including Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Coherence, Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle Development ToolsJuly 31st, 2013 10am Pacific Time >> Register now! (of course, it's free) This will be the first release of Coherence we're making available at the same time as an Oracle WebLogic Server release - and that's not a coincidence. One of the main focus areas of this launch is the operational simplicity that we want you to enjoy, and that includes a tight integration not only with WebLogic Server itself, but also with cloud management tools (Enterprise Manager) and developer technologies - like JDeveloper, Eclipse tools, ADF Mobile and more - to ensure you can be productive out of the box on day one. The word is, there are even some heavy-duty capabilities Coherence will be delivering around real-time data processing, elastic scalability, developer technology friendliness and even some deep integration with Oracle Database 12c, which is launching on July 10th. But, we're already giving away too much. We look forward to seeing you there!

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  • How to cover the widest range of computers when publishing?

    - by DevilWithin
    When you plan a game, or even when you already made a game, and its time to publish, you wonder how much of your audience is covered by the game technology demands. I'm directing this essentialy to casual games, as I constantly see people having old laptops and being unable to replace them. Laptops with integrated cards whose OpenGL version doesn't even support textures larger than 1024x1024. These people may be avid gamers as well, and a reasonable share of the audience to consider giving them the chance to play casual games, once they cannot play any blockbusters. As I've seen happening, a very "noticeable" example is Angry Birds. It's gameplay is merely casual (I think nobody disagrees here) and still, it uses so high resolution textures that at least OpenGL 2.0 or around is needed, which blocks away a lot of people. So, the actual question is: what is a good tradeoff for this issue? Would it be better to just sacrifice the texture resolution for everyone, but have more supported hardware? Would it be better to keep the high quality and just slice the textures into smaller ones, sacrificing the performance a little bit? What else? Any ideas about this topic are welcome for discussion.

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  • It's Raining Solaris Training

    - by rajeshr
    That the popularity of Solaris 11 is only growing is clear from how regular the training sessions have been around this product. It's such an excitement to be going around sharing knowledge on Solaris, more so to explore the nitty gritty of many new and evolving features. Trust me, it's only getting better! In the process, just like in the past I stumbled on several individuals, each teaching me a lesson or two. I'm grateful. And if I've managed to get over the laziness to come back to the web logs with a collection of class photos from the last couple of months, it's because of a sense of gratitude to all 'em in the picture below. Solaris 11 Network Administration Pilot Teach in Bangalore. Sun Identity Manager (n.k.a Oracle Waveset IDM) Deployment Fundamentals Training. I'm missing from the snap because these delegates sat well over 10,000 Kms away from where I taught this class from, but were kind enough to help me associate a face with the voice by sending me a group photograph. If you want to attend one such OU program cutting down the travel, try OU's Live Virtual Class (a.k.a LVC) . Transition to Solaris 11 in Mumbai. Solaris 11 Advanced Administration Session in Bangalore. Transition to Solaris 11 in Mumbai. Attending Gary Riseborough's Exadata Training at Singapore. Solaris 11 Advanced Administration Session in Bangalore. If only the participants of each LVC session belonged to the same location, there would've been additional three group photographs occupying this space! Thank you everyone for many many memorable moments.

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  • Automatic Generalization

    - by Nick Harrison
    I have been interested in functional programming since college. I played around a little with LISP back then, but I have not had an opportunity since then. Now that F# ships standard with VS 2010, I figured now is my chance. So, I was reading up on it a little over the weekend when I came across a very interesting topic. F# includes a concept called "Automatic Generalization". As I understand it, the compiler will look at your method and analyze how you are using parameters. It will automatically switch to a generic parameter if it is possible based on your usage. Wow! I am looking forward to playing with this. I have long been an advocate of using the most generic types possible especially when developing library classes. Use the highest level base class that you can get away with. Use an interface instead of a specific implementation. I don't advocate passing object around, but you get the idea. Tools like resharper, fxCop, and most static code analysis tools provide guidance to help you identify when a more generalized type is possible, but this is the first time I have heard about the compiler taking matters into its own hands. I like the sound of this. We'll see if it is a good idea or not. What are your thoughts? Am I missing the mark on what Automatic Generalization does in F#? How would this work in C#? Do you see any problems with this?

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  • How to manage drawing loop when changing render targets

    - by George Duckett
    I'm managing my game state by having a base GameScreen class with a Draw method. I then have (basically) a stack of GameScreens that I render. I render the bottom one first, as screens above might not completely cover the ones below. I now have a problem where one GameScreen changes render targets while doing its rendering. Anything the previous screens have drawn to the backbuffer is lost (as XNA emulates what happens on the xbox). I don't want to just set the backbuffer to preserve its contents as I want this to work on the xbox as well as PC. How should I manage this problem? A few ideas I've had: Render every GameScreen to its own render target, then render them all to the backbuffer. Create some kind of RenderAction queue where a game screen (and anything else I guess) could queue something to be rendered to the back buffer. They'd render whatever they wanted to any render target as normal, but if they wanted to render to the backbuffer they'd stick that in a queue which would get processed once all rendertarget rendering was done. Abstract away from render targets and backbuffers and have some way of representing the way graphics flows and transforms between render targets and have something manage/work out the correct rendering order (and render targets) given what rendering process needs as input and what it produces as output. I think each of my ideas have pros and cons and there are probably several other ways of approaching this general problem so I'm interested in finding out what solutions are out there.

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  • Why The Athene Group Chose Fusion CRM

    - by Tony Berk
    A guest post by Vikas Bhambri, Managing Partner, The Athene Group This year, The Athene Group (www.theathenegroup.com) celebrated our tenth anniversary. The company has accomplished a lot in ten years overcoming a number of hurdles and challenges to have grown organically to a 150+ person global company with offices in the US, UK, and India and customers in the US, Canada, and Europe. Now more than ever with the current global landscape from an economic and competitive standpoint it was vital that we make some changes to remain successful for the next ten years. There were two key initiatives that we discussed internally that would enable us to successfully accomplish this – collaboration and the concept of “insight to action”. With our existing Oracle CRM On Demand platform we had components of this but not the full depth and breadth that we were looking for. When we started to discuss Fusion CRM we immediately saw several next generation tools that would embrace these two objectives. For a consulting and development organization the collaboration required between business development and consulting delivery is as important as the collaboration required during the projects between the project delivery and account management teams. The Activity Streams functionality in Fusion CRM immediately addressed the communication of key discussion topics and exchanges around our clients. Of course when we saw the Oracle Social Network (which is part of our Fusion CRM roadmap) we were blown away. The combination OSN and our CRM is going to make us more effective as we discuss and work cohesively on client engagements – ensuring mutual success for both Athene and our clients. When we looked at “insight to action” we saw that we had a great platform when folks were at their desks, unfortunately a lot of our business development and consulting folks are on the road. The Fusion Mobile Sales and Fusion Outlook Desktop provide information to our teams when they are on the go. So that they can provide real-time information and react to real-time information provided by their peers. We are in the early stages of our transformative experience with Fusion CRM but we believe the platform along with our people and processes are going to help us achieve our goals in the future.

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  • Oracle Java Embedded Client 1.1 Released

    - by Roger Brinkley
    Yesterday an update release of Oracle Java Embedded Client (OJEC) 1.1 quietly slipped out door for general availability. Until last year it was pretty difficult to get your hands on either a Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC) for small devices or a Connected Device Configuration (CDC) for medium devices java implementation without a substantial initial commitment. But with the the release of OJWC (CLDC) and OJEC (CDC) last year that has changed. OJEC 1.1 is a binary distribution designed for installation on medium configurations which is a mid range processor requiring a  slow startup time, seamless upgrades, in a cost sensitive hardware environment  anywhere from 3.5mb to 8 mb. There are headless as well as headed versions available. It is intended for devices, such as Blu-­-ray Disc players, set-­-top boxes, residential gateways,VOIP phones, and similar. From a software point of view, OJEC is the Java runtime platform implementation of Connected Device Configuration (CDC v1.1, JSR-­-218), Foundation Profile (FP v1.1, JSR-­-219), and Personal Basis Profile (PBP v1.1, JSR-­-217)  and includes optional packages RMI (JSR 66), JDBC (JSR 169) and XML API for Java ME (JSR 280), and Java TV (JSR-­-927). New to this release is support for the XML API (JSR 280) and a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements, including an improved Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation for the x86 chipset architecture. The platforms supported include ArmV5, ArmV6/ArmV7, MIPS 32 74K, and X86 in headless mode. For embedded developers there are number of advantages to using Java and if you have shied away from the JavaME edition in the past I would encourage you to look into the updated version of OJEC 1.1.

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  • Does immutability entirely eliminate the need for locks in multi-processor programming?

    - by GlenPeterson
    Part 1 Clearly Immutability minimizes the need for locks in multi-processor programming, but does it eliminate that need, or are there instances where immutability alone is not enough? It seems to me that you can only defer processing and encapsulate state so long before most programs have to actually DO something. If a program performs actions on multiple processors, something needs to collect and aggregate the results. All this involves multi-process communication before, after, and possibly during some transformations. The start and end state of the machines are different. Can this always be done with no locks just by throwing out each object and creating a new one instead of changing the original (a crude view of immutability)? What cases still require locking? I'm interested in both the theoretical/academic answer and the practical/real-world answer. I know a lot of functional programmers like to talk about "no side effect" but in the "real world" everything has a side effect. Every processor click takes time and electricity and machine resources away from other processes. So I understand that there may be more than one perspective to answer this question from. If immutability is safe, given certain bounds or assumptions, I want to know what the borders of the "safety zone" are exactly. Some examples of possible boundaries: I/O Exceptions/errors Interfaces with programs written in other languages Interfaces with other machines (physical, virtual, or theoretical) Special thanks to @JimmaHoffa for his comment which started this question! Part 2 Multi-processor programming is often used as an optimization technique - to make some code run faster. When is it faster to use locks vs. immutable objects? Given the limits set out in Amdahl's Law, when can you achieve better over-all performance (with or without the garbage collector taken into account) with immutable objects vs. locking mutable ones? Summary I'm combining these two questions into one to try to get at where the bounding box is for Immutability as a solution to threading problems.

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  • Building Enterprise Smartphone App &ndash; Part 4: Application Development Considerations

    - by Tim Murphy
    This is the final part in a series of posts based on a talk I gave recently at the Chicago Information Technology Architects Group.  Feel free to leave feedback. Application Development Considerations Now we get to the actual building of your solutions.  What are the skills and resources that will be needed in order to develop a smartphone application in the enterprise? Language Knowledge One of the first things you need to consider when you are deciding which platform language do you either have the most in house skill base or can you easily acquire.  If you already have developers who know Java or C# you may want to use either Android or Windows Phone.  You should also take into consideration the market availability of developers.  If your key developer leaves how easy is it to find a knowledgeable replacement? A second consideration when it comes to programming languages is the qualities exposed by the languages of a particular platform.  How well does that development language and its associated frameworks support things like security and access to the features of the smartphone hardware?  This will play into your overall cost of ownership if you have to create this infrastructure on your own. Manage Limited Resources Everything is limited on a smartphone: battery, memory, processing power, network bandwidth.  When developing your applications you will have to keep your footprint as small as possible in every way.  This means not running unnecessary processes in the background that will drain the battery or pulling more data over the airwaves than you have to.  You also want to keep your on device in as compact a format as possible. Mobile Design Patterns There are a number of design patterns that have either come to life because of smartphone development or have been adapted for this use.  The main pattern in the Windows Phone environment is the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model).  This is great for overall application structure and separation of concerns.  The fun part is trying to keep that separation as pure as possible.  Many of the other patterns may or may not have strict definitions, but some that you need to be concerned with are push notification, asynchronous communication and offline data storage. Real estate is limited on smartphones and even tablets. You are also limited in the type of controls that can be represented in the UI. This means rethinking how you modularize your application. Typing is also much harder to do so you want to reduce this as much as possible.  This leads to UI patterns.  While not what we would traditionally think of as design patterns the guidance each platform has for UI design is critical to the success of your application.  If user find the application difficult navigate they will not use it. Development Process Because of the differences in development tools required, test devices and certification and deployment processes your teams will need to learn new way of working together.  This will include the need to integrate service contracts of back-end systems with mobile applications.  You will also want to make sure that you present consistency across different access points to corporate data.  Your web site may have more functionality than your smartphone application, but it should have a consistent core set of functionality.  This all requires greater communication between sub-teams of your developers. Testing Process Testing of smartphone apps has a lot more to do with what happens when you lose connectivity or if the user navigates away from your application. There are a lot more opportunities for the user or the device to perform disruptive acts.  This should be your main testing concentration aside from the main business requirements.  You will need to do things like setting the phone to airplane mode and seeing what the application does in order to weed out any gaps in your handling communication interruptions. Need For Outside Experts Since this is a development area that is new to most companies the need for experts is a lot greater. Whether these are consultants, vendor representatives or just development community forums you will need to establish expert contacts. Nothing is more dangerous for your project timelines than a lack of knowledge.  Make sure you know who to call to avoid lengthy delays in your project because of knowledge gaps. Security Security has to be a major concern for enterprise applications. You aren't dealing with just someone's game standings. You are dealing with a companies intellectual property and competitive advantage. As such you need to start by limiting access to the application itself.  Once the user is in the app you need to ensure that the data is secure at all times.  This includes both local storage and across the wire.  This means if a platform doesn’t natively support encryption for these functions you will need to find alternatives to secure your data.  You also need to keep secret (encryption) keys obfuscated or locked away outside of the application. People can disassemble the code otherwise and break your encryption. Offline Capabilities As we discussed earlier one your biggest concerns is not having connectivity.  Because of this a good portion of your code may be dedicated to handling loss of connection and reconnection situations.  What do you do if you lose the network?  Back up all your transactions and store of any supporting data so that operations can continue off line. In order to support this you will need to determine the available flat file or local data base capabilities of the platform.  Any failed transactions will need to support a retry mechanism whether it is automatic or user initiated.  This also includes your services since they will need to be able to roll back partially completed transactions.  What ever you do, don’t ignore this area when you are designing your system. Deployment Each platform has different deployment capabilities. Some are more suited to enterprise situations than others. Apple's approach is probably the most mature at the moment. Prior to the current generation of smartphone platforms it would have been Windows CE. Windows Phone 7 has the limitation that the app has to be distributed through the same network as public facing applications. You mark them as private which means that they are only accessible by a direct URL. Unfortunately this does not make them undiscoverable (although it is very difficult). This will change with Windows Phone 8 where companies will be able to certify their own applications and distribute them.  Given this Windows Phone applications need to be more diligent with application access in order to keep them restricted to the company's employees. My understanding of the Android deployment schemes is that it is much less standardized then either iOS or Windows Phone. Someone would have to confirm or deny that for me though since I have not yet put the time into researching this platform further. Given my limited exposure to the iOS and Android platforms I have not been able to confirm this, but there are varying degrees of user involvement to install and keep applications updated. At one extreme the user just goes to a website to do the install and in other case they may need to download files and perform steps to install them. Future Bluetooth Today we use Bluetooth for keyboards, mice and headsets.  In the future it could be used to interrogate car computers or manufacturing systems or possibly retail machines by service techs.  This would open smartphones to greater use as a almost a Star Trek Tricorder.  You would get you all your data as well as being able to use it as a universal remote for just about any device or machine. Better corporation controlled deployment At least in the Windows Phone world the upcoming release of Windows Phone 8 will include a private certification and deployment option that is currently not available with Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We currently have to run the apps through the Marketplace certification process and use a targeted distribution method. Platform independent approaches HTML5 and JavaScript with Web Service has become a popular topic lately for not only creating flexible web site, but also creating cross platform mobile applications.  I’m not yet convinced that this lowest common denominator approach is viable in most cases, but it does have it’s place and seems to be growing.  Be sure to keep an eye on it. Summary From my perspective enterprise smartphone applications can offer a great competitive advantage to many companies.  They are not cheap to build and should be approached cautiously.  Understand the factors I have outlined in this series, do you due diligence and see if there is a portion of your business that can benefit from the mobile experience. del.icio.us Tags: Architecture,Smartphones,Windows Phone,iOS,Android

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  • Should I stay in my degree or take an opportunity for management experience?

    - by Adam
    I've read a couple other post along these lines and they've been helpful but I'm wondering if my case is any different. I've been working towards my CS degree while working part time in a programming job. I'm now about two years away from getting my degree and was just offered a management position at my job. This would mean that I have to work full-time at my job and I can't really work towards my degree anymore in person. My school doesn't really offer CS classes after hours nor online. It seems that getting a degree is very important from the other post that I read. Does having management experience trump that? I'm currently leaning towards taking the job and finding some sort of online degree. Also my school only offers a business degree online, could I just get this in place. Does the type of degree really matter? For some jobs it's not the type of degree just that you have one, is there any merit for this in the programming industry? Thanks :)

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  • Upcoming events : OBUG Connect Conference 2012

    - by Maria Colgan
    The Oracle Benelux User Group (OBUG) have given me an amazing opportunity to present a one day Optimizer workshop at their annual Connect Conference in Maastricht on April 24th. The workshop will run as one of the parallel tracks at the conference and consists of three 45 minute sessions. Each session can be attended stand alone but they will build on each other to allow someone new to the Oracle Optimizer or SQL tuning to come away from the conference with a better understanding of how the Optimizer works and what techniques they should deploy to tune their SQL. Below is a brief description of each of the sessions Session 7 - 11:30 am Oracle Optimizer: Understanding Optimizer StatisticsThe workshop opens with a discussion on Optimizer statistics and the features introduced in Oracle Database 11g to improve the quality and efficiency of statistics-gathering. The session will also provide strategies for managing statistics in various database environments. Session 27 -  14:30 pm Oracle Optimizer: Explain the Explain PlanThe workshop will continue with a detailed examination of the different aspects of an execution plan, from selectivity to parallel execution, and explains what information you should be gleaning from the plan. Session 47 -  15:45 pm Top Tips to get Optimal Execution Plans Finally I will show you how to identify and resolving the most common SQL execution performance problems, such as poor cardinality estimations, bind peeking issues, and selecting the wrong access method.   Hopefully I will see you there! +Maria Colgan

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  • The Oracle Platform

    - by Naresh Persaud
    Today’s enterprises typically create identity management infrastructures using ad-hoc, multiple point solutions. Relying on point solutions introduces complexity and high cost of ownership leading many organizations to rethink this approach. In a recent worldwide study of 160 companies conducted by Aberdeen Research, there was a discernible shift in this trend as businesses are now looking to move away from the point solution approach from multiple vendors and adopt an integrated platform approach. By deploying a comprehensive identity and access management strategy using a single platform, companies are saving as much as 48% in IT costs, while reducing audit deficiencies by nearly 35%. According to Aberdeen's research, choosing an integrated suite or “platform” of solutions for Identity Management from a single vendor can have many advantages over choosing “point solutions” from multiple vendors. The Oracle Identity Management Platform is uniquely designed to offer several compelling benefits to our customers.  Shared Services: Instead of separate solutions for - Administration, Authentication, Authorization, Audit and so on–  Oracle Identity Management offers a set of share services that allows these services to be consumed by each component in the stack and by developers of new applications  Actionable Intelligence: The most compelling benefit of the Oracle platform is ” Actionable intelligence” which means if there is a compliance violation, the same platform can fix it. And If a user is logging in from an un-trusted device or we detect an attack and act proactively on that information. Suite Interoperability: With the oracle platform the components all connect and integrated with each other. So if an organization purchase the platform for provisioning and wants to manage access, then the same platform can offer access management which leads to cost savings. Extensible and Configurable: With point solutions – you typically get limited ability to extend the tool to address custom requirements. But with the Oracle platform all of the components have a common way to extend the UI and behavior Find out more about the Oracle Platform approach in this presentation. Platform approach-series-the oracleplatform-final View more PowerPoint from OracleIDM

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  • What is the point of dynamic allocation in C++?

    - by Aerovistae
    I really have never understood it at all. I can do it, but I just don't get why I would want to. For instance, I was programming a game yesterday, and I set up an array of pointers to dynamically allocated little enemies in the game, then passed it to a function which updates their positions. When I ran the game, I got one of those nondescript assertion errors, something about a memory block not existing, I don't know. It was a run-time error, so it didn't say where the problem was. So I just said screw it and rewrote it with static instantiation, i.e.: while(n<4) { Enemy tempEnemy = Enemy(3, 4); enemyVector.push_back(tempEnemy); n++; } updatePositions(&enemyVector); And it immediately worked perfectly. Now sure, some of you may be thinking something to the effect of "Maybe if you knew what you were doing," or perhaps "n00b can't use pointers L0L," but frankly, you really can't deny that they make things way overcomplicated, hence most modern languages have done away with them entirely. But please-- someone -- What IS the point of dynamic allocation? What advantage does it afford? Why would I ever not do what I just did in the above example?

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  • DHCP-server doesn't start at boot because of wrong startup order

    - by stolsvik
    Apparently the isc-dhcp-server is started too early in the boot sequence, it states that it has nothing to do. If I just log directly in as root and start it using the init.d-script, it starts normally. My setup is basically an utterly standard router, with an eth0 on the inet side, and an eth1 on the lan side. However, I've defined a bridge instead of the eth1 for the lan-side. Thus, the lan-part of the network isn't up until the bridge is up. I currently believe that the dhcp server is brought up before the bridge is brought up, probably because the bridge is brought up with the 'networking' task, while the eth's are taken up with the 'network-interface' tasks - which are run earlier. (also, the bridge takes a small age to get up compared to the eth's). If I do take away the bridge config, instead using eth1 directly for the lan side, things work. (However, judging by syslog, things are still tight.) Ideas of how the get DHCP to start later? (The reason for the bridge, is to be able to use KVM with bridged networking..)

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  • Priority Manager&ndash;Part 1- Laying out the plan

    - by Patrick Liekhus
    Now that we have shown the EDMX with XPO/XAF and how use SpecFlow and BDD to run EasyTest scripts, let’s put it all together and show the evolution of a project using all the tools combined. I have a simple project that I use to track my priorities throughout the day.  It uses some of Stephen Covey’s principles from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  The idea is to write down all your priorities the night before and rank them.  This way when you get started tomorrow you will have your list of priorities.  Now it’s not that new things won’t appear tomorrow and reprioritize your list, but at least now you can track them.  My idea is to create a project that will allow you manage your list from your desktop, a web browser or your mobile device.  This way your list is never too far away.  I will layout the data model and the additional concepts as time progresses. My goal is to show the power of all of these tools combined and I thought the best way would be to build a project in sequence.  I have had this idea for quite some time so let’s get it completed with the outline below. Here is the outline of the series of post in the near future: Part 2 – Modeling the Business Objects Part 3 – Changing XAF Default Properties Part 4 – Advanced Settings within Liekhus EDMX/XAF Tool Part 5 – Custom Business Rules Part 6 – Unit Testing Our Implementation Part 7 – Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and SpecFlow Tests Part 8 – Using the Windows Application Part 9 – Using the Web Application Part 10 – Exposing OData from our Project Part 11 – Consuming OData with Excel PowerPivot Part 12 – Consuming OData with iOS Part 13 – Consuming OData with Android Part 14 – What’s Next I hope this helps outline what to expect.  I anticipate that I will have additional topics mixed in there but I plan on getting this outline completed within the next several weeks.  Thanks

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  • Windows 8 Developer Camp - Raleigh September 25th

    - by Jim Duffy
    Time is ticking away and the time to act is now! How's that for some motivation? :-)  Microsoft Developer Evangelist Brian Hitney and I want to help you get your app in the store in time for the October 26 Windows 8 launch. Come join us on Tuesday, September 25, at 9:00 AM in the Microsoft RTP offices to learn how simple it can be to construct a world class Windows 8 application. Don't think you can be ready to join the Windows 8 launch? Come anyway. You might be surprised. Don't have any idea what kind of app to build? Come anyway. They're are plenty of places to look for inspiration. Either way you can learn what it takes to create or tune an app for Windows 8 and publish it in the Windows App Store. Learn more about this free event on the registration page. Registration is now open and space is limited. Have a day.

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  • Simple Architecture Verification

    - by Jean Carlos Suárez Marranzini
    I just made an architecture for an application with the function of scoring, saving and loading tennis games. The architecture has 2 kinds of elements: components & layers. Components: Standalone elements that can be consumed by other components or by layers. They might also consume functionality from the model/bottom layer. Layers: Software components whose functionality rests on previous layers (except for the model layer). -Layers: -Models: Data and it's behavior. -Controllers: A layer that allows interaction between the views and the models. -Views: The presentation layer for interacting with the user. -Components: -Persistence: Makes sure the game data can be stored away for later retrieval. -Time Machine: Records changes in the game through time so it's possible to navigate the game back and forth. -Settings: Contains the settings that determine how some of the game logic will apply. -Game Engine: Contains all the game logic, which it applies to the game data to determine the path the game should take. This is an image of the architecture (I don't have enough rep to post images): http://i49.tinypic.com/35lt5a9.png The requierements which this architecture should satisfy are the following: Save & load games. Move through game history and see how the scoreboard changes as the game evolves. Tie-breaks must be properly managed. Games must be classified by hit-type. Every point can be modified. Match name and player names must be stored. Game logic must be configurable by the user. I would really appreciate any kind of advice or comments on this architecture. To see if it is well built and makes sense as a whole. I took the idea from this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller

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  • My Feelings About Microsoft Surface

    - by Valter Minute
    Advice: read the title carefully, I’m talking about “feelings” and not about advanced technical points proved in a scientific and objective way I still haven’t had a chance to play with a MS Surface tablet (I would love to, of course) and so my ideas just came from reading different articles on the net and MS official statements. Remember also that the MVP motto begins with “Independent” (“Independent Experts. Real World Answers.”) and this is just my humble opinion about a product and a technology. I know that, being an MS MVP you can be called an “MS-fanboy”, I don’t care, I hope that people can appreciate my opinion, even if it doesn’t match theirs. The “Surface” brand can be confusing for techies that knew the “original” surface concept but I think that will be a fresh new brand name for most of the people out there. But marketing department are here to confuse people… so I can understand this “recycle” of an existing name. So Microsoft is entering the hardware arena… for me this is good news. Microsoft developed some nice hardware in the past: the xbox, zune (even if the commercial success was quite limited) and, last but not least, the two arc mices (old and new model) that I use and appreciate. In the past Microsoft worked with OEMs and that model lead to good and bad things. Good thing (for microsoft, at least) is market domination by windows-based PCs that only in the last years has been reduced by the return of the Mac and tablets. Google is also moving in the hardware business with its acquisition of Motorola, and Apple leveraged his control of both the hardware and software sides to develop innovative products. Microsoft can scare OEMs and make them fly away from windows (but where?) or just lead the pack, showing how devices should be designed to compete in the market and bring back some of the innovation that disappeared from recent PC products (look at the shelves of your favorite electronics store and try to distinguish a laptop between the huge mass of anonymous PCs on displays… only Macs shine out there…). Having to compete with MS “official” hardware will force OEMs to develop better product and bring back some real competition in a market that was ruled only by prices (the lower the better even when that means low quality) and no innovative features at all (when it was the last time that a new PC surprised you?). Moving into a new market is a big and risky move, but with Windows 8 Microsoft is playing a crucial move for its future, trying to be back in the innovation run against apple and google. MS can’t afford to fail this time. I saw the new devices (the WinRT and Pro) and the specifications are scarce, misleading and confusing. The first impression is that the device looks like an iPad with a nice keyboard cover… Using “HD” and “full HD” to define display resolution instead of using the real figures and reviving the “ClearType” brand (now dead on Win8 as reported here and missed by people who hate to read text on displays, like myself) without providing clear figures (couldn’t you count those damned pixels?) seems to imply that MS was caught by surprise by apple recent “retina” displays that brought very high definition screens on tablets.Also there are no specifications about the processors used (even if some sources report NVidia Tegra for the ARM tablet and i5 for the x86 one) and expected battery life (a critical point for tablets and the point that killed Windows7 x86 based tablets). Also nothing about the price, and this will be another critical point because other platform out there already provide lots of applications and have a good user base, if MS want to enter this market tablets pricing must be competitive. There are some expansion ports (SD and USB), so no fixed storage model (even if the specs talks about 32-64GB for RT and 128-256GB for pro). I like this and don’t like the apple model where flash memory (that it’s dirt cheap used in thumdrives or SD cards) is as expensive as gold (or cocaine to have a more accurate per gram measurement) when mounted inside a tablet/phone. For big files you’ll be able to use external media and an SD card could be used to store files that don’t require super-fast SSD-like access times, I hope. To be honest I really don’t like the marketplace model and the limitation of Windows RT APIs (no local database? from a company that based a good share of its success on VB6+Access!) and lack of desktop support on the ARM (even if the support is here and has been used to port office). It’s a step toward the consumer market (where competitors are making big money), but may impact enterprise (and embedded) users that may not appreciate Windows 8 new UI or the limitations of the new app model (if you aren’t connected you are dead ). Not having compatibility with the desktop will require brand new applications and honestly made all the CPU cycles spent to convert .NET IL into real machine code in the past like a huge waste of time… as soon as a new processor architecture is supported by Windows you still have to rewrite part of your application (and MS is pushing HTML5+JS and native code more than .NET in my perception). On the other side I believe that the development experience provided by Visual Studio is still miles (or kilometres) ahead of the competition and even the all-uppercase menu of VS2012 hasn’t changed this situation. The new metro UI got mixed reviews. On my side I should say that is very pleasant to use on a touch screen, I like the minimalist design (even if sometimes is too minimal and hides stuff that, in my opinion, should be visible) but I should also say that using it with mouse and keyboard is like trying to pick your nose with boxing gloves… Metro is also very interesting for embedded devices where touch screen usage is quite common and where having an application taking all the screen is the norm. For devices like kiosks, vending machines etc. this kind of UI can be a great selling point. I don’t need a new tablet (to be honest I’m pretty happy with my wife’s iPad and with my PC), but I may change my opinion after having a chance to play a little bit with those new devices and understand what’s hidden under all this mysterious and generic announcements and specifications!

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  • How do I stop sound coming from my speakers with a faulty headphone socket?

    - by Andy
    On my laptop, I have a faulty headphone socket, so when I insert headphones into it, the speakers do not mute. I can confirm that this problem is caused by faulty hardware and not software as when I twist the headphone jack, the speakers come on and off according to the movements. On previous versions of Ubuntu, I worked around this problem by going into alsamixer and disabling "Auto-Mute Mode", and then going into the sound settings and choosing "Analog Headphones". However, on 12.04, no such option exists, rendering my headphones unusable with no way to work around the problem. I momentarily thought I had this problem fixed when I installed PulseAudio Volume Control from the Software Centre. I selected the Output Devices tab, and under "Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo" I selected "Headphones" for the port. However, this almost randomly seems to change back to "Speakers", despite me setting "Auto-Mute Mode" as disabled. Basically, I would like a way to permanently mute the speakers so only the headphones will play sound, without it losing my settings. It is ridiculous that such a simple setting has been taken away to "simplify" the user interface.

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  • Game programming basics under Windows

    - by dreta
    I've been trying to learn some Windows programming using the Win32 API. Now, i'm used to working with the OS layer being abstracted away, mostly thanks to libraries like SFML or Allegro. Could you guys help me out and tell me if i'm thinking right here. The place for my gameloop is where i'm reading the messages? while (TRUE) { if (PeekMessage (&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_REMOVE)) { if (msg.message == WM_QUIT) break ; TranslateMessage (&msg) ; DispatchMessage (&msg) ; } else { //my game loop goes here } } Now the slightly bigger issue, that is, drawing. Do i run my drawing where i normaly do it, inside the game loop after the game logic? Or do i do it when WM_PAIN is being called and just call InvalidateRect (hwnd, NULL, TRUE); when i want to draw? This does feel weird, the WM_PAINT is a queued message, so i don't know for sure when it'll be called. So if i wanted to avoid this, do i just get the device handle inside the game loop and only ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); in the WM_PAINT case (beside the ValidateRect (hwnd, NULL); called after drawing in the game loop)? Actually, now that i think about it, do i even need WM_PAINT in this situation or can i skip it and let DefWindowProc handle it (does it validate the screen if WM_PAINT isn't processed)? If this is any important, i'm setting up my code for OpenGL.

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  • Agile Data Book from O'Reilly Media

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2013/07/01/153309.aspxAs part of my ongoing self-education and approaching of some free time, yeah, both is a must for every IT person and geek! I have carefully examined the latest trends in the Computersphere with whatever tools I had at my disposal (nothing really fancy was used) and came to a conclusion that for a database pro the *hottest* topic today is undoubtedly the #BigData and all the rapidly growing and spawning ecosystem around it. Having recently immersed myself into the NoSQL world (let me tell here right away NoSQL means Not Only SQL) one book really stood out of the crowd: Book site: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025054.doDespite being a new book I am sure it will end up on the tables of many Big Data Generalists.In a few dozen words, it is primarily for two reasons:1) The author understands that a  typical business today cannot wait for a Data Scientist for too long to deliver results demanding as usual a very quick turnaround on investments (ROI), and 2) The book covers all the needed and proven modern brick and mortar offerings to get the job done by a relatively newcomer to the Big Data World.It certainly enables such a professional to grow and expand based on the acquired knowledge, and one can truly do it very fast.

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  • At what point would you drop some of your principles of software development for the sake of more money?

    - by MeshMan
    I'd like to throw this question out there to interestingly see where the medium is. I'm going to admit that in my last 12 months, I picked up TDD and a lot of the Agile values in software development. I was so overwhelmed with how much better my development of software became that I would never drop them out of principle. Until...I was offered a contracting role that doubled my take home pay for the year. The company I joined didn't follow any specific methodology, the team hadn't heard of anything like code smells, SOLID, etc., and I certainly wasn't going to get away with spending time doing TDD if the team had never even seen unit testing in practice. Am I a sell out? No, not completely... Code will always been written "cleanly" (as per Uncle Bob's teachings) and the principles of SOLID will always be applied to the code that I write as they are needed. Testing was dropped for me though, the company couldn't afford to have such a unknown handed to the team who quite frankly, even I did create test frameworks, they would never use/maintain the test framework correctly. Using that as an example, what point would you say a developer should never drop his craftsmanship principles for the sake of money/other benefits to them personally? I understand that this can be a very personal opinion on how concerned one is to their own needs, business needs, and the sake of craftsmanship etc. But one can consider that for example testing can be dropped if the company decided they would rather have a test team, than rather understand unit testing in programming, would that be something you could forgive yourself for like I did? So given that there is something you would drop, there usually should be an equal cost in the business that makes up for what you drop - hopefully, unless of course you are pretty much out for lining your own pockets and not community/social collaborating ;). Double your money, go back to RAD? Or walk on, and look for someone doing Agile, and never look back...

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  • good literature for teaching object oriented thinking in C [closed]

    - by Dipan Mehta
    Quite often C is the primary platform for the development. And when things are large scale, I have seen partitioning of the system as different objects is quite a natural thing. Some or many of the object orientated analysis and design principles are used here very well. This is not a debate question about whether or not C is a good candidate for object oriented programming or not. This is also NOT a question how to do OO in C. You can refer to this question and there are probably many such citations. As far as I am concerned, I have learned some of this things while working with many open source and commercial projects. (libjpeg, ffmpeg, Gstreamer which is based on GObject). I can probably extend a few references that explains some of these concepts such as - 1. Event Helix article, 2. Linux Mag article 3. one of my answers which links Schreiner's reference. Unfortunately, when we induct younger folks, it seems too hard to make them learn all of it the hard way. Usually, when we say it's C, a general reaction is to throw away all of the "Object thinking". Looking for help extending above references from those who have been in the similar areas of work. Are there any good formal literature that explains how Object thinking can be made to use while you are working in C? I have seen tons of book on general "object oriented paradigms" but they all focus on advanced languages mostly not in C. You see most C books - but most focus only on the syntax and the obfuscated corners of C and that's it. There are hardly ANY good reference, specially books or any systematic (I mean formal) literature on how to apply OO in C. This is very surprising given that so many large scale open source projects use C which are truly using this very well; but we hardly see any good formal literature on this subject.

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  • Happy Tau Day! (Or: How Some Mathematicians Think We Should Retire Pi) [Video]

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    When you were in school you learned all about Pi and its relationship to circles and turn-based geometry. Some mathematicians are rallying for a new lesson, on about Tau. Michael Hartl is a mathematician on a mission, a mission to get people away from using Pi and to start using Tau. His manifesto opens: Welcome to The Tau Manifesto. This manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice of circle constant is p—but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article “p Is Wrong!”,1 p is wrong. It’s time to set things right. Why is Pi wrong? Among the arguments is that Tau is the ration of a circumference to the radius of a circle and defining circles by their radius is more natural and that Pi is a 2-factor number but with Tau everything is based of a single unit–three quarters of a turn around a Tau-defined circle is simply three quarters of a Tau radian. Watch the video above to see the Tau sequence (which begins 6.2831853071…) turned into a musical composition. For more information about Tau hit up the link below to read the manifesto. The Tau Manifesto [TauDay] HTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)What is a Histogram, and How Can I Use it to Improve My Photos?

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  • Office arangement - comfort vs. teamwork?

    - by finrod
    Our team works in an open-space office. Luckily the cubicles are quite big (L shaped tables for everyone!), there is quite a lot of space so we are not sandwiched. Without going into further detail, there are comfortable spots (window), normal spots and stupid spots (near the corridor). Until recently, the development team of twelve engineers was seated so that all types of spots were occupied and we were all close together. In the old arrangement, verbal communication was very easy - half of the team was withing talking distance. The other half was like ten steps away. Often times I could ask, discuss, solve problems without leaving the cube. Most of the communication is work related, no bullshit or mental masturbation that would unnecessarily distract others. Now we have moved to another part of the building and have larger space to occupy. At this point, everyone could pick their spot. Naturally all stupid spots are left empty (for the poor newcomers to occupy bwehaha). In the new arrangement, the development team is stretched across the floor and some of the key engineers are seated 'far' from each other - definitely not within talking distance. I have yet to experience how this works out but am getting concerned that team work and communication may have been traded for personal comfort. Finally the questions... What do you think is better office arrangement? Such that allows for free verbal communication but trading for some developer's comfort, or such that potentially hinders verbal communication but makes developer's more comfortable in their spot? Or maybe it does not matter at all and we will evolve to be efficient in any arrangement? What is your personal experience? Note - yes I read books and posts how workplace is important in our job. However in this case - we are all still in open space and the difference between the different spots are not really groundbreaking. So I'm thinking the little comfort that few developers gain is not worth the loss of easy communication.

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