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Local dns for testing websites using mobile devices

- by Morpheu5

Hi. I have no idea where to start from so sorry in advance if this topic has already been discussed. I usually develop web sites using my laptop as a development server, and recently I needed to test a web site using various mobile devices that can connect via wifi. Having no real AP, I set up a ad-hoc network using my laptop's wireless card and the devices can correctly browse the Internet and access the laptop's web server. The setup is as follows: subnet: 192.168.1.0/24 gateway to the Internet (wired adsl router/modem): 192.168.1.1 laptop: 192.168.1.64 (eth0, wired if connected to the gateway) and 192.168.1.32 (eth1, wifi if somewhat bridged to eth0) mobile devices (same for all, I only use one of them at any time for simplicity): 192.168.1.11 with default gw 192.168.1.1 Now, if I open either 192.168.1.32 or 192.168.1.64 from the mobile devices, I correctly get the default host of my Apache configuration. However I usually work with virtual hosts for many practical reasons, one of which being Drupal's peculiar implementation of multi-sites. For those who don't know how this works, Drupal takes the request's hostname and searches into its sites/ subdirectories for an appropriate configuration file. So, for example, suppose I request www.example.com, then Drupal would search for a config file in the following directories: sites/www.example.com/ sites/example.com/ sites/com/ sites/default/ So I decided to adopt the following style of virtual hosts: if the website I'm working on will be accessible using www.example.com I set up a sites/www.example.com/ directory and create a virtual host for local.www.example.com so Drupal have no trouble finding it. I've been told this is suboptimal from a dns point of view since I'd have to create an authoritative entry for example.com and turn Bind on only when I'm supposed to access the local copy, which is weird. However, if this is the only path I can follow, I still have some problems with Bind's configuration, as I couldn't find any guide that tells me in a clear, noob-friendly way, how to set up such an entry. On the other hand, I was wondering if I could set up an authoritative entry for local, so I could access www.example.com.local and tell in some way (which I don't even know if this is possible) Apache to put www.example.com instead of www.example.com.local in the relevant environment variable. Anyway, I have a last problem, sort of: when I launch Bind in debug mode with high verbosity, and make 192.168.1.32 as the primary dns for the devices, the output doesn't say anything about requests being made from the devices to Bind, so I'm not even sure it comes into play. As you can see, I'm a complete noob at these matters, but I'm eager to learn, so any help/pointer will be appreciated.

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Scriptaculous Shaking Effect Problem

- by TheOnly92

The scriptaculous shaking effect somehow produce some bugs for Webkit browsers, including Chrome and Safari. When shaking, the element will shift to the top left of the screen covering everything. An example code is given as below, are there any ways of solving this? <html> <head> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.1/prototype.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.3/scriptaculous.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.3/scriptaculous.js?load=effects'></script> </head> <body> <div style="z-index: 20000; position: fixed; display: block; bottom: 10px; right: 10px; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: white;" id="floating_text"> <p>This should be some floating text.</p> <p>Some more floating text.</p> </div> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer dui ligula, tempus adipiscing posuere id, sollicitudin sed nulla. Sed neque diam, volutpat non interdum vel, pellentesque vitae lorem. Vivamus et leo risus. Fusce at nunc nulla, non ultricies elit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam pulvinar mi at purus laoreet eu varius nisl laoreet. Mauris lobortis sapien diam. Maecenas arcu est, ullamcorper fringilla placerat nec, semper ut arcu. Curabitur metus nisl, ornare nec posuere at, tincidunt tempor nisi. Ut ut est risus. Curabitur elit urna, sagittis sagittis cursus quis, accumsan eget nulla. Donec odio ante, rutrum at fermentum vel, tempus gravida odio. Quisque a ante a urna vehicula posuere ac ut orci. Integer luctus sem et justo condimentum consequat. Phasellus pharetra malesuada velit, et commodo arcu imperdiet vitae. Suspendisse vitae risus orci. Maecenas massa tortor, sodales ut luctus ac, lacinia vitae sapien. Vestibulum sit amet rutrum est. Nullam magna erat, semper a volutpat id, porta sed nisl.</p> <p>Praesent nec consectetur sapien. Integer mollis libero a odio pharetra vulputate. Donec mattis consequat arcu, vel ultricies orci imperdiet sit amet. Mauris sit amet tellus libero. Morbi ac venenatis ligula. Cras tellus neque, porttitor sit amet hendrerit nec, ornare quis tellus. Nam iaculis mi at mi bibendum at commodo justo pretium. Ut in nibh non diam hendrerit fermentum a ut odio. Curabitur lorem turpis, tincidunt et rhoncus et, pulvinar a metus. Vestibulum a quam sit amet arcu condimentum cursus vitae feugiat lectus. Sed ut lorem tellus, non sagittis enim. Curabitur lectus eros, commodo a elementum et, molestie eget est. Donec ullamcorper, arcu nec volutpat auctor, sem odio interdum tellus, nec volutpat lacus libero at nisl. Aliquam metus sapien, aliquam a rutrum ac, tincidunt at purus. Donec in erat mi. Quisque semper mauris in massa bibendum sed tincidunt augue facilisis. In tempus lacinia urna ac tristique.</p> <p>Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Fusce tristique urna sem. Etiam iaculis aliquam dui nec porta. Proin tristique diam non augue mattis tristique. Phasellus nulla erat, adipiscing sed cursus sed, pulvinar eget nisl. Maecenas blandit nibh eu nisl facilisis et semper turpis posuere. Pellentesque auctor sem in massa sollicitudin congue. Vivamus quis lacinia massa. Aliquam sodales dictum magna, eget ullamcorper eros placerat at. Quisque gravida diam sit amet nunc porta aliquam. Ut quis aliquet est. Maecenas risus tellus, euismod id porttitor at, porta id turpis. Phasellus id molestie ante. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Aenean purus nibh, egestas vestibulum aliquet eget, luctus nec eros. Nulla facilisi. Quisque molestie, sem interdum posuere lacinia, nisl purus ornare lectus, id dapibus lacus dolor in ipsum. Aenean pharetra leo nulla.</p> <p>Curabitur nisi quam, iaculis eget pellentesque vel, pretium sed massa. In viverra, tellus at sollicitudin fringilla, orci eros blandit elit, a bibendum mauris dolor ut metus. Vivamus pellentesque suscipit diam, vitae euismod mi pellentesque vitae. Nullam neque libero, vehicula ut iaculis at, tincidunt eget leo. Suspendisse vitae velit justo. Nullam vitae sem tincidunt nulla tincidunt mollis in id massa. Duis rhoncus elementum turpis quis mollis. Vivamus egestas urna in velit commodo iaculis. Aenean quis dolor eu odio porttitor rhoncus nec vel eros. Donec ut est eu nisl vehicula pulvinar et id dolor. Donec a dolor neque. Morbi tempus mattis tortor ut rutrum. Phasellus orci metus, pellentesque vel tincidunt nec, pulvinar eu ante. Duis faucibus felis et diam ullamcorper in feugiat urna dignissim. Quisque nec diam mauris, vel viverra arcu. Cras sagittis dignissim nisl in sagittis. Fusce venenatis rhoncus est, nec elementum libero dapibus eget. Donec eu velit metus. Sed sollicitudin felis a diam condimentum in suscipit neque varius. Nulla nec tortor tristique elit malesuada luctus luctus quis leo.</p> <p>Nullam at quam dui. Ut gravida, tellus malesuada faucibus gravida, purus nulla consequat lorem, pellentesque egestas justo quam et enim. Suspendisse fringilla tellus id odio tristique varius. Cras et metus elit. Etiam interdum adipiscing mollis. Aliquam aliquet vestibulum imperdiet. In consectetur, nunc cursus sodales scelerisque, tellus eros tristique nisl, ut luctus augue dolor vel nibh. Fusce eget dui sed eros tristique varius lacinia id sapien. Nullam ac lorem ac lacus cursus ultricies id a risus. Ut eget dolor sem. Aliquam euismod consequat euismod. Duis sit amet neque et massa ullamcorper tempor.</p> <p>Quisque rutrum, ipsum ac volutpat dictum, urna diam facilisis enim, ac vestibulum justo metus eu mi. Curabitur nunc sem, consequat a mollis non, bibendum vitae dolor. Mauris pulvinar pellentesque tellus, vel aliquet mauris vulputate vel. Morbi eu ante id nulla ultricies tincidunt. Proin porta, felis nec tincidunt iaculis, justo nibh laoreet dolor, eu sollicitudin arcu justo et odio. Sed suscipit tellus lobortis est tristique semper fermentum magna laoreet. Sed eget ante nunc, vitae varius purus. Mauris nec viverra neque. Morbi et lectus velit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Integer sit amet lobortis magna.</p> <p>Phasellus elementum iaculis sem in consectetur. Curabitur nec dictum enim. Nunc at pellentesque augue. Nulla sit amet sapien neque, et molestie augue. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin non elit ante. Mauris justo tellus, feugiat at dapibus a, placerat id felis. Nullam lobortis vehicula rutrum. Fusce tristique pharetra urna, ac scelerisque ipsum consequat eget. Morbi at ipsum in tellus luctus volutpat. Duis placerat accumsan lacus, dictum convallis elit porttitor eu.</p> <p>Sed ac neque sit amet neque luctus rhoncus. Vestibulum sit amet commodo ante. Duis ullamcorper est id dui ullamcorper cursus. Maecenas fringilla ultricies turpis, nec pulvinar libero faucibus a. Quisque bibendum aliquam sapien, in fermentum arcu iaculis at. Mauris bibendum, metus sed rhoncus fringilla, nisl purus interdum eros, vitae malesuada felis est rhoncus magna. Phasellus elit justo, sagittis nec interdum tincidunt, mollis quis justo. Suspendisse rhoncus rutrum vestibulum. Aliquam ut nunc lectus, quis aliquam risus. Aliquam vel nulla sed odio blandit sagittis. Nulla facilisi. Vivamus ullamcorper, lectus facilisis eleifend accumsan, purus massa sollicitudin nunc, in sodales tellus dui eget est. Morbi ipsum nisi, semper sit amet vehicula sit amet, semper at mauris. Nam mollis massa sed risus scelerisque quis congue mauris tempus. Vestibulum nec urna magna, vitae ornare massa. Aenean adipiscing tempor rutrum.</p> <p>In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Etiam in dolor eros, eleifend volutpat magna. Sed blandit gravida feugiat. Sed eu dolor in odio sagittis molestie eget ac orci. Phasellus tellus erat, scelerisque tincidunt lacinia sed, placerat eu sapien. Curabitur lobortis feugiat cursus. Nam eu egestas justo. Nullam dignissim enim ipsum, sed semper orci. Donec nulla dui, viverra vel viverra eu, eleifend nec justo. Sed in ultricies turpis. Maecenas ullamcorper, erat ac scelerisque mattis, augue magna laoreet mauris, nec sagittis tellus enim eget tellus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In vestibulum urna eu magna ultricies adipiscing. Phasellus sed urna at nibh euismod vestibulum at eget dui. Nulla ullamcorper viverra tellus ut volutpat. Praesent hendrerit, purus a imperdiet tempus, turpis est suscipit felis, ut commodo diam orci ac augue. Quisque consectetur varius sapien, vel lobortis ante porttitor sit amet. Proin fermentum blandit justo, id faucibus elit feugiat ut. Nulla quam elit, tristique gravida ultrices in, imperdiet et enim.</p> <p>Aliquam malesuada, nibh eget laoreet malesuada, lorem ligula gravida eros, a consectetur dui odio id urna. Vivamus tincidunt porttitor facilisis. Maecenas vitae lacus at lorem porttitor sodales. Duis et velit ac ipsum cursus ornare. Aliquam eu rhoncus est. Cras nec facilisis tellus. Nunc in felis odio. Nam facilisis dui eu lacus egestas sit amet malesuada dolor volutpat. In placerat dictum turpis ac vulputate. Suspendisse neque odio, elementum sagittis sollicitudin quis, eleifend ac orci. Proin suscipit molestie orci non venenatis. Sed metus mauris, laoreet id lobortis at, tempor eu erat. Mauris tempor, nisi id interdum tempor, tellus ligula pretium mi, a viverra nibh neque vitae est. Integer mattis, lorem ac congue fermentum, quam ipsum gravida erat, in egestas lorem eros ac massa. Vestibulum lobortis ante libero, vel fermentum ante. Aliquam augue ipsum, ullamcorper sit amet dictum id, commodo sit amet lacus. Vivamus elit purus, elementum a vestibulum quis, iaculis id metus. Cras facilisis orci in nulla consequat gravida. Integer blandit, felis at lacinia porta, lacus velit pretium magna, ut eleifend diam magna a justo. Donec scelerisque diam quis nisi molestie vel egestas urna condimentum. </p> <script type="text/javascript"> Effect.Shake('floating_text'); </script> </body> </html>

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Adding A Custom Dropdown in RCDC for Forefront Identity Manager 2010

- by Daniel Lackey

My latest exploration has been FIM 2010 for Identity Management. The following is a post of how to add a custom dropdown for the FIM Portal. I have decided to document this as I cannot find documentation on how to do this anywhere else. I hope that it finds useful to others. For starters, this was to me not an easy task to figure out. I really would like to know why it is so cumbersome to do something that seems like a lot of people would need to do, but that’s for another day J The dropdown I wanted to add was for ‘Account Status’ which would display if the account is ‘Enabled’ or ‘Disabled’ in the data source Active Directory. This option would also allow helpdesk users or admins to administer the userAccountControl attribute in AD from the FIM Portal interface. The first thing I had to do was create the attribute itself. This is done by going to Administration à Schema Management from the FIM 2010 portal. Once here, you click on All Attributes. What is listed here are all attributes and their associated Resource Types in FIM. To create the ‘AccountStatus’ attribute, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘AccountStatus’ with no spaces for the System Name and ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name. The Data Type is going to be ‘Indexed String’. Click Next. Leave everything on the Localization tab default and click Next. On the Validation tab as shown below, we will enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ with our two desired string values ‘Enabled’ and ‘Disabled’. Click on Finish and then and Submit to complete adding the attribute. The next step involves associating the attribute with a resource type. This is called ‘Binding’ the attribute. From the Schema Management page, click on All Bindings. From the page that comes up, click on New. As shown below, enter ‘User’ for the Resource Type and ‘Account Status’ for the Attribute Type. This is essentially binding the Account Status attribute to the ‘User’ Resource Type. Click Next. On the ‘Attribute Override’ tab, type in ‘Account Status’ for the Display Name field. Click Next. On the ‘Localization’ tab, click Next. On the ‘Validation’ tab, enter the regex expression ^(Enabled|Disabled)?$ we entered previously for the attribute. Click Finish and then Submit to complete. Now that the Attribute and the Binding are complete, you have to give users permission to see the attribute on the User Edit page. Go to Administration à Management Policy Rules. Look for the rule named Administration: Administrators can read and update Users and click on it. Once it opens, click on the ‘Target Resources’ tab and look at the section named Resource Attributes. Type in at the end the ‘Account Status’ attribute and check it with the validator. Once done click on OK to save the changes. Lastly, we need to add the actual dropdown control to the RCDC (Resource Control Display Configuration) for User Editing. Go to Administration à Resource Control Display Configuration. From here navigate until you find the RCDC named Configuration for User Editing RCDC and click on it. The following is what you will see: First step is to export the Configuration Data file. Click on the Export configuration link and save the file to your desktop of other folder. Find the file you just exported and open the file in your XML editor of choice. I use notepad but anything will work. Since we are adding a dropdown control, first find another control in the existing file that is already a dropdown in FIM. I used EmployeeType as my example. Copy the control from the beginning tag named <my:Control… to the ending tag </my:Control>. Now take what you copied and paste it in whatever location you desire within the form between two other controls. I chose to place the ‘Account Status’ field after the ‘Account Name’ field. After you paste the control you will need to modify so it looks like this: Notice where you specify what attribute you are dealing with where it has AccountStatus in the XML. Once you are complete with modifying this, save the file and make sure it is a .xml file. Now go back to the Configuration for User Editing screen and look at the section named ‘Configuration Data’. Click the ‘Browse’ button and find the XML file you just modified and choose it. Click OK on the bottom of the window and you are done! Now when you click on a user’s name in the FIM Portal, you should see the newly added dropdown box as below: Later I will post more about this drop down, specifically on how to automate actually ‘Disabling’ the account in the data source through the FIM Workflows and MAs. <my:Control my:Name="AccountStatus" my:TypeName="UocDropDownList" my:Caption="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.DisplayName}" my:Description="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.Description}" my:RightsLevel="{Binding Source=rights, Path=AccountStatus}"> <my:Properties> <my:Property my:Name="ValuePath" my:Value="Value"/> <my:Property my:Name="CaptionPath" my:Value="Caption"/> <my:Property my:Name="HintPath" my:Value="Hint"/> <my:Property my:Name="ItemSource" my:Value="{Binding Source=schema, Path=AccountStatus.LocalizedAllowedValues}"/> <my:Property my:Name="SelectedValue" my:Value="{Binding Source=object, Path=AccountStatus, Mode=TwoWay}"/> </my:Properties> </my:Control>

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XNA Notes 007

- by George Clingerman

Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month. Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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Oracle Open World 2012: SQL Developer Recap

- by thatjeffsmith

Last week was the ‘big show’ in San Francisco. I was very happy to meet many of you in person. And many of you had questions – lots of questions! We had full or overflowing rooms for our sessions and hands-on-labs. The SQL Developer ‘booths’ were also slammed several times. So exciting to see so many of YOU excited about SQL Developer. It’s very cool to hear the stories of our tools saving you and your organizations so much time (and money!) Instead of doing a Day 0 – Day 9 recap, I thought I’d share with you the questions that I heard more than once. And just for giggles, I’ll throw in some answers as well So in no particular order… What’s the difference between Oracle SQL Developer & Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler? Mathematically speaking – two words. But as far as the actual modeling features go, there’s no difference between the two applications. The same ‘code’ or features as it pertains to data modeling and design are in both tools. However, in SQL Developer you have all of the OTHER features fighting for real estate in the UI. So I have a general rule of thumb – if you spend MOST of your time in the database, use SQL Developer. And if you spend most of your time in the data model, run the separate and dedicated program, Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Here’s a couple of screenshots to drive home the UI point: Oracle SQL Developer Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler running INSIDE of SQL Developer. Notice how the Modeler menu items fold under the file menu? Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Easier to navigate and manipulate your models with the stand alone modeler. Just no worksheet to run your ad-hoc queries, etc. Don’t forget you can disable the Data Modeler inside of SQL Developer via the Extensions preference page. How can I model my table partitions? Partitioning is defined via the Physical model. So after you have finished your relational model, you need to generate a physical model. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Physical Model and Partitioning Open the properties for your physical model table. Enable the ‘partitioned’ property. Once you do so, the ‘Partitioning’ page will activate. Lots and lots of partitioning support and options here But what about Interval Partitioning? An extension of range partitioning in 11gR2, we don’t currently support this partitioning scheme in SQL Developer. But we’re working on it! Can SQL Developer ignore column order when comparing models? Yes! After you start a model compare, one of your options is to disregard the order of an attribute or column definition. Tell SQL Developer you don’t care when your column shows up, just as long as it DOES show up. Wow, you got a lot of questions around modeling! Is that normal? Yes! While we appreciate that many folks inherit their applications and associated designs, new applications are being ‘born’ every day. Since both of our tools are free for anyone to design their new Oracle applications with, we attract a fair amount of attention I want to do a Hands On Lab. How do I get your software and instructional guides? Go here. Download VirtualBox. Then download the VB image. Import the appliance. Start it. Connect oracle/oracle on the OEL VM. Click on ‘Start Here’ in the desktop. Follow the instructions. If you need help, ask away! You went too fast in your Tips & Tricks session. Do you have cliff notes? Yes! And you’re SO close to finding them! Just go to my SQL Developer resources page. All of my tips are documented on this blog somewhere. I’ve indexed the most popular ones on the resource page. You can use the Search dialog on the right to find the rest. Or just send me a comment or question, and I’ll do my best to answer them as they come in.

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Social Network Updates: While You Were Busy Marketing 2

- by Mike Stiles

Since social moves at the speed of data, it’s already time for another update, as we did back in April, on the changes the various social networks have made or gone through while you were busy marketing. Facebook There’s a lot of talk Facebook’s developing a mobile product to act like Flipboard and surface news, from both users and media outlets. The biggest news was Facebook/Instagram’s introduction of 15-second videos, enhanced with with filters, to take some of Vine’s candy. You can also delete parts of videos and rerecord them, and there’s image stabilization. Facebook’s ad revenue is coming along just fine, thank you very much. 35% quarter-to-quarter growth in Q2. And it looks like new formats like Mobile App Install Ads and Unpublished Page Posts are adding to the mix. If you don’t already, you’ll soon see a little camera in comment boxes letting you insert photos right into the comments you make. The drive toward “more visual” continues. The other big news is Facebook’s adoption of our Twitter friend, the hashtag. Adding # sets apart the post topic so it can be easily found or discovered. It’s also being added to Google Plus, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Twitter Want to send someone a promoted tweet when they’re in range of your store? That could be happening by the end of this year. Some users have been seeing automatic in-stream previews of images on Twitter.com. Right now it’s images in your own tweets, but we can assume all tweets are next. Get your followers organized! Twitter raised the limit on the number of lists you can create from 20 to 1,000. They also raised the number of accounts you can have in a list from 500 to 5,000. Twitter started notifying you when someone favorites a tweet you’re mentioned in or re-tweets a tweet you re-tweeted. Anyway, it’s the first time Twitter’s notified you about indirect interactions like that. Who’s afraid of Instagram? A study shows 6-second Vine videos are being posted to Twitter at the rate of 9/second, up from 5/second 2 months ago. Vine has over 13 million users and branded Vines are 4x more likely to be shared than video ads. Google Plus Now featuring a 3-column redesigned stream, and images that take up a whole column. And photo filters Auto Highlight and Auto Awesome work to turn your photos into a real show. Google Hangouts is the workhorse for all Google messaging now, it’s not just an online chat with 9 people anymore. Google Plus Dashboard improves the connection between your company’s Google Plus business page and your Google Plus Local. Updates go out across all Google properties and you can do your managing from the dashboard. With Google Plus’ authorship system, you can build “Author Rank” based on what you write and put on the web. If your stuff is +1’ed and shared a lot, you’re the real deal and there are search result benefits. LinkedIn "Who's Viewed Your Updates" shows you what you’ve shared recently, who saw it and what they did about it in real-time. “Influencers” is, well, influential. Traffic to all LI news products has gone up 8x since it was introduced. LinkedIn is quickly figuring out how to get users to stick around awhile. You and your brand can post images and documents in status updates now. In fact, that whole “document posting” thing is making some analysts wonder if LinkedIn will drift on over to the Dropboxes and YouSendIts of the world. C’mon, admit it. Your favorite part of LinkedIn is being able to see who’s viewed your profile. Now you’ve got even more info and can see what/who you have in common. Premium users get even deeper insights about how people are finding them. If you’re a big fan of security, you’ll love that LinkedIn started offering two-factor authentication (2FA). It’s optional, but step 2 is a one-time code texted to your registered mobile. Pinterest A study showed pins have a looong shelf life compared to other social net posts. “Clicks kept coming for 30 days and beyond.” Most pins are timeless, and the infinite scroll causes people to see older pins. Is it a keeper? Pinterest jumped 82% to 54 million users in the past year. It’s valued at $2.5 billion and is one of the biggest sources of referral traffic there is. That said, CEO Ben Silbermann adds, "Right now, we don't make money." A new search feature stops you from having to endlessly scroll through your own pins looking for that waterfall picture you posted. Simply select “just my pins” in the search bar. New "Rich Pins" lets brands add info like price and availability to pins that can be updated daily via a data feed from your merchant site. Not so fast, you have to apply to Pinterest for it first. Like other social nets, Pinterest does not allow sexual content, nudity, or even partial nudity. However…some art contains nudity, and Pinterest wants to allow art. What constitutes “art” will be judged by…what we have to assume are Pinterest employees who love their job. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng, Tim Marmon

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Gartner PCC Follow-up: Interview with Chaeny Emanavin, Usability Lead - Office of Information Develo

- by [email protected]

Last week at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration conference in Baltimore, Chaeny and I co-presented on Oracle Enterprise 2.0 and BIA's Citizen Portal. Chaeny's presentation about the BIA solution was very well received and I wanted to do a follow-up interview with Chaeny to discuss more details about their solution and its Enterprise 2.0 features. Ajay: What were the main objectives for the BIA Citizen Portal? Chaeny: The BIA Citizen Portal is designed to provide all the services of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the community of 564 federally recognized tribes that include over 1.9 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. The BIA provides the same breadth of services that the entire U.S. Federal Government provides in one small Bureau. So, we needed a solution that was flexible enough to handle content ranging from law enforcement to housing to education. Key objectives for external users was to use the Web as a communications channel and keep them informed on what services are available. We also wanted to build an internal web presence and community for BIA's 5000 employees to ensure that they update their content, leverage internal experts and create single sources of truth for key policy documents. Ajay: How is the project being implemented? Chaeny: We are using a phased approach. In phases 1 & 2, interim internal and external sites were built to ensure usability and functional requirements are being met. In Phases 3 & 4, we built out a modern internal and external presence using Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM), including enabling delegated content management for our internal business units. Phase 4 was completed in January 2010. Phase 5 will add deeper Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities to the solution. Ajay: Are you integrating any existing sites into the new solution? Chaeny: Yes, we have a SharePoint implementation that we are using for document management. We needed more precise functionality however. We found that SharePoint would let individual administrators of a SharePoint site actually create new sites. In a 3 months span, we had over 200 new sites created and most were not being used. So, we had an enormous sprawl problem. Our requirements mandated increased governance and more granular control over the creation of sites and flexible user access to content. In SharePoint this required custom code and was very time-intensive which was unfeasible given our tight deadlines. We are piloting Oracle WebCenter Spaces as our collaboration solution to mitigate these issues. However, we must integrate our existing SharePoint investment which we can do easily by using the SharePoint connectors available in Oracle WebCenter and UCM. Ajay: What were the key design parameters for your solution? Chaeny: We wanted everything driven by standards and policies. We created a cross-functional steering group called the Indian Affairs Web Council to codify policies that were baked into the system. Other key design areas were focused on security/governance, self-service content management, ease of use, integration with legacy applications and seamless single sign-on. We are using Dublin Core as our metadata standard. We also are using Java, APEX, and ADF as our development standards. Ajay: Why was it important to standardize on a platform? Chaeny: We initially looked at best-of-breed solutions, but we faced a lot of issues getting the different solutions to work together. Going with an integrated solution was more economical, easier to learn and faster to deliver the solution. Ajay: What type of legacy applications are you integrating into the portal? Chaeny: Initially we are starting with administrative apps such as people directory and user admin and then we will integrate HR and Financial applications among others. Ajay: Can you describe some of the E20 collaboration features you are putting into the solution? Chaeny: We are adding Enterprise 2.0 using Oracle WebCenter Spaces to deliver different collaboration tools such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums. Wikis to create rapid, ad hoc monthly roll-up reports; discussion forums to provide context-specific help; blogs to capture tacit organization knowledge from experts, identify gurus and turn tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. Ajay: Are you doing anything specifically to spur adoption and usage? Chaeny: Yes, we did several things that I think helped us ramp quickly. First, we met our commitments for the new system launch date and also provided extra resources for a customer support "hotline" during the launch period. Prior to launch, we did exhaustive usability studies to capture user requirements around functionality, navigation and other key interaction areas. We also created extensive training programs so that the content managers in each business unit were comfortable using the content management tools and knew the best practices for usage. Finally, to launch the Enterprise 2.0 collaboration capabilities, we are working with a pilot group from the Division of Forestry and Wildland Fire Management of BIA. This group of people in the past have been willing early adopters and they have a strong business need to collaborate with many agencies both internal and external across State, County and other Federal jurisdictions. Their feedback is key to helping us launch Enterprise 2.0 successfully in our broader organization. Ajay: What were the biggest benefits to internal BIA employees and to the external community of users? Chaeny: For our employees, the new Enterprise 2.0-based solution will make it easier to find information; enhance employee productivity by embedding standard business processes into the system and create more of a community by creating connections with experts via social collaboration to ultimately provide better services more quickly. For the external American Indian and Alaska Native communities, we have a better relationship with the users and the new site has improved BIA's perception as a more responsive and customer-centric organization.

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LSI 9285-8e and Supermicro SC837E26-RJBOD1 duplicate enclosure ID and slot numbers

- by Andy Shinn

I am working with 2 x Supermicro SC837E26-RJBOD1 chassis connected to a single LSI 9285-8e card in a Supermicro 1U host. There are 28 drives in each chassis for a total of 56 drives in 28 RAID1 mirrors. The problem I am running in to is that there are duplicate slots for the 2 chassis (the slots list twice and only go from 0 to 27). All the drives also show the same enclosure ID (ID 36). However, MegaCLI -encinfo lists the 2 enclosures correctly (ID 36 and ID 65). My question is, why would this happen? Is there an option I am missing to use 2 enclosures effectively? This is blocking me rebuilding a drive that failed in slot 11 since I can only specify enclosure and slot as parameters to replace a drive. When I do this, it picks the wrong slot 11 (device ID 46 instead of device ID 19). Adapter #1 is the LSI 9285-8e, adapter #0 (which I removed due to space limitations) is the onboard LSI. Adapter information: Adapter #1 ============================================================================== Versions ================ Product Name : LSI MegaRAID SAS 9285-8e Serial No : SV12704804 FW Package Build: 23.1.1-0004 Mfg. Data ================ Mfg. Date : 06/30/11 Rework Date : 00/00/00 Revision No : 00A Battery FRU : N/A Image Versions in Flash: ================ BIOS Version : 5.25.00_4.11.05.00_0x05040000 WebBIOS Version : 6.1-20-e_20-Rel Preboot CLI Version: 05.01-04:#%00001 FW Version : 3.140.15-1320 NVDATA Version : 2.1106.03-0051 Boot Block Version : 2.04.00.00-0001 BOOT Version : 06.253.57.219 Pending Images in Flash ================ None PCI Info ================ Vendor Id : 1000 Device Id : 005b SubVendorId : 1000 SubDeviceId : 9285 Host Interface : PCIE ChipRevision : B0 Number of Frontend Port: 0 Device Interface : PCIE Number of Backend Port: 8 Port : Address 0 5003048000ee8e7f 1 5003048000ee8a7f 2 0000000000000000 3 0000000000000000 4 0000000000000000 5 0000000000000000 6 0000000000000000 7 0000000000000000 HW Configuration ================ SAS Address : 500605b0038f9210 BBU : Present Alarm : Present NVRAM : Present Serial Debugger : Present Memory : Present Flash : Present Memory Size : 1024MB TPM : Absent On board Expander: Absent Upgrade Key : Absent Temperature sensor for ROC : Present Temperature sensor for controller : Absent ROC temperature : 70 degree Celcius Settings ================ Current Time : 18:24:36 3/13, 2012 Predictive Fail Poll Interval : 300sec Interrupt Throttle Active Count : 16 Interrupt Throttle Completion : 50us Rebuild Rate : 30% PR Rate : 30% BGI Rate : 30% Check Consistency Rate : 30% Reconstruction Rate : 30% Cache Flush Interval : 4s Max Drives to Spinup at One Time : 2 Delay Among Spinup Groups : 12s Physical Drive Coercion Mode : Disabled Cluster Mode : Disabled Alarm : Enabled Auto Rebuild : Enabled Battery Warning : Enabled Ecc Bucket Size : 15 Ecc Bucket Leak Rate : 1440 Minutes Restore HotSpare on Insertion : Disabled Expose Enclosure Devices : Enabled Maintain PD Fail History : Enabled Host Request Reordering : Enabled Auto Detect BackPlane Enabled : SGPIO/i2c SEP Load Balance Mode : Auto Use FDE Only : No Security Key Assigned : No Security Key Failed : No Security Key Not Backedup : No Default LD PowerSave Policy : Controller Defined Maximum number of direct attached drives to spin up in 1 min : 10 Any Offline VD Cache Preserved : No Allow Boot with Preserved Cache : No Disable Online Controller Reset : No PFK in NVRAM : No Use disk activity for locate : No Capabilities ================ RAID Level Supported : RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID00, RAID10, RAID50, RAID60, PRL 11, PRL 11 with spanning, SRL 3 supported, PRL11-RLQ0 DDF layout with no span, PRL11-RLQ0 DDF layout with span Supported Drives : SAS, SATA Allowed Mixing: Mix in Enclosure Allowed Mix of SAS/SATA of HDD type in VD Allowed Status ================ ECC Bucket Count : 0 Limitations ================ Max Arms Per VD : 32 Max Spans Per VD : 8 Max Arrays : 128 Max Number of VDs : 64 Max Parallel Commands : 1008 Max SGE Count : 60 Max Data Transfer Size : 8192 sectors Max Strips PerIO : 42 Max LD per array : 16 Min Strip Size : 8 KB Max Strip Size : 1.0 MB Max Configurable CacheCade Size: 0 GB Current Size of CacheCade : 0 GB Current Size of FW Cache : 887 MB Device Present ================ Virtual Drives : 28 Degraded : 0 Offline : 0 Physical Devices : 59 Disks : 56 Critical Disks : 0 Failed Disks : 0 Supported Adapter Operations ================ Rebuild Rate : Yes CC Rate : Yes BGI Rate : Yes Reconstruct Rate : Yes Patrol Read Rate : Yes Alarm Control : Yes Cluster Support : No BBU : No Spanning : Yes Dedicated Hot Spare : Yes Revertible Hot Spares : Yes Foreign Config Import : Yes Self Diagnostic : Yes Allow Mixed Redundancy on Array : No Global Hot Spares : Yes Deny SCSI Passthrough : No Deny SMP Passthrough : No Deny STP Passthrough : No Support Security : No Snapshot Enabled : No Support the OCE without adding drives : Yes Support PFK : Yes Support PI : No Support Boot Time PFK Change : Yes Disable Online PFK Change : No PFK TrailTime Remaining : 0 days 0 hours Support Shield State : Yes Block SSD Write Disk Cache Change: Yes Supported VD Operations ================ Read Policy : Yes Write Policy : Yes IO Policy : Yes Access Policy : Yes Disk Cache Policy : Yes Reconstruction : Yes Deny Locate : No Deny CC : No Allow Ctrl Encryption: No Enable LDBBM : No Support Breakmirror : No Power Savings : Yes Supported PD Operations ================ Force Online : Yes Force Offline : Yes Force Rebuild : Yes Deny Force Failed : No Deny Force Good/Bad : No Deny Missing Replace : No Deny Clear : No Deny Locate : No Support Temperature : Yes Disable Copyback : No Enable JBOD : No Enable Copyback on SMART : No Enable Copyback to SSD on SMART Error : Yes Enable SSD Patrol Read : No PR Correct Unconfigured Areas : Yes Enable Spin Down of UnConfigured Drives : Yes Disable Spin Down of hot spares : No Spin Down time : 30 T10 Power State : Yes Error Counters ================ Memory Correctable Errors : 0 Memory Uncorrectable Errors : 0 Cluster Information ================ Cluster Permitted : No Cluster Active : No Default Settings ================ Phy Polarity : 0 Phy PolaritySplit : 0 Background Rate : 30 Strip Size : 64kB Flush Time : 4 seconds Write Policy : WB Read Policy : Adaptive Cache When BBU Bad : Disabled Cached IO : No SMART Mode : Mode 6 Alarm Disable : Yes Coercion Mode : None ZCR Config : Unknown Dirty LED Shows Drive Activity : No BIOS Continue on Error : No Spin Down Mode : None Allowed Device Type : SAS/SATA Mix Allow Mix in Enclosure : Yes Allow HDD SAS/SATA Mix in VD : Yes Allow SSD SAS/SATA Mix in VD : No Allow HDD/SSD Mix in VD : No Allow SATA in Cluster : No Max Chained Enclosures : 16 Disable Ctrl-R : Yes Enable Web BIOS : Yes Direct PD Mapping : No BIOS Enumerate VDs : Yes Restore Hot Spare on Insertion : No Expose Enclosure Devices : Yes Maintain PD Fail History : Yes Disable Puncturing : No Zero Based Enclosure Enumeration : No PreBoot CLI Enabled : Yes LED Show Drive Activity : Yes Cluster Disable : Yes SAS Disable : No Auto Detect BackPlane Enable : SGPIO/i2c SEP Use FDE Only : No Enable Led Header : No Delay during POST : 0 EnableCrashDump : No Disable Online Controller Reset : No EnableLDBBM : No Un-Certified Hard Disk Drives : Allow Treat Single span R1E as R10 : No Max LD per array : 16 Power Saving option : Don't Auto spin down Configured Drives Max power savings option is not allowed for LDs. Only T10 power conditions are to be used. Default spin down time in minutes: 30 Enable JBOD : No TTY Log In Flash : No Auto Enhanced Import : No BreakMirror RAID Support : No Disable Join Mirror : No Enable Shield State : Yes Time taken to detect CME : 60s Exit Code: 0x00 Enclosure information: # /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -encinfo -a1 Number of enclosures on adapter 1 -- 3 Enclosure 0: Device ID : 36 Number of Slots : 28 Number of Power Supplies : 2 Number of Fans : 3 Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Number of Alarms : 1 Number of SIM Modules : 0 Number of Physical Drives : 28 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Port B Enclosure type : SES VendorId is LSI CORP and Product Id is SAS2X36 VendorID and Product ID didnt match FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : 65 Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI CORP Product Identification : SAS2X36 Product Revision Level : 0718 Vendor Specific : x36-55.7.24.1 Number of Voltage Sensors :2 Voltage Sensor :0 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :5020 milli volts Voltage Sensor :1 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :11820 milli volts Number of Power Supplies : 2 Power Supply : 0 Power Supply Status : OK Power Supply : 1 Power Supply Status : OK Number of Fans : 3 Fan : 0 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 1 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 2 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Temp Sensor : 0 Temperature : 48 Temperature Sensor Status : OK Number of Chassis : 1 Chassis : 0 Chassis Status : OK Enclosure 1: Device ID : 65 Number of Slots : 28 Number of Power Supplies : 2 Number of Fans : 3 Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Number of Alarms : 1 Number of SIM Modules : 0 Number of Physical Drives : 28 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Port A Enclosure type : SES VendorId is LSI CORP and Product Id is SAS2X36 VendorID and Product ID didnt match FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : 36 Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI CORP Product Identification : SAS2X36 Product Revision Level : 0718 Vendor Specific : x36-55.7.24.1 Number of Voltage Sensors :2 Voltage Sensor :0 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :5020 milli volts Voltage Sensor :1 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :11760 milli volts Number of Power Supplies : 2 Power Supply : 0 Power Supply Status : OK Power Supply : 1 Power Supply Status : OK Number of Fans : 3 Fan : 0 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 1 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 2 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Temp Sensor : 0 Temperature : 47 Temperature Sensor Status : OK Number of Chassis : 1 Chassis : 0 Chassis Status : OK Enclosure 2: Device ID : 252 Number of Slots : 8 Number of Power Supplies : 0 Number of Fans : 0 Number of Temperature Sensors : 0 Number of Alarms : 0 Number of SIM Modules : 1 Number of Physical Drives : 0 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Unavailable Enclosure type : SGPIO Failed in first Inquiry commnad FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : Unavailable Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI Product Identification : SGPIO Product Revision Level : N/A Vendor Specific : Exit Code: 0x00 Now, notice that each slot 11 device shows an enclosure ID of 36, I think this is where the discrepancy happens. One should be 36. But the other should be on enclosure 65. Drives in slot 11: Enclosure Device ID: 36 Slot Number: 11 Drive's postion: DiskGroup: 5, Span: 0, Arm: 1 Enclosure position: 0 Device Id: 48 WWN: Sequence Number: 11 Media Error Count: 0 Other Error Count: 0 Predictive Failure Count: 0 Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0 PD Type: SATA Raw Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d50a3b0 Sectors] Non Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d40a3b0 Sectors] Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d400000 Sectors] Firmware state: Online, Spun Up Is Commissioned Spare : YES Device Firmware Level: A5C0 Shield Counter: 0 Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A SAS Address(0): 0x5003048000ee8a53 Connected Port Number: 1(path0) Inquiry Data: MJ1311YNG6YYXAHitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 MEAOA5C0 FDE Enable: Disable Secured: Unsecured Locked: Unlocked Needs EKM Attention: No Foreign State: None Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s Media Type: Hard Disk Device Drive Temperature :30C (86.00 F) PI Eligibility: No Drive is formatted for PI information: No PI: No PI Drive's write cache : Disabled Drive's NCQ setting : Enabled Port-0 : Port status: Active Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No Enclosure Device ID: 36 Slot Number: 11 Drive's postion: DiskGroup: 19, Span: 0, Arm: 1 Enclosure position: 0 Device Id: 19 WWN: Sequence Number: 4 Media Error Count: 0 Other Error Count: 0 Predictive Failure Count: 0 Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0 PD Type: SATA Raw Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d50a3b0 Sectors] Non Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d40a3b0 Sectors] Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d400000 Sectors] Firmware state: Online, Spun Up Is Commissioned Spare : NO Device Firmware Level: A580 Shield Counter: 0 Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A SAS Address(0): 0x5003048000ee8e53 Connected Port Number: 0(path0) Inquiry Data: MJ1313YNG1VA5CHitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 MEAOA580 FDE Enable: Disable Secured: Unsecured Locked: Unlocked Needs EKM Attention: No Foreign State: None Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s Media Type: Hard Disk Device Drive Temperature :30C (86.00 F) PI Eligibility: No Drive is formatted for PI information: No PI: No PI Drive's write cache : Disabled Drive's NCQ setting : Enabled Port-0 : Port status: Active Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No Update 06/28/12: I finally have some new information about (what we think) the root cause of this problem so I thought I would share. After getting in contact with a very knowledgeable Supermicro tech, they provided us with a tool called Xflash (doesn't appear to be readily available on their FTP). When we gathered some information using this utility, my colleague found something very strange: root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i get avail Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) 1) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:00EE917F) (0.0.0.0) 2) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:00E9D67F) (0.0.0.0) 3) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:0112D97F) (0.0.0.0) This lists the connected enclosures. You see the 3 connected (we have since added a 3rd and a 4th which is not yet showing up) with their respective SAS address / WWN (50030480:00EE917F). Now we can use this address to get information on the individual enclosures: [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 5003048000EE917F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:00EE917F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0000007F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 5003048000E9D67F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:00E9D67F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0000007F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 500304800112D97F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:0112D97F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0112D97F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 Did you catch it? The first 2 enclosures logical ID is partially masked out where the 3rd one (which has a correct unique enclosure ID) is not. We pointed this out to Supermicro and were able to confirm that this address is supposed to be set during manufacturing and there was a problem with a certain batch of these enclosures where the logical ID was not set. We believe that the RAID controller is determining the ID based on the logical ID and since our first 2 enclosures have the same logical ID, they get the same enclosure ID. We also confirmed that 0000007F is the default which comes from LSI as an ID. The next pointer that helps confirm this could be a manufacturing problem with a run of JBODs is the fact that all 6 of the enclosures that have this problem begin with 00E. I believe that between 00E8 and 00EE Supermicro forgot to program the logical IDs correctly and neglected to recall or fix the problem post production. Fortunately for us, there is a tool to manage the WWN and logical ID of the devices from Supermicro: ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/ExpanderXtools_Lite/. Our next step is to schedule a shutdown of these JBODs (after data migration) and reprogram the logical ID and see if it solves the problem. Update 06/28/12 #2: I just discovered this FAQ at Supermicro while Google searching for "lsi 0000007f": http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=11805. I still don't understand why, in the last several times we contacted Supermicro, they would have never directed us to this article :\

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Big Data – Buzz Words: Importance of Relational Database in Big Data World – Day 9 of 21

- by Pinal Dave

In yesterday’s blog post we learned what is HDFS. In this article we will take a quick look at the importance of the Relational Database in Big Data world. A Big Question? Here are a few questions I often received since the beginning of the Big Data Series - Does the relational database have no space in the story of the Big Data? Does relational database is no longer relevant as Big Data is evolving? Is relational database not capable to handle Big Data? Is it true that one no longer has to learn about relational data if Big Data is the final destination? Well, every single time when I hear that one person wants to learn about Big Data and is no longer interested in learning about relational database, I find it as a bit far stretched. I am not here to give ambiguous answers of It Depends. I am personally very clear that one who is aspiring to become Big Data Scientist or Big Data Expert they should learn about relational database. NoSQL Movement The reason for the NoSQL Movement in recent time was because of the two important advantages of the NoSQL databases. Performance Flexible Schema In personal experience I have found that when I use NoSQL I have found both of the above listed advantages when I use NoSQL database. There are instances when I found relational database too much restrictive when my data is unstructured as well as they have in the datatype which my Relational Database does not support. It is the same case when I have found that NoSQL solution performing much better than relational databases. I must say that I am a big fan of NoSQL solutions in the recent times but I have also seen occasions and situations where relational database is still perfect fit even though the database is growing increasingly as well have all the symptoms of the big data. Situations in Relational Database Outperforms Adhoc reporting is the one of the most common scenarios where NoSQL is does not have optimal solution. For example reporting queries often needs to aggregate based on the columns which are not indexed as well are built while the report is running, in this kind of scenario NoSQL databases (document database stores, distributed key value stores) database often does not perform well. In the case of the ad-hoc reporting I have often found it is much easier to work with relational databases. SQL is the most popular computer language of all the time. I have been using it for almost over 10 years and I feel that I will be using it for a long time in future. There are plenty of the tools, connectors and awareness of the SQL language in the industry. Pretty much every programming language has a written drivers for the SQL language and most of the developers have learned this language during their school/college time. In many cases, writing query based on SQL is much easier than writing queries in NoSQL supported languages. I believe this is the current situation but in the future this situation can reverse when No SQL query languages are equally popular. ACID (Atomicity Consistency Isolation Durability) – Not all the NoSQL solutions offers ACID compliant language. There are always situations (for example banking transactions, eCommerce shopping carts etc.) where if there is no ACID the operations can be invalid as well database integrity can be at risk. Even though the data volume indeed qualify as a Big Data there are always operations in the application which absolutely needs ACID compliance matured language. The Mixed Bag I have often heard argument that all the big social media sites now a days have moved away from Relational Database. Actually this is not entirely true. While researching about Big Data and Relational Database, I have found that many of the popular social media sites uses Big Data solutions along with Relational Database. Many are using relational databases to deliver the results to end user on the run time and many still uses a relational database as their major backbone. Here are a few examples: Facebook uses MySQL to display the timeline. (Reference Link) Twitter uses MySQL. (Reference Link) Tumblr uses Sharded MySQL (Reference Link) Wikipedia uses MySQL for data storage. (Reference Link) There are many for prominent organizations which are running large scale applications uses relational database along with various Big Data frameworks to satisfy their various business needs. Summary I believe that RDBMS is like a vanilla ice cream. Everybody loves it and everybody has it. NoSQL and other solutions are like chocolate ice cream or custom ice cream – there is a huge base which loves them and wants them but not every ice cream maker can make it just right for everyone’s taste. No matter how fancy an ice cream store is there is always plain vanilla ice cream available there. Just like the same, there are always cases and situations in the Big Data’s story where traditional relational database is the part of the whole story. In the real world scenarios there will be always the case when there will be need of the relational database concepts and its ideology. It is extremely important to accept relational database as one of the key components of the Big Data instead of treating it as a substandard technology. Ray of Hope – NewSQL In this module we discussed that there are places where we need ACID compliance from our Big Data application and NoSQL will not support that out of box. There is a new termed coined for the application/tool which supports most of the properties of the traditional RDBMS and supports Big Data infrastructure – NewSQL. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about NewSQL. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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Seven Worlds will collide…. High Availability BI is not such a Distant Sun.

- by Testas

Over the last 5 years I have observed Microsoft persevere with the notion of Self Service BI over a series of conferences as far back as SQLBits V in Newport. The release of SQL Server 2012, improvements in Excel and the integration with SharePoint 2010 is making this a reality. Business users are now empowered to create their own BI reports through a number of different technologies such as PowerPivot, PowerView and Report Builder. This opens up a whole new way of working; improving staff productivity, promoting efficient decision making and delivering timely business reports. There is, however; a serious question to answer. What happens should any of these applications become unavailable? More to the point, how would the business react should key business users be unable to fulfil reporting requests for key management meetings when they require it? While the introduction of self-service BI will provide instant access to the creation of management information reports, it will also cause instant support calls should the access to the data become unavailable. These are questions that are often overlooked when a business evaluates the need for self-service BI. But as I have written in other blog posts, the thirst for information is unquenchable once the business users have access to the data. When they are unable to access the information, you will be the first to know about it and will be expected to have a resolution to the downtime as soon as possible. The world of self-service BI is pushing reporting and analytical databases to the tier 1 application level for some of Coeo’s customers. A level that is traditionally associated with mission critical OLTP environments. There is recognition that by making BI readily available to the business user, provisions also need to be made to ensure that the solution is highly available so that there is minimal disruption to the business. This is where High Availability BI infrastructures provide a solution. As there is a convergence of technologies to support a self-service BI culture, there is also a convergence of technologies that need to be understood in order to provide the high availability architecture required to support the self-service BI infrastructure. While you may not be the individual that implements these components, understanding the concepts behind these components will empower you to have meaningful discussions with the right people should you put this infrastructure in place. There are 7 worlds that you will have to understand to successfully implement a highly available BI infrastructure 1. Server/Virtualised server hardware/software 2. DNS 3. Network Load Balancing 4. Active Directory 5. Kerberos 6. SharePoint 7. SQL Server I have found myself over the last 6 months reaching out to knowledge that I learnt years ago when I studied for the Windows 2000 and 2003 (MCSE) Microsoft Certified System Engineer. (To the point that I am resuming my studies for the Windows Server 2008 equivalent to be up to date with newer technologies) This knowledge has proved very useful in the numerous engagements I have undertaken since being at Coeo, particularly when dealing with High Availability Infrastructures. As a result of running my session at SQLBits X and SQL Saturday in Dublin, the feedback I have received has been that many individuals desire to understand more of the concepts behind the first 6 “worlds” in the list above. Over the coming weeks, a series of blog posts will be put on this site to help understand the key concepts of each area as it pertains to a High Availability BI Infrastructure. Each post will not provide exhaustive coverage of the topic. For example DNS can be a book in its own right when you consider that there are so many different configuration options with Forward Lookup, Reverse Lookups, AD Integrated Zones and DNA forwarders to name some examples. What I want to do is share the pertinent points as it pertains to the BI infrastructure that you build so that you are equipped with the knowledge to have the right discussion when planning this infrastructure. Next, we will focus on the server infrastructure that will be required to support the High Availability BI Infrastructure, from both a physical box and virtualised perspective. Thanks Chris

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SanjayP’s venture after Microsoft involves no Microsoft

- by eddraper

When I was at Microsoft, I always found Sanjay Parthasarathy to be a bright and passionate leader. While he was a bit disconnected at times with what was really going on out in the trenches, I always thought he was true believer in what we in Developer Platform and Evangelism (DPE) were doing. He got it. He had started DPE and kicked a lot of doors down up in Redmond to make it happen. Back in the early 2000s, battles over platform choices at large customers was trench warfare… bayonets and hand grenades at the P-Code level. This model was not at all suited to Microsoft’s org structure at the time. While there were plenty of people fully able to have competitive conversations around Windows Server, or AD, or Exchange, or the desktop, there weren’t many that could have deep technical conversations around Java vs .NET and the platform “stack” as a cohesive, unified unit of value. This task fell to DPE. Sanjay ended up leaving Microsoft a number of months before me in 2009 and I remember thinking these exact words: “holy shit, SanjayP left Microsoft.” When SanjayP left DPE years before that, Sheila Gulati had stepped into his shoes and I thought we where starting to miss a beat. Sheila had built an amazing business at Microsoft India, but I don’t recall being inspired by her as a leader. SanjayP’s talks felt like the opening scene of “Patton” with George C. Scott pacing in front of the American flag. Sheila was a voice on a con-call. When she moved on in 2007, Walid Abu-Hadba was given the reigns. Personally, I don’t ever recall even seeing his face. I think I might recall hearing his voice on some con-calls, but for all intents and purposes he was invisible to me. Perhaps this was the beginning of my carelessness around seeking “visibility.” Fast forward to Build 2011. First off, we have no PDC – we have Build. Microsoft had made an 11 year investment by this time in building an organization to make its technology relevant to developers. One would think such an org would be in the driver’s seat of such an event, but we see Windows product group people on the podiums. Watching, I could see the messaging unfold… but no story. It was like the old days. Demos and PowerPoints by team members building the tech, and in many cases VPs. The ensuing confusion is almost legendary now. Windows 8 was, and is, a pretty big deal… but who is telling the story – not just features and benefits, but the story around how it all fits together. Having been out of Microsoft for two years now, and looking in, I can only conclude that the “DPE of old” has at best been emasculated, and at worst been completely marginalized by internal politics, or perhaps the eternal march of the corporate entropy generator that resides at all large companies. I don’t think this is a good thing for anyone. And now, back to Sanjay who is the father of Microsoft DPE… I noticed that he has moved back to India and is doing start-up work. His current company Indix looks to be doing some interesting things with “big data” and here’s their stack: Nary a trace of anything Microsoft. What could account for this? I wonder…. Better availability of labor and expertise in India for this stack? Donno, but even in India, leet R and Hadoop skills have to be hard to find. Technical superiority? This, I sincerely doubt. This stack, with SanjayP’s name as CEO leaves me with an unsettling feeling. If he did believe, he no longer does. One doesn’t place bets with real money on things they don’t believe in. Perhaps he never did believe, and was a corporate creature seeking to find a niche for himself after which he manipulated me and others. Or perhaps… anger… be it passive aggression or an outright “in your face F*** you” to his former masters. I guess in the end, only he knows the true reason… But I have my theory...

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Searching for the last logon of users in Active Directory

- by Robert May

I needed to clean out a bunch of old accounts at Veracity Solutions, and wanted to delete those that hadn’t used their account in more than a year. I found that AD has a property on objects called the lastLogonTimestamp. However, this value isn’t exposed to you in any useful fashion. Sure, you can pull up ADSI Edit and and eventually get to it there, but it’s painful. I spent some time searching, and discovered that there’s not much out there to help, so I thought a blog post showing exactly how to get at this information would be in order. Basically, what you end up doing is using System.DirectoryServices to search for accounts and then filtering those for users, doing some conversion and such to make it happen. Basically, the end result of this is that you get a list of users with their logon information and you can then do with that what you will. I turned my list into an observable collection and bound it into a XAML form. One important note, you need to add a reference to ActiveDs Type Library in the COM section of the world in references to get to LargeInteger. Here’s the class: namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.DirectoryServices; using ActiveDs; using log4net; /// <summary> /// Finds users inside of the active directory system. /// </summary> public class UserFinder { /// <summary> /// Creates the default logger /// </summary> private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(UserFinder)); /// <summary> /// Finds last logon information /// </summary> /// <param name="domain">The domain to search.</param> /// <param name="userName">The username for the query.</param> /// <param name="password">The password for the query.</param> /// <returns>A list of users with their last logon information.</returns> public IList<UserLoginInformation> GetLastLogonInformation(string domain, string userName, string password) { IList<UserLoginInformation> result = new List<UserLoginInformation>(); DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry(domain, userName, password, AuthenticationTypes.Secure); DirectorySearcher directorySearcher = new DirectorySearcher(entry); directorySearcher.PropertyNamesOnly = true; directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name"); directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("lastLogonTimeStamp"); SearchResultCollection searchResults; try { searchResults = directorySearcher.FindAll(); } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to do a find all.", ex); throw; } try { foreach (SearchResult searchResult in searchResults) { DirectoryEntry resultEntry = searchResult.GetDirectoryEntry(); if (resultEntry.SchemaClassName == "user") { UserLoginInformation logon = new UserLoginInformation(); logon.Name = resultEntry.Name; PropertyValueCollection timeStampObject = resultEntry.Properties["lastLogonTimeStamp"]; if (timeStampObject.Count > 0) { IADsLargeInteger logonTimeStamp = (IADsLargeInteger)timeStampObject[0]; long lastLogon = (long)((uint)logonTimeStamp.LowPart + (((long)logonTimeStamp.HighPart) << 32)); logon.LastLogonTime = DateTime.FromFileTime(lastLogon); } result.Add(logon); } } } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to iterate search results.", ex); throw; } return result; } } } Some important things to note: Username and Password can be set to null and if your computer us part of the domain, this may still work. Domain should be set to something like LDAP://servername/CN=Users,CN=Domain,CN=com You’re actually getting a com object back, so that’s why the LongInteger conversions are happening. The class for UserLoginInformation looks like this: namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; /// <summary> /// Represents user login information. /// </summary> public class UserLoginInformation { /// <summary> /// Gets or sets Name /// </summary> public string Name { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets LastLogonTime /// </summary> public DateTime LastLogonTime { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the age of the account. /// </summary> public TimeSpan AccountAge { get { TimeSpan result = TimeSpan.Zero; if (this.LastLogonTime != DateTime.MinValue) { result = DateTime.Now.Subtract(this.LastLogonTime); } return result; } } } } I hope this is useful and instructive. Technorati Tags: Active Directory

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Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21

- by Pinal Dave

In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the NewSQL. In this article we will understand the role of Cloud in Big Data Story What is Cloud? Cloud is the biggest buzzword around from last few years. Everyone knows about the Cloud and it is extremely well defined online. In this article we will discuss cloud in the context of the Big Data. Cloud computing is a method of providing a shared computing resources to the application which requires dynamic resources. These resources include applications, computing, storage, networking, development and various deployment platforms. The fundamentals of the cloud computing are that it shares pretty much share all the resources and deliver to end users as a service. Examples of the Cloud Computing and Big Data are Google and Amazon.com. Both have fantastic Big Data offering with the help of the cloud. We will discuss this later in this blog post. There are two different Cloud Deployment Models: 1) The Public Cloud and 2) The Private Cloud Public Cloud Public Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by commercial providers (Amazon, Rackspace etc.) creates a highly scalable data center that hides the complex infrastructure from the consumer and provides various services. Private Cloud Private Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by a single organization where they are managing highly scalable data center internally. Here is the quick comparison between Public Cloud and Private Cloud from Wikipedia: Public Cloud Private Cloud Initial cost Typically zero Typically high Running cost Unpredictable Unpredictable Customization Impossible Possible Privacy No (Host has access to the data Yes Single sign-on Impossible Possible Scaling up Easy while within defined limits Laborious but no limits Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build with the composition of two or more clouds like public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud gives best of the both the world as it combines multiple cloud deployment models together. Cloud and Big Data – Common Characteristics There are many characteristics of the Cloud Architecture and Cloud Computing which are also essentially important for Big Data as well. They highly overlap and at many places it just makes sense to use the power of both the architecture and build a highly scalable framework. Here is the list of all the characteristics of cloud computing important in Big Data Scalability Elasticity Ad-hoc Resource Pooling Low Cost to Setup Infastructure Pay on Use or Pay as you Go Highly Available Leading Big Data Cloud Providers There are many players in Big Data Cloud but we will list a few of the known players in this list. Amazon Amazon is arguably the most popular Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. The history of how Amazon started in this business is very interesting. They started out with a massive infrastructure to support their own business. Gradually they figured out that their own resources are underutilized most of the time. They decided to get the maximum out of the resources they have and hence they launched their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service in 2006. Their products have evolved a lot recently and now it is one of their primary business besides their retail selling. Amazon also offers Big Data services understand Amazon Web Services. Here is the list of the included services: Amazon Elastic MapReduce – It processes very high volumes of data Amazon DynammoDB – It is fully managed NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database service Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) – A web-scale service designed to store and accommodate any amount of data Amazon High Performance Computing – It provides low-tenancy tuned high performance computing cluster Amazon RedShift – It is petabyte scale data warehousing service Google Though Google is known for Search Engine, we all know that it is much more than that. Google Compute Engine – It offers secure, flexible computing from energy efficient data centers Google Big Query – It allows SQL-like queries to run against large datasets Google Prediction API – It is a cloud based machine learning tool Other Players Besides Amazon and Google we also have other players in the Big Data market as well. Microsoft is also attempting Big Data with the Cloud with Microsoft Azure. Additionally Rackspace and NASA together have initiated OpenStack. The goal of Openstack is to provide a massively scaled, multitenant cloud that can run on any hardware. Thing to Watch The cloud based solutions provides a great integration with the Big Data’s story as well it is very economical to implement as well. However, there are few things one should be very careful when deploying Big Data on cloud solutions. Here is a list of a few things to watch: Data Integrity Initial Cost Recurring Cost Performance Data Access Security Location Compliance Every company have different approaches to Big Data and have different rules and regulations. Based on various factors, one can implement their own custom Big Data solution on a cloud. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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World Record Oracle Business Intelligence Benchmark on SPARC T4-4

- by Brian

Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server configured with four SPARC T4 3.0 GHz processors delivered the first and best performance of 25,000 concurrent users on Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (BI EE) 11g benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 10. A SPARC T4-4 server running Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g achieved 25,000 concurrent users with an average response time of 0.36 seconds with Oracle BI server cache set to ON. The benchmark data clearly shows that the underlying hardware, SPARC T4 server, and the Oracle BI EE 11g (11.1.1.6.0 64-bit) platform scales within a single system supporting 25,000 concurrent users while executing 415 transactions/sec. The benchmark demonstrated the scalability of Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g 11.1.1.6.0, which was deployed in a vertical scale-out fashion on a single SPARC T4-4 server. Oracle Internet Directory configured on SPARC T4 server provided authentication for the 25,000 Oracle BI EE users with sub-second response time. A SPARC T4-4 with internal Solid State Drive (SSD) using the ZFS file system showed significant I/O performance improvement over traditional disk for the Web Catalog activity. In addition, ZFS helped get past the UFS limitation of 32767 sub-directories in a Web Catalog directory. The multi-threaded 64-bit Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g and SPARC T4-4 server proved to be a successful combination by providing sub-second response times for the end user transactions, consuming only half of the available CPU resources at 25,000 concurrent users, leaving plenty of head room for increased load. The Oracle Business Intelligence on SPARC T4-4 server benchmark results demonstrate that comprehensive BI functionality built on a unified infrastructure with a unified business model yields best-in-class scalability, reliability and performance. Oracle BI EE 11g is a newer version of Business Intelligence Suite with richer and superior functionality. Results produced with Oracle BI EE 11g benchmark are not comparable to results with Oracle BI EE 10g benchmark. Oracle BI EE 11g is a more difficult benchmark to run, exercising more features of Oracle BI. Performance Landscape Results for the Oracle BI EE 11g version of the benchmark. Results are not comparable to the Oracle BI EE 10g version of the benchmark. Oracle BI EE 11g Benchmark System Number of Users Response Time (sec) 1 x SPARC T4-4 (4 x SPARC T4 3.0 GHz) 25,000 0.36 Results for the Oracle BI EE 10g version of the benchmark. Results are not comparable to the Oracle BI EE 11g version of the benchmark. Oracle BI EE 10g Benchmark System Number of Users 2 x SPARC T5440 (4 x SPARC T2+ 1.6 GHz) 50,000 1 x SPARC T5440 (4 x SPARC T2+ 1.6 GHz) 28,000 Configuration Summary Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server 4 x SPARC T4-4 processors, 3.0 GHz 128 GB memory 4 x 300 GB internal SSD Storage Configuration: "> Sun ZFS Storage 7120 16 x 146 GB disks Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Oracle Solaris Studio 12.1 Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g (11.1.1.6.0) Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3.5 Oracle Internet Directory 11.1.1.6.0 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Benchmark Description Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE) delivers a robust set of reporting, ad-hoc query and analysis, OLAP, dashboard, and scorecard functionality with a rich end-user experience that includes visualization, collaboration, and more. The Oracle BI EE benchmark test used five different business user roles - Marketing Executive, Sales Representative, Sales Manager, Sales Vice-President, and Service Manager. These roles included a maximum of 5 different pre-built dashboards. Each dashboard page had an average of 5 reports in the form of a mix of charts, tables and pivot tables, returning anywhere from 50 rows to approximately 500 rows of aggregated data. The test scenario also included drill-down into multiple levels from a table or chart within a dashboard. The benchmark test scenario uses a typical business user sequence of dashboard navigation, report viewing, and drill down. For example, a Service Manager logs into the system and navigates to his own set of dashboards using Service Manager. The BI user selects the Service Effectiveness dashboard, which shows him four distinct reports, Service Request Trend, First Time Fix Rate, Activity Problem Areas, and Cost Per Completed Service Call spanning 2002 to 2005. The user then proceeds to view the Customer Satisfaction dashboard, which also contains a set of 4 related reports, drills down on some of the reports to see the detail data. The BI user continues to view more dashboards – Customer Satisfaction and Service Request Overview, for example. After navigating through those dashboards, the user logs out of the application. The benchmark test is executed against a full production version of the Oracle Business Intelligence 11g Applications with a fully populated underlying database schema. The business processes in the test scenario closely represent a real world customer scenario. See Also SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Business Intelligence oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN WebLogic Suite oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 30 September 2012.

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An Alphabet of Eponymous Aphorisms, Programming Paradigms, Software Sayings, Annoying Alliteration

- by Brian Schroer

Malcolm Anderson blogged about “Einstein’s Razor” yesterday, which reminded me of my favorite software development “law”, the name of which I can never remember. It took much Wikipedia-ing to find it (Hofstadter’s Law – see below), but along the way I compiled the following list: Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Law of Demeter: Each unit should only talk to its friends; don't talk to strangers. Einstein’s Razor: “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler” is the popular paraphrase, but what he actually said was “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience”, an overly complicated quote which is an obvious violation of Einstein’s Razor. (You can tell by looking at a picture of Einstein that the dude was hardly an expert on razors or other grooming apparati.) Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment. - O'Toole's Corollary: The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Morris’s Corollary: “…including Common Lisp”) Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Issawi’s Omelet Analogy: One cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs - but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelet. Jackson’s Rules of Optimization: Rule 1: Don't do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet. Kaner’s Caveat: A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program. Liskov Substitution Principle (paraphrased): Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to use objects of derived classes without knowing it Mason’s Maxim: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do. Nils-Peter Nelson’s Nil I/O Rule: The fastest I/O is no I/O. Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Quentin Tarantino’s Pie Principle: “…you want to go home have a drink and go and eat pie and talk about it.” (OK, he was talking about movies, not software, but I couldn’t find a “Q” quote about software. And wouldn’t it be cool to write a program so great that the users want to eat pie and talk about it?) Raymond’s Rule: Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter. Sowa's Law of Standards: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X. Turing’s Tenet: We shall do a much better programming job, provided we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as very humble programmers. Udi Dahan’s Race Condition Rule: If you think you have a race condition, you don’t understand the domain well enough. These rules didn’t exist in the age of paper, there is no reason for them to exist in the age of computers. When you have race conditions, go back to the business and find out actual rules. Van Vleck’s Kvetching: We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer -- and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply. Wheeler’s Law: All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection... Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection. Wheeler also said “Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”. The Wrong Road Rule of Mr. X (anonymous): No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back. Yourdon’s Rule of Two Feet: If you think your management doesn't know what it's doing or that your organisation turns out low-quality software crap that embarrasses you, then leave. Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Zawinski is also responsible for “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems.” He once commented about X Windows widget toolkits: “Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.”

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Messaging Systems – Handshaking, Reconciliation and Tracking for Data Transparency

- by Ahsan Alam

As many corporations build business partnerships with other organizations, the need to share information becomes necessary. Large amount of data sharing using snail mail, email and/or fax are quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more organizations are relying heavily on Ftp and/or Web Service to exchange data. Corporations apply wide range of technologies and techniques based on available resources and data transfer needs. Sometimes, it involves simple home-grown applications. Other times, large investments are made on products like BizTalk, TIBCO etc. Complexity of information management also varies significantly from one organizations to another. Some may deal with handful of simple steps to process and manage shared data; whereas others may rely on fairly complex processes with heavy interaction with internal and external systems in order to serve the business needs. It is not surprising that many of these systems end up becoming black boxes over a period of time. Consequently, people and business start to rely more and more on developers and support personnel just to extract simple information adding to the loss of productivity. One of the most important factor in any business is transparency to data irrespective of technology preferences and the complexity of business processes. Not knowing the state of data could become very costly to the business. Being involved in messaging systems for some time now, I have heard the same type of questions over and over again. Did we transmit messages successfully? Did we get responses back? What is the expected turn-around-time? Did the system experience any errors? When one company transmits data to one or more company, it may invoke a set of processes that could complete in matter of seconds, or it could days. As data travels from one organizations to another, the uncertainty grows, and the longer it takes to track uncertain state of the data the costlier it gets for the business, So, in every business scenario, it's extremely important to be aware of the state of the data. Architects of messaging systems can take several steps to aid with data transparency. Some forms of data handshaking and reconciliation mechanism as well as extensive data tracking can be incorporated into the system to provide clear visibility to the data. What do I mean by handshaking and reconciliation? Some might consider these to be a single concept; however, I like to consider them in two unique categories. Handshaking serves as message receipts or acknowledgment. When one transmits messages to another, the receiver must acknowledge each message by sending immediate responses for each transaction. Whenever we use Web Services, handshaking is often achieved utilizing request/reply pattern. Similarly, if Ftp is used, a receiver can acknowledge by dropping messages for the sender as soon as the files are picked up. These forms of handshaking or acknowledgment informs the message sender and receiver that a successful transaction has occurred. I have mentioned earlier that it could take anywhere from a few seconds to a number of days before shared data is completely processed. In addition, whenever a batched transaction is used, processing time for each data element inside the batch could also vary significantly. So, in order to successfully manage data processing, reconciliation becomes extremely important; otherwise it may result into data loss or in some cases hefty penalty. Reconciliation can be done in many ways. Partner organizations can share and compare ad hoc reports to achieve reconciliation. On the other hand, partners can agree on some type of systematic reconciliation messages. Systems within responsible parties can trigger messages to partners as soon as the data process completes. Next step in the data transparency is extensive data tracking. Some products such as BizTalk and TIBCO provide built-in functionality for data tracking; however, built-in functionality may not always be adequate. Sometimes additional tracking system (or databases) needs to be built in order monitor all types of data flow including, message transactions, handshaking, reconciliation, system errors and many more. If these types of data are captured, then these can be presented to business users in any forms or fashion. When business users are empowered with such information, then the reliance on developers and support teams decreases dramatically. In today's collaborative world of information sharing, data transparency is key to the success of every business. The state of business data will constantly change. However, when people have easier access to various states of data, it allows them to make better and quicker decisions. Therefore, I feel that data handshaking, reconciliation and tracking is very important aspect of messaging systems.

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Sublime text 2 syntax highlighter?

- by BigSack

I have coded my first custom syntax highlighter for sublime text 2, but i don't know how to install it. It is based on notepad++ highlighter found here https://70995658-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/lohanplus/files/smali_npp.xml?attachauth=ANoY7criVTO9bDmIGrXwhZLQ_oagJzKKJTlbNDGRzMDVpFkO5i0N6hk_rWptvoQC1tBlNqcqFDD5NutD_2vHZx1J7hcRLyg1jruSjebHIeKdS9x0JCNrsRivgs6DWNhDSXSohkP1ZApXw0iQ0MgqcXjdp7CkJJ6pY_k5Orny9TfK8UWn_HKFsmPcpp967NMPtUnd--ad-BImtkEi-fox2tjs7zc5LabkDQ%3D%3D&attredirects=0&d=1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>fileTypes</key> <array> <string>smali</string> </array> <dict> <key>Word1</key> <string>add-double add-double/2addr add-float add-float/2addr add-int add-int/2addr add-int/lit16 add-int/lit8 add-long add-long/2addr aget aget-boolean aget-byte aget-char aget-object aget-short aget-wide and-int and-int/2addr and-int/lit16 and-int/lit8 and-long and-long/2addr aput aput-boolean aput-byte aput-char aput-object aput-short aput-wide array-length check-cast cmp-long cmpg-double cmpg-float cmpl-double cmpl-float const const-class const-string const-string-jumbo const-wide const-wide/16 const-wide/32 const-wide/high16 const/16 const/4 const/high16 div-double div-double/2addr div-float div-float/2addr div-int div-int/2addr div-int/lit16 div-int/lit8 div-long div-long/2addr double-to-float double-to-int double-to-long execute-inline fill-array-data filled-new-array filled-new-array/range float-to-double float-to-int float-to-long goto goto/16 goto/32 if-eq if-eqz if-ge if-gez if-gt if-gtz if-le if-lez if-lt if-ltz if-ne if-nez iget iget-boolean iget-byte iget-char iget-object iget-object-quick iget-quick iget-short iget-wide iget-wide-quick instance-of int-to-byte int-to-char int-to-double int-to-float int-to-long int-to-short invoke-direct invoke-direct-empty invoke-direct/range invoke-interface invoke-interface/range invoke-static invoke-static/range invoke-super invoke-super-quick invoke-super-quick/range invoke-super/range invoke-virtual invoke-virtual-quick invoke-virtual-quick/range invoke-virtual/range iput iput-boolean iput-byte iput-char iput-object iput-object-quick iput-quick iput-short iput-wide iput-wide-quick long-to-double long-to-float long-to-int monitor-enter monitor-exit move move-exception move-object move-object/16 move-object/from16 move-result move-result-object move-result-wide move-wide move-wide/16 move-wide/from16 move/16 move/from16 mul-double mul-double/2addr mul-float mul-float/2addr mul-int mul-int/2addr mul-int/lit8 mul-int/lit16 mul-long mul-long/2addr neg-double neg-float neg-int neg-long new-array new-instance nop not-int not-long or-int or-int/2addr or-int/lit16 or-int/lit8 or-long or-long/2addr rem-double rem-double/2addr rem-float rem-float/2addr rem-int rem-int/2addr rem-int/lit16 rem-int/lit8 rem-long rem-long/2addr return return-object return-void return-wide rsub-int rsub-int/lit8 sget sget-boolean sget-byte sget-char sget-object sget-short sget-wide shl-int shl-int/2addr shl-int/lit8 shl-long shl-long/2addr shr-int shr-int/2addr shr-int/lit8 shr-long shr-long/2addr sparse-switch sput sput-boolean sput-byte sput-char sput-object sput-short sput-wide sub-double sub-double/2addr sub-float sub-float/2addr sub-int sub-int/2addr sub-int/lit16 sub-int/lit8 sub-long sub-long/2addr throw throw-verification-error ushr-int ushr-int/2addr ushr-int/lit8 ushr-long ushr-long/2addr xor-int xor-int/2addr xor-int/lit16 xor-int/lit8 xor-long xor-long/2addr</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Word2</key> <string>v0 v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 v6 v7 v8 v9 v10 v11 v12 v13 v14 v15 v16 v17 v18 v19 v20 v21 v22 v23 v24 v25 v26 v27 v28 v29 v30 v31 v32 v33 v34 v35 v36 v37 v38 v39 v40 v41 v42 v43 v44 v45 v46 v47 v48 v49 v50 p0 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10 p11 p12 p13 p14 p15 p16 p17 p18 p19 p20 p21 p22 p23 p24 p25 p26 p27 p28 p29 p30</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Word3</key> <string>array-data .catch .catchall .class .end .end\ local .enum .epilogue .field .implements .line .local .locals .parameter .prologue .registers .restart .restart\ local .source .subannotation .super</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Word4</key> <string>abstract bridge constructor declared-synchronized enum final interface native private protected public static strictfp synchronized synthetic system transient varargs volatile</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Word4</key> <string>("0)"0</string> </dict> <dict> <key>Word5</key> <string>.method .annotation .sparse-switch .packed-switch</string> </dict> <dict> <key>word6</key> <string>.end\ method .end\ annotation .end\ sparse-switch .end\ packed-switch</string> </dict> <dict> <key>word7</key> <string>" ( ) , ; { } ></string> </dict> <key>uuid</key> <string>27798CC6-6B1D-11D9-B8FA-000D93589AF6</string> </dict> </plist>

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CQRS - Benefits

- by Dylan Smith

Thanks to all the comments and feedback from the last post I think I have a better understanding now of the benefits of CQRS (separate from the benefits of Event Sourcing). I’m going to try and sum it up here, and point out some areas where I could still use some advice: CQRS Benefits Sounds like the primary benefit of CQRS as an architecture is it allows you to create a simpler domain model by sucking out everything related to queries. I can definitely see the benefit to this, in general the domain logic related to commands is the high-value behavior in the software, but the logic required to service the queries would add a lot of low-value “noise” to the domain model that would dilute the high-value (command) behavior – sorting, paging, filtering, pre-fetch paths, etc. Also the most appropriate domain structure for implementing commands might not be the most optimal for implementing queries. To paraphrase Greg, this usually results in a domain model that is mediocre at both, piss-poor at one, or more likely piss-poor at both commands and queries. Not only will you be able to simplify your domain model by pulling out all the query logic, but at least a handful of commands in most systems will probably be “pass-though” type commands with little to no logic that just generate events. If these can be implemented directly in the command-handler and never touch the domain model, this allows you to slim down the domain model even more. Also, if you were to do event sourcing without CQRS, you no longer have a database containing the current state (only the domain model would) which makes it difficult (or impossible) to support ad-hoc querying and/or reporting that is common in most business software. Of course CQRS provides some great scalability benefits, not only scalability but I have to assume that it provides extremely low latency for most operations, especially if you have an asynchronous event bus. I know Greg says that you get a 3x scaling (Commands, Queries, Client) of your ability to perform parallel development, but IMHO, it seems like it only provides 1.5x scaling since even without CQRS you’re going to have your client loosely coupled to your domain - which is still a great benefit to be able to realize. Questions / Concerns If all the queries against an aggregate get pulled out to the Query layer, what if the only commands for that aggregate can be handled in a “pass-through” manner with the command handler directly generating events. Is it possible to have an aggregate that isn’t modeled in the domain model? Are there any issues or downsides to this? I know in the feedback from my previous posts it was suggested that having one domain model handling both commands and queries requires implementing a lot of traversals between objects that wouldn’t be necessary if it was only servicing commands. My question is, do you include traversals in your domain model based on the needs of the code, or based on the conceptual domain model? If none of my Commands require a Customer.Orders traversal, but the conceptual domain includes the concept of a set of orders belonging to a customer – should I model that in my domain model or not? I like the idea of using the Query side of the architecture as a place to put junior devs where the risk of them screwing something up has minimal impact. But I’m not sold on the idea that you can actually outsource it. Like I said in one of my comments on my previous post, the code to handle a query and generate DTO’s is going to be dead simple, but the code to process events and apply them to the tables on the query side is going to require a significant amount of domain knowledge to know which events to listen for to update each of the de-normalized tables (and what changes need to be made when each event is processed). I don’t know about everybody else, but having Indian/Russian/whatever outsourced developers have to do anything that requires significant domain knowledge has never been successful in my experience. And if you need to spec out for each new query which events to listen to and what to do with each one, well that’s probably going to be just as much work to document as it would be to just implement it. Greg made the point in a comment that doing an aggregate query like “Total Sales By Customer” is going to be inefficient if you use event sourcing but not CQRS. I don’t understand why that would be the case. I imagine in that case you’d simply have a method/property on the Customer object that calculated total sales for that customer by enumerating over the Orders collection. Then the application services layer would generate DTO’s off of the Customers collection that included say the CustomerID, CustomerName, TotalSales, or whatever the case may be. As long as you use a snapshotting implementation, I don’t see why that would be anymore inefficient in a DDD+Event Sourcing implementation than in a typical DDD implementation. Like I mentioned in my last post I still have some questions about query logic that haven’t been answered yet, but before I start asking those I want to make sure I have a strong grasp on what benefits CQRS provides. My main concern with the query logic was that I know I could just toss it all into the query side, but I was concerned that I would be losing the benefits of using CQRS in the first place if I did that. I want to elaborate more on this though with some example situations in an upcoming post.

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Data Mining Resources

- by Dejan Sarka

There are many different types of analyses, each one with its own pros and cons. Relational reports have a predefined structure, and end users cannot change it. They are simple to use for end users. Reports can use real-time data and snapshots of data to show the state of a report at specific points in time. One of the drawbacks is that report authoring is limited to IT pros and advanced users. Any kind of dynamic restructuring is very limited. If real-time data is used for a report, the report has a negative impact on the performance of the source system. Processing of the reports might be slow because the data comes from relational database management systems, which are not optimized for reporting only. If you create a semantic model of your data, your end users can create ad-hoc report structures. However, the development is more complex because a developer is needed to create these semantic models. For OLAP, you typically use specialized database management systems. You get lightning speed of analyses. End users can use rich and thin clients to interactively change the structure of the report. Typically, they do it graphically. However, the development of an OLAP system is many times quite complex. It involves the preparation and maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse and OLAP cubes. In order to exploit the possibility of real-time restructuring of reports, the users must be both active and educated. The data is usually stale, as it is loaded into data warehouses and OLAP cubes with a scheduled process. With data mining, a structure is not selected in advance; it searches for the structure. As a result, data mining can give you the most valuable results because you can discover patterns you did not expect. A data mining model structure is limited only by the attributes that you use to train the model. One of the drawbacks is that a lot of knowledge is needed for a successful data mining project. End users have to understand the results. Subject matter experts and IT professionals need to understand business problem thoroughly. The development might be sometimes even more complex than the development of OLAP cubes. Each type of analysis has its own place in an enterprise system. SQL Server has tools for all kinds of analyses. However, data mining is the most advanced way of analyzing the data; this is the “I” in BI. In order to get the most out of it, you need to learn quite a lot. In this blog post, I am gathering together resources for learning, including forthcoming events. Books Multiple authors: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives – I wrote an introductory data mining chapter there. Erik Veerman, Teo Lachev and Dejan Sarka: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance – you can find a good overview of a complete BI solution, including data mining, in this book. Jamie MacLennan, ZhaoHui Tang, and Bogdan Crivat: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – can’t miss this book if you want to mine your data with SQL Server tools. Michael Berry, Gordon Linoff: Mastering Data Mining: The Art and Science of Customer Relationship Management – data mining from both, business and technical perspective. Dorian Pyle: Data Preparation for Data Mining – an in-depth book about data preparation. Thomas and Ronald Wonnacott: Introductory Statistics – if you thought that you could get away without statistics, then you are not serious about data mining. Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber: Data Mining Concepts and Techniques – in-depth explanation of the most popular data mining algorithms. Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff: Data Mining Techniques – another book that explains data mining algorithms, more fro a business perspective. Paolo Guidici: Applied Data Mining – very mathematical book, only if you enjoy statistics and mathematics in general. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting two data mining related sessions during the PASS Summit in Charlotte, NC: Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 - Fraud Detection: Notes from the Field – I am showing how to use data mining for a specific business problem. The presentation is based on real-life projects. Friday, October 18th: Excel 2013 Advanced Analytics – I am focusing on Excel Data Mining Add-ins, and how to use them together with Power Pivot and other add-ins. This is the most you can get out of Excel. Sinergija 2013, Belgrade, Serbia Tuesday, October 22nd: Excel 2013 Analytics to the Max – another presentation focusing on the most advanced analytics you can get in Excel. SQL Rally Amsterdam, Netherlands Thursday, November 7th: Advanced Analytics in Excel 2013 – and again I am presenting about data mining in Excel. Why three different titles for the same presentation? I don’t know, I guess I forgot the name I proposed every time right after I sent the proposal. Courses Data Mining with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. OK, now you know: no more excuses, start learning data mining, get the most out of your data

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Big Data – Various Learning Resources – How to Start with Big Data? – Day 20 of 21

- by Pinal Dave

In yesterday’s blog post we learned how to become a Data Scientist for Big Data. In this article we will go over various learning resources related to Big Data. In this series we have covered many of the most essential details about Big Data. At the beginning of this series, I have encouraged readers to send me questions. One of the most popular questions is - “I want to learn more about Big Data. Where can I learn it?” This is indeed a great question as there are plenty of resources out to learn about Big Data and it is indeed difficult to select on one resource to learn Big Data. Hence I decided to write here a few of the very important resources which are related to Big Data. Learn from Pluralsight Pluralsight is a global leader in high-quality online training for hardcore developers. It has fantastic Big Data Courses and I started to learn about Big Data with the help of Pluralsight. Here are few of the courses which are directly related to Big Data. Big Data: The Big Picture Big Data Analytics with Tableau NoSQL: The Big Picture Understanding NoSQL Data Analysis Fundamentals with Tableau I encourage all of you start with this video course as they are fantastic fundamentals to learn Big Data. Learn from Apache Resources at Apache are single point the most authentic learning resources. If you want to learn fundamentals and go deep about every aspect of the Big Data, I believe you must understand various concepts in Apache’s library. I am pretty impressed with the documentation and I am personally referencing it every single day when I work with Big Data. I strongly encourage all of you to bookmark following all the links for authentic big data learning. Haddop - The Apache Hadoop® project develops open-source software for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. Ambari: A web-based tool for provisioning, managing, and monitoring Apache Hadoop clusters which include support for Hadoop HDFS, Hadoop MapReduce, Hive, HCatalog, HBase, ZooKeeper, Oozie, Pig and Sqoop. Ambari also provides a dashboard for viewing cluster health such as heat maps and ability to view MapReduce, Pig and Hive applications visually along with features to diagnose their performance characteristics in a user-friendly manner. Avro: A data serialization system. Cassandra: A scalable multi-master database with no single points of failure. Chukwa: A data collection system for managing large distributed systems. HBase: A scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables. Hive: A data warehouse infrastructure that provides data summarization and ad hoc querying. Mahout: A Scalable machine learning and data mining library. Pig: A high-level data-flow language and execution framework for parallel computation. ZooKeeper: A high-performance coordination service for distributed applications. Learn from Vendors One of the biggest issues with about learning Big Data is setting up the environment. Every Big Data vendor has different environment request and there are lots of things require to set up Big Data framework. Many of the users do not start with Big Data as they are afraid about the resources required to set up framework as well as a time commitment. Here Hortonworks have created fantastic learning environment. They have created Sandbox with everything one person needs to learn Big Data and also have provided excellent tutoring along with it. Sandbox comes with a dozen hands-on tutorial that will guide you through the basics of Hadoop as well it contains the Hortonworks Data Platform. I think Hortonworks did a fantastic job building this Sandbox and Tutorial. Though there are plenty of different Big Data Vendors I have decided to list only Hortonworks due to their unique setup. Please leave a comment if there are any other such platform to learn Big Data. I will include them over here as well. Learn from Books There are indeed few good books out there which one can refer to learn Big Data. Here are few good books which I have read. I will update the list as I will learn more. Ethics of Big Data Balancing Risk and Innovation Big Data for Dummies Head First Data Analysis: A Learner’s Guide to Big Numbers, Statistics, and Good Decisions If you search on Amazon there are millions of the books but I think above three books are a great set of books and it will give you great ideas about Big Data. Once you go through above books, you will have a clear idea about what is the next step you should follow in this series. You will be capable enough to make the right decision for yourself. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will wrap up this series of Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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Use WLST to Delete All JMS Messages From a Destination

- by james.bayer

I got a question today about whether WebLogic Server has any tools to delete all messages from a JMS Queue. It just so happens that the WLS Console has this capability already. It’s available on the screen after the “Show Messages” button is clicked on a destination’s Monitoring tab as seen in the screen shot below. The console is great for something ad-hoc, but what if I want to automate this? Well it just so happens that the console is just a weblogic application layered on top of the JMX Management interface. If you look at the MBean Reference, you’ll find a JMSDestinationRuntimeMBean that includes the operation deleteMessages that takes a JMS Message Selector as an argument. If you pass an empty string, that is essentially a wild card that matches all messages. Coding a stand-alone JMX client for this is kind of lame, so let’s do something more suitable to scripting. In addition to the console, WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) based on Jython is another way to browse and invoke MBeans, so an equivalent interactive shell session to delete messages from a destination would looks like this: D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\fmw11gr1ps3\user_projects\domains\hotspot_domain>java weblogic.WLST Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ... Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell Type help() for help on available commands wls:/offline> connect('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'AdminServer' that belongs to domain 'hotspot_domain'. Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead. wls:/hotspot_domain/serverConfig> serverRuntime() Location changed to serverRuntime tree. This is a read-only tree with ServerRuntimeMBean as the root. For more help, use help(serverRuntime) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime> cd('JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0') wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> ls() dr-- DurableSubscribers -r-- BytesCurrentCount 0 -r-- BytesHighCount 174620 -r-- BytesPendingCount 0 -r-- BytesReceivedCount 253548 -r-- BytesThresholdTime 0 -r-- ConsumersCurrentCount 0 -r-- ConsumersHighCount 0 -r-- ConsumersTotalCount 0 -r-- ConsumptionPaused false -r-- ConsumptionPausedState Consumption-Enabled -r-- DestinationInfo javax.management.openmbean.CompositeDataSupport(compositeType=javax.management.openmbean.CompositeType(name=DestinationInfo,items=((itemName=ApplicationName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ModuleName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=SerializedDestination,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=ServerName,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.String)),(itemName=Topic,itemType=javax.management.openmbean.SimpleType(name=java.lang.Boolean)),(itemName=VersionNumber,itemType=javax.management.op ule-0!Queue-0, Queue=true, SerializedDestination=rO0ABXNyACN3ZWJsb2dpYy5qbXMuY29tbW9uLkRlc3RpbmF0aW9uSW1wbFSmyJ1qZfv8DAAAeHB3kLZBABZTeXN0ZW1Nb2R1bGUtMCFRdWV1ZS0wAAtKTVNTZXJ2ZXItMAAOU3lzdGVtTW9kdWxlLTABAANBbGwCAlb6IS6T5qL/AAAACgEAC0FkbWluU2VydmVyAC2EGgJW+iEuk+ai/wAAAAsBAAtBZG1pblNlcnZlcgAthBoAAQAQX1dMU19BZG1pblNlcnZlcng=, ServerName=JMSServer-0, Topic=false, VersionNumber=1}) -r-- DestinationType Queue -r-- DurableSubscribers null -r-- InsertionPaused false -r-- InsertionPausedState Insertion-Enabled -r-- MessagesCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesDeletedCurrentCount 3 -r-- MessagesHighCount 2 -r-- MessagesMovedCurrentCount 0 -r-- MessagesPendingCount 0 -r-- MessagesReceivedCount 3 -r-- MessagesThresholdTime 0 -r-- Name SystemModule-0!Queue-0 -r-- Paused false -r-- ProductionPaused false -r-- ProductionPausedState Production-Enabled -r-- State advertised_in_cluster_jndi -r-- Type JMSDestinationRuntime -r-x closeCursor Void : String(cursorHandle) -r-x deleteMessages Integer : String(selector) -r-x getCursorEndPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorSize Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getCursorStartPosition Long : String(cursorHandle) -r-x getItems javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),Integer(count) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),Long(messageHandle) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(cursorHandle),String(messageID) -r-x getMessage javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData : String(messageID) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout) -r-x getMessages String : String(selector),Integer(timeout),Integer(state) -r-x getNext javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x getPrevious javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[] : String(cursorHandle),Integer(count) -r-x importMessages Void : javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData[],Boolean(replaceOnly) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(java.lang.String),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData,Integer(java.lang.Integer) -r-x moveMessages Integer : String(selector),javax.management.openmbean.CompositeData -r-x pause Void : -r-x pauseConsumption Void : -r-x pauseInsertion Void : -r-x pauseProduction Void : -r-x preDeregister Void : -r-x resume Void : -r-x resumeConsumption Void : -r-x resumeInsertion Void : -r-x resumeProduction Void : -r-x sort Long : String(cursorHandle),Long(start),String[](fields),Boolean[](ascending) wls:/hotspot_domain/serverRuntime/JMSRuntime/AdminServer.jms/JMSServers/JMSServer-0/Destinations/SystemModule-0!Queue-0> cmo.deleteMessages('') 2 where the domain name is “hotspot_domain”, the JMS Server name is “JMSServer-0”, the Queue name is “Queue-0” and the System Module is named “SystemModule-0”. To invoke the operation, I use the “cmo” object, which is the “Current Management Object” that represents the currently navigated to MBean. The 2 indicates that two messages were deleted. Combining this WLST code with a recent post by my colleague Steve that shows you how to use an encrypted file to store the authentication credentials, you could easily turn this into a secure automated script. If you need help with that step, a long while back I blogged about some WLST basics. Happy scripting.

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Tuning Red Gate: #4 of Some

- by Grant Fritchey

First time connecting to these servers directly (keys to the kingdom, bwa-ha-ha-ha. oh, excuse me), so I'm going to take a look at the server properties, just to see if there are any issues there. Max memory is set, cool, first possible silly mistake clear. In fact, these look to be nicely set up. Oh, I'd like to see the ANSI Standards set by default, but it's not a big deal. The default location for database data is the F:\ drive, where I saw all the activity last time. Cool, the people maintaining the servers in our company listen, parallelism threshold is set to 35 and optimize for ad hoc is enabled. No shocks, no surprises. The basic setup is appropriate. On to the problem database. Nothing wrong in the properties. The database is in SIMPLE recovery, but I think it's a reporting system, so no worries there. Again, I'd prefer to see the ANSI settings for connections, but that's the worst thing I can see. Time to look at the queries, tables, indexes and statistics because all the information I've collected over the last several days suggests that we're not looking at a systemic problem (except possibly not enough memory), but at the traditional tuning issues. I just want to note that, I started looking at the system, not the queries. So should you when tuning your environment. I know, from the data collected through SQL Monitor, what my top poor performing queries are, and the most frequently called, etc. I'm starting with the most frequently called. I'm going to get the execution plan for this thing out of the cache (although, with the cache dumping constantly, I might not get it). And it's not there. Called 1.3 million times over the last 3 days, but it's not in cache. Wow. OK. I'll see what's in cache for this database: SELECT deqs.creation_time, deqs.execution_count, deqs.max_logical_reads, deqs.max_elapsed_time, deqs.total_logical_reads, deqs.total_elapsed_time, deqp.query_plan, SUBSTRING(dest.text, (deqs.statement_start_offset / 2) + 1, (deqs.statement_end_offset - deqs.statement_start_offset) / 2 + 1) AS QueryStatement FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(deqs.plan_handle) AS deqp WHERE dest.dbid = DB_ID('Warehouse') AND deqs.statement_end_offset > 0 AND deqs.statement_start_offset > 0 ORDER BY deqs.max_logical_reads DESC ; And looking at the most expensive operation, we have our first bad boy: Multiple table scans against very large sets of data and a sort operation. a sort operation? It's an insert. Oh, I see, the table is a heap, so it's doing an insert, then sorting the data and then inserting into the primary key. First question, why isn't this a clustered index? Let's look at some more of the queries. The next one is deceiving. Here's the query plan: You're thinking to yourself, what's the big deal? Well, what if I told you that this thing had 8036318 reads? I know, you're looking at skinny little pipes. Know why? Table variable. Estimated number of rows = 1. Actual number of rows. well, I'm betting several more than one considering it's read 8 MILLION pages off the disk in a single execution. We have a serious and real tuning candidate. Oh, and I missed this, it's loading the table variable from a user defined function. Let me check, let me check. YES! A multi-statement table valued user defined function. And another tuning opportunity. This one's a beauty, seriously. Did I also mention that they're doing a hash against all the columns in the physical table. I'm sure that won't lead to scans of a 500,000 row table, no, not at all. OK. I lied. Of course it is. At least it's on the top part of the Loop which means the scan is only executed once. I just did a cursory check on the next several poor performers. all calling the UDF. I think I found a big tuning opportunity. At this point, I'm typing up internal emails for the company. Someone just had their baby called ugly. In addition to a series of suggested changes that we need to implement, I'm also apologizing for being such an unkind monster as to question whether that third eye & those flippers belong on such an otherwise lovely child.

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Top Reasons You Need A User Engagement Platform

- by Michael Snow

Guest post by: Amit Sircar, Senior Sales Consultant, Oracle Deliver complex enterprise functionality through a simple intuitive and unified User Interface (UI) The modern enterprise contains a wide range of applications that are used to manage the business and drive competitive advantages. Organizations respond by creating a complex structure that results in a functional and management grouping of users. Each of these groups of users requires access to multiple applications and information sources in order to perform their job functions. This leads to the lack of a unified view of enterprise information, inconsistent user interfaces and disjointed security. To be effective, portals must be designed from the end-user perspective, enabling the user to accomplish as many tasks as possible while visiting the fewest number of portals. This requires rethinking the way that portals are built, moving from a functional business unit perspective to a user-focused, process-oriented point of view. Oracle WebCenter provides the Common User Experience Architecture that allows organizations to seamlessly present a unified view of enterprise information tailored to a particular user’s role and preferences. This architecture provides the best practices, design patterns and delivery mechanism for myriad services, applications, and data sources. In order to serve as a primary system of access, Oracle WebCenter also provides access to unstructured content and to other users via integrated search, service-oriented artifacts, content management, and collaboration tools. Provide a modern and engaging experience without modifying the core business application Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, forums or social media sites are having a profound impact in the public internet. These technologies can be leveraged by enterprises to add significant value to the business. Organizations need to integrate these technologies directly into their business applications while continuing to meet their security and governance needs. To deliver richer connections and become a more agile and intelligent business, WebCenter provides an enterprise portal platform that contains pre-integrated, standards-based Enterprise 2.0 services. These Enterprise 2.0 services can be easily accessed, integrated and utilized by users. By giving users the ability to use and integrate Enterprise 2.0 services such as tags, links, wikis, activities, blogs or social networking directly with their portals and applications, they are empowered to make richer connections, optimize their productivity, and ultimately increase the value of their applications. Foster a collaborative experience The organizational workplace has undergone a major change in the last decade. With increasing globalization and a distributed workforce, project teams may be physically separated by large distances. Online collaboration technologies are becoming a critical resource to enable virtual teams to share information and work together effectively. Oracle WebCenter delivers dynamic business communities with rich Services to empower teams to quickly and efficiently manage their information, applications, projects, and people without requiring IT assistance. It brings together the latest technology around Enterprise 2.0 and social computing, communities, personal productivity, and ad-hoc team interactions without any development effort. It enables the sharing and collaboration on team content, focusing an organization’s valuable resources on solving business problems, tapping into new ideas, and reducing time-to-market. Mobile Support The traditional workplace dynamics that required employees to access their work applications from their desktops have undergone a fundamental shift. Employees were used to primarily working from company offices and utilized an IT-issued computer for performing their job functions. With the introduction of flexible work hours and the growth of remote workers, more and more employees need the ability to remain productive even when they do not have access to a computer via the use of tablets and smartphones. In addition, customers and citizens have come to expect 24x7 access to resources and websites from wherever they are located. Tablets and smartphones have empowered everyone to quickly access services they need anytime and from any place. WebCenter provides out of the box capabilities to deliver the mobile experience in a seamless manner. Seeded device profiles and toolkits within WebCenter can be used to render the same web pages into multiple target devices such iPads, iPhones and android devices. Web designers can preview the portal using the built in simulator, make necessary updates and then deploy their UI design for the targeted device. Conclusion The competitive economy and resource constraints facing organizations today require them to find ways to make their applications, portals and Web sites more agile and intelligent and their knowledge workers more productive no matter where they are located. Organizations need to provide faster access to relevant information and resources, enhance existing applications and business processes with rich Enterprise 2.0 services, and seamlessly deliver content to mobile platforms. Oracle WebCenter successfully meets these challenges by providing the modern user experience platform for the enterprise and the Web.

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MSSQL: Copying data from one database to another

- by DigiMortal

I have database that has data imported from another server using import and export wizard of SQL Server Management Studio. There is also empty database with same tables but it also has primary keys, foreign keys and indexes. How to get data from first database to another? Here is the description of my crusade. And believe me – it is not nice one. Bugs in import and export wizard There is some awful bugs in import and export wizard that makes data imports and exports possible only on very limited manner: wizard is not able to analyze foreign keys, wizard wants to create tables always, whatever you say in settings. The result is faulty and useless package. Now let’s go step by step and make things work in our scenario. Database There are two databases. Let’s name them like this: PLAIN – contains data imported from remote server (no indexes, no keys, no nothing, just plain dumb data) CORRECT – empty database with same structure as remote database (indexes, keys and everything else but no data) Our goal is to get data from PLAIN to CORRECT. 1. Create import and export package In this point we will create faulty SSIS package using SQL Server Management Studio. Run import and export wizard and let it create SSIS package that reads data from CORRECT and writes it to, let’s say, CORRECT-2. Make sure you enable identity insert. Make sure there are no views selected. Make sure you don’t let package to create tables (you can miss this step because it wants to create tables anyway). Save package to SSIS. 2. Modify import and export package Now let’s clean up the package and remove all faulty crap. Connect SQL Server Management Studio to SSIS instance. Select the package you just saved and export it to your hard disc. Run Business Intelligence Studio. Create new SSIS project (DON’T MISS THIS STEP). Add package from disc as existing item to project and open it. Move to Control Flow page do one of following: Remove all preparation SQL-tasks and connect Data Flow tasks. Modify all preparation SQL-tasks so the existence of tables is checked before table is created (yes, you have to do it manually). Add new Execute-SQL task as first task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command: EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'DELETE FROM ?' GO Save task. Add new Execute-SQL task as last task in control flow: Open task properties. Assign destination connection as connection to use. Insert the following SQL as command: EXEC sp_MSForEachTable 'ALTER TABLE ? CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL' GO Save task Now connect first Execute-SQL task with first Data Flow task and last Data Flow task with second Execute-SQL task. Now move to Package Explorer tab and change connections under Connection Managers folder. Make source connection to use database PLAIN. Make destination connection to use database CORRECT. Save package and rebuilt the project. Update package using SQL Server Management Studio. Some hints: Make sure you take the package from solution folder because it is saved there now. Don’t overwrite existing package. Use numeric suffix and let Management Studio to create a new version of package. Now you are done with your package. Run it to test it and clean out all the errors you find. TRUNCATE vs DELETE You can see that I used DELETE FROM instead of TRUNCATE. Why? Because TRUNCATE has some nasty limits (taken from MSDN): “You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint; instead, use DELETE statement without a WHERE clause. Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged, it cannot activate a trigger. TRUNCATE TABLE may not be used on tables participating in an indexed view.” As I am not sure what tables you have and how they are used I provided here the solution that should work for all scenarios. If you need better performance then in some cases you can use TRUNCATE table instead of DELETE. Conclusion My conclusion is bitter this time although I am very positive guy. It is A.D. 2010 and still we have to write stupid hacks for simple things. Simple tools that existed before are long gone and we have to live mysterious bloatware that is our only choice when using default tools. If you take a look at the length of this posting and the count of steps I had to do for one easy thing you should treat it as a signal that something has went wrong in last years. Although I got my job done I would be still more happy if out of box tools are more intelligent one day. References T-SQL Trick for Deleting All Data in Your Database (Mauro Cardarelli) TRUNCATE TABLE (MSDN Library) Error Handling in SQL 2000 – a Background (Erland Sommarskog) Disable/Enable Foreign Key and Check constraints in SQL Server (Decipher)

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PASS Summit 2011 – Part III

- by Tara Kizer

Well we’re about a month past PASS Summit 2011, and yet I haven’t finished blogging my notes! Between work and home life, I haven’t been able to come up for air in a bit. Now on to my notes… On Thursday of the PASS Summit 2011, I attended Klaus Aschenbrenner’s (blog|twitter) “Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting”, Joe Webb’s (blog|twitter) “SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple”, Kalen Delaney’s (blog|twitter) “What Happened? Exploring the Plan Cache”, and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) “More DBA Mythbusters”. I think my head grew two times in size from the Thursday sessions. Just WOW! I took a ton of notes in Klaus' session. He took a deep dive into how to troubleshoot performance problems. Here is how he goes about solving a performance problem: Start by checking the wait stats DMV System health Memory issues I/O issues I normally start with blocking and then hit the wait stats. Here’s the wait stat query (Paul Randal’s) that I use when working on a performance problem. He highlighted a few waits to be aware of such as WRITELOG (indicates IO subsystem problem), SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD (indicates CPU problem), and PAGEIOLATCH_XX (indicates an IO subsystem problem or a buffer pool problem). Regarding memory issues, Klaus recommended that as a bare minimum, one should set the “max server memory (MB)” in sp_configure to 2GB or 10% reserved for the OS (whichever comes first). This is just a starting point though! Regarding I/O issues, Klaus talked about disk partition alignment, which can improve SQL I/O performance by up to 100%. You should use 64kb for NTFS cluster, and it’s automatic in Windows 2008 R2. Joe’s locking and blocking presentation was a good session to really clear up the fog in my mind about locking. One takeaway that I had no idea could be done was that you can set a timeout in T-SQL code view LOCK_TIMEOUT. If you do this via the application, you should trap error 1222. Kalen’s session went into execution plans. The minimum size of a plan is 24k. This adds up fast especially if you have a lot of plans that don’t get reused much. You can use sys.dm_exec_cached_plans to check how often a plan is being reused by checking the usecounts column. She said that we can use DBCC FLUSHPROCINDB to clear out the stored procedure cache for a specific database. I didn’t know we had this available, so this was great to hear. This will be less intrusive when an emergency comes up where I’ve needed to run DBCC FREEPROCCACHE. Kalen said one should enable “optimize for ad hoc workloads” if you have an adhoc loc. This stores only a 300-byte stub of the first plan, and if it gets run again, it’ll store the whole thing. This helps with plan cache bloat. I have a lot of systems that use prepared statements, and Kalen says we simulate those calls by using sp_executesql. Cool! Paul did a series of posts last year to debunk various myths and misconceptions around SQL Server. He continues to debunk things via “DBA Mythbusters”. You can get a PDF of a bunch of these here. One of the myths he went over is the number of tempdb data files that you should have. Back in 2000, the recommendation was to have as many tempdb data files as there are CPU cores on your server. This no longer holds true due to the numerous cores we have on our servers. Paul says you should start out with 1/4 to 1/2 the number of cores and work your way up from there. BUT! Paul likes what Bob Ward (twitter) says on this topic: 8 or less cores –> set number of files equal to the number of cores Greater than 8 cores –> start with 8 files and increase in blocks of 4 One common myth out there is to set your MAXDOP to 1 for an OLTP workload with high CXPACKET waits. Instead of that, dig deeper first. Look for missing indexes, out-of-date statistics, increase the “cost threshold for parallelism” setting, and perhaps set MAXDOP at the query level. Paul stressed that you should not plan a backup strategy but instead plan a restore strategy. What are your recoverability requirements? Once you know that, now plan out your backups. As Paul always does, he talked about DBCC CHECKDB. He said how fabulous it is. I didn’t want to interrupt the presentation, so after his session had ended, I asked Paul about the need to run DBCC CHECKDB on your mirror systems. You could have data corruption occur at the mirror and not at the principal server. If you aren’t checking for data corruption on your mirror systems, you could be failing over to a corrupt database in the case of a disaster or even a planned failover. You can’t run DBCC CHECKDB against the mirrored database, but you can run it against a snapshot off the mirrored database.

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