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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 24, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, October 24, 2011Popular ReleasesPeople's Note: People's Note 0.31: Added note tag editing. Changed note edit conflict resolution to keep the latest version. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011 Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package) Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK Stor...Workflow Automation (for Dynamics CRM 2011): Release 1.0: Initial release version 1.0.Window Manipulation with the Microsoft Touch Mouse: Window Touch v1.0: This is the initial release of the Window Touch software, which may have bugs and incomplete interactions. Please be patient with us as we work out all of the kinks, and feel free to send comments. To install and run the program download and double click the .msi file below. Make sure you already have a Microsoft Touch Mouse and can use it before installing.xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-resharper 0.4.4 (dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 6.0 RTM, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release addresses the following issues:Support for dotCover code coverage 4132 Note that this build work against ALL VERSIONS of xunit. The files are compiled against xunit.dll 1.8 - DO NOT REPLACE THIS FILE. Thanks to xunit's version independent runner system, this package can r...BookShop: BookShop: BookShop WP7 clientRibbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Editor (0.1.2122.266): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New icon Bug fix: can't connect to an IFD deployment when the discovery service url has been customizedSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.921.340): Added CodePlex and PayPal links New iconMVCQuick: MVCQuick 0.3.1: Features??NHibernate 3.2??Repository（ORuM） ??Spring.Net 1.3.2??Container（IoC） ??Common.Logging 1.2??Logging ASP.NET Security Provider?? ??MVCQuick.Framework??MusicStoreDotNet.Framework.Common: DotNet.Framework.Common 4.0: ??????????，????????????XML Explorer: XML Explorer 4.0.5: Changes in 4.0.5: Added 'Copy Attribute XPath to Address Bar' feature. Added methods for decoding node text and value from Base64 encoded strings, and copying them to the clipboard. Added 'ChildNodeDefinitions' to the options, which allows for easier navigation of parent-child and ID-IDREF relationships. Discovery happens on-demand, as nodes are expanded and child nodes are added. Nodes can now have 'virtual' child nodes, defined by an xpath to select an identifier (usually relative to ...Media Companion: MC 3.419b Weekly: A couple of minor bug fixes, but the important fix in this release is to tackle the extremely long load times for users with large TV collections (issue #130). A note has been provided by developer Playos: "One final note, you will have to suffer one final long load and then it should be fixed... alternatively you can delete the TvCache.xml and rebuild your library... The fix was to include the file extension so it doesn't have to look for the video file (checking to see if a file exists is a...CODE Framework: 4.0.11021.0: This build adds a lot of our WPF components, including our MVVC and MVC components as well as a "Metro" and "Battleship" style.GridLibre para Visual FoxPro: GridLibre para Visual FoxPro v3.5: GridLibre Para Visual FoxPro: esta herramienta ayudara a los usuarios y programadores en los manejos de los datos, como Filtrar, multiseleccion y el autoformato a las columnas como la asignacion del controlsource.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.0 CMS Alpha 3: Umbraco 5 Alpha 3Umbraco 5 (aka Jupiter) will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out the Alpha of v5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video. What's Alpha 3?This is our third Alpha release. It's intended for developers looking to become familiar with the codebase & architecture, or for thos...Vkontakte WP: Vkontakte: source codeWay2Sms Applications for Android, Desktop/Laptop & Java enabled phones: Way2SMS Desktop App v2.0: 1. Fixed issue with sending messages due to changes to Way2Sms site 2. Updated the character limit to 160 from 140GART - Geo Augmented Reality Toolkit: 1.0.1: About Release 1.0.1 Release 1.0.1 is a service release that addresses several issues and improves performance. As always, check the Documentation tab for instructions on how to get started. If you don't have the Windows Phone SDK yet, grab it here. Breaking Change Please note: There is a breaking change in this release. As noted below, the WorldCalculationMode property of ARItem has been replaced by a user-definable function. ARItem is now automatically wired up with a function that perform...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.32: Fix for issue #16710 - string literals in "constant literal operations" which contain ASP.NET substitutions should not be considered "constant." Move the JS1284 error (Misplaced Function Declaration) so it only fires when in strict mode. I got a couple complaints that people didn't like that error popping up in their existing code when they could verify that the location of that function, although not strict JS, still functions as expected cross-browser.Naked Objects: Naked Objects Release 4.0.110.0: Corresponds to the packaged version 4.0.110.0 available via NuGet. Please note that the easiest way to install and run the Naked Objects Framework is via the NuGet package manager: just search the Official NuGet Package Source for 'nakedobjects'. It is only necessary to download the source code (from here) if you wish to modify or re-build the framework yourself. If you do wish to re-build the framework, consul the file HowToBuild.txt in the release. Documentation Please note that after ...New Projects360zebra4en: 360zebra???AG: Web Framework that can leverage silverlight, but fall back on native html if silverlight is not available.BookShop: BookShop ????? ???? ? ????????????? ?????????.CompendiumImport: Import data from Dungeons & Dragons Compendium to Masterplan librariesCS 6235 Arbiter Server: CS 6235 Arbiter ServerDual numbers for automatic differentiation: Dual numbers can be used to automatically calculate numerically stable derivatives of functions.Effort - Entity Framework Unit Testing Tool: Effort is a powerful unit testing tool that brings an easy way to create unit tests for Entity Framework based applications. It can manipulate the behavior of EntityConnection or ObjectContext objects, so that the data operations are executed by a fake in-process database, while omitting the real database completely. This mechanism makes possible to remove the dependency between your unit test and the real database.FlexiCache for ASP.NET applications: This library provides extended cache capabilities to the ASP.NET applications. It includes the MongoDB and SQL Server output cache providers extending ASP.NET Output Cache capabilities by allowing to store cached data outside of the application process that is especially important in web-farm scenario. This library provides "Session-On-Demand" functionality - ability to separate ASP.NET Session data to subsets that can be stored outside of the main ASP.NET session and loaded on demand w...HtmlAgilityPackContrib - Logical extension to HtmlAgilityPack: HtmlAgilityPackContrib - A logical extension to HtmlAgilityPack to parse HTML using jQuery like methods inspired by jSoupjsonhttphandler: The JsonHttpHandler is a simple JSON oriented Http handler to easily integrate JSON GET, POST, and JSONP web services into your application.My Recent Documents: This Webpart for Sharepoint 2010 is developed for users that need help finding the last number of documents they have been working on. The target user have trouble location where he/she placed their documents. This Webpart gives the following features... 1. Locate your last edited documents.. 2. Customize how many documents the webpart should find. 3. Should it look in subsites also? 4. Show the structure in where the documents are located and click easy link to either document lib...Option pricing for arbitrary distributions: European option pricing with arbitrary distributions using dual numbers to calculate greeks.Project Tracy: ????????？ ????????？ ????????10??????？ ???????????????????????。。。。。 ???！Tracy?????????????！（?RegSharp: RegSharp provides server functionality for Sencha Extjs (http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/) paging grid. RegSharp implements sorting, filtering and paging logic on the server side that is required for using the paging grid. Is't developed in C#SharePoint/TFS Continuous Integration Starter Pack: Provides a customized TFS Build workflow and PowerShell scripts to get started with Continuous Integration (automated builds) in SharePoint 2010/TFS 2010. This pack will allow you to automatically build and deploy WSPs using TFS, and optionally also include automated testing as part of the build such as Visual Studio 2010's Coded UI Tests. Sharp Investor: Sharp Investor pools various online sources as well as preforms a couple local calculation to return recommended stocks. The program is easy to use, and requires very little work to find profitable stocks online. It's developed in C#.SharpXML: Aims to be a simpler library for interacting with XML files that exposes attributes and children elements as properties and objects respectively.Splash: Splash is an interactive MediaCenter-style YouTube client written in WPF.TomCdc: TomCdc is a solution which makes tracking of sql databse changes easy. Quick and simple installation process allows to start using the solution in just a few minutes. It supports all versions of Microsoft Sql server. You'll no longer have to write triggers manually to find out what process is changing data in a table.Track your work: Another work-time tracker TumblePower: TumblePower is a simplified API library for Tumblr. Use it in your application to post Text, Photos, Quotes, Links, Chats, Audio and Videos as well as set functions such as tags, dates and choose whether the post should be private or not.VisualBASH: This project aims to extends Visual Studio's language support to include bash scripting. This includes syntax highlighting, code completion, and syntax error checking.Window Manipulation with the Microsoft Touch Mouse: Window Manipulation for the Microsoft Touch Mouse provides a set of simple gestures for moving and resizing windows.Workflow Automation (for Dynamics CRM 2011): Workflow Automation for Dynamics CRM 2011 allows user to automate or schedule workflow execution via Windows Task Scheduler. XNA Model Viewer: The XNA Model Viewer allows you to load FBX files and view them. It allows you to test that models will work in XNA, determine the effect of modifying bone transforms, and view animation clips. You can examine the bones and meshes and see the complete hierarchy.

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• array and array_view from amp.h

  - by Daniel Moth

  This is a very long post, but it also covers what are probably the classes (well, array_view at least) that you will use the most with C++ AMP, so I hope you enjoy it! Overview The concurrency::array and concurrency::array_view template classes represent multi-dimensional data of type T, of N dimensions, specified at compile time (and you can later access the number of dimensions via the rank property). If N is not specified, it is assumed that it is 1 (i.e. single-dimensional case). They are rectangular (not jagged). The difference between them is that array is a container of data, whereas array_view is a wrapper of a container of data. So in that respect, array behaves like an STL container, whereas the closest thing an array_view behaves like is an STL iterator (albeit with random access and allowing you to view more than one element at a time!). The data in the array (whether provided at creation time or added later) resides on an accelerator (which is specified at creation time either explicitly by the developer, or set to the default accelerator at creation time by the runtime) and is laid out contiguously in memory. The data provided to the array_view is not stored by/in the array_view, because the array_view is simply a view over the real source (which can reside on the CPU or other accelerator). The underlying data is copied on demand to wherever the array_view is accessed. Elements which differ by one in the least significant dimension of the array_view are adjacent in memory. array objects must be captured by reference into the lambda you pass to the parallel_for_each call, whereas array_view objects must be captured by value (into the lambda you pass to the parallel_for_each call). Creating array and array_view objects and relevant properties You can create array_view objects from other array_view objects of the same rank and element type (shallow copy, also possible via assignment operator) so they point to the same underlying data, and you can also create array_view objects over array objects of the same rank and element type e.g.   array_view<int,3> a(b); // b can be another array or array_view of ints with rank=3 Note: Unlike the constructors above which can be called anywhere, the ones in the rest of this section can only be called from CPU code. You can create array objects from other array objects of the same rank and element type (copy and move constructors) and from other array_view objects, e.g.   array<float,2> a(b); // b can be another array or array_view of floats with rank=2 To create an array from scratch, you need to at least specify an extent object, e.g. array<int,3> a(myExtent);. Note that instead of an explicit extent object, there are convenience overloads when N<=3 so you can specify 1-, 2-, 3- integers (dependent on the array's rank) and thus have the extent created for you under the covers. At any point, you can access the array's extent thought the extent property. The exact same thing applies to array_view (extent as constructor parameters, incl. convenience overloads, and property). While passing only an extent object to create an array is enough (it means that the array will be written to later), it is not enough for the array_view case which must always wrap over some other container (on which it relies for storage space and actual content). So in addition to the extent object (that describes the shape you'd like to be viewing/accessing that data through), to create an array_view from another container (e.g. std::vector) you must pass in the container itself (which must expose .data() and a .size() methods, e.g. like std::array does), e.g.   array_view<int,2> aaa(myExtent, myContainerOfInts); Similarly, you can create an array_view from a raw pointer of data plus an extent object. Back to the array case, to optionally initialize the array with data, you can pass an iterator pointing to the start (and optionally one pointing to the end of the source container) e.g.   array<double,1> a(5, myVector.begin(), myVector.end()); We saw that arrays are bound to an accelerator at creation time, so in case you don’t want the C++ AMP runtime to assign the array to the default accelerator, all array constructors have overloads that let you pass an accelerator_view object, which you can later access via the accelerator_view property. Note that at the point of initializing an array with data, a synchronous copy of the data takes place to the accelerator, and then to copy any data back we'll see that an explicit copy call is required. This does not happen with the array_view where copying is on demand... refresh and synchronize on array_view Note that in the previous section on constructors, unlike the array case, there was no overload that accepted an accelerator_view for array_view. That is because the array_view is simply a wrapper, so the allocation of the data has already taken place before you created the array_view. When you capture an array_view variable in your call to parallel_for_each, the copy of data between the non-CPU accelerator and the CPU takes place on demand (i.e. it is implicit, versus the explicit copy that has to happen with the array). There are some subtleties to the on-demand-copying that we cover next. The assumption when using an array_view is that you will continue to access the data through the array_view, and not through the original underlying source, e.g. the pointer to the data that you passed to the array_view's constructor. So if you modify the data through the array_view on the GPU, the original pointer on the CPU will not "know" that, unless one of two things happen: you access the data through the array_view on the CPU side, i.e. using indexing that we cover below you explicitly call the array_view's synchronize method on the CPU (this also gets called in the array_view's destructor for you) Conversely, if you make a change to the underlying data through the original source (e.g. the pointer), the array_view will not "know" about those changes, unless you call its refresh method. Finally, note that if you create an array_view of const T, then the data is copied to the accelerator on demand, but it does not get copied back, e.g.   array_view<const double, 5> myArrView(…); // myArrView will not get copied back from GPU There is also a similar mechanism to achieve the reverse, i.e. not to copy the data of an array_view to the GPU. copy_to, data, and global copy/copy_async functions Both array and array_view expose two copy_to overloads that allow copying them to another array, or to another array_view, and these operations can also be achieved with assignment (via the = operator overloads). Also both array and array_view expose a data method, to get a raw pointer to the underlying data of the array or array_view, e.g. float* f = myArr.data();. Note that for array_view, this only works when the rank is equal to 1, due to the data only being contiguous in one dimension as covered in the overview section. Finally, there are a bunch of global concurrency::copy functions returning void (and corresponding concurrency::copy_async functions returning a future) that allow copying between arrays and array_views and iterators etc. Just browse intellisense or amp.h directly for the full set. Note that for array, all copying described throughout this post is deep copying, as per other STL container expectations. You can never have two arrays point to the same data. indexing into array and array_view plus projection Reading or writing data elements of an array is only legal when the code executes on the same accelerator as where the array was bound to. In the array_view case, you can read/write on any accelerator, not just the one where the original data resides, and the data gets copied for you on demand. In both cases, the way you read and write individual elements is via indexing as described next. To access (or set the value of) an element, you can index into it by passing it an index object via the subscript operator. Furthermore, if the rank is 3 or less, you can use the function ( ) operator to pass integer values instead of having to use an index object. e.g. array<float,2> arr(someExtent, someIterator); //or array_view<float,2> arr(someExtent, someContainer); index<2> idx(5,4); float f1 = arr[idx]; float f2 = arr(5,4); //f2 ==f1 //and the reverse for assigning, e.g. arr(idx[0], 7) = 6.9; Note that for both array and array_view, regardless of rank, you can also pass a single integer to the subscript operator which results in a projection of the data, and (for both array and array_view) you get back an array_view of rank N-1 (or if the rank was 1, you get back just the element at that location). Not Covered In this already very long post, I am not going to cover three very cool methods (and related overloads) that both array and array_view expose: view_as, section, reinterpret_as. We'll revisit those at some point in the future, probably on the team blog. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Solving Big Problems with Oracle R Enterprise, Part I

  - by dbayard

  Abstract: This blog post will show how we used Oracle R Enterprise to tackle a customer’s big calculation problem across a big data set. Overview: Databases are great for managing large amounts of data in a central place with rigorous enterprise-level controls.  R is great for doing advanced computations.  Sometimes you need to do advanced computations on large amounts of data, subject to rigorous enterprise-level concerns.  This blog post shows how Oracle R Enterprise enables R plus the Oracle Database enabled us to do some pretty sophisticated calculations across 1 million accounts (each with many detailed records) in minutes. The problem: A financial services customer of mine has a need to calculate the historical internal rate of return (IRR) for its customers’ portfolios.  This information is needed for customer statements and the online web application.  In the past, they had solved this with a home-grown application that pulled trade and account data out of their data warehouse and ran the calculations.  But this home-grown application was not able to do this fast enough, plus it was a challenge for them to write and maintain the code that did the IRR calculation. IRR – a problem that R is good at solving: Internal Rate of Return is an interesting calculation in that in most real-world scenarios it is impractical to calculate exactly.  Rather, IRR is a calculation where approximation techniques need to be used.  In this blog post, we will discuss calculating the “money weighted rate of return” but in the actual customer proof of concept we used R to calculate both money weighted rate of returns and time weighted rate of returns.  You can learn more about the money weighted rate of returns here: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Money-weighted_return First Steps- Calculating IRR in R We will start with calculating the IRR in standalone/desktop R.  In our second post, we will show how to take this desktop R function, deploy it to an Oracle Database, and make it work at real-world scale.  The first step we did was to get some sample data.  For a historical IRR calculation, you have a balances and cash flows.  In our case, the customer provided us with several accounts worth of sample data in Microsoft Excel.      The above figure shows part of the spreadsheet of sample data.  The data provides balances and cash flows for a sample account (BMV=beginning market value. FLOW=cash flow in/out of account. EMV=ending market value). Once we had the sample spreadsheet, the next step we did was to read the Excel data into R.  This is something that R does well.  R offers multiple ways to work with spreadsheet data.  For instance, one could save the spreadsheet as a .csv file.  In our case, the customer provided a spreadsheet file containing multiple sheets where each sheet provided data for a different sample account.  To handle this easily, we took advantage of the RODBC package which allowed us to read the Excel data sheet-by-sheet without having to create individual .csv files.  We wrote ourselves a little helper function called getsheet() around the RODBC package.  Then we loaded all of the sample accounts into a data.frame called SimpleMWRRData. Writing the IRR function At this point, it was time to write the money weighted rate of return (MWRR) function itself.  The definition of MWRR is easily found on the internet or if you are old school you can look in an investment performance text book.  In the customer proof, we based our calculations off the ones defined in the The Handbook of Investment Performance: A User’s Guide by David Spaulding since this is the reference book used by the customer.  (One of the nice things we found during the course of this proof-of-concept is that by using R to write our IRR functions we could easily incorporate the specific variations and business rules of the customer into the calculation.) The key thing with calculating IRR is the need to solve a complex equation with a numerical approximation technique.  For IRR, you need to find the value of the rate of return (r) that sets the Net Present Value of all the flows in and out of the account to zero.  With R, we solve this by defining our NPV function: where bmv is the beginning market value, cf is a vector of cash flows, t is a vector of time (relative to the beginning), emv is the ending market value, and tend is the ending time. Since solving for r is a one-dimensional optimization problem, we decided to take advantage of R’s optimize method (http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/stats/html/optimize.html). The optimize method can be used to find a minimum or maximum; to find the value of r where our npv function is closest to zero, we wrapped our npv function inside the abs function and asked optimize to find the minimum.  Here is an example of using optimize: where low and high are scalars that indicate the range to search for an answer.   To test this out, we need to set values for bmv, cf, t, emv, tend, low, and high.  We will set low and high to some reasonable defaults. For example, this account had a negative 2.2% money weighted rate of return. Enhancing and Packaging the IRR function With numerical approximation methods like optimize, sometimes you will not be able to find an answer with your initial set of inputs.  To account for this, our approach was to first try to find an answer for r within a narrow range, then if we did not find an answer, try calling optimize() again with a broader range.  See the R help page on optimize()  for more details about the search range and its algorithm. At this point, we can now write a simplified version of our MWRR function.  (Our real-world version is  more sophisticated in that it calculates rate of returns for 5 different time periods [since inception, last quarter, year-to-date, last year, year before last year] in a single invocation.  In our actual customer proof, we also defined time-weighted rate of return calculations.  The beauty of R is that it was very easy to add these enhancements and additional calculations to our IRR package.)To simplify code deployment, we then created a new package of our IRR functions and sample data.  For this blog post, we only need to include our SimpleMWRR function and our SimpleMWRRData sample data.  We created the shell of the package by calling: To turn this package skeleton into something usable, at a minimum you need to edit the SimpleMWRR.Rd and SimpleMWRRData.Rd files in the \man subdirectory.  In those files, you need to at least provide a value for the “title” section. Once that is done, you can change directory to the IRR directory and type at the command-line: The myIRR package for this blog post (which has both SimpleMWRR source and SimpleMWRRData sample data) is downloadable from here: myIRR package Testing the myIRR package Here is an example of testing our IRR function once it was converted to an installable package: Calculating IRR for All the Accounts So far, we have shown how to calculate IRR for a single account.  The real-world issue is how do you calculate IRR for all of the accounts?This is the kind of situation where we can leverage the “Split-Apply-Combine” approach (see http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/815.html).  Given that our sample data can fit in memory, one easy approach is to use R’s “by” function.  (Other approaches to Split-Apply-Combine such as plyr can also be used.  See http://4dpiecharts.com/2011/12/16/a-quick-primer-on-split-apply-combine-problems/). Here is an example showing the use of “by” to calculate the money weighted rate of return for each account in our sample data set.  Recap and Next Steps At this point, you’ve seen the power of R being used to calculate IRR.  There were several good things: R could easily work with the spreadsheets of sample data we were given R’s optimize() function provided a nice way to solve for IRR- it was both fast and allowed us to avoid having to code our own iterative approximation algorithm R was a convenient language to express the customer-specific variations, business-rules, and exceptions that often occur in real-world calculations- these could be easily added to our IRR functions The Split-Apply-Combine technique can be used to perform calculations of IRR for multiple accounts at once. However, there are several challenges yet to be conquered at this point in our story: The actual data that needs to be used lives in a database, not in a spreadsheet The actual data is much, much bigger- too big to fit into the normal R memory space and too big to want to move across the network The overall process needs to run fast- much faster than a single processor The actual data needs to be kept secured- another reason to not want to move it from the database and across the network And the process of calculating the IRR needs to be integrated together with other database ETL activities, so that IRR’s can be calculated as part of the data warehouse refresh processes In our next blog post in this series, we will show you how Oracle R Enterprise solved these challenges.

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• StreamInsight 2.1, meet LINQ

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Someone recently called LINQ “magic” in my hearing. I leapt to LINQ’s defense immediately. Turns out some people don’t realize “magic” is can be a pejorative term. I thought LINQ needed demystification. Here’s your best demystification resource: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mattwar/archive/2008/11/18/linq-links.aspx. I won’t repeat much of what Matt Warren says in his excellent series, but will talk about some core ideas and how they affect the 2.1 release of StreamInsight. Let’s tell the story of a LINQ query. Compile time It begins with some code: IQueryable<Product> products = ...; var query = from p in products             where p.Name == "Widget"             select p.ProductID; foreach (int id in query) {     ... When the code is compiled, the C# compiler (among other things) de-sugars the query expression (see C# spec section 7.16): ... var query = products.Where(p => p.Name == "Widget").Select(p => p.ProductID); ... Overload resolution subsequently binds the Queryable.Where<Product> and Queryable.Select<Product, int> extension methods (see C# spec sections 7.5 and 7.6.5). After overload resolution, the compiler knows something interesting about the anonymous functions (lambda syntax) in the de-sugared code: they must be converted to expression trees, i.e.,“an object structure that represents the structure of the anonymous function itself” (see C# spec section 6.5). The conversion is equivalent to the following rewrite: ... var prm1 = Expression.Parameter(typeof(Product), "p"); var prm2 = Expression.Parameter(typeof(Product), "p"); var query = Queryable.Select<Product, int>(     Queryable.Where<Product>(         products,         Expression.Lambda<Func<Product, bool>>(Expression.Property(prm1, "Name"), prm1)),         Expression.Lambda<Func<Product, int>>(Expression.Property(prm2, "ProductID"), prm2)); ... If the “products” expression had type IEnumerable<Product>, the compiler would have chosen the Enumerable.Where and Enumerable.Select extension methods instead, in which case the anonymous functions would have been converted to delegates. At this point, we’ve reduced the LINQ query to familiar code that will compile in C# 2.0. (Note that I’m using C# snippets to illustrate transformations that occur in the compiler, not to suggest a viable compiler design!) Runtime When the above program is executed, the Queryable.Where method is invoked. It takes two arguments. The first is an IQueryable<> instance that exposes an Expression property and a Provider property. The second is an expression tree. The Queryable.Where method implementation looks something like this: public static IQueryable<T> Where<T>(this IQueryable<T> source, Expression<Func<T, bool>> predicate) {     return source.Provider.CreateQuery<T>(     Expression.Call(this method, source.Expression, Expression.Quote(predicate))); } Notice that the method is really just composing a new expression tree that calls itself with arguments derived from the source and predicate arguments. Also notice that the query object returned from the method is associated with the same provider as the source query. By invoking operator methods, we’re constructing an expression tree that describes a query. Interestingly, the compiler and operator methods are colluding to construct a query expression tree. The important takeaway is that expression trees are built in one of two ways: (1) by the compiler when it sees an anonymous function that needs to be converted to an expression tree, and; (2) by a query operator method that constructs a new queryable object with an expression tree rooted in a call to the operator method (self-referential). Next we hit the foreach block. At this point, the power of LINQ queries becomes apparent. The provider is able to determine how the query expression tree is evaluated! The code that began our story was intentionally vague about the definition of the “products” collection. Maybe it is a queryable in-memory collection of products: var products = new[]     { new Product { Name = "Widget", ProductID = 1 } }.AsQueryable(); The in-memory LINQ provider works by rewriting Queryable method calls to Enumerable method calls in the query expression tree. It then compiles the expression tree and evaluates it. It should be mentioned that the provider does not blindly rewrite all Queryable calls. It only rewrites a call when its arguments have been rewritten in a way that introduces a type mismatch, e.g. the first argument to Queryable.Where<Product> being rewritten as an expression of type IEnumerable<Product> from IQueryable<Product>. The type mismatch is triggered initially by a “leaf” expression like the one associated with the AsQueryable query: when the provider recognizes one of its own leaf expressions, it replaces the expression with the original IEnumerable<> constant expression. I like to think of this rewrite process as “type irritation” because the rewritten leaf expression is like a foreign body that triggers an immune response (further rewrites) in the tree. The technique ensures that only those portions of the expression tree constructed by a particular provider are rewritten by that provider: no type irritation, no rewrite. Let’s consider the behavior of an alternative LINQ provider. If “products” is a collection created by a LINQ to SQL provider: var products = new NorthwindDataContext().Products; the provider rewrites the expression tree as a SQL query that is then evaluated by your favorite RDBMS. The predicate may ultimately be evaluated using an index! In this example, the expression associated with the Products property is the “leaf” expression. StreamInsight 2.1 For the in-memory LINQ to Objects provider, a leaf is an in-memory collection. For LINQ to SQL, a leaf is a table or view. When defining a “process” in StreamInsight 2.1, what is a leaf? To StreamInsight a leaf is logic: an adapter, a sequence, or even a query targeting an entirely different LINQ provider! How do we represent the logic? Remember that a standing query may outlive the client that provisioned it. A reference to a sequence object in the client application is therefore not terribly useful. But if we instead represent the code constructing the sequence as an expression, we can host the sequence in the server: using (var server = Server.Connect(...)) {     var app = server.Applications["my application"];     var source = app.DefineObservable(() => Observable.Range(0, 10, Scheduler.NewThread));     var query = from i in source where i % 2 == 0 select i; } Example 1: defining a source and composing a query Let’s look in more detail at what’s happening in example 1. We first connect to the remote server and retrieve an existing app. Next, we define a simple Reactive sequence using the Observable.Range method. Notice that the call to the Range method is in the body of an anonymous function. This is important because it means the source sequence definition is in the form of an expression, rather than simply an opaque reference to an IObservable<int> object. The variation in Example 2 fails. Although it looks similar, the sequence is now a reference to an in-memory observable collection: var local = Observable.Range(0, 10, Scheduler.NewThread); var source = app.DefineObservable(() => local); // can’t serialize ‘local’! Example 2: error referencing unserializable local object The Define* methods support definitions of operator tree leaves that target the StreamInsight server. These methods all have the same basic structure. The definition argument is a lambda expression taking between 0 and 16 arguments and returning a source or sink. The method returns a proxy for the source or sink that can then be used for the usual style of LINQ query composition. The “define” methods exploit the compile-time C# feature that converts anonymous functions into translatable expression trees! Query composition exploits the runtime pattern that allows expression trees to be constructed by operators taking queryable and expression (Expression<>) arguments. The practical upshot: once you’ve Defined a source, you can compose LINQ queries in the familiar way using query expressions and operator combinators. Notably, queries can be composed using pull-sequences (LINQ to Objects IQueryable<> inputs), push sequences (Reactive IQbservable<> inputs), and temporal sequences (StreamInsight IQStreamable<> inputs). You can even construct processes that span these three domains using “bridge” method overloads (ToEnumerable, ToObservable and To*Streamable). Finally, the targeted rewrite via type irritation pattern is used to ensure that StreamInsight computations can leverage other LINQ providers as well. Consider the following example (this example depends on Interactive Extensions): var source = app.DefineEnumerable((int id) =>     EnumerableEx.Using(() =>         new NorthwindDataContext(), context =>             from p in context.Products             where p.ProductID == id             select p.ProductName)); Within the definition, StreamInsight has no reason to suspect that it ‘owns’ the Queryable.Where and Queryable.Select calls, and it can therefore defer to LINQ to SQL! Let’s use this source in the context of a StreamInsight process: var sink = app.DefineObserver(() => Observer.Create<string>(Console.WriteLine)); var query = from name in source(1).ToObservable()             where name == "Widget"             select name; using (query.Bind(sink).Run("process")) {     ... } When we run the binding, the source portion which filters on product ID and projects the product name is evaluated by SQL Server. Outside of the definition, responsibility for evaluation shifts to the StreamInsight server where we create a bridge to the Reactive Framework (using ToObservable) and evaluate an additional predicate. It’s incredibly easy to define computations that span multiple domains using these new features in StreamInsight 2.1! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

  - by pinaldave

  I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly give me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. Encryption in SQL Server 2000 Built-in cryptographic encryption functionality was nonexistent in SQL Server 2000 and prior versions. In order to get server-side encryption in SQL Server you had to resort to purchasing or creating your own SQL Server XPs. Creating your own cryptographic XPs could be a daunting task owing to the fact that XPs had to be compiled as native DLLs (using a language like C or C++) and the XP application programming interface (API) was poorly documented. In addition there were always concerns around creating wellbehaved XPs that “played nicely” with the SQL Server process. Encryption in SQL Server 2005 Prior to the release of SQL Server 2005 there was a flurry of regulatory activity in response to accounting scandals and attacks on repositories of confidential consumer data. Much of this regulation centered onthe need for protecting and controlling access to sensitive financial and consumer information. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Microsoft responded to the increasing demand for built-in encryption byproviding the necessary tools to encrypt data at the column level. This functionality prominently featured the following: Support for column-level encryption of data using symmetric keys or passphrases. Built-in access to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, including AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, RC4, and RSA. Capability to create and manage symmetric keys. Key creation and management. Ability to generate asymmetric keys and self-signed certificates, or to install external asymmetric keys and certificates. Implementation of hierarchical model for encryption key management, similar to the ANSI X9.17 standard model. SQL functions to generate one-way hash codes and digital signatures, including SHA-1 and MD5 hashes. Additional SQL functions to encrypt and decrypt data. Extensions to the SQL language to support creation, use, and administration of encryption keys and certificates. SQL CLR extensions that provide access to .NET-based encryption functionality. Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Encryption demands have increased over the past few years. For instance, there has been a demand for the ability to store encryption keys “off-the-box,” physically separate from the database and the data it contains. Also there is a recognized requirement for legacy databases and applications to take advantage of encryption without changing the existing code base. To address these needs SQL Server 2008 adds the following features to its encryption arsenal: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE): Allows you to encrypt an entire database, including log files and the tempdb database, in such a way that it is transparent to client applications. Extensible Key Management (EKM): Allows you to store and manage your encryption keys on an external device known as a hardware security module (HSM). Cryptographic random number generation functionality. Additional cryptography-related catalog views and dynamic management views. SQL language extensions to support the new encryption functionality. The encryption book covers all the tools in its various chapter in one simple story. If you are interested how encryption evolved and reached to the stage where it is today, this book is must for everyone. You can read my earlier review of the book over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Encryption, SQL Server Encryption, SQLPASS

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• GPU Debugging with VS 11

  - by Daniel Moth

  With VS 11 Developer Preview we have invested tremendously in parallel debugging for both CPU (managed and native) and GPU debugging. I'll be doing a whole bunch of blog posts on those topics, and in this post I just wanted to get people started with GPU debugging, i.e. with debugging C++ AMP code. First I invite you to watch 6 minutes of a glimpse of the C++ AMP debugging experience though this video (ffw to minute 51:54, up until minute 59:16). Don't read the rest of this post, just go watch that video, ideally download the High Quality WMV. Summary GPU debugging essentially means debugging the lambda that you pass to the parallel_for_each call (plus any functions you call from the lambda, of course). CPU debugging means debugging all the code above and below the parallel_for_each call, i.e. all the code except the restrict(direct3d) lambda and the functions that it calls. With VS 11 you have to choose what debugger you want to use for a particular debugging session, CPU or GPU. So you can place breakpoints all over your code, then choose what debugger you want (CPU or GPU), and you'll only be able to hit breakpoints for the code type that the debugger engine understands – the remaining breakpoints will appear as unbound. If you want to hit the unbound breakpoints, you'd have to stop debugging, and start again with the other debugger. Sorry. We suck. We know. But once you are past that limitation, I think you'll find the experience truly rewarding – seriously! Switching debugger engines With the Developer Preview bits, one way to switch the debugger engine is through the project properties – see the screenshots that follow. This one is showing the CPU option selected, which is basically the default that you are all familiar with: This screenshot is showing the GPU option selected, by changing the debugger launcher (notice that this applies for both the local and remote case): You actually do not have to open the project properties just for switching the debugger engine, you can switch the selection from the toolbar in VS 11 Developer Preview too – see following screenshot (the effect is the same as if you opened the project properties and switched there) Breakpoint behavior Here are two screenshots, one showing a debugging session for CPU and the other a debugging session for GPU (notice the unbound breakpoints in each case) …and here is the GPU case (where we cannot bind the CPU breakpoints but can the GPU breakpoint, which is actually hit) Give C++ AMP debugging a try So to debug your C++ AMP code, pull down the drop down under the 'play' button to select the 'GPU C++ Direct3D Compute Debugger' menu option, then hit F5 (or the 'play' button itself). Then you can explore debugging by exploring the menus under the Debug and under the Debug->Windows menus. One way to do that exploration is through the C++ AMP debugging walkthrough on MSDN. Another way to explore the C++ AMP debugging experience, you can use the moth.cpp code file, which is what I used in my BUILD session debugger demo. Note that for my demo I was using the latest internal VS11 bits, so your experience with the Developer Preview bits won't be identical to what you saw me demonstrate, but it shouldn't be far off. Stay tuned for a lot more content on the parallel debugger in VS 11, both CPU and GPU, both managed and native. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – book review

  - by DigiMortal

     Writing code that is easy read and test is not something that is easy to achieve. Unfortunately there are still way too much programming students who write awful spaghetti after graduating. But there is one really good book that helps you raise your code to new level – your code will be also communication tool for you and your fellow programmers. “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin is excellent book that helps you start writing the easily readable code. Of course, you are the one who has to learn and practice but using this book you have very good guide that keeps you going to right direction. You can start writing better code while you read this book and you can do it right in your current projects – you don’t have to create new guestbook or some other simple application to start practicing. Take the project you are working on and start making it better! My special thanks to Robert C. Martin I want to say my special thanks to Robert C. Martin for this book. There are many books that teach you different stuff and usually you have markable learning curve to go before you start getting results. There are many books that show you the direction to go and then leave you alone figuring out how to achieve all that stuff you just read about. Clean Code gives you a lot more – the mental tools to use so you can go your way to clean code being sure you will be soon there. I am reading books as much as I have time for it. Clean Code is top-level book for developers who have to write working code. Before anything else take Clean Code and read it. You will never regret your decision. I promise. Fragment of editorial review “Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Readers will come away from this book understanding How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.” Table of contents Clean code Meaningful names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and data structures Error handling Boundaries Unit tests Classes Systems Emergence Concurrency Successive refinement JUnit internals Refactoring SerialDate Smells and heuristics A Concurrency II org.jfree.date.SerialDate Cross references of heuristics Epilogue Index

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• Fusion Concepts: Fusion Database Schemas

  - by Vik Kumar

  You often read about FUSION and FUSION_RUNTIME users while dealing with Fusion Applications. There is one more called FUSION_DYNAMIC. Here are some details on the difference between these three and the purpose of each type of schema. FUSION: It can be considered as an Administrator of the Fusion Applications with all the corresponding rights and powers such as owning tables and objects, providing grants to FUSION_RUNTIME.  It is used for patching and has grants to many internal DBMS functions. FUSION_RUNTIME: Used to run the Applications.  Contains no DB objects. FUSION_DYNAMIC: This schema owns the objects that are created dynamically through ADM_DDL. ADM_DDL is a package that acts as a wrapper around the DDL statement. ADM_DDL support operations like truncate table, create index etc. As the above statements indicate that FUSION owns the tables and objects including FND tables so using FUSION to run applications is insecure. It would be possible to modify security policies and other key information in the base tables (like FND) to break the Fusion Applications security via SQL injection etc. Other possibilities would be to write a logon DB trigger and steal credentials etc. Thus, to make Fusion Applications secure FUSION_RUNTIME is granted privileges to execute DMLs only on APPS tables. Another benefit of having separate users is achieving Separation of Duties (SODs) at schema level which is required by auditors. Below are the roles and privileges assigned to FUSION, FUSION_RUNTIME and FUSION_DYNAMIC schema: FUSION It has the following privileges: Create SESSION Do all types of DDL owned by FUSION. Additionally, some specific priveleges on other schemas is also granted to FUSION. EXECUTE ON various EDN_PUBLISH_EVENT It has the following roles: CTXAPP for managing Oracle Text Objects AQ_SER_ROLE and AQ_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE for managing Advanced Queues (AQ) FUSION_RUNTIME It has the following privileges: CREATE SESSION CHANGE NOTIFICATION EXECUTE ON various EDN_PUBLISH_EVENT It has the following roles: FUSION_APPS_READ_WRITE for performing DML (Select, Insert, Delete) on Fusion Apps tables FUSION_APPS_EXECUTE for performing execute on objects such as procedures, functions, packages etc. AQ_SER_ROLE and AQ_ADMINISTRATOR_ROLE for managing Advanced Queues (AQ) FUSION_DYNAMIC It has following privileges: CREATE SESSION, PROCEDURE, TABLE, SEQUENCE, SYNONYM, VIEW UNLIMITED TABLESPACE ANALYZE ANY CREATE MINING MODEL EXECUTE on specific procedure, function or package and SELECT on specific tables. This depends on the objects identified by product teams that ADM_DDL needs to have access  in order to perform dynamic DDL statements. There is one more role FUSION_APPS_READ_ONLY which is not attached to any user and has only SELECT privilege on all the Fusion objects. FUSION_RUNTIME does not have any synonyms defined to access objects owned by FUSION schema. A logon trigger is defined in FUSION_RUNTIME which sets the current schema to FUSION and eliminates the need of any synonyms.   What it means for developers? Fusion Application developers should be using FUSION_RUNTIME for testing and running Fusion Applications UI, BC and to connect to any SQL front end like SQL *PLUS, SQL Loader etc. For testing ADFbc using AM tester while using FUSION_RUNTIME you may hit the following error: oracle.jbo.JboException: JBO-29000: Unexpected exception caught: java.sql.SQLException, msg=invalid name pattern: FUSION.FND_TABLE_OF_VARCHAR2_255 The fix is to add the below JVM parameter in the Run/Debug client property in the Model project properties -Doracle.jdbc.createDescriptorUseCurrentSchemaForSchemaName=true More details are discussed in this forum thread for it.

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Web Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Many applications have a requirement to be located outside of the organization’s internal infrastructure control. For instance, the company website for a brick-and-mortar retail company may want to post not only static but interactive content to be available to their external customers, and not want the customers to have access inside the organization’s firewall. There are also cases of pure web applications used for a great many of the internal functions of the business. This allows for remote workers, shared customer/employee workloads and data and other advantages. Some firms choose to host these web servers internally, others choose to contract out the infrastructure to an “ASP” (Application Service Provider) or an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) company. In any case, the design of these applications often resembles the following: In this design, a server (or perhaps more than one) hosts the presentation function (http or https) access to the application, and this same system may hold the computational aspects of the program. Authorization and Access is controlled programmatically, or is more open if this is a customer-facing application. Storage is either placed on the same or other servers, hosted within an RDBMS or NoSQL database, or a combination of the options, all coded into the application. High-Availability within this scenario is often the responsibility of the architects of the application, and by purchasing more hosting resources which must be built, licensed and configured, and manually added as demand requires, although some IaaS providers have a partially automatic method to add nodes for scale-out, if the architecture of the application supports it. Disaster Recovery is the responsibility of the system architect as well. Implementation: In a Windows Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment, many of these architectural considerations are designed into the system. The Azure “Fabric” (not to be confused with the Azure implementation of Application Fabric - more on that in a moment) is designed to provide scalability. Compute resources can be added and removed programmatically based on any number of factors. Balancers at the request-level of the Fabric automatically route http and https requests. The fabric also provides High-Availability for storage and other components. Disaster recovery is a shared responsibility between the facilities (which have the ability to restore in case of catastrophic failure) and your code, which should build in recovery. In a Windows Azure-based web application, you have the ability to separate out the various functions and components. Presentation can be coded for multiple platforms like smart phones, tablets and PC’s, while the computation can be a single entity shared between them. This makes the applications more resilient and more object-oriented, and lends itself to a SOA or Distributed Computing architecture. It is true that you could code up a similar set of functionality in a traditional web-farm, but the difference here is that the components are built into the very design of the architecture. The API’s and DLL’s you call in a Windows Azure code base contains components as first-class citizens. For instance, if you need storage, it is simply called within the application as an object.  Computation has multiple options and the ability to scale linearly. You also gain another component that you would either have to write or bolt-in to a typical web-farm: the Application Fabric. This Windows Azure component provides communication between applications or even to on-premise systems. It provides authorization in either person-based or claims-based perspectives. SQL Azure provides relational storage as another option, and can also be used or accessed from on-premise systems. It should be noted that you can use all or some of these components individually. Resources: Design Strategies for Scalable Active Server Applications - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972349.aspx  Physical Tiers and Deployment  - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee658120.aspx

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• OSI Model

  - by kaleidoscope

  The Open System Interconnection Reference Model (OSI Reference Model or OSI Model) is an abstract description for layered communications and computer network protocol design. In its most basic form, it divides network architecture into seven layers which, from top to bottom, are the Application, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data Link, and Physical Layers. It is therefore often referred to as the OSI Seven Layer Model. A layer is a collection of conceptually similar functions that provide services to the layer above it and receives service from the layer below it. Description of OSI layers: Layer 1: Physical Layer ·         Defines the electrical and physical specifications for devices. In particular, it defines the relationship between a device and a physical medium. ·         Establishment and termination of a connection to a communications medium. ·         Participation in the process whereby the communication resources are effectively shared among multiple users. ·         Modulation or conversion between the representation of digital data in user equipment and the corresponding signals transmitted over a communications channel. Layer 2: Data Link Layer ·         Provides the functional and procedural means to transfer data between network entities. ·         Detect and possibly correct errors that may occur in the Physical Layer. The error check is performed using Frame Check Sequence (FCS). ·         Addresses is then sought to see if it needs to process the rest of the frame itself or whether to pass it on to another host. ·         The Layer is divided into two sub layers: The Media Access Control (MAC) layer and the Logical Link Control (LLC) layer. ·         MAC sub layer controls how a computer on the network gains access to the data and permission to transmit it. ·         LLC layer controls frame synchronization, flow control and error checking.   Layer 3: Network Layer ·         Provides the functional and procedural means of transferring variable length data sequences from a source to a destination via one or more networks. ·         Performs network routing functions, and might also perform fragmentation and reassembly, and report delivery errors. ·         Network Layer Routers operate at this layer—sending data throughout the extended network and making the Internet possible.   Layer 4: Transport Layer ·         Provides transparent transfer of data between end users, providing reliable data transfer services to the upper layers. ·         Controls the reliability of a given link through flow control, segmentation/de-segmentation, and error control. ·         Transport Layer can keep track of the segments and retransmit those that fail. Layer 5: Session Layer ·         Controls the dialogues (connections) between computers. ·         Establishes, manages and terminates the connections between the local and remote application. ·         Provides for full-duplex, half-duplex, or simplex operation, and establishes checkpointing, adjournment, termination, and restart procedures. ·         Implemented explicitly in application environments that use remote procedure calls. Layer 6: Presentation Layer ·         Establishes a context between Application Layer entities, in which the higher-layer entities can use different syntax and semantics, as long as the presentation service understands both and the mapping between them. The presentation service data units are then encapsulated into Session Protocol data units, and moved down the stack. ·         Provides independence from differences in data representation (e.g., encryption) by translating from application to network format, and vice versa. The presentation layer works to transform data into the form that the application layer can accept. This layer formats and encrypts data to be sent across a network, providing freedom from compatibility problems. It is sometimes called the syntax layer. Layer 7: Application Layer ·         This layer interacts with software applications that implement a communicating component. ·         Identifies communication partners, determines resource availability, and synchronizes communication. o       When identifying communication partners, the application layer determines the identity and availability of communication partners for an application with data to transmit. o       When determining resource availability, the application layer must decide whether sufficient network or the requested communication exists. o       In synchronizing communication, all communication between applications requires cooperation that is managed by the application layer. Technorati Tags: Kunal,OSI,Networking

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• SQL SERVER – Identity Fields – Contest Win Joes 2 Pros Combo (USD 198) – Day 2 of 5

  - by pinaldave

  August 2011 we ran a contest where every day we give away one book for an entire month. The contest had extreme success. Lots of people participated and lots of give away. I have received lots of questions if we are doing something similar this month. Absolutely, instead of running a contest a month long we are doing something more interesting. We are giving away USD 198 worth gift every day for this week. We are giving away Joes 2 Pros 5 Volumes (BOOK) SQL 2008 Development Certification Training Kit every day. One copy in India and One in USA. Total 2 of the giveaway (worth USD 198). All the gifts are sponsored from the Koenig Training Solution and Joes 2 Pros. The books are available here Amazon | Flipkart | Indiaplaza How to Win: Read the Question Read the Hints Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India residents only) 2 Winners will be randomly selected announced on August 20th. Question of the Day: Which of the following statement is incorrect? a) Identity value can be negative. b) Identity value can have negative interval. c) Identity value can be of datatype VARCHAR d) Identity value can have increment interval larger than 1 Query Hints: BIG HINT POST A simple way to determine if a table contains an identity field is to use the SSMS Object Explorer Design Interface. Navigate to the table, then right-click it and choose Design from the pop-up window. When your design tab opens, select the first field in the table to view its list of properties in the lower pane of the tab (In this case the field is ProductID). Look to see if the Identity Specification property in the lower pane is set to either yes or no. SQL Server will allow you to utilize IDENTITY_INSERT with just one table at a time. After you’ve completed the needed work, it’s very important to reset the IDENTITY_INSERT back to OFF. Additional Hints: I have previously discussed various concepts from SQL Server Joes 2 Pros Volume 2. SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Output Clause in Simple Examples SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – Advanced NTILE in Detail SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Ranking Functions – RANK( ), DENSE_RANK( ), and ROW_NUMBER( ) SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Advanced Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Aggregates with the Over Clause SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Overriding Identity Fields – Tricks and Tips of Identity Fields SQL Joes 2 Pros Development Series – Many to Many Relationships Next Step: Answer the Quiz in Contact Form in following format Question Answer Name of the country (The contest is open for USA and India) Bonus Winner Leave a comment with your favorite article from the “additional hints” section and you may be eligible for surprise gift. There is no country restriction for this Bonus Contest. Do mention why you liked it any particular blog post and I will announce the winner of the same along with the main contest. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

  - by mseika

  I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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• PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

  - by mseika

  I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations.   Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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• PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

  - by mseika

  I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations.   Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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• PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

  - by mseika

  I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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• Using the RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In From Excel Macros (VBA)

  - by dataintegration

  The RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In makes it easy to retrieve and update data from Salesforce from within Microsoft Excel. In addition to the built-in wizards that make data manipulation possible without code, the full functionality of the RSSBus Excel Add-Ins is available programmatically with Excel Macros (VBA) and Excel Functions. This article shows how to write an Excel macro that can be used to perform bulk inserts into Salesforce. Although this article uses the Salesforce Excel Add-In as an example, the same process can be applied to any of the Excel Add-Ins available on our website. Step 1: Download and install the RSSBus Excel Add-In available on our website. Step 2: Open Excel and create place holder cells for the connection details that are needed from the macro. In this article, a spreadsheet will be created for batch inserts, and these cells will store the connection details, and will be used to report the job Id, the batch Id, and the batch status. Step 3: Switch to the Developer tab in Excel. Add a new button on the spreadsheet, and create a new macro associated with it. This macro will contain the code needed to insert a batch of rows into Salesforce. Step 4: Add a reference to the Excel Add-In by selecting Tools --> References --> RSSBus Excel Add-In. The macro functions of the Excel Add-In will be available once the reference has been added. The following code shows how to call a Stored Procedure. In this example, a job is created to insert Leads by calling the CreateJob stored procedure. CreateJob returns a jobId that can be used to upload a large number of Leads in one transaction. Note the use of cells B1, B2, B3, and B4 that were created in Step 2 to read the connection settings from the Excel SpreadSheet and to write out the status of the procedure. methodName = "CreateJob" module.SetProviderName ("Salesforce") nameArray = Array("ObjectName", "Action", "ConcurrencyMode") valueArray = Array("Lead", "insert", "Serial") user = Range("B1").value pass = Range("B2").value atoken = Range("B3").value If (Not user = "" And Not pass = "" And Not atoken = "") Then module.SetConnectionString ("User=" + user + ";Password=" + pass + ";Access Token=" + atoken + ";") If module.CallSP(methodName, nameArray, valueArray) Then Dim ColumnCount As Integer ColumnCount = module.GetColumnCount Dim idIndex As Integer For Count = 0 To ColumnCount - 1 Dim colName As String colName = module.GetColumnName(Count) If module.GetColumnName(Count) = "id" Then idIndex = Count End If Next While (Not module.EOF) Range("B4").value = module.GetValue(idIndex) module.MoveNext Wend Else MsgBox "The CreateJob query failed." End If Exit Sub Else MsgBox "Please specify the connection details." Exit Sub End If Error: MsgBox "ERROR: " & Err.Description Step 5: Add the code to your macro. If you use the code above, you can check the results at Salesforce.com. They can be seen at Administration Setup -> Monitoring -> Bulk Data Load Jobs. Download the attached sample file for a more complete demo. Distributing an Excel File With Macros An Excel file with macros is saved using the .xlms extension. The code for the macro remains in the Excel file, and you can distribute your Excel file to any machine where the RSSBus Salesforce Excel Add-In is already installed. Macro Sample File Please download the fully functional sample excel file that includes the code referenced here. You will also need the RSSBus Excel Add-In to make the connection. You can download a free trial here. Note: You may get an error message stating: "Can't find project or library." in Excel 2007, since this example is made using Excel 2010. To resolve this, navigate to Tools -> References and uncheck the "MISSING: RSSBus Excel Add-In", then scroll down and check the "RSSBus Excel Add-In" listed below it.

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• Partner Webcast: Innovation in Products - October 1st, 2012 at 04:00 PM CET (03:00 PM GMT) Program

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  I am pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products – webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio – for your and your customer's benefit. Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions available on October 1st:   Topics Speaker To Register Fusion HCM Social Capabilities, Enterprise social capabilities embedded in how you run your business Anca Dumitru, HCM Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE Oracle Fusion Applications Security Concepts, Overview Alexandra Dan, Applications Technology Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Centre CLICK HERE Fusion Financials Overview - Focus on Fusion Payables, Meeting the Payables' Challenges Elena Nita, Senior ERP Sales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE Introduction to Oracle RightNow CX, Empowering companies to engage directly with their customers through great Social, Web, Chat and Contact Center experiences. Cais Champsi, Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Centre CLICK HERE Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, Product Overview Emma Palii, BI Sales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE To access previously presented 23 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the overall registration page Innovations in Products October 1st and the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products – program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration: Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku Rouhiainen Director, Applications Partner Enablement EMEA

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• Entity Framework - Single EMDX Mapping Multiple Database

  - by michaelalisonalviar

  Because of my recent craze on Entity Framework thanks to Sir Humprey, I have continuously searched the Internet for tutorials on how to apply it to our current system. So I've come to learn that with EF, I can eliminate the numerous coding of methods/functions for CRUD operations, my overly used assigning of connection strings, Data Adapters or Data Readers as Entity Framework will map my desired database and will do its magic to create entities for each table I want (using EF Powertool) and does all the methods/functions for my Crud Operations. But as I begin applying it to a new project I was assigned to, I realized our current server is designed to contain each similar entities in different databases. For example Our lookup tables are stored in LookupDb, Accounting-related tables are in AccountingDb, Sales-related tables in SalesDb. My dilemma is I have to use an existing table from LookupDB and use it as a look-up for my new table. Then I have found Miss Rachel's Blog (here)Thank You Miss Rachel!  which enables me to let EF think that my TableLookup1 is in the AccountingDB using the following steps. Im on VS 2010, I am using C# , Using Entity Framework 5, SQL Server 2008 as our DB ServerStep 1:Creating A SQL Synonym. If you want a more detailed discussion on synonyms, this was what i have read -> (link here). To simply put it, A synonym enabled me to simplify my query for the Look-up table when I'm using the AccountingDB fromSELECT [columns] FROM LookupDB.dbo.TableLookup1toSELECT [columns] FROM TableLookup1Syntax: CREATE SYNONYM  TableLookup1(1) FOR LookupDB.dbo.TableLookup1 (2)1. What you want to call the table on your other DB2. DataBaseName.schema.TableNameStep 2: We will now follow Miss Rachel's steps. you can either visit the link on the original topic I posted earlier or just follow the step I made.1. I created a Visual Basic Solution that will contain the 4 projects needed to complete the merging2. First project will contain the edmx file pointing to the AccountingDB3. Second project will contain the edmx file pointing to the LookupDB4. Third Project will will be our repository of the merged edmx file. Create an edmx file pointing To AccountingDB as this the database that we created the Synonym on.Reminder: Aside from using the same name for the Entities, please make sure that you have the same Model Namespace for all your Entities  5. Fourth project that will contain the beautiful EDMX merger that Miss Rachel created that will free you from Hard coding of the merge/recoding the Edmx File of the third project everytime a change is done on either one of the first two projects' Edmx File.6. Run the solution, but make sure that on the solutions properties Single startup project is selected and the project containing the EDMX merger is selected.7. After running the solution, double click on the EDMX file of the 3rd project and set Lazy Loading Enabled = False. This will let you use the tables/entities that you see in that EDMX File.8. Feel free to do your CRUD Operations.I don't know if EF 5 already has a feature to support synonyms as I am still a newbie on that aspect but I have seen a linked where there are supposed suggestions on Entity Framework upgrades and one is the "Support for multiple databases"  So that's it! Thanks for reading!

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

  - by FredOverflow

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

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• Surviving MATLAB and R as a Hardcore Programmer

  - by dsimcha

  I love programming in languages that seem geared towards hardcore programmers. (My favorites are Python and D.) MATLAB is geared towards engineers and R is geared towards statisticians, and it seems like these languages were designed by people who aren't hardcore programmers and don't think like hardcore programmers. I always find them somewhat awkward to use, and to some extent I can't put my finger on why. Here are some issues I have managed to identify: (Both): The extreme emphasis on vectors and matrices to the extent that there are no true primitives. (Both): The difficulty of basic string manipulation. (Both): Lack of or awkwardness in support for basic data structures like hash tables and "real", i.e. type-parametric and nestable, arrays. (Both): They're really, really slow even by interpreted language standards, unless you bend over backwards to vectorize your code. (Both): They seem to not be designed to interact with the outside world. For example, both are fairly bulky programs that take a while to launch and seem to not be designed to make simple text filter programs easy to write. Furthermore, the lack of good string processing makes file I/O in anything but very standard forms near impossible. (Both): Object orientation seems to have a very bolted-on feel. Yes, you can do it, but it doesn't feel much more idiomatic than OO in C. (Both): No obvious, simple way to get a reference type. No pointers or class references. For example, I have no idea how you roll your own linked list in either of these languages. (MATLAB): You can't put multiple top level functions in a single file, encouraging very long functions and cut-and-paste coding. (MATLAB): Integers apparently don't exist as a first class type. (R): The basic builtin data structures seem way too high level and poorly documented, and never seem to do quite what I expect given my experience with similar but lower level data structures. (R): The documentation is spread all over the place and virtually impossible to browse or search. Even D, which is often knocked for bad documentation and is still fairly alpha-ish, is substantially better as far as I can tell. (R): At least as far as I'm aware, there's no good IDE for it. Again, even D, a fairly alpha-ish language with a small community, does better. In general, I also feel like MATLAB and R could be easily replaced by plain old libraries in more general-purpose langauges, if sufficiently comprehensive libraries existed. This is especially true in newer general purpose languages that include lots of features for library writers. Why do R and MATLAB seem so weird to me? Are there any other major issues that you've noticed that may make these languages come off as strange to hardcore programmers? When their use is necessary, what are some good survival tips? Edit: I'm seeing one issue from some of the answers I've gotten. I have a strong personal preference, when I analyze data, to have one script that incorporates the whole pipeline. This implies that a general purpose language needs to be used. I hate having to write a script to "clean up" the data and spit it out, then another to read it back in a completely different environment, etc. I find the friction of using MATLAB/R for some of my work and a completely different language with a completely different address space and way of thinking for the rest to be a huge source of friction. Furthermore, I know there are glue layers that exist, but they always seem to be horribly complicated and a source of friction.

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• 45 minutes to talk about C# [closed]

  - by Philip

  I have the opportunity to give a 45 minute talk on C# in the theory of programming languages class I'm taking. The college teaches Java almost exclusively, so that's what all the students are most familiar with. (There's a little C, assembly, Prolog and LISP as well.) I decide what to talk about. It seems to me the best approach is to focus on a few of the big, obvious differences between C# and Java. I don't intend it to be a recommendation to use C# -- there are reasons to use each, mostly because of their ecosystems. So I want to focus on C# as a language. I don't want to go too fast and end up listing a whole bunch of features without showing their usefulness. My current plan is this: Functions as first class objects. This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest differences between C# and Java. The professor briefly mentioned this notion and showed a LISP example, but many of the students have probably never used it. I can show real world examples where it's made my code more readable. Lambda expressions as concise syntax for anonymous functions. Obviously with examples to show how this is useful. The real hit-home examples will be at the end when it's combined with the rest. I don't see an advantage to first showing the old delegate syntax and then replacing it with lambdas -- most of us won't have ever seen delegates anyway so it would just be confusing. The yield keyword and how it's different from returning an array. I have the impression that a lot of C# developers aren't familiar with how to use this. It will likely be very foreign to Java developers. I have some examples from my own work where it was really useful, such as iterating over a tree traversal, or iterating over neighbors in a graph where the neighbors aren't stored in memory. In both cases, doing it in Java would likely mean returning a complete list -- with yield I can stop iterating if I find what I want early on, without using memory for superfluous lists or arrays. Extension methods as a way to write implementation on interfaces. We'll all be familiar with how interfaces don't allow method implementation, and how this leads to code duplication. I'll show a specific example of this and how the extension method can solve the problem. Demonstrate how the above can be combined by implementing some simple Linq methods and using them. Where, Select, First, maybe more depending on how much time is left. Ideas on which ones might 'hit home' the best? There are other things I could talk about such as generics, value types, properties and more. I haven't yet though of good ways to incorporate these. In the case of generics and value types, the advantages might not be obvious or as relevant. Properties are obviously useful, particularly since we're taught strict JavaBeans here, but I don't know if I could integrate it with the "path to Linq" discussion above without it feeling tacked on. So I'm looking for thoughts on how to talk about C#, and what to talk about. Even minor details. I'm sure there are more experienced C# developers than me here who have good insight about what's really important in the language, and what would miss the point.

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• What is the best Broadphase Interface for moving spheres?

  - by Molmasepic

  As of now I am working on optimizing the performance of the physics and collision, and as of now I am having some slowdowns on my other computers from my main. I have well over 3000 btSphereShape Rigidbodies and 2/3 of them do not move at all, but I am noticing(by the profile below) that collision is taking a bit of time to maneuver. Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls ms/call ms/call name 10.09 0.65 0.65 SphereTriangleDetector::collide(btVector3 const&, btVector3&, btVector3&, float&, float&, float) 7.61 1.14 0.49 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::processCollision(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btDispatcherInfo const&, btManifoldResult*) 5.59 1.50 0.36 btConvexTriangleCallback::processTriangle(btVector3*, int, int) 5.43 1.85 0.35 btQuantizedBvh::reportAabbOverlappingNodex(btNodeOverlapCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const 4.97 2.17 0.32 btBvhTriangleMeshShape::processAllTriangles(btTriangleCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const::MyNodeOverlapCallback::processNode(int, int) 4.19 2.44 0.27 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowGeneric(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 4.04 2.70 0.26 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowLowerLimit(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 3.73 2.94 0.24 Ogre::OctreeSceneManager::walkOctree(Ogre::OctreeCamera*, Ogre::RenderQueue*, Ogre::Octree*, Ogre::VisibleObjectsBoundsInfo*, bool, bool) 3.42 3.16 0.22 btTriangleShape::getVertex(int, btVector3&) const 2.48 3.32 0.16 Ogre::Frustum::isVisible(Ogre::AxisAlignedBox const&, Ogre::FrustumPlane*) const 2.33 3.47 0.15 1246357 0.00 0.00 Gorilla::Layer::setVisible(bool) 2.33 3.62 0.15 SphereTriangleDetector::getClosestPoints(btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::ClosestPointInput const&, btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::Result&, btIDebugDraw*, bool) 1.86 3.74 0.12 btCollisionDispatcher::findAlgorithm(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btPersistentManifold*) 1.86 3.86 0.12 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupContactConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btManifoldPoint&, btContactSolverInfo const&, btVector3&, float&, float&, btVector3&, btVector3&) 1.71 3.97 0.11 btTriangleShape::getEdge(int, btVector3&, btVector3&) const 1.55 4.07 0.10 _Unwind_SjLj_Register 1.55 4.17 0.10 _Unwind_SjLj_Unregister 1.55 4.27 0.10 Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::updateBufferResources(char const*, Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::BufferResources*) 1.40 4.36 0.09 btManifoldResult::addContactPoint(btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, float) 1.40 4.45 0.09 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupFrictionConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btVector3 const&, btRigidBody*, btRigidBody*, btManifoldPoint&, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, float, float, float) 1.24 4.53 0.08 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::convertContact(btPersistentManifold*, btContactSolverInfo const&) 1.09 4.60 0.07 408760 0.00 0.00 Living::MapHide() 1.09 4.67 0.07 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::~btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm() 1.09 4.74 0.07 inflate_fast EDIT: Updated to show current Profile. I have only listed the functions using over 1% time from the many functions that are being used. Another thing is that each monster has a certain area that they stay in and are only active when a player is in said area. I was wondering if maybe there is a way to deactivate the non-active monsters from bullet(reactivating once in the area again) or maybe theres a different broadphase interface that I should use. The current BPI is btDbvtBroadphase. EDIT: Here is the Profile on the other computer(the top one is my main) Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds. % cumulative self self total time seconds seconds calls ms/call ms/call name 12.18 1.19 1.19 SphereTriangleDetector::collide(btVector3 const&, btVector3&, btVector3&, float&, float&, float) 6.76 1.85 0.66 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::processCollision(btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btDispatcherInfo const&, btManifoldResult*) 5.83 2.42 0.57 btQuantizedBvh::reportAabbOverlappingNodex(btNodeOverlapCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const 5.12 2.92 0.50 btConvexTriangleCallback::processTriangle(btVector3*, int, int) 4.61 3.37 0.45 btTriangleShape::getVertex(int, btVector3&) const 4.09 3.77 0.40 _Unwind_SjLj_Register 3.48 4.11 0.34 btBvhTriangleMeshShape::processAllTriangles(btTriangleCallback*, btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&) const::MyNodeOverlapCallback::processNode(int, int) 2.46 4.35 0.24 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowLowerLimit(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 2.15 4.56 0.21 _Unwind_SjLj_Unregister 2.15 4.77 0.21 SphereTriangleDetector::getClosestPoints(btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::ClosestPointInput const&, btDiscreteCollisionDetectorInterface::Result&, btIDebugDraw*, bool) 1.84 4.95 0.18 btTriangleShape::getEdge(int, btVector3&, btVector3&) const 1.64 5.11 0.16 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::resolveSingleConstraintRowGeneric(btRigidBody&, btRigidBody&, btSolverConstraint const&) 1.54 5.26 0.15 btSequentialImpulseConstraintSolver::setupContactConstraint(btSolverConstraint&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, btManifoldPoint&, btContactSolverInfo const&, btVector3&, float&, float&, btVector3&, btVector3&) 1.43 5.40 0.14 Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::updateBufferResources(char const*, Ogre::D3D9HardwareVertexBuffer::BufferResources*) 1.33 5.53 0.13 btManifoldResult::addContactPoint(btVector3 const&, btVector3 const&, float) 1.13 5.64 0.11 btRigidBody::predictIntegratedTransform(float, btTransform&) 1.13 5.75 0.11 btTriangleIndexVertexArray::getLockedReadOnlyVertexIndexBase(unsigned char const**, int&, PHY_ScalarType&, int&, unsigned char const**, int&, int&, PHY_ScalarType&, int) const 1.02 5.85 0.10 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::CreateFunc::CreateCollisionAlgorithm(btCollisionAlgorithmConstructionInfo&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*) 1.02 5.95 0.10 btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm::btSphereTriangleCollisionAlgorithm(btPersistentManifold*, btCollisionAlgorithmConstructionInfo const&, btCollisionObject*, btCollisionObject*, bool) Edited same as other Profile.

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• HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

  - by darrenm

  Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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• New R Interface to Oracle Data Mining Available for Download

  - by charlie.berger

    The R Interface to Oracle Data Mining ( R-ODM) allows R users to access the power of Oracle Data Mining's in-database functions using the familiar R syntax. R-ODM provides a powerful environment for prototyping data analysis and data mining methodologies. R-ODM is especially useful for: Quick prototyping of vertical or domain-based applications where the Oracle Database supports the application Scripting of "production" data mining methodologies Customizing graphics of ODM data mining results (examples: classification, regression, anomaly detection) The R-ODM interface allows R users to mine data using Oracle Data Mining from the R programming environment. It consists of a set of function wrappers written in source R language that pass data and parameters from the R environment to the Oracle RDBMS enterprise edition as standard user PL/SQL queries via an ODBC interface. The R-ODM interface code is a thin layer of logic and SQL that calls through an ODBC interface. R-ODM does not use or expose any Oracle product code as it is completely an external interface and not part of any Oracle product. R-ODM is similar to the example scripts (e.g., the PL/SQL demo code) that illustrates the use of Oracle Data Mining, for example, how to create Data Mining models, pass arguments, retrieve results etc. R-ODM is packaged as a standard R source package and is distributed freely as part of the R environment's Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). For information about the R environment, R packages and CRAN, see www.r-project.org. R-ODM is particularly intended for data analysts and statisticians familiar with R but not necessarily familiar with the Oracle database environment or PL/SQL. It is a convenient environment to rapidly experiment and prototype Data Mining models and applications. Data Mining models prototyped in the R environment can easily be deployed in their final form in the database environment, just like any other standard Oracle Data Mining model. What is R? R is a system for statistical computation and graphics. It consists of a language plus a run-time environment with graphics, a debugger, access to certain system functions, and the ability to run programs stored in script files. The design of R has been heavily influenced by two existing languages: Becker, Chambers & Wilks' S and Sussman's Scheme. Whereas the resulting language is very similar in appearance to S, the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. R was initially written by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the Department of Statistics of the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. Since mid-1997 there has been a core group (the "R Core Team") who can modify the R source code archive. Besides this core group many R users have contributed application code as represented in the near 1,500 publicly-available packages in the CRAN archive (which has shown exponential growth since 2001; R News Volume 8/2, October 2008). Today the R community is a vibrant and growing group of dozens of thousands of users worldwide. It is free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft, and an official part of the GNU project ("GNU S"). Resources: R website / CRAN R-ODM

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• Orchestrating the Virtual Enterprise, Part I

  - by Kathryn Perry

  A guest post by Jon Chorley, Oracle's Chief Sustainability Officer & Vice President, SCM Product Strategy During the American Industrial Revolution, the Ford Motor Company did it all. It turned raw materials into a showroom full of Model Ts. It owned a steel mill, a glass factory, and an automobile assembly line. The company was both self-sufficient and innovative and went on to become one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Nowadays, it's unusual for any business to follow this vertical integration model because its much harder to be best in class across such a wide a range of capabilities and services. Instead, businesses focus on their core competencies and outsource other business functions to specialized suppliers. They exchange vertical integration for collaboration. When done well, all parties benefit from this arrangement and the collaboration leads to the creation of an agile, lean and successful "virtual enterprise." Case in point: For Sun hardware, Oracle outsources most of its manufacturing and all of its logistics to third parties. These are vital activities, but ones where Oracle doesn't have a core competency, so we shift them to business partners who do. Within our enterprise, we always retain the core functions of product development, support, and most of the sales function, because that's what constitutes our core value to our customers. This is a perfect example of a virtual enterprise.  What are the implications of this? It means that we must exchange direct internal control for indirect external collaboration. This fundamentally changes the relative importance of different business processes, the boundaries of security and information sharing, and the relationship of the supply chain systems to the ERP. The challenge is that the systems required to support this virtual paradigm are still mired in "island enterprise" thinking. But help is at hand. Developments such as the Web, social networks, collaboration, and rules-based orchestration offer great potential to fundamentally re-architect supply chain systems to better support the virtual enterprise.  Supply Chain Management Systems in a Virtual Enterprise Historically enterprise software was constructed to automate the ERP - and then the supply chain systems extended the ERP. They were joined at the hip. In virtual enterprises, the supply chain system needs to be ERP agnostic, sitting above each of the ERPs that are distributed across the virtual enterprise - most of which are operating in other businesses. This is vital so that the supply chain system can manage the flow of material and the related information through the multiple enterprises. It has to have strong collaboration tools. It needs to be highly flexible. Users need to be able to see information that's coming from multiple sources and be able to react and respond to events across those sources.  Oracle Fusion Distributed Order Orchestration (DOO) is a perfect example of a supply chain system designed to operate in this virtual way. DOO embraces the idea that a company's fulfillment challenge is a distributed, multi-enterprise problem. It enables users to manage the process and the trading partners in a uniform way and deliver a consistent user experience while operating over a heterogeneous, virtual enterprise. This is a fundamental shift at the core of managing supply chains. It forces virtual enterprises to think architecturally about how best to construct their supply chain systems. In my next post, I will share examples of companies that have made that shift and talk more about the distributed orchestration process.

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