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• Win 8: Adding a boot volume to an MBR dynamic disk [NOT about changing to basic disks]

  - by Stilez

  (This is NOT aiming to convert to basic disk. In this question, the disk stays dynamic but becomes bootable) There doesn't seem to be a clear, well stated answer I can find, for the question "What are the criteria for Windows 8 to successfully boot from an MBR dynamic disk", or "how do I fix a dynamic MBR partition that's failing boot"? I've tried to educate myself but can't find crucial information to clear it all up. My existing HDD/SSD setup: DISK 0 ~ 60GB SSD/MBR/basic: (350MB recovery)(60GB windows 8 bootable) DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data) DISK 2 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB unallocated)(410GB mirrored data) DISKS 3, 4, 5: (ignored for simplicity: 2xHDD RAID1 + caching SSD) I'm heavy duty on data crunching and virtualisation, just maxxed out 32GB RAM @ 2133 and moved to 4960X + 64GB. Disk 0 is a pure system disk of little value, and virtualisations runs off mirrored SSDs (Samsung 840 Pro 512 x 2) for double speed reading and so they snapshot in reasonable time. I'm using 4 SATA3 ports and the board only has two decent Intel ports (onboard Marvell are poorer quality). I'm wary of choosing between LSI, HighPoint and other 3rd party controllers as I'm unfamiliar with the maze of decent RAID cards (that's a whole other issue!). I want to cut down my SSD needs by moving the boot volume and caching volume to the 840 pros, giving a setup with 2 fewer SSDs: DISK 0 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(60GB boot)(410GB mirrored data) DISK 1 ~ 512GB SSD/MBR/dynamic: (350MB recovery)(30GB cache for the ICH10R mirror)(30GB temp)(410GB mirrored data) DISKS 2, 3: (2xHDD RAID1) Intel's RST allows this, Win 8 allows booting off a MBR/dynamic disk, and the two 60GB SSDs are hardly the fastest SSDs anyway, they'll get repurposed. Moving the caching volume is easy. Moving the boot volume has me stumped. The difficulty is, I'm hitting a wall of knowledge here. I have a UEFI Asus motherboard with an previous traditional MBR/basic boot disk, and I want it to boot from a disk and volume that's MBR/dynamic. The disk copy is physically ok (Partition Wizard Server will copy to dynamic volumes) but then hits a light blue 0xc000000e boot error. No real surprise, I expected to have some boot fixing, but had expected Windows to boot-fix it (all drivers exist), or the usual manual fixes to work. Specifically, I don't know enough, to know what's got to be manually checked and perhaps corrected for the disk to boot (legacy/uefi/bios, odd partitions, boot tables, disk IDs, hidden boot files, oh my!), or if I need to change any of this secure boot/UEFI/legacy stuff in the bios, convert a 512 SSD to basic and then back to dynamic when working, or if the issue is pure OS config using "diskpart", "bootsect" and "bootrec" from the Win8 DVD. The old system disk still boots but I don't know enough to figure what to fix, to make the system boot as I want. The answers probably aren't hard but the real issue is my confusion and missing information. Thanks for helping!

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• Event ID 17890 (A significant part... paged out.) with SQL Server 2008

  - by Godeke

  I have a machine that has SQL Server 2008 Standard installed. Periodically (about once an hour) I am getting Event ID 17890 several times in a row. An example: 6:28:54 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 0 seconds. Working set (KB): 10652, committed (KB): 628428, memory utilization: 1%%. 6:34:27 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 332 seconds. Working set (KB): 169780, committed (KB): 546124, memory utilization: 31%%." 6:38:55 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 600 seconds. Working set (KB): 245068, committed (KB): 546124, memory utilization: 44%%." This pattern repeated at 7:26 - 7:37, 8:26 - 8:36, 9:24 - 9:35 and so with the same increasing working set and memory utilization pattern. I don't have any (known) background tasks running at this time. Backups run at 2:00 This subsided from 11:00 at night until it resumed at 4:00 in the morning and has been continuing the intermittent 10 minute glitch periods. As this server has plenty of RAM (the commit charge has peaked at 2,871,564 of 4,194,012 physical) I disabled the paging files after reading several items I dug up searching Google and not finding any of them changing the situation. This pattern I am documented is after removing the paging files, so I'm not even sure where we are paging the SQL process could be going. I also changed the SQL process memory to have a minimum of 500MB and a maximum of 2GB of RAM (as this is a light duty database server serving only a small workgroup). Has anyone encountered this? Prior to disabling the page files this error would cause 5 minutes of disk thrashing that disabled access to the databases, files, IIS webs and so on. Since disabling the page files it just logs strange things, but I'm not seeing a performance drop at least. Any suggestions would be welcome.

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• Last week I was presented with a Microsoft MVP award in Virtual Machines – time to thank all who hel

  - by Liam Westley

  MVP in Virtual Machines Last week, on 1st April, I received an e-mail from Microsoft letting me know that I had been presented with a 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award for outstanding contributions in Virtual Machine technical communities during the past year.   It was an honour to be nominated, and is a great reflection on the vibrancy of the UK user group community which made this possible. Virtualisation for developers, not just IT Pros I consider it a special honour as my expertise in virtualisation is as a software developer utilising virtual machines to aid my software development, rather than an IT Pro who manages data centre and network infrastructure.  I’ve been on a minor mission over the past few years to enthuse developers in a topic usually seen as only for network admins, but which can make their life a whole lot easier once understood properly. Continuous learning is fun In 1676, the scientist Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert Hooke used the phrase (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/268025.html) ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants’ I’m a nuclear physicist by education, so I am more than comfortable that any knowledge I have is based on the work of others.  Although far from a science, software development and IT is equally built upon the work of others. It’s one of the reasons I despise software patents. So in that sense this MVP award is a result of all the great minds that have provided virtualisation solutions for me to talk about.  I hope that I have always acknowledged those whose work I have used when blogging or giving presentations, and that I have executed my responsibility to share any knowledge gained as widely as possible. Thanks to all those who helped – a big thanks to the UK user group community I reckon this journey started in 2003 when I started attending a user group called the London .Net Users Group (http://www.dnug.org.uk) started by a nice chap called Ian Cooper. The great thing about Ian was that he always encouraged non professional speakers to take the stage at the user group, and my first ever presentation was on 30th September 2003; SQL Server CE 2.0 and the.NET Compact Framework. In 2005 Ian Cooper was on the committee for the first DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! day, the free community conference held at Microsoft’s UK HQ in Thames Valley park in Reading.  He encouraged me to take part and so on 14th May 2005 I presented a talk previously given to the London .Net User Group on Simplifying access to multiple DB providers in .NET.  From that point on I definitely had the bug; presenting at DDD2, DDD3, groking at DDD4 and SQLBits I and after a break, DDD7, DDD Scotland and DDD8.  What definitely made me keen was the encouragement and infectious enthusiasm of some of the other DDD organisers; Craig Murphy, Barry Dorrans, Phil Winstanley and Colin Mackay. During the first few DDD events I met the Dave McMahon and Richard Costall from NxtGenUG who made it easy to start presenting at their user groups.  Along the way I’ve met a load of great user group organisers; Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .Net Developer Network, Jimmy Skowronski of GL.Net and the double act of Ray Booysen and Gavin Osborn behind what was Vista Squad and is now Edge UG. Final thanks to those who suggested virtualisation as a topic ... Final thanks have to go the people who inspired me to create my Virtualisation for Developers talk.  Toby Henderson (@holytshirt) ensured I took notice of Sun’s VirtualBox, Peter Ibbotson for being a fine sounding board at the Kew Railway over quite a few Adnam’s Broadside and to Guy Smith-Ferrier for allowing his user group to be the guinea pigs for the talk before it was seen at DDD7.  Thanks to all of you I now know much more about virtualisation than I would have thought possible and it continues to be great fun. Conclusion If this was an academy award acceptance speech I would have been cut off after the first few paragraphs, so well done if you made it this far.  I’ll be doing my best to do justice to the MVP award and the UK community.  I’m fortunate in having a new employer who considers presenting at user groups as a good thing, so don’t expect me to stop any time soon. If you’ve never seen me in action, then you can view the original DDD7 Virtualisation for Developers presentation (filmed by the Microsoft Channel 9 team) as part of the full DDD7 video list here, http://www.craigmurphy.com/blog/?p=1591.  Also thanks to Craig Murphy’s fine video work you can also view my latest DDD8 presentation on Commercial Software Development, here, http://vimeo.com/9216563 P.S. If I’ve missed anyone out, do feel free to lambast me in comments, it’s your duty.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 17, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 17, 2010New Projectschaosreader: A simple RSS reader.CRM 4.0 Customization GUID Update: The CRM 4.0 customization GUID update is an open source C# console application that automatically replaces GUID values in your exported workflow cu...DotNetNuke® Skin Bright: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Noel Jerke of SiteToolset. This simple and clean business...DotNetNuke® Skin Go: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by DnnGo Corporation. The skin uses web standard DIV+CSS tec...DotNetNuke® Skin J10blend: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Timthy Maler of 2M Studio Design. J10-Black v01.00.00 inc...DotNetNuke® Skin Recipe: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Standards" category by dnnprofis.at. For mobile devices the skin changes to a mobile...DotNetNuke® Skin SpaceSmurfs: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Eric Johnson of Personify Design. This fun personal skin was ins...ERDOS6 - Web: A Web Project about ERDOS 6Flickrlight: Flickrlight is a personal fun project out of love of Flickr and Silverlight. You can experience it here: http://www.flickrlight.net.GsGrid: Extracting data from Gaussian grid file and grid file calculationiLocator: iLocator is a collaborative educational mapping game for children developed on Microsoft Surface. This game encourages players to collaborate with ...Javascript CallObject SOAP AJAX Helper: CallObject is a Javascript based AJAX helper, it facilitates wrapping of basic soap calls (as long as simple data types are used), asynchronous ret...kbTrainer: kbTrainer is a simple to use HTML application for typing speed training. A lot of features completed in basic. 2 learning keywords layouts -- engli...Laboratório de Engenharia de Software - Projeto: Criado para estudar e aplicar novas tecnologias web.Maxilds Powershell Scripts: Repo of my powershell scriptsNamespacifier: Namespacifier is a C#.NET library and console application to fix XML documents containing multiple default namespaces. It gives prefixes to defaul...OData SDK for Objective-C: This is a CTP of the OData SDK for Objective-C. The library targets iPhone devices and Mac OS X and it is designed to facilitate the connection wit...Open Data App Framework (ODAF): The Open Data Application Framework (ODAF) is a framework that allows cities to easily map existing civic Open Data landmarks, and allow users to r...QuickieB2B: QuickieB2B is web application which main target is to provide quick info about products. It's designed for small companies who have a big number of...RayView: Rayview is an easy-to-use Raytracing-Framework based on Microsoft XNA.Robotics Studio application to navigate Lego Mindstorms robot through labyrinth: A project for Software Systems Analysis and Design Tools subject at the Kaunas University of Technology. The main point of the project is to code L...SharePoint Icon Integration: SharePoint Icon Integration makes it easier for SharePoint Administrators / Developers to add a icon (pdf) to the SharePoint farm. You will no long...TestVersion: Testing VersionieringTimecard: SoftSource Timecard project.T-shirt Cannon: So the Coding4Fun team had two weeks to build two robots able to drive, aim, and shoot t-shirts with a Windows Phone during a MIX10 Keynote demo of...USTF: This project is a bit secretive right now.Windows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP Developers: The “Windows Azure Command-line tools for PHP” provide a command-line experience to developers who wish to develop, package, and deploy PHP applic...New ReleasesCaramel Engine: CaramelEngine Alpha Build 0.0.0.1a: This is an early alpha release of the Engine and it's functionality. Be sure to have the using CaramelEngine statement. This release is for people...Coot: Preview: Basic preview On the first use you have to click Create New Session and Login. After this you can just click Screen Saver each time. Settings sho...CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4.0 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 0.08.32: The latest alpha release.DeepZoomContainer, Expanded DeepZoom for Silverlight & Windows Phone 7 Series: Release ver. 1.20 for Windows Phone 7 Series: SolutionMerge PathAnimation solution into one MouseWheel elimination PathAnimationWP7 Port DeepZoomContainerProject rebuilt for WP7 support De...Desktop Google Reader: 1.3 (the social release): NewsSharing Liking Mail item Labels / Tags Send to Twitter Read It Later http://readitlaterlist.com/ Instapaper http://www.instapaper.com/ Favicons...DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 2: PLEASE NOTE: Please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from 03.05.01 This is a RELEASE CANDIDATE, and as such ...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.03.00: New FeaturesTemplated User Profiles - User profile pages are now publicly viewable Photo field in User Profile - Users can upload a photo to thei...DotNetNuke® Skin Bright: Bright Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by Noel Jerke of SiteToolset. This simple and clean business...DotNetNuke® Skin Go: Go Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Modern Business" category by DnnGo Corporation. The skin uses web standard DIV+CSS tec...DotNetNuke® Skin J10blend: J10 Blend Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Out of the box" category by Timthy Maler of 2M Studio Design. J10-Black v01.00.00 incl...DotNetNuke® Skin Recipe: Recipe Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Standards" category by dnnprofis.at. For mobile devices the skin changes to a mobile f...DotNetNuke® Skin SpaceSmurfs: Space Smurfs Package 1.0.0: A DotNetNuke Design Challenge skin package submitted to the "Personal" category by Eric Johnson of Personify Design. This fun personal skin was ins...Dynamo: Dynamo v0.1 Beta: The following is included: Dynamo dlls Antlr dlls Hello world Simple Plugin example Application Dependency injection Singleton Managment ...ExtremeML: ExtremeML v1.0 Beta 1: Timed to accompany the RTM release of the OpenXML SDK v2.0, this is the first Beta release of ExtremeML (it was previously classified as a preview ...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.1.1.1: Version 1.1.1.1 Lots of Gedcom parsing fixes it should crash a whole lot less often and tolerate more "interesting" or "quirky" Gedcom entries. Add...Family Tree Analyzer: Version 1.2.0.1: Version 1.2.0.1 Added option to treat residence facts as Census Facts IGI Search now permits default country selection ie: what to use if it doesn...Flickrlight: Flickrlight: Current release is for idea sharing. There are not many design patterns being used. Please bare with the mess. :-) In order to run the applicat...Gherkin editor: Alpha 0.1: Most of the code at this point is the same as the Avalon.Sample from code project, just changed the name, removed extra languages and added syntax ...GsGrid: gsgrid1.6.4: gsgrid1.6.4GsGrid: gsgrid1.6.4-src: gsgrid1.6.4-srcHTML Template Repeater Module: Version 01.00.02: GeneralThe HTML Template Repeater Module is a direct replacement for the Core DotNetNuke Text/HTML module. Use it where you need to repeat the form...Images Compiler: Release 0.1: Last alpha buildJavascript CallObject SOAP AJAX Helper: Beta Release, 0.2.1: Beta Release, 0.2.1 Contains only core objectskbTrainer: kbtrainer 1.25u: kbTrainer is a simple to use speed typing training HTML application. A lot of features. All ither info availiable on http://code.google.com/p/kbtr...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 16): This version fixes a bug where selected points were not drawing correctly.Mesopotamia Experiment: Mesopotamia 1.2.43: Release Notes New Features - Scenario Name on title bar - Show organisms in Scnearios with simple stats Bug Fixes - Removed app domain recyling an...MFCMAPI: March 2010 Release: If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. Build: 6.0.0.1018 The 64 bit bu...MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3: Download the Zip file and extract it to a local folder. Then, follow the instructions on the Installation page http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/installi...NETXPF: 1.0.2: Changes: - Added a class "IOUtils" with methods for reading streams and GZip-compressing HTTP responses - Fixed a bug in the size formatter (excep...OData SDK for Objective-C: OData SDK for Objective-C CTP: The current release supports read-only operations only and it has been tested on a limited set of scenarios. The download include a sample iPhone a...Open Data App Framework (ODAF): ODAF 1.0: Initial beta release.Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.1: New FeaturesContext Menu for ListView added Bug FixesFixed: If the users press Copy/Cut Button when no item is selected in ListView the ListView cl...Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.2: Bug Fixes:a minor bug fixedSimple.NET: Simple.Mocking 1.0.0.5: Initial version of a new mocking framework for .NET Revision 1: Expect.AnyInocationOn<T>(T target) changed to Expect.AnyInocationOn(object target...SQL Server Extended Properties Quick Editor: New release 1.5.4: Whats new: Move preferences to application settings and add a form to edit preferences. Support to add, modify and delete operations could be made ...SuperModel - A Dynamic View-Model Generator: 1.0.0.0 - Tyra: The final 1.0 release, now less intrusive! If you don't want to implement ISuperModel, simply implement INotifyPropertyChanged.Timecard: Timecard Initial Release: The zipped version of the Initial Checkin.Transparent Persistence.Net: TP.Net 0.1.0: This is the initial alpha release. It's working for small set of use-cases (basic access to Cassandra).VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30316.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVFPnfe: Projeto Ajuda PAF-ECF: Este projeto visa ajudar aos desenvolvedores para homologação do PAF-ECF , sob licença publica GNU/GPL para ver mais detalhes do mesmo assista o vi...Visual Studio DSite: Gif Animator: This program will make an animate gif. (Program written in Vb.Net 2008)Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpLiveUpload to FacebookSkype Voice ChangerLiveUpload to YouTubeSIPSorceryChartPart for SharePointTFS Branching Guide 2.0TouchFlo DetacherNPandaySnippet EditorMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPDirectQpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETN2 CMSOpen Data App Framework (ODAF)NB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleMapWindow6

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• XNA Notes 005

  - by George Clingerman

  Another week and another crazy amount of activity going on in the XNA community. I’m fairly certain I missed over half of it. In fact, if I am missing things, make sure to email me and I’ll try and make sure I catch it next week! ([email protected]). Also, if you’ve got any advice, things you like/don’t like about the way these XNA Notes are going let me know. I always appreciate feedback (currently spammers are leaving me the nicest comments so you guys have work to do!) Without further ado, here’s this week’s notes! Time Critical XNA News The XNA Team Blob reminds us that February 7th is the last day to submit XNA 3.1 games to peer review! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/31/7-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-on-app-hub.aspx XNA MVPS Chris Williams kicks off the marketing campaign for our book http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2011/01/28/143680.aspx Catalin Zima posts the comparison cheat sheet for why Angry Birds is different than Chickens Can’t Fly http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/comparison-cheat-sheet-for-chickens-cant-fly-and-angry-birds/ Jim Perry congratulates the developers selected by Game Developer Magazine for Best Xbox LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://machxgames.com/blog/?p=24 @NemoKrad posts his XNAKUUG talks for all to enjoy http://twitter.com/NemoKrad/statuses/33142362502864896 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/02/03/xblig-uk-2011-january-amp-february-talk.aspx George  (that’s me!) preps for his XNA talk coming up on the 8th http://twitter.com/clingermangw/statuses/32669550554124288 http://www.portlandsilverlight.net/Meetings/Details/15 XNA Developers FireFly posts the last tutorial in his XNA Tower Defense tutorial series http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/26442/451460.aspx#451460 http://xnatd.blogspot.com/2011/01/tutorial-14-polishing-game.html @fredericmy posts the main difference when porting a game from Windows Phone 7 to Xbox 360 http://fairyengine.blogspot.com/2011/01/main-differences-when-porting-game-from.html @ElementCy creates a pretty rad video of a MineCraft type terrain created using XNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waw1f7wnl9I Andrew Russel gets the first XNA badge on gamedev.stackexchange http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/32322877004972032 http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/badges?tab=tags And his funding for ExEn has passed $7000 only $3000 to go http://twitter.com/_AndrewRussell/statuses/33042412804771840 Subodh Pushpak blogs about his Windows Phone 7 XNA talk http://geekswithblogs.net/subodhnpushpak/archive/2011/02/01/windows-phone-7-silverlight--xna-development-talk.aspx Slyprid releases the latest version of Transmute and needs more people to test http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/32452488418299904 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ SpynDoctorGames celebrates the 1 year anniversary of Your Doodles Are Bugged! Congrats! http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/32511689068908544 Noogy (creator of Dust the Elysian Tail) prepares his conversion to XNA 4.0 http://twitter.com/NoogyTweet/statuses/32522008449253376 @philippedasilva posts about the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.2.0.0 Input management system http://twitter.com/philippedasilva/statuses/32763393957957632 http://indiefreaks.com/2011/02/02/behind-smart-input-system-feature/ Mommy’s Best Games debates what to do about High Scores with their new update http://mommysbest.blogspot.com/2011/02/high-score-shake-up.html @BinaryTweedDeej want to know if there’s anything the community needs to make XNA games for the PC. Give him some feedback! http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/status/32895453863354368 @mikebmcl promises to write us all a book (I can’t wait to read it!) http://twitter.com/mikebmcl/statuses/33206499102687233 @werezompire is going to live, LIVE, thanks to all the generosity and support from the community! http://twitter.com/werezompire/statuses/32840147644977153 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG) Making money in Xbox 360 indie game development. Is it possible? http://www.bitmob.com/articles/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible @AlejandroDaJ posts some thoughts abut the bitmob article http://twitter.com/AlejandroDaJ/statuses/31068552165330944 http://www.apathyworks.com/blog/view.php?id=00215 Kobun gets my respect as an XBLIG champion. I’m not sure who Kobun is, but if you’ve every read through the comment sections any time Kotaku writes about XBLIGs you’ll see a lot of confusion, disinformation in there. Kobun has been waging a secret war battling that lack of knowledge and he does it well. Also he’s running a pretty kick ass site for Xbox LIVE Indie Game reviews http://xboxindies.teamkobun.com/ @radiangames releases his last Xbox LIVE Indie Game...for now http://bit.ly/gMK6lE Playing Avaglide with the Kinect controller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqAYbHww53o http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/30/kinect-hacks-take-to-the-skies-with-avaglide/ Luke Schneider of Radiangames interviewed in Edge magazine http://www.next-gen.biz/features/radiangames-venture Digital Quarters posts thoughts on why XBLIG’s online requirement kills certain genres http://digitalquarters.blogspot.com/2011/02/thoughts-why-xbligs-online-requirement.html Mommy’s Best Games shares the news that several XBLIGs were featured in the March 2011 issue of Famitsu 360 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/33455/451487.aspx#451487 NaviFairy continues with his Indie-Game-A-Day http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_epic_dungeon.html http://gaygamer.net/2011/02/indie_game_a_day_break_limit_r.html and more every day...that’s kind of the point! Keep your eye on this series! VVGTV continues with it’s awesome reviews/promotions for XBLIGs http://vvgtv.com/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/03/iredia-atrams-secret-xblig-review-2/ http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/02/poopocalypse-coming-soon-to-xblig/ ….and even more, you get the point. Magicka is an Indie Game doing really well on Steam AND it’s made using XNA http://www.magickagame.com/ http://twitter.com/Magickagame/statuses/32712762580799488 GameMarx reviews Antipole http://www.gamemarx.com/reviews/73/antipole-is-vvvvvvery-good.aspx Armless Octopus review Alpha Squad http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/28/xbox-indie-review-alpha-squad/ An interesting article about Kodu that Jim Perry found http://twitter.com/MachXGames/statuses/32848044105924608 http://www.develop-online.net/news/36915/10-year-old-Jordan-makes-games-The-UK-needs-more-like-her XNA Game Development Sgt. Conker posts about the Natur beta, a new book and whether you can make money with XBLIG http://www.sgtconker.com/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/a-new-book-on-the-block-and-a-new-natur-beta/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/01/making-money-in-xbox-360-indie-game-development-is-it-possible/ Tips for setting up SVN http://bit.ly/fKxgFh @bsimser found tons of royalty free music and soundfx for your XNA Games http://twitter.com/bsimser/statuses/31426632933711872 Post on the new features in the next Sunburn Editor http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/fivesidedbarrel/archive/2011/01/28/new-editor-features-prefabs-components-and-more.aspx @jasons_novaleaf posts source code for light pre-pass optimizations for #xna http://twitter.com/jasons_novaleaf/statuses/33348855403642880 http://jcoluna.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/xna-4-0-light-pre-pass-optimization-round-one/ I’ve been learning about doing an A.I. for turn based games and this article was a great resource. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1535/designing_ai_algorithms_for_.php?print=1

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• Getting Started with Prism (aka Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight)

  - by dotneteer

  Overview Prism is a framework from the Microsoft Patterns and Practice team that allow you to create WPF and Silverlight in a modular way. It is especially valuable for larger projects in which a large number of developers can develop in parallel. Prism achieves its goal by supplying several services: · Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of control (IoC): By using DI, Prism takes away the responsibility of instantiating and managing the life time of dependency objects from individual components to a container. Prism relies on containers to discover, manage and compose large number of objects. By varying the configuration, the container can also inject mock objects for unit testing. Out of the box, Prism supports Unity and MEF as container although it is possible to use other containers by subclassing the Bootstrapper class. · Modularity and Region: Prism supplies the framework to split application into modules from the application shell. Each module is a library project that contains both UI and code and is responsible to initialize itself when loaded by the shell. Each window can be further divided into regions. A region is a user control with associated model. · Model, view and view-model (MVVM) pattern: Prism promotes the user MVVM. The use of DI container makes it much easier to inject model into view. WPF already has excellent data binding and commanding mechanism. To be productive with Prism, it is important to understand WPF data binding and commanding well. · Event-aggregation: Prism promotes loosely coupled components. Prism discourages for components from different modules to communicate each other, thus leading to dependency. Instead, Prism supplies an event-aggregation mechanism that allows components to publish and subscribe events without knowing each other. Architecture In the following, I will go into a little more detail on the services provided by Prism. Bootstrapper In a typical WPF application, application start-up is controls by App.xaml and its code behind. The main window of the application is typically specified in the App.xaml file. In a Prism application, we start a bootstrapper in the App class and delegate the duty of main window to the bootstrapper. The bootstrapper will start a dependency-injection container so all future object instantiations are managed by the container. Out of box, Prism provides the UnityBootstrapper and MefUnityBootstrapper abstract classes. All application needs to either provide a concrete implementation of one of these bootstrappers, or alternatively, subclass the Bootstrapper class with another DI container. A concrete bootstrapper class must implement the CreateShell method. Its responsibility is to resolve and create the Shell object through the DI container to serve as the main window for the application. The other important method to override is ConfigureModuleCatalog. The bootstrapper can register modules for the application. In a more advance scenario, an application does not have to know all its modules at compile time. Modules can be discovered at run time. Readers to refer to one of the Open Modularity Quick Starts for more information. Modules Once modules are registered with or discovered by Prism, they are instantiated by the DI container and their Initialize method is called. The DI container can inject into a module a region registry that implements IRegionViewRegistry interface. The module, in its Initialize method, can then call RegisterViewWithRegion method of the registry to register its regions. Regions Regions, once registered, are managed by the RegionManager. The shell can then load regions either through the RegionManager.RegionName attached property or dynamically through code. When a view is created by the region manager, the DI container can inject view model and other services into the view. The view then has a reference to the view model through which it can interact with backend services. Service locator Although it is possible to inject services into dependent classes through a DI container, an alternative way is to use the ServiceLocator to retrieve a service on demard. Prism supplies a service locator implementation and it is possible to get an instance of the service by calling: ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IServiceType>() Event aggregator Prism supplies an IEventAggregator interface and implementation that can be injected into any class that needs to communicate with each other in a loosely-coupled fashion. The event aggregator uses a publisher/subscriber model. A class can publishes an event by calling eventAggregator.GetEvent<EventType>().Publish(parameter) to raise an event. Other classes can subscribe the event by calling eventAggregator.GetEvent<EventType>().Subscribe(EventHandler, other options). Getting started The easiest way to get started with Prism is to go through the Prism Hands-On labs and look at the Hello World QuickStart. The Hello World QuickStart shows how bootstrapper, modules and region works. Next, I would recommend you to look at the Stock Trader Reference Implementation. It is a more in depth example that resemble we want to set up an application. Several other QuickStarts cover individual Prism services. Some scenarios, such as dynamic module discovery, are more advanced. Apart from the official prism document, you can get an overview by reading Glen Block’s MSDN Magazine article. I have found the best free training material is from the Boise Code Camp. To be effective with Prism, it is important to understands key concepts of WPF well first, such as the DependencyProperty system, data binding, resource, theme and ICommand. It is also important to know your DI container of choice well. I will try to explorer these subjects in depth in the future. Testimony Recently, I worked on a desktop WPF application using Prism. I had a wonderful experience with Prism. The Prism is flexible enough even in the presence of third party controls such as Telerik WPF controls. We have never encountered any significant obstacle.

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• Backpacks and Booth Paint: TechEd 2012

  - by The Un-T Guy

  Arriving in the parking lot of the Orange County Convention Center, I immediately knew I was in the right place. As far as the eye could see, the acres of asphalt were awash in backpacks, quirky (to be kind) outfits, and bad haircuts. This was the place. This was Microsoft Mecca v2012 for geeks and nerds, the Central Florida event of the year, a gathering of high tech professionals whose skills I both greatly respect and, frankly, fear a little. I was wholly and completely out of element, a dork in a vast sea of geek jumbo. It like was wearing dockers and a golf shirt walking into a RenFaire, but one with really crappy costumes and no turkey legs...save those attached to some of the attendees. Of course the corporate whores...errrr, vendors were in place, ready to parlay the convention's fre-nerd-ic energy into millions of dollars by convincing the big-brained and under-sexed in the crowd (i.e., virtually all of them...present company excluded, of course) that their product or service was the only thing standing between them and professional success, industry fame, and clear skin. "With KramTech 2012," they seemed to scream, "you will be THE ROCK STAR of your company's IT department!" As car shows and tattoo parlors learned long ago, Tech companies seem to believe that the best way to attract the attention of this crowd is through the hint of the promise of sex. They recruit and deploy an army of "sales reps" whose primary qualifications appear to be long hair, short skirts, high heels, and a vagina. Unlike their distant cousins in the car and body art industries, however, this sub-species of booth paint (semi-gloss decoration that adds nothing to the substance of the product) seems torn between committing to being all-out sex objects and recognition that they are in the presence of intelligent, discerning people. People who are smart enough to know exactly what these vendors are doing. Also unlike their distant car show and tattoo shop cousins, these young women (what…are there no gay tech professionals who could use some eye candy?) seem to realize that while IT remains a male-dominated field, there are ever-increasing numbers of intelligent, capable, strong professional women – women who’ve battled to make it in this field through hard work and work performance rather than a hard body and performing after work. This is not to say that all of the young female sales reps are there only because of their physical attributes. Many are competent, intelligent, and driven -- not to mention attractive. They're working hard on the front lines of delivering the next generation of technology. The distinction is pretty clear, however, between these young professionals and the booth paint. The former enthusiastically deliver credible information about the products they’re hawking. The latter are positioned in the aisles, uncomfortably avoiding eye contact as they struggle to operate the badge readers. Surprisingly, not all of the women in attendance seemed to object to the objectification of their younger sisters. One IT professional woman who came of age in the industry (mostly in IT marketing) said, “I have no problem with it. I was a ‘booth babe’ for years and it doesn’t bother me at all.” Others, however, weren’t quite so gracious. One woman I spoke with, an IT manager from Cheyenne, Wyoming, said it was demeaning and frankly, as more and more women grow into IT management positions, not a great marketing idea. “Using these young women is, to me, no different than vendors giving out t-shirts to attract attention. It’s sad because it’s still hard for a woman to be respected in the IT field and this just perpetuates the outdated notion that IT is a male-dominated field.” She went on to say that decisions by vendors to employ these young women in this “inappropriate way” could impact her purchasing decisions. “I might be swayed toward a vendor who has women on staff who are intelligent and dynamic rather than the vendors who use the ‘decoration’ girls.” So in many ways, the IT industry is no different than most other industries as it struggles to maximize performance by finding and developing talent – all of the talent, not just the 50% with a penis. Women in IT, like their brethren, struggle to find their niche in the field, to grow professionally, and reach for the brass ring, struggling to overcome obstacles as they climb the mountain of professional success in a never-ending cycle of economic uncertainty. But as (generally) well-educated and highly-trained professionals, they are probably better positioned than those in many other industries. Beside, they’ve got one other advantage over their non-IT counterparts as they attempt their ascent to the summit: They’ve already got the backpacks.

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• Talend Enterprise Data Integration overperforms on Oracle SPARC T4

  - by Amir Javanshir

  The SPARC T microprocessor, released in 2005 by Sun Microsystems, and now continued at Oracle, has a good track record in parallel execution and multi-threaded performance. However it was less suited for pure single-threaded workloads. The new SPARC T4 processor is now filling that gap by offering a 5x better single-thread performance over previous generations. Following our long-term relationship with Talend, a fast growing ISV positioned by Gartner in the “Visionaries” quadrant of the “Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools”, we decided to test some of their integration components with the T4 chip, more precisely on a T4-1 system, in order to verify first hand if this new processor stands up to its promises. Several tests were performed, mainly focused on: Single-thread performance of the new SPARC T4 processor compared to an older SPARC T2+ processor Overall throughput of the SPARC T4-1 server using multiple threads The tests consisted in reading large amounts of data --ten's of gigabytes--, processing and writing them back to a file or an Oracle 11gR2 database table. They are CPU, memory and IO bound tests. Given the main focus of this project --CPU performance--, bottlenecks were removed as much as possible on the memory and IO sub-systems. When possible, the data to process was put into the ZFS filesystem cache, for instance. Also, two external storage devices were directly attached to the servers under test, each one divided in two ZFS pools for read and write operations. Multi-thread: Testing throughput on the Oracle T4-1 The tests were performed with different number of simultaneous threads (1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 32, 48 and 64) and using different storage devices: Flash, Fibre Channel storage, two stripped internal disks and one single internal disk. All storage devices used ZFS as filesystem and volume management. Each thread read a dedicated 1GB-large file containing 12.5M lines with the following structure: customerID;FirstName;LastName;StreetAddress;City;State;Zip;Cust_Status;Since_DT;Status_DT 1;Ronald;Reagan;South Highway;Santa Fe;Montana;98756;A;04-06-2006;09-08-2008 2;Theodore;Roosevelt;Timberlane Drive;Columbus;Louisiana;75677;A;10-05-2009;27-05-2008 3;Andrew;Madison;S Rustle St;Santa Fe;Arkansas;75677;A;29-04-2005;09-02-2008 4;Dwight;Adams;South Roosevelt Drive;Baton Rouge;Vermont;75677;A;15-02-2004;26-01-2007 […] The following graphs present the results of our tests: Unsurprisingly up to 16 threads, all files fit in the ZFS cache a.k.a L2ARC : once the cache is hot there is no performance difference depending on the underlying storage. From 16 threads upwards however, it is clear that IO becomes a bottleneck, having a good IO subsystem is thus key. Single-disk performance collapses whereas the Sun F5100 and ST6180 arrays allow the T4-1 to scale quite seamlessly. From 32 to 64 threads, the performance is almost constant with just a slow decline. For the database load tests, only the best IO configuration --using external storage devices-- were used, hosting the Oracle table spaces and redo log files. Using the Sun Storage F5100 array allows the T4-1 server to scale up to 48 parallel JVM processes before saturating the CPU. The final result is a staggering 646K lines per second insertion in an Oracle table using 48 parallel threads. Single-thread: Testing the single thread performance Seven different tests were performed on both servers. Given the fact that only one thread, thus one file was read, no IO bottleneck was involved, all data being served from the ZFS cache. Read File ? Filter ? Write File: Read file, filter data, write the filtered data in a new file. The filter is set on the “Status” column: only lines with status set to “A” are selected. This limits each output file to about 500 MB. Read File ? Load Database Table: Read file, insert into a single Oracle table. Average: Read file, compute the average of a numeric column, write the result in a new file. Division & Square Root: Read file, perform a division and square root on a numeric column, write the result data in a new file. Oracle DB Dump: Dump the content of an Oracle table (12.5M rows) into a CSV file. Transform: Read file, transform, write the result data in a new file. The transformations applied are: set the address column to upper case and add an extra column at the end, which is the concatenation of two columns. Sort: Read file, sort a numeric and alpha numeric column, write the result data in a new file. The following table and graph present the final results of the tests: Throughput unit is thousand lines per second processed (K lines/second). Improvement is the % of improvement between the T5140 and T4-1. Test T4-1 (Time s.) T5140 (Time s.) Improvement T4-1 (Throughput) T5140 (Throughput) Read/Filter/Write 125 806 645% 100 16 Read/Load Database 195 1111 570% 64 11 Average 96 557 580% 130 22 Division & Square Root 161 1054 655% 78 12 Oracle DB Dump 164 945 576% 76 13 Transform 159 1124 707% 79 11 Sort 251 1336 532% 50 9 The improvement of single-thread performance is quite dramatic: depending on the tests, the T4 is between 5.4 to 7 times faster than the T2+. It seems clear that the SPARC T4 processor has gone a long way filling the gap in single-thread performance, without sacrifying the multi-threaded capability as it still shows a very impressive scaling on heavy-duty multi-threaded jobs. Finally, as always at Oracle ISV Engineering, we are happy to help our ISV partners test their own applications on our platforms, so don't hesitate to contact us and let's see what the SPARC T4-based systems can do for your application! "As describe in this benchmark, Talend Enterprise Data Integration has overperformed on T4. I was generally happy to see that the T4 gave scaling opportunities for many scenarios like complex aggregations. Row by row insertion in Oracle DB is faster with more than 650,000 rows per seconds without using any bulk Oracle capabilities !" Cedric Carbone, Talend CTO.

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• The illusion of Competence

  - by tony_lombardo

  Working as a contractor opened my eyes to the developer food chain.  Even though I had similar experiences earlier in my career, the challenges seemed much more vivid this time through.  I thought I’d share a couple of experiences with you, and the lessons that can be taken from them. Lesson 1: Beware of the “funnel” guy.  The funnel guy is the one who wants you to funnel all thoughts, ideas and code changes through him.  He may say it’s because he wants to avoid conflicts in source control, but the real reason is likely that he wants to hide your contributions.  Here’s an example.  When I finally got access to the code on one of my projects, I was told by the developer that I had to funnel all of my changes through him.  There were 4 of us coding on the project, but only 2 of us working on the UI.  The other 2 were working on a separate application, but part of the overall project.  So I figured, I’ll check it into SVN, he reviews and accepts then merges in.  Not even close.  I didn’t even have checkin rights to SVN, I had to email my changes to the developer so he could check those changes in.  Lesson 2: If you point out flaws in code to someone supposedly ‘higher’ than you in the developer chain, they’re going to get defensive.  My first task on this project was to review the code, familiarize myself with it.  So of course, that’s what I did.  And in familiarizing myself with it, I saw so many bad practices and code smells that I immediately started coming up with solutions to fix it.  Of course, when I reviewed these changes with the developer (guy who originally wrote the code), he smiled and nodded and said, we can’t make those changes now, it’s too destabilizing.  I recommended we create a new branch and start working on refactoring, but branching was a new concept for this guy and he was worried we would somehow break SVN. How about some concrete examples? I started out by recommending we remove NUnit dependency and tests from the application project, and create a separate Unit testing project.  This was met with a little bit of resistance because - “How do I access the private methods?”  As it turned out there weren’t really any private methods that weren’t exposed by public methods, so I quickly calmed this fear. Win 1 Loss 0 Next, I recommended that all of the File IO access be wrapped in Using clauses, or at least properly wrapped in try catch finally.  This recommendation was accepted.. but never implemented. Win 2  Loss 1 Next recommendation was to refactor the command pattern implementation.  The command pattern was implemented, but it wasn’t really necessary for the application.  More over, the fact that we had 100 different command classes, each with it’s own specific command parameters class, made maintenance a huge hassle.  The same code repeated over and over and over.  This recommendation was declined, the code was too fragile and this change would destabilize it.  I couldn’t disagree, though it was the commands themselves in many cases that were fragile. Win 2 Loss 2 Next recommendation was to aid performance (and responsiveness) of the application by using asynchronous service calls.  This on was accepted. Win 2 Loss 3 If you’re paying any attention, you’re wondering why the async service calls was scored as a loss.. Let me explain.  The service call was made using the async pattern.  Followed by a thread.sleep  <facepalm>. Now it’s easy to be harsh on this kind of code, especially if you’re an experienced developer.  But I understood how most of this happened.  One junior guy, working as hard as he can to build his first real world application, with little or no guidance from anyone else.  He had his pattern book and theory of programming to help him, but no real world experience.  He didn’t know how difficult it would be to trace the crashes to the coding issues above, but he will one day.  The part that amazed me was the management position that “this guy should be a team lead, because he’s worked so hard”.  I’m all for rewarding hard work, but when you reward someone by promoting them past the point of their competence, you’re setting yourself and them up for failure.  And that’s lesson 3.  Just because you’ve got a hard worker, doesn’t mean he should be leading a development project.  If you’re a junior guy busting your ass, keep at it.  I encourage you to try new things, but most importantly to learn from your mistakes.  And correct your mistakes.  And if someone else looks at your code and shows you a laundry list of things that should be done differently, don’t take it personally – they’re really trying to help you.  And if you’re a senior guy, working with a junior guy, it’s your duty to point out the flaws in the code.  Even if it does make you the bad guy.  And while I’ve used “guy” above, I mean both men and women.  And in some cases mutant dinosaurs. 

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• How to Secure a Data Role by Multiple Business Units

  - by Elie Wazen

  In this post we will see how a Role can be data secured by multiple Business Units (BUs).  Separate Data Roles are generally created for each BU if a corresponding data template generates roles on the basis of the BU dimension. The advantage of creating a policy with a rule that includes multiple BUs is that while mapping these roles in HCM Role Provisioning Rules, fewer number of entires need to be made. This could facilitate maintenance for enterprises with a large number of Business Units. Note: The example below applies as well if the securing entity is Inventory Organization. Let us take for example the case of a user provisioned with the "Accounts Payable Manager - Vision Operations" Data Role in Fusion Applications. This user will be able to access Invoices in Vision Operations but will not be able to see Invoices in Vision Germany. Figure 1. A User with a Data Role restricting them to Data from BU: Vision Operations With the role granted above, this is what the user will see when they attempt to select Business Units while searching for AP Invoices. Figure 2.The List Of Values of Business Units is limited to single one. This is the effect of the Data Role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 1 In order to create a data role that secures by multiple BUs,  we need to start by creating a condition that groups those Business Units we want to include in that data role. This is accomplished by creating a new condition against the BU View .  That Condition will later be used to create a data policy for our newly created Role.  The BU View is a Database resource and  is accessed from APM as seen in the search below Figure 3.Viewing a Database Resource in APM The next step is create a new condition,  in which we define a sql predicate that includes 2 BUs ( The ids below refer to Vision Operations and Vision Germany).  At this point we have simply created a standalone condition.  We have not used this condition yet, and security is therefore not affected. Figure 4. Custom Role that inherits the Purchase Order Overview Duty We are now ready to create our Data Policy.  in APM, we search for our newly Created Role and Navigate to “Find Global Policies”.  we query the Role we want to secure and navigate to view its global policies. Figure 5. The Job Role we plan on securing We can see that the role was not defined with a Data Policy . So will create one that uses the condition we created earlier.   Figure 6. Creating a New Data Policy In the General Information tab, we have to specify the DB Resource that the Security Policy applies to:  In our case this is the BU View Figure 7. Data Policy Definition - Selection of the DB Resource we will secure by In the Rules Tab, we  make the rule applicable to multiple values of the DB Resource we selected in the previous tab.  This is where we associate the condition we created against the BU view to this data policy by entering the Condition name in the Condition field Figure 8. Data Policy Rule The last step of Defining the Data Policy, consists of  explicitly selecting  the Actions that are goverened by this Data Policy.  In this case for example we select the Actions displayed below in the right pane. Once the record is saved , we are ready to use our newly secured Data Role. Figure 9. Data Policy Actions We can now see a new Data Policy associated with our Role.  Figure 10. Role is now secured by a Data Policy We now Assign that new Role to the User.  Of course this does not have to be done in OIM and can be done using a Provisioning Rule in HCM. Figure 11. Role assigned to the User who previously was granted the Vision Ops secured role. Once that user accesses the Invoices Workarea this is what they see: In the image below the LOV of Business Unit returns the two values defined in our data policy namely: Vision Operations and Vision Germany Figure 12. The List Of Values of Business Units now includes the two we included in our data policy. This is the effect of the data role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 11

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• IndyTechFest Recap

  - by Johnm

  The sun had yet to raise above the horizon on Saturday, May 22nd and I was traveling toward the location of the 2010 IndyTechFest. In my freshly awaken, and pre-coffee, state I reflected on the months that preceded this day and how quickly they slipped away. The big day had finally come and the morning dew glistened with a unique brightness that morning. What is this all about? For those who are unfamiliar with IndyTechFest, it is a regional conference held in Indianapolis and hosted by the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) and the Indianapolis Professional Association for SQL Server (IndyPASS).  The event presents multiple tracks and sessions covering subjects such as Business Intelligence,  Database Administration, .NET Development, SharePoint Development, Windows Mobile Development as well as non-Microsoft topics such as Lean and MongoDB. This year's event was the third hosting of IndyTechFest. No man is an island No event such as IndyTechFest is executed by a single person. My fellow co-founders, with their highly complementary skill sets and philanthropy make the process very enjoyable. Our amazing volunteers and their aid were indispensible. The generous financial support of our sponsors that made the event and fabulous prizes possible. The spectacular line up of speakers who came from near and far to donate their time and knowledge. Our beloved attendees who sacrificed the first sunny Saturday in weeks to expand their skill sets and network with their peers. We are deeply appreciative. Challenges in preparation With the preparation of any event comes challenges. It is these challenges that makes the process of planning an event so interesting. This year's largest challenge was the location of the event. In the past two years IndyTechFest was held at the Gene B. Glick Junior Achievement Center in Indianapolis. This facility has been the hub of the Indy technical community for many years. As the big day drew near, the facility's availability came into question due to some recent changes that had occurred with those who operated the facility. We began our search for an alternative option. Thankfully, the Marriott Indianapolis East was available, was very spacious and willing to work within the range of our budget. Within days of our event, the decision to move proved to be wise since the prior location had begun renovations to the interior. Whew! Always trust your gut. Every day it's getting better At the ending of each year, we huddle together, review the evaluations and identify an area in which the event could improve. This year's big opportunity for improvement resided in the prize give-away portion at the end of the day. In the 2008 event, admittedly, this portion was rather chaotic, rushed and disorganized. This year, we broke the drawing into two sections, of which each attendee received two tickets. The first ticket was a drawing for the mountain of books that were given away. The second ticket was a drawing for the big prizes, the 2 Xboxes, 3 laptops and iPad. We peppered the ticket drawings with gift card raffles and tossing t-shirts into the audience. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again Each year of IndyTechFest, we have offered a means for ad-hoc sessions or discussion groups to pop-up. To our disappointment it was something that never quite took off. We have always believed that this unique type of session was valuable and wanted to figure out a way to make it work for this year. A special thanks to Alan Stevens, who took on and facilitated the "open space" track and made it an official success. Share with your tweety When the attendee badges were designed we decided to place an emphasis on the attendee's Twitter account as well as the events hash-tag (#IndyTechFest) to encourage some real-time buzz during the day. At the host table we displayed a Twitter feed for all to enjoy. It was quite successful and encouraging use of social media. My badge was missing my Twitter account since it was recently changed. For those who care to follow my rather sparse tweets, my address is @johnnydata. Man, this is one long blog post! All in all it was a very successful event. It is always great to see new faces and meet old friends. The planning for the 2011 IndyTechFest will kick off very soon. We have more capacity for future growth and a truck full of great ideas. Stay tuned!

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• Day 1 - Finding Like Minds

  - by dapostolov

  So, is being a Game Developer any different from being an IT Developer? I picture a poorly lit environment where I get to purchase my own desk lamp; I'm thinking one of those huge lava lamps that pump out so much heat you could fry an egg on it. To my right: a "great wall" of empty coke cans dwarf me. Eating my last slice of pizza I look across my desk to see a fellow developer with a smug look on his face;  he's just coded his latest module for the game and it looks like he's in nirvana. My duty, of course, is to remind him to keep focused on the job at hand. So, picking up my trusty elastic and aerodynamically crafted paper bullet I begin a 10 minute war of welts and laughter which is promptly abrupted by our Project Manager demanding more details from our morning Scrum meeting. After providing about 5 minutes of geek speak and several words of comfort to make his eyes glaze over...it hits me, the idea for the module...beckoning my developer friend over, we quickly shoo the Project Manager away and begin our brainstorming frenzy ... now, where'd I put that full can of coke? OK. OK. This isn't probably the most ideal game developer environment, but it definitely sounds fun to me...and from what I gather is nothing like most game development companies. But I'm not doing this blog series to "go pro"; like I stated in my first post I want to make a 2D game from an idea my best friend and I drummed up long, long ago. I'm in this for the passion AND I want to see how easy it is for us .Net Developers to create a game. So where do I start? Where can I find like minded individuals? What technologies are there? What do I need to make a video game? The questions are endless....AND...since I already have an idea ... lets start with ... Technology (yes, I'm a geek, live with it...) Technology OK. Predominantly, games are still made in C++ or even C. I'm not sure how much assembly code is floating around lately, however, that is not my concern. I do know C / C++ from my past, enough to even get me by, but I'm mainly interested in a recent, not-so-new, technology called XNA. What is XNA? XNA allows us .Net Developers to make 2D / 3D games for windows, Xbox*, and Windows Mobile 7*. * = for a nominal fee *cough* The following link is your one stop shop to XNA game development: http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted The above site hosts information such as: - getting started - a sample/instructional shooter game in 2D / 3D with code (if I'm taking too long for you in this blog series) - downloads - starter kits... http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/starterkits/ And of course...forums. You can also subscribe and pay for their premium membership which gets you some pretty awesome tutorials, resources, downloads, and premium community support. Some general Wiki information about XNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNA_%28Microsoft%29 Community Support OK. Let's move on to industry and community support. Apart from XNA, there are some really cool sites out there, I just haven't found all of them yet. However, I found a really cool Game Development website called Gamastura. You can click on the following link to get you there: http://www.gamasutra.com/ The site is 100% dedicated to "The Art & Business of Making Games". Armed with blogs, twitter, jobs/resumes and most importantly industry news; one could subscribe to the feed and got lost in the wealth of information it provides. On a side note: I remember Gamasutra being around when my best friend and I wanted to make a video game...meaning, they've been around for a while now. I think the most beneficial aspect of this site is to understand the industry you want to get into. Otherwise, it's just a cool site to keep up to date with the industry in general. Another Community Support option is LinkedIn. Amongst the land of extremely bloated achievements and responsibilities lay 3 groups (that I have found) that deal with game development.: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=59205 - Game Developers http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=824817 - DirectX Game Developer Network http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=756587 - DirectX Developers The Game Developers group in LinkedIn is by far the most active of the three and could possibly provide a wealth of support. What I've done thus far: - I lightly researched the XNA technology - I looked around for some community sites to assist me - I downloaded the XNA Game Studio 3.1 on my PC and installed it on my IDE - I even tried both tutorials! http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/gettingstarted/bgintro/chapter1   Best Regards D.

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• InnoDB Compression Improvements in MySQL 5.6

  - by Inaam Rana

  MySQL 5.6 comes with significant improvements for the compression support inside InnoDB. The enhancements that we'll talk about in this piece are also a good example of community contributions. The work on these was conceived, implemented and contributed by the engineers at Facebook. Before we plunge into the details let us familiarize ourselves with some of the key concepts surrounding InnoDB compression. In InnoDB compressed pages are fixed size. Supported sizes are 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16K. The compressed page size is specified at table creation time. InnoDB uses zlib for compression. InnoDB buffer pool will attempt to cache compressed pages like normal pages. However, whenever a page is actively used by a transaction, we'll always have the uncompressed version of the page as well i.e.: we can have a page in the buffer pool in compressed only form or in a state where we have both the compressed page and uncompressed version but we'll never have a page in uncompressed only form. On-disk we'll always only have the compressed page. When both compressed and uncompressed images are present in the buffer pool they are always kept in sync i.e.: changes are applied to both atomically. Recompression happens when changes are made to the compressed data. In order to minimize recompressions InnoDB maintains a modification log within a compressed page. This is the extra space available in the page after compression and it is used to log modifications to the compressed data thus avoiding recompressions. DELETE (and ROLLBACK of DELETE) and purge can be performed without recompressing the page. This is because the delete-mark bit and the system fields DB_TRX_ID and DB_ROLL_PTR are stored in uncompressed format on the compressed page. A record can be purged by shuffling entries in the compressed page directory. This can also be useful for updates of indexed columns, because UPDATE of a key is mapped to INSERT+DELETE+purge. A compression failure happens when we attempt to recompress a page and it does not fit in the fixed size. In such case, we first try to reorganize the page and attempt to recompress and if that fails as well then we split the page into two and recompress both pages. Now lets talk about the three major improvements that we made in MySQL 5.6.Logging of Compressed Page Images:InnoDB used to log entire compressed data on the page to the redo logs when recompression happens. This was an extra safety measure to guard against the rare case where an attempt is made to do recovery using a different zlib version from the one that was used before the crash. Because recovery is a page level operation in InnoDB we have to be sure that all recompress attempts must succeed without causing a btree page split. However, writing entire compressed data images to the redo log files not only makes the operation heavy duty but can also adversely affect flushing activity. This happens because redo space is used in a circular fashion and when we generate much more than normal redo we fill up the space much more quickly and in order to reuse the redo space we have to flush the corresponding dirty pages from the buffer pool.Starting with MySQL 5.6 a new global configuration parameter innodb_log_compressed_pages. The default value is true which is same as the current behavior. If you are sure that you are not going to attempt to recover from a crash using a different version of zlib then you should set this parameter to false. This is a dynamic parameter.Compression Level:You can now set the compression level that zlib should choose to compress the data. The global parameter is innodb_compression_level - the default value is 6 (the zlib default) and allowed values are 1 to 9. Again the parameter is dynamic i.e.: you can change it on the fly.Dynamic Padding to Reduce Compression Failures:Compression failures are expensive in terms of CPU. We go through the hoops of recompress, failure, reorganize, recompress, failure and finally page split. At the same time, how often we encounter compression failure depends largely on the compressibility of the data. In MySQL 5.6, courtesy of Facebook engineers, we have an adaptive algorithm based on per-index statistics that we gather about compression operations. The idea is that if a certain index/table is experiencing too many compression failures then we should try to pack the 16K uncompressed version of the page less densely i.e.: we let some space in the 16K page go unused in an attempt that the recompression won't end up in a failure. In other words, we dynamically keep adding 'pad' to the 16K page till we get compression failures within an agreeable range. It works the other way as well, that is we'll keep removing the pad if failure rate is fairly low. To tune the padding effort two configuration variables are exposed. innodb_compression_failure_threshold_pct: default 5, range 0 - 100,dynamic, implies the percentage of compress ops to fail before we start using to padding. Value 0 has a special meaning of disabling the padding. innodb_compression_pad_pct_max: default 50, range 0 - 75, dynamic, the  maximum percentage of uncompressed data page that can be reserved as pad.

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• Oracle OpenWorld Preview: Let's Get Social and Interactive

  - by Christie Flanagan

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} On this blog, we often write about getting social and interactive.  Usually, we’re talking about how to create a social business or how to make the customer experience more social and interactive.  Today’s topic is about getting social and interactive as well. But this time we’re talking about getting social and interactive the old fashioned way, face-to-face at Oracle OpenWorld with fellow Oracle WebCenter customers, partners and experts and the broader Oracle community.  Here are some great ways to get social at OpenWorld outside of the exhibition halls and meeting rooms: Oracle OpenWorld Welcome Reception - Sponsored by FujitsuSunday, September 30, 7:00 p.m.–8:30 p.m.Yerba Buena Gardens & Howard Street Tent You’ll definitely want to attend the Opening Ceremonies for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 on Sunday, September 30. Centered in Yerba Buena Gardens (YBG) and shimmying out to other venues, the Opening Ceremonies are not to be missed. Join other attendees for great food and drink, energizing music, networking opportunities, and more. While you’re at YBG (home of ORACLE TEAM USA’s America’s Cup Pavilion), be sure to meet the sailors who will be defending the 34th America’s Cup in 2013. Get a good look at the 161-year old Trophy itself—the oldest trophy still being contested in international sport. And at the AC72 boat display, view a model of the largest wingsail ever built. Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation ReceptionTuesday, October 2, 6:30 p.m.—9:30 p.m.The Palace Hotel, Rallston BallroomThose Oracle WebCenter customers who’ve RSVP’d to attend the Oracle WebCenter Customer Appreciation Reception shouldn’t miss this private cocktail reception at one of San Francisco’s finest hotels. Sponsored by Oracle WebCenter partners Fishbowl Solutions, Fujitsu, Keste, Mythics, Redstone Content Solutions, TEAM Informatics, and TekStream, this evening will provide plenty of time to interact with other WebCenter customers, partners and employees over hors d'oeuvres and cocktails. Oracle Appreciation Event – Sponsored by CSC, Fujitsu and IntelWednesday, October 3, 7:30 p.m.—1:00 a.m.Treasure Island, San Francisco On Wednesday night October 3, Treasure Island will be engineered to rock as the Oracle Appreciation Event gets revved up and attendees get rolling. As always at the Oracle Appreciation Event, there will be unlimited refreshments, fun and games, the most awesome views of San Francisco from just about anywhere, and top notch entertainment.  Past performers read like a veritable who’s who of the rock and roll elite. Join us—it's our way of saying thanks to you for supporting Oracle and our flagship conference. Complimentary shuttle service to and from Treasure Island will be provided, so all you have to worry about is having a rocking night of your own. Oracle OpenWorld Music FestivalSeptember 30-October 4, Check schedule for venues and times.Oracle presents the first annual Oracle OpenWorld Musical Festival, featuring some of today’s breakthrough musicians from around the country and the world including Macy Gray, Joss Stone, Jimmy Cliff and The Hives. It’s five nights of back-to-back performances in the heart of San Francisco. Registered Oracle conference attendees get free admission, so remember your badge when you head to a show. With limited space at some venues, these concerts are first-come, first-served. So mark your calendars and get ready for the music to begin. See you there!I hope this give you an idea of the many opportunities to socialize and interact with the Oracle community at OpenWorld, and if you’re a music lover like me, you’re in for a special treat as we debut our first annual Oracle OpenWorld Music Festival.  Check out the links below for more information on these events and the many featured performers: Reflections from the Young Prisms A Brief Soul Session with Joss Stone Mixing It Up with Blues Mix Red Meat’s Music is Rare and Well Done The English Beat’s Dave Wakeling Gets Philosophical Top Ten Reasons to Attend the Oracle Appreciation Event There’s Magic in the Air, There’ll Be Music Everywhere Looking forward to seeing you at OpenWorld!

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• 24 Hours of PASS – first reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  A few days after the end of 24HOP, I find myself reflecting on it. I’m still waiting on most of the information. I want to be able to discover things like where the countries represented on each of the sessions, and things like that. So far, I have the feedback scores and the numbers of attendees. The data was provided in a PDF, so while I wait for it to appear in a more flexible format, I’ve pushed the 24 attendee numbers into Excel. This chart shows the numbers by time. Remember that we started at midnight GMT, which was 10:30am in my part of the world and 8pm in New York. It’s probably no surprise that numbers drooped a bit at the start, stayed comparatively low, and then grew as the larger populations of the English-speaking world woke up. I remember last time 24HOP ran for 24 hours straight, there were quite a few sessions with less than 100 attendees. None this time though. We got close, but even when it was 4am in New York, 8am in London and 7pm in Sydney (which would have to be the worst slot for attracting people), we still had over 100 people tuning in. As expected numbers grew as the UK woke up, and even more so as the US did, with numbers peaking at 755 for the “3pm in New York” session on SQL Server Data Tools. Kendra Little almost reached those numbers too, and certainly contributed the biggest ‘spike’ on the chart with her session five hours earlier. Of all the sessions, Kendra had the highest proportion of ‘Excellent’s for the “Overall Evaluation of the session” question, and those of you who saw her probably won’t be surprised by that. Kendra had one of the best ranked sessions from the 24HOP event this time last year (narrowly missing out on being top 3), and she has produced a lot of good video content since then. The reports indicate that there were nearly 8.5 thousand attendees across the 24 sessions, averaging over 350 at each one. I’m looking forward to seeing how many different people that was, although I do know that Wil Sisney managed to attend every single one (if you did too, please let me know). Wil even moderated one of the sessions, which made his feat even greater. Thanks Wil. I also want to send massive thanks to Dave Dustin. Dave probably would have attended all of the sessions, if it weren’t for a power outage that forced him to take a break. He was also a moderator, and it was during this session that he earned special praise. Part way into the session he was moderating, the speaker lost connectivity and couldn’t get back for about fifteen minutes. That’s an incredibly long time when you’re in a live presentation. There were over 200 people tuned in at the time, and I’m sure Dave was as stressed as I was to have a speaker disappear. I started chasing down a phone number for the speaker, while Dave spoke to the audience. And he did brilliantly. He started answering questions, and kept doing that until the speaker came back. Bear in mind that Dave hadn’t expected to give a presentation on that topic (or any other), and was simply drawing on his SQL expertise to get him through. Also consider that this was between midnight at 1am in Dave’s part of the world (Auckland, NZ). I would’ve been expecting just to welcome people, monitor questions, probably read some out, and in general, help make things run smoothly. He went far beyond the call of duty, and if I had a medal to give him, he’d definitely be getting one. On the whole, I think this 24HOP was a success. We tried a different platform, and I think for the most part it was a popular move. We didn’t ask the question “Was this better than LiveMeeting?”, but we did get a number of people telling us that they thought the platform was very good. Some people have told me I get a chance to put my feet up now that this is over. As I’m also co-ordinating a tour of SQLSaturday events across the Australia/New Zealand region, I don’t quite get to take that much of a break (plus, there’s the little thing of squeezing in seven SQL 2012 exams over the next 2.5 weeks). But I am pleased to be reflecting on this event rather than anticipating it. There were a number of factors that could have gone badly, but on the whole I’m pleased about how it went. A massive thanks to everyone involved. If you’re reading this and thinking you wish you could’ve tuned in more, don’t worry – they were all recorded and you’ll be able to watch them on demand very soon. But as well as that, PASS has a stream of content produced by the Virtual Chapters, so you can keep learning from the comfort of your desk all year round. More info on them at sqlpass.org, of course.

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• Taking the Plunge - or Dipping Your Toe - into the Fluffy IAM Cloud by Paul Dhanjal (Simeio Solutions)

  - by Greg Jensen

  In our last three posts, we’ve examined the revolution that’s occurring today in identity and access management (IAM). We looked at the business drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IAM, the shortcomings of the old, last-century IAM models, and the new opportunities that federation, identity hubs and other new cloud capabilities can provide by changing the way you interact with everyone who does business with you. In this, our final post in the series, we’ll cover the key things you, the enterprise architect, should keep in mind when considering moving IAM to the cloud. Invariably, what starts the consideration process is a burning business need: a compliance requirement, security vulnerability or belt-tightening edict. Many on the business side view IAM as the “silver bullet” – and for good reason. You can almost always devise a solution using some aspect of IAM. The most critical question to ask first when using IAM to address the business need is, simply: is my solution complete? Typically, “business” is not focused on the big picture. Understandably, they’re focused instead on the need at hand: Can we be HIPAA compliant in 6 months? Can we tighten our new hire, employee transfer and termination processes? What can we do to prevent another password breach? Can we reduce our service center costs by the end of next quarter? The business may not be focused on the complete set of services offered by IAM but rather a single aspect or two. But it is the job – indeed the duty – of the enterprise architect to ensure that all aspects are being met. It’s like remodeling a house but failing to consider the impact on the foundation, the furnace or the zoning or setback requirements. While the homeowners may not be thinking of such things, the architect, of course, must. At Simeio Solutions, the way we ensure that all aspects are being taken into account – to expose any gaps or weaknesses – is to assess our client’s IAM capabilities against a five-step maturity model ranging from “ad hoc” to “optimized.” The model we use is similar to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based upon some simple criteria, which can provide a visual representation of how well our clients fair when evaluated against four core categories: ·         Program Governance ·         Access Management (e.g., Single Sign-On) ·         Identity and Access Governance (e.g., Identity Intelligence) ·         Enterprise Security (e.g., DLP and SIEM) Often our clients believe they have a solution with all the bases covered, but the model exposes the gaps or weaknesses. The gaps are ideal opportunities for the cloud to enter into the conversation. The complete process is straightforward: 1.    Look at the big picture, not just the immediate need – what is our roadmap and how does this solution fit? 2.    Determine where you stand with respect to the four core areas – what are the gaps? 3.    Decide how to cover the gaps – what role can the cloud play? Returning to our home remodeling analogy, at some point, if gaps or weaknesses are discovered when evaluating the complete impact of the proposed remodel – if the existing foundation wouldn’t support the new addition, for example – the owners need to decide if it’s time to move to a new house instead of trying to remodel the old one. However, with IAM it’s not an either-or proposition – i.e., either move to the cloud or fix the existing infrastructure. It’s possible to use new cloud technologies just to cover the gaps. Many of our clients start their migration to the cloud this way, dipping in their toe instead of taking the plunge all at once. Because our cloud services offering is based on the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite, we can offer a tremendous amount of flexibility in this regard. The Oracle platform is not a collection of point solutions, but rather a complete, integrated, best-of-breed suite. Yet it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can choose just the features and capabilities you need using a pay-as-you-go model, incrementally turning on and off services as needed. Better still, all the other capabilities are there, at the ready, whenever you need them. Spooling up these cloud-only services takes just a fraction of the time it would take a typical organization to deploy internally. SLAs in the cloud may be higher than on premise, too. And by using a suite of software that’s complete and integrated, you can dramatically lower cost and complexity. If your in-house solution cannot be migrated to the cloud, you might consider using hardware appliances such as Simeio’s Cloud Interceptor to extend your enterprise out into the network. You might also consider using Expert Managed Services. Cost is usually the key factor – not just development costs but also operational sustainment costs. Talent or resourcing issues often come into play when thinking about sustaining a program. Expert Managed Services such as those we offer at Simeio can address those concerns head on. In a cloud offering, identity and access services lend to the new paradigms described in my previous posts. Most importantly, it allows us all to focus on what we're meant to do – provide value, lower costs and increase security to our respective organizations. It’s that magic “silver bullet” that business knew you had all along. If you’d like to talk more, you can find us at simeiosolutions.com.

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• Separating text strings into a table of individual words in SQL via XML.

  - by Phil Factor

  p.MsoNormal {margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; } Nearly nine years ago, Mike Rorke of the SQL Server 2005 XML team blogged ‘Querying Over Constructed XML Using Sub-queries’. I remember reading it at the time without being able to think of a use for what he was demonstrating. Just a few weeks ago, whilst preparing my article on searching strings, I got out my trusty function for splitting strings into words and something reminded me of the old blog. I’d been trying to think of a way of using XML to split strings reliably into words. The routine I devised turned out to be slightly slower than the iterative word chop I’ve always used in the past, so I didn’t publish it. It was then I suddenly remembered the old routine. Here is my version of it. I’ve unwrapped it from its obvious home in a function or procedure just so it is easy to appreciate. What it does is to chop a text string into individual words using XQuery and the good old nodes() method. I’ve benchmarked it and it is quicker than any of the SQL ways of doing it that I know about. Obviously, you can’t use the trick I described here to do it, because it is awkward to use REPLACE() on 1…n characters of whitespace. I’ll carry on using my iterative function since it is able to tell me the location of each word as a character-offset from the start, and also because this method leaves punctuation in (removing it takes time!). However, I can see other uses for this in passing lists as input or output parameters, or as return values.   if exists (Select * from sys.xml_schema_collections where name like 'WordList')   drop XML SCHEMA COLLECTION WordList go create xml schema collection WordList as ' <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:element name="words">        <xs:simpleType>               <xs:list itemType="xs:string" />        </xs:simpleType> </xs:element> </xs:schema>'   go   DECLARE @string VARCHAR(MAX) –we'll get some sample data from the great Ogden Nash Select @String='This is a song to celebrate banks, Because they are full of money and you go into them and all you hear is clinks and clanks, Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills, Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills. Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don''t need it. I know you, you cautious conservative banks! If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks; Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the jungle, And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had better go get the money from their wife''s aunt or ungle. But suppose people come in and they have a million and they want another million to pile on top of it, Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you urge them to accept every drop of it, And you lend them the million so then they have two million and this gives them the idea that they would be better off with four, So they already have two million as security so you have no hesitation in lending them two more, And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm, And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the money sent or do they want to take it withm. Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks, the jackasses who go around saying that health and happi- ness are everything and money isn''t essential, Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant money to maintain their health and happiness they starve to death so they can''t go around any more sneering at good old money, which is nothing short of providential. '   –we now turn it into XML declare @xml_data xml(WordList)  set @xml_data='<words>'+ replace(@string,'&', '&amp;')+'</words>'    select T.ref.value('.', 'nvarchar(100)')  from (Select @xml_data.query('                      for $i in data(/words) return                      element li { $i }               '))  A(list) cross apply A.List.nodes('/li') T(ref)     …which gives (truncated, of course)…

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• Not sure I am using inheritance/polymorphism issue?

  - by planker1010

  So for this assignment I have to create a car class(parent) and a certifiedpreowned (child) and I need to have the parent class have a method to check if it is still under warranty. *checkWarrantyStatus(). that method calls the boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty() to veryify if the car still has warranty. My issue is in the certifiedpreowned class I have to call the isCoveredUnderWarranty() as well to see if it is covered under the extended warranty and then have it be called via the checkWarrantyStatus() in the car method. I hope this makes sense. So to sum it up I need to in the child class have it check the isCoveredUnderWarranty with extended warranty info. Then it has to move to the parent class so it can be called via checkWarrantyStatus. Here is my code, I have 1 error. public class Car { public int year; public String make; public String model; public int currentMiles; public int warrantyMiles; public int warrantyYears; int currentYear =java.util.Calendar.getInstance().get(java.util.Calendar.YEAR); /** construct car object with specific parameters*/ public Car (int y, String m, String mod, int mi){ this.year = y; this.make = m; this.model = mod; this.currentMiles = mi; } public int getWarrantyMiles() { return warrantyMiles; } public void setWarrantyMiles(int warrantyMiles) { this.warrantyMiles = warrantyMiles; } public int getWarrantyYears() { return warrantyYears; } public void setWarrantyYears(int warrantyYears) { this.warrantyYears = warrantyYears; } public boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty(){ if (currentMiles < warrantyMiles){ if (currentYear < (year+ warrantyYears)) return true; } return false; } public void checkWarrantyStatus(){ if (isCoveredUnderWarranty()){ System.out.println("Your car " + year+ " " + make+ " "+ model+ " With "+ currentMiles +" is still covered under warranty"); } else System.out.println("Your car " + year+ " " + make+ " "+ model+ " With "+ currentMiles +" is out of warranty"); } } public class CertifiedPreOwnCar extends Car{ public CertifiedPreOwnCar(int y, String m, String mod, int mi) { super(mi, m, mod, y); } public int extendedWarrantyYears; public int extendedWarrantyMiles; public int getExtendedWarrantyYears() { return extendedWarrantyYears; } public void setExtendedWarrantyYears(int extendedWarrantyYears) { this.extendedWarrantyYears = extendedWarrantyYears; } public int getExtendedWarrantyMiles() { return extendedWarrantyMiles; } public void setExtendedWarrantyMiles(int extendedWarrantyMiles) { this.extendedWarrantyMiles = extendedWarrantyMiles; } public boolean isCoveredUnderWarranty() { if (currentMiles < extendedWarrantyMiles){ if (currentYear < (year+ extendedWarrantyYears)) return true; } return false; } } public class TestCar { public static void main(String[] args) { Car car1 = new Car(2014, "Honda", "Civic", 255); car1.setWarrantyMiles(60000); car1.setWarrantyYears(5); car1.checkWarrantyStatus(); Car car2 = new Car(2000, "Ferrari", "F355", 8500); car2.setWarrantyMiles(20000); car2.setWarrantyYears(7); car2.checkWarrantyStatus(); CertifiedPreOwnCar car3 = new CertifiedPreOwnCar(2000, "Honda", "Accord", 65000); car3.setWarrantyYears(3); car3.setWarrantyMiles(30000); car3.setExtendedWarrantyMiles(100000); car3.setExtendedWarrantyYears(7); car3.checkWarrantyStatus(); } }

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• Where is meta.local_fields set in django.db.models.base.py ?

  - by BryanWheelock

  I'm getting the error: Exception Value: (1110, "Column 'about' specified twice") As I was reviewing the Django error page, I noticed that the customizations the model User, seem to be appended to the List twice. This seems to be happening here in django/db/model/base.py in base_save(): values = [(f, f.get_db_prep_save(raw and getattr(self, f.attname) or f.pre_save(self, True))) for f in meta.local_fields] this is what Django error page shows values to be: values = [(<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa78996c>, u'kallie'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa7899cc>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa789a2c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.EmailField object at 0xa789a8c>, u'[email protected]'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa789b2c>, 'sha1$d4a80$0e5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxddadfb07'), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789bcc>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789c6c>, True), (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa789d2c>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa789dcc>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa789e2c>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), # this is where the values from the User model customizations show up (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa8c69ac>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c688c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.PositiveIntegerField object at 0xa8c69cc>, 1), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c69ec>, 'b5ab1603b2308xxxxxxxxxxx75bca1'), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6dac>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6e4c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6e8c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6ecc>, 10), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xa8c6eec>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c6f2c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.URLField object at 0xa8c6f6c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xa8c6fac>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.DateField object at 0xa8c6fec>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.TextField object at 0xa8cb04c>, ''), # at this point User model customizations repeats itself (<django.db.models.fields.BooleanField object at 0xa663b0c>, False), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa1e94c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.PositiveIntegerField object at 0xaa1e34c>, 1), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa1e40c>, 'b5ab1603b2308050ebd62f49ca75bca1'), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xa8c6d8c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa2378c>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa237ac>, 0), (<django.db.models.fields.SmallIntegerField object at 0xaa237ec>, 10), (<django.db.models.fields.DateTimeField object at 0xaa2380c>, u'2010-02-03 14:54:35'), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa2384c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.URLField object at 0xaa2388c>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.CharField object at 0xaa238cc>, ''), (<django.db.models.fields.DateField object at 0xaa2390c>, None), (<django.db.models.fields.TextField object at 0xaa2394c>, '')] Since this app is in Production, I can't figure out how to use pdb.set_trace() to see what's going on inside of save_base. The customizations to User are: User.add_to_class('email_isvalid', models.BooleanField(default=False)) User.add_to_class('email_key', models.CharField(max_length=16, null=True)) User.add_to_class('reputation', models.PositiveIntegerField(default=1)) User.add_to_class('gravatar', models.CharField(max_length=32)) User.add_to_class('email_feeds', generic.GenericRelation(EmailFeed)) User.add_to_class('favorite_questions', models.ManyToManyField(Question, through=FavoriteQuestion, related_name='favorited_by')) User.add_to_class('badges', models.ManyToManyField(Badge, through=Award, related_name='awarded_to')) User.add_to_class('gold', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('silver', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('bronze', models.SmallIntegerField(default=0)) User.add_to_class('questions_per_page', models.SmallIntegerField(choices=QUESTIONS_PER_PAGE_CHOICES, default=10)) User.add_to_class('last_seen', models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.datetime.now)) User.add_to_class('real_name', models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('website', models.URLField(max_length=200, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('location', models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('date_of_birth', models.DateField(null=True, blank=True)) User.add_to_class('about', models.TextField(blank=True)) Django1.1.1 Python 2.5

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• .NET 1.0 ThreadPool Question

  - by dotnet-practitioner

  I am trying to spawn a thread to take care of DoWork task that should take less than 3 seconds. Inside DoWork its taking 15 seconds. I want to abort DoWork and transfer the control back to main thread. I have copied the code as follows and its not working. Instead of aborting DoWork, it still finishes DoWork and then transfers the control back to main thread. What am I doing wrong? class Class1 { /// <summary> /// The main entry point for the application. /// </summary> /// private static System.Threading.ManualResetEvent[] resetEvents; [STAThread] static void Main(string[] args) { resetEvents = new ManualResetEvent[1]; int i = 0; resetEvents[i] = new ManualResetEvent(false); ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(DoWork),(object)i); Thread.CurrentThread.Name = "main thread"; Console.WriteLine("[{0}] waiting in the main method", Thread.CurrentThread.Name); DateTime start = DateTime.Now; DateTime end ; TimeSpan span = DateTime.Now.Subtract(start); //abort dowork method if it takes more than 3 seconds //and transfer control to the main thread. do { if (span.Seconds < 3) WaitHandle.WaitAll(resetEvents); else resetEvents[0].Set(); end = DateTime.Now; span = end.Subtract(start); }while (span.Seconds < 2); Console.WriteLine(span.Seconds); Console.WriteLine("[{0}] all done in the main method",Thread.CurrentThread.Name); Console.ReadLine(); } static void DoWork(object o) { int index = (int)o; Thread.CurrentThread.Name = "do work thread"; //simulate heavy duty work. Thread.Sleep(15000); //work is done.. resetEvents[index].Set(); Console.WriteLine("[{0}] do work finished",Thread.CurrentThread.Name); } }

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• NSTimer as a self-targeting ivar.

  - by Matt Wilding

  I have come across an awkward situation where I would like to have a class with an NSTimer instance variable that repeatedly calls a method of the class as long as the class is alive. For illustration purposes, it might look like this: // .h @interface MyClock : NSObject { NSTimer* _myTimer; } - (void)timerTick; @end - // .m @implementation MyClock - (id)init { self = [super init]; if (self) { _myTimer = [[NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:1.0f target:self selector:@selector(timerTick) userInfo:nil repeats:NO] retain]; } return self; } - (void)dealloc { [_myTimer invalidate]; [_myTImer release]; [super dealloc]; } - (void)timerTick { // Do something fantastic. } @end That's what I want. I don't want to to have to expose an interface on my class to start and stop the internal timer, I just want it to run while the class exists. Seems simple enough. But the problem is that NSTimer retains its target. That means that as long as that timer is active, it is keeping the class from being dealloc'd by normal memory management methods because the timer has retained it. Manually adjusting the retain count is out of the question. This behavior of NSTimer seems like it would make it difficult to ever have a repeating timer as an ivar, because I can't think of a time when an ivar should retain its owning class. This leaves me with the unpleasant duty of coming up with some method of providing an interface on MyClock that allows users of the class to control when the timer is started and stopped. Besides adding unneeded complexity, this is annoying because having one owner of an instance of the class invalidate the timer could step on the toes of another owner who is counting on it to keep running. I could implement my own pseudo-retain-count-system for keeping the timer running but, ...seriously? This is way to much work for such a simple concept. Any solution I can think of feels hacky. I ended up writing a wrapper for NSTimer that behaves exactly like a normal NSTimer, but doesn't retain its target. I don't like it, and I would appreciate any insight.

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• Parallel.For maintain input list order on output list

  - by romeozor

  I'd like some input on keeping the order of a list during heavy-duty operations that I decided to try to do in a parallel manner to see if it boosts performance. (It did!) I came up with a solution, but since this was my first attempt at anything parallel, I'd need someone to slap my hands if I did something very stupid. There's a query that returns a list of card owners, sorted by name, then by date of birth. This needs to be rendered in a table on a web page (ASP.Net WebForms). The original coder decided he would construct the table cell-by-cell (TableCell), add them to rows (TableRow), then each row to the table. So no GridView, allegedly its performance is bad, but the performance was very poor regardless :). The database query returns in no time, the most time is spent on looping through the results and adding table cells etc. I made the following method to maintain the original order of the list: private TableRow[] ComposeRows(List<CardHolder> queryResult) { int queryElementsCount = queryResult.Count(); // array with the query's size var rowArray = new TableRow[queryElementsCount]; Parallel.For(0, queryElementsCount, i => { var row = new TableRow(); var cell = new TableCell(); // various operations, including simple ones such as: cell.Text = queryResult[i].Name; row.Cells.Add(cell); // here I'm adding the current item to it's original index // to maintain order in the output list rowArray[i] = row; }); return rowArray; } So as you can see, because I'm returning a very different type of data (List<CardHolder> -> TableRow[]), I can't just simply omit the ordering from the original query to do it after the operations. Also, I also thought it would be a good idea to Dispose() the objects at the end of each loop, because the query can return a huge list and letting cell and row objects pile up in the heap could impact performance.(?) How badly did I do? Does anyone have a better solution in case mine is flawed?

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• Increase efficiency for an R simulator of the Monty Hall Puzzle

  - by jahan_m

  The Monty Hall Problem is a simple puzzle involving probability that even stumps professionals in careers dealing with some heavy-duty math. Here's the basic problem: Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? You can find numerous explanations of the solution here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem Goal of my simulation: Prove that a switching strategy will win you the car 2/3 of the time. I got curious and wanted to write a little function that simulates the problem many times and returns the proportion of wins if you switched and the proportion of wins if you stayed with your first choice. The function then plots the cumulative wins. First and foremost, I'm interested in hearing if my simulation is indeed replicating the Monty Problem, or if some aspect of the code got it wrong. Secondly, this function takes a long time to run once I get to about 10,000 simulations. I know I don't need this many simulations to prove this but I'd love to hear some ideas on how to make it more efficient. Thanks for your feedback! Monty_Hall=function(repetitions){ doors=c('A','B','C') stay_wins=0 switch_wins=0 series=data.frame(sim_num=seq(repetitions),cum_sum_stay=replicate(repetitions,0),cum_sum_switch=replicate(repetitions,0)) for(i in seq(repetitions)){ winning_door=sample(doors,1) contestant_chooses=sample(doors,1) if(contestant_chooses==winning_door) stay_wins=stay_wins+1 else switch_wins=switch_wins+1 series[i,'cum_sum_stay']=stay_wins series[i,'cum_sum_switch']=switch_wins } plot(series$sim_num,series$cum_sum_switch,col=2,ylab='Cumulative # of wins', xlab='Simulation #',main=sprintf('%d Simulations of the Monty Hall Paradox',repetitions),type='l') lines(series$sim_num,series$cum_sum_stay,col=4) legend('topleft',legend=c('Cumulative wins from switching', 'Cumulative wins from staying'),col=c(2,4),lty=1) result=list(series=series,stay_wins=stay_wins,switch_wins=switch_wins, proportion_stay_wins=stay_wins/repetitions, proportion_switch_wins=switch_wins/repetitions) return(result) } #Theory predicts that it is to the contestant's advantage if he #switches his choice to the other door. This function simulates the game #many times, and shows you the proportion of games in which staying or #switching would win the car. It also plots the cumulative wins for each strategy. Monty_Hall(100)

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• Difference between Cloud and Virtualization

  - by Akash Kava

  Ops: This does not belong to ServerFault because it focuses on Programing Architecture. I have following questions regarding differences between Cloud and Virtualization.. How Cloud is different then Virtualization? Currently I tried to find out pricing of Rackspace, Amazone and all similar cloud providers, I found that our current 6 dedicated servers came cheaper then their pricing. So how one can claim cloud is cheaper? Is it cheaper only in comparison of normal hosting? We re organized our infrastructure in virtual environment to reduce or configuration overhead at time of failure, we did not have to rewrite any peice of code that is already written for earlier setup. So moving to virtualization does not require any re programming. But cloud is absoltely different and it will require entire reprogramming right? Is it really worth to recode when our current IT costs are 3-4 times lower then cloud hosting including raid backups and all sort of clustering for high availability? New programming architecture means new overheads of training staff, new methods of testing and new deployment schemes, does it justify over "on demand resource usage" words of cloud? We are having current development architecture with simple Server side ASP.NET WebServices with no local context and on client side Flex/Silverlight which offers pretty good REST architecture and its highly scalable. How does cloud differs from REST model of deployment? On storage, SQL Server or MySQL offers pretty good replication and high availibility then what is advantage in cloud? Data guarantee, one of our vendor hosting some other customer's app on cloud (one of most used), lost Entire Hard Disk (the virtual) and entire module in first 6 months. Second provider said its your duty to take backup, fine I agree, but no provider gives SLA for data guarantee, they give 99% uptime. However in most business apps, uptime is less important then data integrity. In our 10 years of dedicated hosting experience we had only one hard disk crash. This makes me little skeptical to go for cloud and loosing control over data. And I feel its just a big marketing buzz to sell virtulization in different form. Size of data, currently all providers charge very heavy for large data, if you are hosting only below 100GB cloud can be good alternative, but I think virtual servers and dedicated servers above 100GB to few TBs are still cheaper. Why would want to pay so high on cloud when there is no data guarentee as well as it doesnt say anything about redundancy. (I wish SO had something for spell check for Internet Explorer, sorry for wrong spellings in my post)

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• Is order of parameters for database Command object really important?

  - by nawfal

  I was debugging a database operation code and I found that proper UPDATE was never happening though the code never failed as such. This is the code: condb.Open(); OleDbCommand dbcom = new OleDbCommand("UPDATE Word SET word=?,sentence=?,mp3=? WHERE id=? AND exercise_id=?", condb); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", wd.ID); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("exercise_id", wd.ExID); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("word", wd.Name); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("sentence", wd.Sentence); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("mp3", wd.Mp3); But after some tweaking this worked: condb.Open(); OleDbCommand dbcom = new OleDbCommand("UPDATE Word SET word=?,sentence=?,mp3=? WHERE id=? AND exercise_id=?", condb); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("word", wd.Name); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("sentence", wd.Sentence); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("mp3", wd.Mp3); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", wd.ID); dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("exercise_id", wd.ExID); Why is it so important that the parameters in WHERE clause has to be given the last in case of OleDb connection? Having worked with MySQL previously, I could (and usually do) write parameters of WHERE clause first because that's more logical to me. Is parameter order important when querying database in general? Some performance concern or something? Is there a specific order to be maintained in case of other databases like DB2, Sqlite etc? Update: I got rid of ? and included proper names with and without @. The order is really important. In both cases only when WHERE clause parameters was mentioned last, actual update happened. To make matter worse, in complex queries, its hard to know ourselves which order is Access expecting, and in all situations where order is changed, the query doesnt do its intended duty with no warning/error!!

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