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• Creating dynamic map graphs

  - by Mehper C. Palavuzlar

  I need a software (or softwares) to achieve the following. I'm not sure if it could be done, but I'd like to hear the suggestions from super users. The data I want to use for graphing purposes include sales figures of magazines by provinces. There are 81 provinces of Turkiye, and I want the computer to automatically paint / write on a graph according to the sales magnitude of the provinces. Since there are loads of magazines with loads of issues, the process must be executed automatically just after selecting the related magazine and issue. So there will be graphs showing the sales weight of the whole country with some nice illustrations. Those graphs might be used as part of some decision support mechanism to help field teams. Is it possible? I have all the data and base maps of Turkiye to be filled/painted. I'm sure this is not easy. If there is a way to do that, it might probably include more than one software. Thanks in advance for any valuable comments and answers.

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• IntelliTrace As a Learning Tool for MVC2 in a VS2010 Project

  - by Sam Abraham

  IntelliTrace is a new feature in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Edition. I see this valuable tool as a “Program Execution Recorder” that captures information about events and calls taking place as soon as we hit the VS2010 play (Start Debugging) button or the F5 key. Many online resources already discuss IntelliTrace and the benefit it brings to both developers and testers alike so I see no value of just repeating this information.  In this brief blog entry, I would like to share with you how I will be using IntelliTrace in my upcoming talk at the Ft Lauderdale ArcSig .Net User Group Meeting on April 20th 2010 (check http://www.fladotnet.com for more information), as a learning tool to demonstrate the internals of the lifecycle of an MVC2 application.  I will also be providing some helpful links that cover IntelliTrace in more detail at the end of my article for reference. IntelliTrace is setup by default to only capture execution events. Microsoft did such a great job on optimizing its recording process that I haven’t even felt the slightest performance hit with IntelliTrace running as I was debugging my solutions and projects.  For my purposes here however, I needed to capture more information beyond execution events, so I turned on the option for capturing calls in addition to events as shown in Figures 1 and 2. Changing capture options will require us to stop our debugging session and start over for the new settings to take place. Figure 1 – Access IntelliTrace options via the Tools->Options menu items Figure 2 – Change IntelliTrace Options to capture call information as well as events Notice the warning with regards to potentially degrading performance when selecting to capture call information in addition to the default events-only setting. I have found this warning to be sure true. My subsequent tests showed slowness in page load times compared to rendering those same exact pages with the “event-only” option selected. Execution recording is auto-started along with the new debugging session of our project. At this point, we can simply interact with the application and continue executing normally until we decide to “playback” the code we have executed so far.  For code replay, first step is to “break” the current execution as show in Figure 3.   Figure 3 – Break to replay recording A few tries later, I found a good process to quickly find and demonstrate the MVC2 page lifecycle. First-off, we start with the event view as shown in Figure 4 until we find an interesting event that needs further studying.  Figure 4 – Going through IntelliTrace’s events and picking as specific entry of interest We now can, for instance, study how the highlighted HTTP GET request is being handled, by clicking on the “Calls View” for that particular event. Notice that IntelliTrace shows us all calls that took place in servicing that GET request. Double clicking on any call takes us to a more granular view of the call stack within that clicked call, up until getting to a specific line of code where we can do a line-by-line replay of the execution from that point onwards using F10 or F11 just like our typical good old VS2008 debugging helped us accomplish. Figure 5 – switching to call view on an event of interest Figure 6 – Double clicking on call shows a more granular view of the call stack. In conclusion, the introduction of IntelliTrace as a new addition to the VS developers’ tool arsenal enhances development and debugging experience and effectively tackles the “no-repro” problem. It will also hopefully enhance my audience’s experience listening to me speaking about  an MVC2 page lifecycle which I can now easily visually demonstrate, thereby improving the probability of keeping everybody awake a little longer. IntelliTrace References: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336126.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264944(VS.100).aspx

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• What makes them click ?

  - by Piet

  The other day (well, actually some weeks ago while relaxing at the beach in Kos) I read ‘Neuro Web Design - What makes them click?’ by Susan Weinschenk. (http://neurowebbook.com) The book is a fast and easy read (no unnecessary filler) and a good introduction on how your site’s visitors can be steered in the direction you want them to go. The Obvious The book handles some of the more known/proven techniques, like for example that ratings/testimonials of other people can help sell your product or service. Another well known technique it talks about is inducing a sense of scarcity/urgency in the visitor. Only 2 seats left! Buy now and get 33% off! It’s not because these are known techniques that they stop working. Luckily 2/3rd of the book handles less obvious techniques, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth buying. The Not So Obvious A less known influencing technique is reciprocity. And then I’m not talking about swapping links with another website, but the fact that someone is more likely to do something for you after you did something for them first. The book cites some studies (I always love the facts and figures) and gives some actual examples of how to implement this in your site’s design, which is less obvious when you think about it. Want to know more ? Buy the book! Other interesting sources For a more general introduction to the same principles, I’d suggest ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. ‘Yes!…’ cites some of the same studies (it seems there’s a rather limited pool of studies covering this subject), but of course doesn’t show how to implement these techniques in your site’s design. I read ‘Yes!…’ last year, making ‘Neuro Web Design’ just a little bit less interesting. !!!Always make sure you’re able to measure your changes. If you haven’t yet, check out the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics (don’t be afraid because it says ‘beta’, it works just fine) and Google Website Optimizer. Worth Buying? Can I recommend it ? Sure, why not. I think it can be useful for anyone who ever had to think about the design or content of a site. You don’t have to be a marketing guy to want a site you’re involved with to be successful. The content/filler ratio is excellent too: you don’t need to wade through dozens of pages to filter out the interesting bits. (unlike ‘The Design of Sites’, which contains too much useless info and because it’s in dead-tree format, you can’t google it) If you like it, you might also check out ‘Yes! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion’. Tip for people living in Europe: check Amazon UK for your book buying needs. Because of the low UK Pound exchange rate, it’s usually considerably cheaper and faster to get a book delivered to your doorstep by Amazon UK compared to having to order it at the local book store or web-shop.

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• Free SQL Server training? Now you’re talking.

  - by Fatherjack

  SQL Server user groups are everywhere, literally all over the globe there are SQL Server professionals meeting on a regular basis, sharing ideas, solving problems, learning about how to do new stuff and new ways to do old stuff and it’s all for free. I don’t have detailed figures but of all the SQL Server professionals there are only a small number of them attend these user groups. Those people are the people that are taking the time and making then effort to make themselves better at their chosen trade, more employable and having a good time. For free. I don’t know why but there are many people that don’t seem to want to be the best they can be. Some of you enlightened people that do already attend could be doing more though. Have you ever spoken at  your group? Not just in the break while you have a mouthful of pizza and a drink in your hand but had the attention of the whole group listen to you speak. It doesn’t need to be a full hour, it doesn’t need to be some obscure deeply technical demonstration of SQL Server internals, just a few minutes on something that you do that might help other people with their daily work. A neat process that helps you get from Problem A to Solution B. There is no need to get concerned that becoming a speaker means that you suddenly have to know more than anyone else in the room. This is you talking about something that you experienced. What you did, what you would repeat, what you might do differently next time. No one in the audience can pick you up on a technicality. If someone comes out with a great idea that you hadn’t thought of, say “That’s a great idea, I didn’t think of that while we had the problem on our hands. I’ll try to remember that for next time”. If someone is looking to show you up for picking the wrong decision (and this, in my experience, is very uncommon indeed) then you simply give a reply like “Well, at the time we chose that option. Perhaps another time then we would tackle things differently but we were happy with how our solution worked”. It’s sharing things like this that makes user groups have a real value, talking about how you coped with or averted a disaster, a handy little section of code or using a tool in a particular way that you take for granted that might, just might, be something that other people haven’t thought of that solves a problem or saves some time for them. At the next meeting you might get the same benefit from a different person and so it goes on. As individuals benefits so the community benefits. For free. Things I encourage you to do; If you are a chapter or user group leader; encourage someone from your group who has never spoken before to start speaking. If you are a chapter or user group attendee that hasn’t spoken before; speak for at least 5 minutes on something related to SQL Server at any group meeting. If you don’t currently attend a user group; please go along to you nearest one when they are meeting next and invest in yourself and your future. UK user group details are here: http://sqlsouthwest.co.uk/national_ug.htm , PASS chapters outside the UK are found via http://www.sqlpass.org/PASSChapters/LocalChapters.aspx. If you are unsure of how you might achieve any of these things then get in touch with me*, I’ll give you specific advice on getting started on any of the above points and help you prove to yourself what you are capable of. SQL Community – be part of it and make it better. Let me know how you get on in the comments.

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• Introducing Oracle System Assistant

  - by B.Koch

  by Josh Rosen One of the challenges with today's servers is getting the server up and running and understanding what all of the steps are once you plug the server in for the first time. So many different pieces come into play: installing drivers, updating firmware, configuring RAID, and provisioning the operating system. All of these steps must be done before you can even start using the server. Finding the latest firmware and drivers, making sure you have the right versions, and knowing that all the different software and firmware components work together properly can be a real challenge. If not done correctly, such as if you separately downloading disk firmware or controller firmware that doesn't match the existing OS drivers, you could experience bugs, performance problems, and incompatibilities. Gone are the days of having to locate the tools and drivers media that shipped with the server only to find out that newer versions of software and firmware are available on the web. Oracle has solved these challenges in the new X3-2 family of servers by introducing Oracle System Assistant. Oracle System Assistant is an innovative tool that is built-in to every new x86 server. It provides step-by-step assistance with configuring the server, updating firmware and drivers, and provisioning the operating system. Once you have completed all of the steps in the Oracle System Assistant tool, the server is ready to use. Oracle System Assistant was designed to be easy and straightforward. Starting it is as simple as pressing F9 when the server is booting. You'll need a keyboard, monitor, and mouse or you can use the remote console feature of Oracle ILOM (Integrated Lights Out Manager) to access a virtual KVM to the server from any machine. From there Oracle System Assistant will walk you through each of the steps necessary to set up your server. After configuring the network settings for Oracle System Assistant, the next step is to check for any new software or firmware for the server. Oracle System Assistant connects back to Oracle using your My Oracle Support account and downloads any updates that were made available to you for this specific server. This is where you really start to see the innovation that went into Oracle System Assistant. Firmware for Oracle ILOM and BIOS, operating system drivers, and other system firmware (including for option cards and disk drivers) come as a single bundle, downloading as a single unit, that has been engineered and tested to work together by Oracle. Oracle System Assistant figures out the right combination for your server, so you don't have to. Now that the server has the latest firmware, Oracle System Assistant will next walk you through configuring the hardware. From Oracle System Assistant, you can configure many Oracle ILOM settings, including the network settings and initial user accounts. This ensures that ILOM is accessible and ready to use. Oracle System Assistant is where all parts of the server come together. In addition to communicating with Oracle ILOM and interacting with BIOS, Oracle System Assistant understands and can configure the storage subsystem. Before installing the operating system, Oracle System Assistant can detect the storage configuration and configure RAID for all disks in the system. At this point, the server is ready to be provisioned with the host operating system. You can use Oracle System Assistant to provision a supported OS, including Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, RHEL, SuSe Linux, and Windows. And by using Oracle System Assistant, you can be sure that the proper OS drivers are installed for each of the installed hardware components. With Oracle System Assistant, initial setup of the server has never been easier. If we can innovate around problems and find solutions to make our servers easier to manage, this reduces IT costs and makes managing servers simpler. I think with Oracle System Assistant we have done just that. Josh Rosen is a Principal Product Manager at Oracle and previously spent more than a decade as a developer and architect of system management software. Josh has worked on system management for many of Oracle's hardware products ranging from the earliest blade systems to the latest Oracle x86 servers.

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• PASS Summit 2011 &ndash; Part IV

  - by Tara Kizer

  This is the final blog for my PASS Summit 2011 series.  Well okay, a mini-series, I guess. On the last day of the conference, I attended Keith Elmore’ and Boris Baryshnikov’s (both from Microsoft) “Introducing the Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” Performance Dashboard Reports, Jeremiah Peschka’s (blog|twitter) “Rewrite your T-SQL for Great Good!”, and Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs”. Keith and Boris talked about the lifecycle of a session, figuring out the running time and the waiting time.  They pointed out the transient nature of the reports.  You could be drilling into it to uncover a problem, but the session may have ended by the time you’ve drilled all of the way down.  Also, the reports are for troubleshooting live problems and not historical ones.  You can use Management Data Warehouse for historical troubleshooting.  The reports provide similar benefits to the Activity Monitor, however Activity Monitor doesn’t provide context sensitive drill through. One thing I learned in Keith’s and Boris’ session was that the buffer cache hit ratio should really never be below 87% due to the read-ahead mechanism in SQL Server.  When a page is read, it will read the entire extent.  So for every page read, you get 7 more read.  If you need any of those 7 extra pages, well they are already in cache.  I had a lot of fun in Jeremiah’s session about refactoring code plus I learned a lot.  His slides were visually presented in a fun way, which just made for a more upbeat presentation.  Jeremiah says that before you start refactoring, you should look at your system.  Investigate missing or too many indexes, out-of-date statistics, and other areas that could be leading to your code running slow.  He talked about code standards.  He suggested using common abbreviations for aliases instead of one-letter aliases.  I’m a big offender of one-letter aliases, but he makes a good point.  He said that join order does not matter to the optimizer, but it does matter to those who have to read your code.  Now let’s get into refactoring! Eliminate useless things – useless/unneeded joins and columns.  If you don’t need it, get rid of it! Instead of using DISTINCT/JOIN, replace with EXISTS Simplify your conditions; use UNION or better yet UNION ALL instead of OR to avoid a scan and use indexes for each union query Branching logic – instead of IF this, IF that, and on and on…use dynamic SQL (sp_executesql, please!) or use a parameterized query in the application Correlated subqueries – YUCK! Replace with a join Eliminate repeated patterns Last, but certainly not least, was Kimberly’s session.  Kimberly is my favorite speaker.  I attended her two-day pre-conference seminar at PASS Summit 2005 as well as a SQL Immersion Event last December.  Did I mention she’s my favorite speaker?  Okay, enough of that. Kimberly’s session was packed with demos.  I had seen some of it in the SQL Immersion Event, but it was very nice to get a refresher on these, especially since I’ve got a VLDB with some growing pains.  One key takeaway from her session is the idea to use a log shipping solution with a load delay, such as 6, 8, or 24 hours behind the primary.  In the case of say an accidentally dropped table in a VLDB, we could retrieve it from the secondary database rather than waiting an eternity for a restore to complete.  Kimberly let us know that in SQL Server 2012 (it finally has a name!), online rebuilds are supported even if there are LOB columns in your table.  This will simplify custom code that intelligently figures out if an online rebuild is possible. There was actually one last time slot for sessions that day, but I had an airplane to catch and my kids to see!

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• Upgrading from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 in Visual Studio 2010 and VS2008.

  - by Sam Abraham

  With MVC2 officially released, I was involved in a few conversations regarding the feasibility of upgrading existing MVC 1.0 projects to quickly leverage the newly introduced MVC features. Luckily, Microsoft has proactively addressed this question for both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 and many online resources discussing the upgrade process are a "Bing/Google Search" away. As I will happen to be speaking about MVC2 and Visual Studio 2010 at the Ft Lauderdale ArcSig .Net User Group Meeting on April 20th 2010 (Check http://www.fladotnet.com for more info.), I decided to include a quick demo on upgrading the NerdDinner project (which I consider the "Hello MVC World" project) from MVC 1.0 to MVC2 using Visual studio 2010 to demonstrate how simple the upgrade process is. In the next few lines, I will be briefly touching on upgrading to MVC2 for Visual Studio 2008 then discussing, in more detail, the upgrade process using Visual Studio 2010 while highlighting the advantage of its multi-targeting support. Using Visual Studio 2008 SP1 For upgrading to MVC2 Using VS2008 SP1, a Microsoft White Paper [1] presents two approaches:  1- Using a provided automated upgrade tool, 2-Manually upgrading the project. I personally prefer using the automated tool although it comes with an "AS IS" disclaimer. For those brave souls, or those who end up with no luck using the tool, detailed manual upgrade steps are also provided as a second option. Backing up the project in question is a must regardless of which route one would take to upgrade. Using Visual Studio 2010 Life is much easier for developers who already adopted Visual Studio 2010. Simply opening the MVC 1.0 solution file brings up the upgrade wizard as shown in figures 1, 2, 3 and 4. As we proceed with the upgrade process, the wizard requests confirmation on whether we choose to upgrade our target framework version to .Net 4.0 or keep the existing .Net 3.5 (Figure 5). VS2010 does a good job with multi-targeting where we can still develop .Net 3.5 applications while leveraging all the new bells and whistles that VS2010 brings to the table (Multi-targeting enables us to develop with as early as .Net 2.0 in VS2010) Figure 1 - Open Solution File Using VS2010   Figure 2 - VS2010 Conversion Wizard Figure 3- Ready To Convert To VS2010 Confirmation Screen Figure 4 - VS2010 Solution Conversion Progress Figure 5 - Confirm Target Framework Upgrade In an attempt to make my demonstration realistic, I decided to opt to keep the project targeted to the .Net 3.5 Framework.  After the successful completion of the conversion process,  a quick sanity check revealed that the NerdDinner project is still targeted to the .Net 3.5 framework as shown in figure 6. Inspecting the Web.Config revealed that the MVC DLL version our code compiles against has been successfully upgraded to 2.0 (Figure 7) and hence we should now be able to leverage the newly introduced features in MVC2 and VS2010 with no effort or time invested on modifying existing code. Figure 6- Confirm Target Framework Remained .Net 3.5  Figure 7 - Confirm MVC DLL Version Has Been Upgraded In Conclusion, Microsoft has empowered developers with the tools necessary to quickly and seamlessly upgrade their MVC solutions to the newly released MVC2. The multi-targeting feature in Visual Studio 2010 enables us to adopt this latest and greatest development tool while supporting development in as early as .Net 2.0. References 1. "Upgrading an ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Application to ASP.NET MVC 2" http://www.asp.net/learn/whitepapers/aspnet-mvc2-upgrade-notes

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• How to use DI and DI containers

  - by Pinetree

  I am building a small PHP mvc framework (yes, yet another one), mostly for learning purposes, and I am trying to do it the right way, so I'd like to use a DI container, but I am not asking which one to use but rather how to use one. Without going into too much detail, the mvc is divided into modules which have controllers which render views for actions. This is how a request is processed: a Main object instantiates a Request object, and a Router, and injects the Request into the Router to figure out which module was called. then it instantiates the Module object and sends the Request to that the Module creates a ModuleRouter and sends the Request to figure out the controller and action it then creates the Controller and the ViewRenderer, and injects the ViewRenderer into the Controller (so that the controller can send data to the view) the ViewRenderer needs to know which module, controller and action were called to figure out the path to the view scripts, so the Module has to figure out this and inject it to the ViewRenderer the Module then calls the action method on the controller and calls the render method on the ViewRenderer For now, I do not have any DI container set up, but what I do have are a bunch of initX() methods that create the required component if it is not already there. For instance, the Module has the initViewRenderer() method. These init methods get called right before that component is needed, not before, and if the component was already set it will not initialize it. This allows for the components to be switched, but it does not require manually setting them if they are not there. Now, I'd like to do this by implementing a DI container, but still keep the manual configuration to a bare minimum, so if the directory structure and naming convention is followed, everything should work, without even touching the config. If I use the DI container, do I then inject it into everything (the container would inject itself when creating a component), so that other components can use it? When do I register components with the DI? Can a component register other components with the DI during run-time? Do I create a 'common' config and use that? How do I then figure out on the fly which components I need and how they need to be set up? If Main uses Router which uses Request, Main then needs to use the container to get Module (or does the module need to be found and set beforehand? How?) Module uses Router but needs to figure out the settings for the ViewRenderer and the Controller on the fly, not in advance, so my DI container can't be setting those on the Module before the module figures out the controller and action... What if the controller needs some other service? Do I inject the container into every controller? If I start doing that, I might just inject it into everything... Basically I am looking for the best practices when dealing with stuff like this. I know what DI is and what DI containers do, but I am looking for guidance to using them in real life, and not some isolated examples on the net. Sorry for the lengthy post and many thanks in advance.

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• Mobile Deals: the Consumer Wants You in Their Pocket

  - by Mike Stiles

  Mobile deals offer something we talk about a lot in social marketing, relevant content. If a consumer is already predisposed to liking your product and gets a timely deal for it that’s easy and convenient to use, not only do you score on the marketing side, it clearly generates some of that precious ROI that’s being demanded of social. First, a quick gut-check on the public’s adoption of mobile. Nielsen figures have 55.5% of US mobile owners using smartphones. If young people are indeed the future, you can count on the move to mobile exploding exponentially. Teens are the fastest growing segment of smartphone users, and 58% of them have one. But the largest demographic of smartphone users is 25-34 at 74%. That tells you a focus on mobile will yield great results now, and even better results straight ahead. So we can tell both from statistics and from all the faces around you that are buried in their smartphones this is where consumers are. But are they looking at you? Do you have a valid reason why they should? Everybody likes a good deal. BIA/Kelsey says US consumers will spend $3.6 billion this year for daily deals (the Groupons and LivingSocials of the world), up 87% from 2011. The report goes on to say over 26% of small businesses are either "very likely" or "extremely likely" to offer up a deal in the next 6 months. Retail Gazette reports 58% of consumers shop with coupons, a 40% increase in 4 years. When you consider that a deal can be the impetus for a real-world transaction, a first-time visit to a store, an online purchase, entry into a loyalty program, a social referral, a new fan or follower, etc., that 26% figure shows us there’s a lot of opportunity being left on the table by brands. The existing and emerging technologies behind mobile devices make the benefits of offering deals listed above possible. Take how mobile payment systems are being tied into deal delivery and loyalty programs. If it’s really easy to use a coupon or deal, it’ll get used. If it’s complicated, it’ll be passed over as “not worth it.” When you can pay with your mobile via technologies that connects store and user, you get the deal, you get the loyalty credit, you pay, and your receipt is uploaded, all in one easy swipe. Nothing to keep track of, nothing to lose or forget about. And the store “knows” you, so future offers will be based on your tastes. Consider the endgame. A customer who’s a fan of your belt buckle store’s Facebook Page is in one of your physical retail locations. They pull up your app, because they’ve gotten used to a loyalty deal being offered when they go to your store. Voila. A 10% discount active for the next 30 minutes. Maybe the app also surfaces social references to your brand made by friends so they can check out a buckle someone’s raving about. If they aren’t a fan of your Page or don’t have your app, perhaps they’ve opted into location-based deal services so you can still get them that 10% deal while they’re in the store. Or maybe they’ve walked in with a pre-purchased Groupon or Living Social voucher. They pay with one swipe, and you’ve learned about their buying preferences, credited their loyalty account and can encourage them to share a pic of their new buckle on social. Happy customer. Happy belt buckle company. All because the brand was willing to use the tech that’s available to meet consumers where they are, incentivize them, and show them how much they’re valued through rewards.

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• Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

  Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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• Git subtree not properly using .gitignore when doing a partial clone

  - by D W

  I am a graduate student with many scripts, bibliography data in bibtex, thesis draft in latex, presentations in open office, posters in scribus, and figures and result data. I would like to put everything in one project under version control. Then when I need to work on a portion such as the bibliography data, I would like to check that subdirectory out, modify it as necessary and merge it back.I would like the ability to check out one version to my home computer, and a different one to my work computer and make changes to each independently and eventually merge them back. I would also like to be able to check out a piece of code from this big project and import it with versioning into a separate project. If I may changes I'd like to be able to merge them back to the original project. Based on my understanding git subtree can do this. http://github.com/apenwarr/git-subtree There is an example that is along the lines of what I'm trying to do at: http://psionides.jogger.pl/2010/02/04/sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree/ Say the trunk of my project contained the directories: (bib bin cfg data fig src todo). When I use git subtree split -P bib -b export git checkout export I get a the bib directory, plus all files that should have been ignored or considered binary based on .gitignore such as the src directory and everything in it that ends in a tilde or the ./data directory. dwickrama@DWwork:~/research/trunk$ ls * -r biblography.bib JabRef src: script1.sh~ README~ script2.sh~ script3.sh~ script4.R~ script5.awk~ script5.py~ cfg: cfgFile1.ini~ cfgFile2.ini~ cfgFile3.ini~ bin: bigBinaryPackage1 bigBinaryPackage2 dwickrama@DWwork:~/research/trunk$ My .gitignore file is as follows: *.doc diff=word *.tex diff=tex *.bib diff=bibtex *.py diff=python *.eps binary *.jpg binary *.png binary ./bin/* binary *~ How do I prevent this?

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• Using git subtree to clone a subdirectory of a project with versioning history then merge it back af

  - by D W

  I am a graduate student with many scripts, bibliography data in bibtex, thesis draft in latex, presentations in open office, posters in scribus, and figures and result data. I would like to put everything in one project under version control. Then when I need to work on a portion such as the bibliography data, I would like to check that subdirectory out, modify it as necessary and merge it back.I would like the ability to check out one version to my home computer, and a different one to my work computer and make changes to each independently and eventually merge them back. I would also like to be able to check out a piece of code from this big project and import it with versioning into a separate project. If I may changes I'd like to be able to merge them back to the original project. Based on my understanding git subtree can do this. http://github.com/apenwarr/git-subtree There is an example that is along the lines of what I'm trying to do at: http://psionides.jogger.pl/2010/02/04/sharing-code-between-projects-with-git-subtree/ This code is from that site: git clone git://git2.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git newtree=$(git subtree split --prefix=gitweb --annotate='(split) ' \ 0a8f4f0^.. --onto=1130ef3 --rejoin) git branch latest_gitweb $newtree gitk latest_gitweb Say the trunk of my project contained the directories: (bib bin cfg data fig src todo). How would I use git-subtree to split off the bib (bibliography) directory with versioning? When I use git-subtree split --prefix=bib I get 884842f6f4e9896e2e4e9402ee0ef762cd617257 as output, but I don't know where to go from there.

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• Workflow for academic research projects, one-step builds, and the Joel Test

  - by Steve

  Working alone on academic research sometimes breeds bad habits. With no one else reading my code, I would write a lot of throw-away code, and I would lose track of intermediate results which, weeks or months later, I wish I had retained. My recent attempts to make my personal workflow conform to the Joel Test raised interesting questions. Academic research has inherently different goals than industrial software development, and therefore some aspects of the Joel Test become less valid. Nevertheless, I find these steps to be still valuable for academic research: Do you use source control? Can you make a build in one step? Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Do you have a spec? Of particular use is the one-step build. I find myself more organized now that I have implemented the following "one-step build": In other words, I have a single script, build.py, that accepts Python code, data, and TeX as inputs. The outputs are results, figures, and a paper with all the results filled in. (Yes, I know "build" is probably not accurate in this context, but you get the idea.) By consolidating many small steps into one, I am not backtracking as much as I used to. ...but I'm sure there is still room for improvement. Question: For research projects, which steps of the Joel Test do you still value? Do you have a one-step build? If so, what does yours consist of, i.e., what inputs does it accept, and what output does it generate?

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• What's the "best" database for embedded?

  - by mawg

  I'm an embedded guy, not a database guy. I've been asked to redesign an existing system which has bottlenecks in several places. The embedded device is based around an ARM 9 processor running at 220mHz. There should be a database of 50k entries (may increase to 250k) each with 1k of data (max 8 filed). That's approximate - I can try to get more precise figures if necessary. They are currently using SqlLite 2 and planning to move to SqlLite 3. Without starting a flame war - I am a complete d/b newbie just seeking advice - is that the "best" decision? I realize that this might be a "how long is a piece of string?" question, but any pointers woudl be greatly welcomed. I don't mind doing a lot of reading & research, but just hoped that you could get me off to a flying start. Thanks. p.s Again, a total rewrite, might not even stick with embedded Linux, but switch to eCos, don't worry too much about one time conversion between d/b formats. Oh, and accesses should be infrequent, at most one every few seconds. edit: ok, it seems they have 30k entries (may reach 100k or more) of only 5 or 6 fields each, but at least 3 of them can be a search key for a record. They are toying with "having no d/b at all, since the data are so simple", but it seems to me that with multiple keys, we couldn't use fancy stuff like a quicksort() type search (recursive, binary search). Any thoughts on "no d/b", just data-structures? Btw, one key is 800k - not sure how well SqlLite handles that (maybe with "no d/b" I have to hash that 800k to something smaller?)

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• How to delete columns?

  - by Joey jie

  Hi all, I have generated the following text file below: fe120b99164f151b28bf86afa6389b22 -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 186 2010-03-14 19:26 Descript.txt 41705ea936cfc653f273b5454c1cdde6 -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 30 2010-03-14 20:29 listof.txt 0e25cca3222d32fff43563465af03340 -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 28 2010-03-14 23:35 sedexample.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test1.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test2.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test3.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test4.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test5.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-02-16 15:11 test6.txt f5c7f1856249d0526be10df5bd5b895a -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 26 2010-03-13 14:13 testingfile.txt d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e -rw-r--r-- 1 joey joey 0 2010-03-15 00:28 uniquelist.txt Basically I would like to get rid of the access, amount column, user and group columns. In other words, I want rid of columns 3,4,5. I have tried using cut to keep the columns that I do want and having " " as my delimiter however because of the file size figures, it messes up using "space" as a delimiter. Any advice would be much appreciated! Oh just to add, I would like to save the output as another text file. Many thanks!

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• Having a hard time implementing jquery serialScroll to a website. Need help!

  - by Martin Defatte

  Here's the page I am attempting to implement it on. www.yosoh.com/2010/advertising/beyond/ I have a custom script with figures out the width of all the images, adds it up, then sets the width of that page... I'd like to be able to set the arrows at the top to scroll to the next div (div.portfolioImage). I've followed Ariel Fischer's demo and documentation as best I can... but something keeps escaping me. I've finally gotten some "movement" on page load.. but to tell you the truth, I can't figure out if it's my html structure, css styles, or implementation of serialScroll causing the issue. here's the code for the buttons: <ul id="portfolioNav"> <li><a href="" id="prev">&larr;</a></li> <li><a href="" id="next">&rarr;</a></li> </ul> Here's the script, as it is right now: $('#mainContent').css('overflow', 'hidden'); $('#mainContent').serialScroll({ items:'.portfolioItem', prev:'a#prev', next:'a#next', axis: 'x', duration:1200, force:true, stop:true, lock:false, easing:'easeOutQuart', jump: true });

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• What are the best open-source software non-profits for making financial contributions and/or facilitating useful work?

  - by Jason S

  I'm not a great programmer myself (my main job is more electrical engineering) and have never really helped out with any open source projects, but I've benefited greatly from free and/or open-source software (MySQL, OpenOffice, Firefox, Apache, PHP, Java, etc.) and at some point would like to make some modest financial contributions to help keep this stuff going. I'm wondering, what are the best non-profits to make financial contributions? I'm aware of: Open Source Initiative (founded 10 years ago by several prominent figures including programmer and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" author Eric S. Raymond) Free Software Foundation Mozilla Foundation Apache Foundation Anyone have a particular favorite? Ideally I'd like to give money to a non-profit that would foster some of the smaller but promising open-source and/or free software projects. The big projects like Firefox and Apache are already well-established. There are a few small individual shareware programs I've already paid for directly. But it's those middle-ground projects that I would really like my contributions to support. (one that comes to mind is a good GUI for Subversion or Mercurial.) It's one thing for a single person to donate a little $$ to a small project. It's another for a foundation or something to give larger grants to projects that give a good bang for the buck. Conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy, or the Trust for Public Lands, have really honed this approach, but I'm not really sure if there's an equivalent model in software-land.

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• Can pdflatex (or any tex package) automatically rescale included images which have been reduced in s

  - by drfrogsplat

  I'm writing my thesis in LaTeX, generating it with pdflatex. I have a large number of figures, many of which are bitmaps (as opposed to SVG) in PNG/JPEG format. I've generally created them to be fairly high resolution (say 1600x1200-ish) to ensure that whatever size they end up in the document, they'll be at least 300dpi when printed. As I'm writing/laying out the document, I'm including graphics (using \includegraphics from the graphicx package) and setting widths/heights as appropriate (e.g. subfigures are quite small). I don't need the images to be any more than about 300 dpi at best, so where I have shrunk a 1600x1200 image down to say 5cm, the image is now at 800 dpi. So despite including some very small (on the page) images, the PDF is becoming quite large. Is there a way to tell pdflatex or graphicx (or something else involved?) to convert all images to a maximum of 300 dpi, based on the dimensions I'm setting with say \includegraphics[width=2in]{filename}? i.e. so it scales the image to a max of 600x600 pixels as it includes it in the PDF (leaving the original file untouched). I know I can resize the original images with various command line applications, and include the pre-resized versions, but given the images vary in size considerably, it wouldn't be as simple as making sure they're all 300dpi for a constant printed size. It'd also be nice to be able to easily create different versions of PDFs (web vs final print) without resizing images manually, so that the 'web' PDF capped images at say 72-100 dpi while the final print one could cap at 600 (if at all).

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• postgresql table for storing automation test results

  - by Martin

  I am building an automation test suite which is running on multiple machines, all reporting their status to a postgresql database. We will run a number of automated tests for which we will store the following information: test ID (a GUID) test name test description status (running, done, waiting to be run) progress (%) start time of test end time of test test result latest screenshot of the running test (updated every 30 seconds) The number of tests isn't huge (say a few thousands) and each machine (say, 50 of them) have a service which checks the database and figures out if it's time to start a new automated test on that machine. How should I organize my SQL table to store all the information? Is a single table with a column per attribute the way to go? If in the future I need to add attributes but want to keep compatibility with old database format (ie I may not want to delete and create a new table with more columns), how should I proceed? Should the new attributes just be in a different table? I'm also thinking of replicating the database. In case of failure, I don't mind if the latest screenshots aren't backed up on the slave database. Should I just store the screenshots in its own table to simplify the replication? Thanks!

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• iPhone OpenGL and NSTimer issues

  - by Kyle

  I have an NSTimer that runs at 60hz. With an OpenGL scene loaded and rendering, my game can get 60fps, solid, all day long.. Then if I go and recompile the app, or reload it, it will get 40fps. Same resources loaded. I've been running into this problem for years, and I just want to know why. It's crazy, and I want to know if I should just abandon this stupid Timer. Conditions are not different on my 3GS between loads. It will just get 40fps sometimes. Obviously the clockrate is not different between loads, so the performance figures should be constant given a constant scene. Here is a log of my framerates: A good load: :-) FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 FrameRate: 60 FrameRate: 61 Now, I'll go ahead and do nothing, recompile, and run: FrameRate: 43 FrameRate: 50 FrameRate: 45 FrameRate: 48 FrameRate: 40 FrameRate: 45 FrameRate: 42 FrameRate: 41 FrameRate: 42 FrameRate: 44 FrameRate: 41 FrameRate: 46 ^- Massive difference visually. What the flying heck could cause this? SAME area of the scene, SAME camera setup. No variables are different.

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• Getting a "No default module defined for this application" exception while running controller unit t

  - by Doron

  I have an application with the default directory structure, for an application without custom modules (see structure figure at the end). I have written a ControllerTestCase.php file as instructed in many tutorials, and I've created the appropriate bootstrap file as well (once again, see figures at the end). I've written some model tests which run just fine, but when I started writing the index controller test file, with only one test in it, with only one line in it ("$this-dispatch('/');"), I'm getting the following exception when running phpunit (but navigating with the browser to the same location - all is good and working): 1) IndexControllerTest::test_indexAction_noParams Zend_Controller_Exception: No default module defined for this application Why is this ? What have I done wrong ? Appendixes: Directory structure: -proj/ -application/ -controllers/ -IndexController.php -ErrorController.php -config/ -layouts/ -models/ -views/ -helpers/ -scripts/ -error/ -error.phtml -index/ -index.phtml -Bootstrap.php -library/ -tests/ -application/ -controllers/ -IndexControllerTest.php -models/ -bootstrap.php -ControllerTestCase.php -library/ -phpunit.xml -public/ -index.php (Basically I have some more files in the models directory, but that's not relevant to this question.) application.ini file: [production] phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 0 phpSettings.display_errors = 0 includePaths.library = APPLICATION_PATH "/../library" bootstrap.path = APPLICATION_PATH "/Bootstrap.php" bootstrap.class = "Bootstrap" appnamespace = "My" resources.frontController.controllerDirectory = APPLICATION_PATH "/controllers" resources.frontController.params.displayExceptions = 0 resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/layouts/scripts/" resources.view[] = phpSettings.date.timezone = "America/Los_Angeles" [staging : production] [testing : production] phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 1 phpSettings.display_errors = 1 [development : production] phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 1 phpSettings.display_errors = 1 resources.frontController.params.displayExceptions = 1 tests/application/bootstrap.php file <?php error_reporting(E_ALL); // Define path to application directory defined('APPLICATION_PATH') || define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../../application')); // Define application environment defined('APPLICATION_ENV') || define('APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'testing')); // Ensure library/ is on include_path set_include_path(implode(PATH_SEPARATOR, array( realpath(APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library'), // this project' library get_include_path(), ))); /** Zend_Application */ require_once 'Zend/Application.php'; require_once 'ControllerTestCase.php';

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• Implementing a State Machine in Angular.js to control routing

  - by ldn_tech_exec

  Can anyone help me with integrating a state machine to control routing? What's the best method to do this? Create a service? I need to basically intercept every $location request, run the state machine and let it figure out what the next $location.path should be. Think of the problem like a bank of questions that get added and removed over time. The user visits once in a while, passes in the user's answers object to the statemachine, and the statemachine figures out which question to load. This is my pseudocode, but i need to figure out where to put this or what event I can hook into to make sure all route requests are passed through the machine. Do I need a specific stateMachine controller? Do I create a service? Where do I use the service? Do I need to override $locationProvider? $scope.user.answers = [{ id: 32, answer: "whatever" }, { id:33, answer: "another answer" }] $scope.questions = [{ id:32, question:"what is your name?", path:"/question/1" },{ id:34, question:"how old are you?", path:"/question/2" }] var questions = $scope.questions; angular.forEach(questions, function(question) { if(question.id !exist in $scope.user.answers.id) { $location.path = question.path break; }); Thanks

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• How can I include a .eps figure within a Tikz simple flow chart?

  - by Jan

  Hi, I would like to create a simple flow chart in latex with the TikZ package similar to the following example http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/simple-flow-chart/ However I would like to include figures (a time series plot created in R, as eps or something else) within the flowchart (e.g. for example within a {block}? \documentclass{article} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} \usepackage{tikz} \usetikzlibrary{shapes,arrows} \begin{document} \pagestyle{empty} % Define block styles \tikzstyle{decision} = [diamond, draw, fill=blue!20, text width=4.5em, text badly centered, node distance=3cm, inner sep=0pt] \tikzstyle{block} = [rectangle, draw, fill=blue!20, text width=5em, text centered, rounded corners, minimum height=4em] \tikzstyle{line} = [draw, -latex'] \tikzstyle{cloud} = [draw, ellipse,fill=red!20, node distance=3cm, minimum height=2em] \begin{tikzpicture}[node distance = 2cm, auto] % Place nodes \node [block] (init) {initialize model}; \node [cloud, left of=init] (expert) {expert}; \node [cloud, right of=init] (system) {system}; \node [block, below of=init] (identify) {identify candidate models}; \node [block, below of=identify] (evaluate) {evaluate candidate models}; \node [block, left of=evaluate, node distance=3cm] (update) {update model}; \node [decision, below of=evaluate] (decide) {is best candidate better?}; \node [block, below of=decide, node distance=3cm] (stop) {stop}; % Draw edges \path [line] (init) -- (identify); \path [line] (identify) -- (evaluate); \path [line] (evaluate) -- (decide); \path [line] (decide) -| node [near start] {yes} (update); \path [line] (update) |- (identify); \path [line] (decide) -- node {no}(stop); \path [line,dashed] (expert) -- (init); \path [line,dashed] (system) -- (init); \path [line,dashed] (system) |- (evaluate); \end{tikzpicture} \end{document} Thanks, Jan

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• What is the proper way to URL encode Unicode characters?

  - by Josh Gibson

  I know of the non-standard %uxxxx scheme but that doesn't seem like a wise choice since the scheme has been rejected by the W3C. Some interesting examples: The heart character. If I type this into my browser: http://www.google.com/search?q=? Then copy and paste it, I see this URL http://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%99%A5 which makes it seem like Firefox (or Safari) is doing this. urllib.quote_plus(x.encode("latin-1")) '%E2%99%A5' which makes sense, except for things that can't be encoded in Latin-1, like the triple dot character. … If I type the URL http://www.google.com/search?q=… into my browser then copy and paste, I get http://www.google.com/search?q=%E2%80%A6 back. Which seems to be the result of doing urllib.quote_plus(x.encode("utf-8")) which makes sense since … can't be encoded with Latin-1. But then its not clear to me how the browser knows whether to decode with UTF-8 or Latin-1. Since this seems to be ambiguous: In [67]: u"…".encode('utf-8').decode('latin-1') Out[67]: u'\xc3\xa2\xc2\x80\xc2\xa6' works, so I don't know how the browser figures out whether to decode that with UTF-8 or Latin-1. What's the right thing to be doing with the special characters I need to deal with?

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• Performance degrades for more than 2 threads on Xeon X5355

  - by zoolii

  Hi All, I am writing an application using boost threads and using boost barriers to synchronize the threads. I have two machines to test the application. Machine 1 is a core2 duo (T8300) cpu machine (windows XP professional - 4GB RAM) where I am getting following performance figures : Number of threads :1 , TPS :21 Number of threads :2 , TPS :35 (66 % improvement) further increase in number of threads decreases the TPS but that is understandable as the machine has only two cores. Machine 2 is a 2 quad core ( Xeon X5355) cpu machine (windows 2003 server with 4GB RAM) and has 8 effective cores. Number of threads :1 , TPS :21 Number of threads :2 , TPS :27 (28 % improvement) Number of threads :4 , TPS :25 Number of threads :8 , TPS :24 As you can see, performance is degrading after 2 threads (though it has 8 cores). If the program has some bottle neck , then for 2 thread also it should have degraded. Any idea? , Explanations ? , Does the OS has some role in performance ? - It seems like the Core2duo (2.4GHz) scales better than Xeon X5355 (2.66GHz) though it has better clock speed. Thank you -Zoolii

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