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• Determining failing sectors on portable flash memory

  - by Faxwell Mingleton

  I'm trying to write a program that will detect signs of failure for portable flash memory devices (thumb drives, etc). I have seen tools in the past that are able to detect failing sectors and other kinds of trouble on conventional mechanical hard drives, but I fear that flash memory does not have the same kind of predictable low-level access to the hardware due to the internal workings of the storage. Things like wear-leveling and other block-remapping techniques (to skip over 'dead' sectors?) lead me to believe that determining if a flash drive is failing will be difficult at best, if not impossible (short of having constant read failures and device unmounts). Flash drives at their end-of-life should be easy to detect (constant CRC discrepancies during reads and all-out failure). But what about drives that might be failing early? Are there any tell-tale signs like slower throughput speeds that might indicate a flash drive is going to fail much sooner than normal? Along the lines of detecting potentially bad blocks, I had considered attempting random reads/writes to a file close to or exactly the size of the entire volume, but even then is it possible that the drive might report sizes under its maximum capacity to account for 'dead' blocks? In short, is there any way to circumvent or at least detect (algorithmically or otherwise) the use of block-remapping or other life extension techniques for flash memory? Let me end this question by expressing my uncertainty as to whether or not this belongs on serverfault.com . This is definitely a hardware-related question, but I also desire a software solution - preferably one that I can program myself. If this question is misplaced, I will be happy to migrate it to serverfault - but I do need a programming solution. Please let me know if you need clarification :) Thanks!

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• Podcast Show Notes: Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up - Part 1

  - by Bob Rhubart

  OK, I know last week I promised you a program featuring Oracle ACE Directors Mike van Alst (IT-Eye) and Jordan Braunstein (TUSC) and The Definitive Guide to SOA: Oracle Service Bus author Jeff Davies. But things happen. In this case, what happened was Collaborate 10 in Las Vegas. Prior to the event I asked Oracle ACE Director and OAUG board member Floyd Teter to see if he could round up a couple of people at the event for an impromtu interview over Skype (I was here in Cleveland) to get their impressions of the event. Listen to Part 1 Floyd, armed with his brand new iPad, went above and beyond the call of duty. At the appointed hour, which turned out to be about hour after the close of Collaborate 10,  Floyd had gathered nine other people to join him in a meeting room somewhere in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Here’s the entire roster: Floyd Teter - Project Manager at Jet Propulsion Lab, OAUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Mark Rittman - EMEA Technical Director and Co-Founder, Rittman Mead,  ODTUG Board Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Chet Justice - OBI Consultant at BI Wizards Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Oracle ACE Profile Elke Phelps - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana, OAUG SIG Chair Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book | Oracle ACE Profile Paul Jackson - Oracle Applications DBA at Humana Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix | Book Srini Chavali - Enterprise Database & Tools Leader at Cummins, Inc Blog | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Dave Ferguson – President, Oracle Applications Users Group LinkedIn | OAUG Profile John King - Owner, King Training Resources Website | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix Gavyn Whyte - Project Portfolio Manager at iFactory Consulting Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Oracle Mix John Nicholson - Channels & Alliances at Greenlight Technologies Website | LinkedIn Big thanks to Floyd for assembling the panelists and handling the on-scene MC/hosting duties.  Listen to Part 1 On a technical note, this discussion was conducted over Skype, using Floyd’s iPad, placed in the middle of the table.  During the call the audio was fantastic – the iPad did a remarkable job. Sadly, the Technology Gods were not smiling on me that day. The audio set-up that I tested successfully before the call failed to deliver when we first connected – I could hear the folks in Vegas, but they couldn’t hear me. A frantic, last-minute adjustment appeared to have fixed that problem, and the audio in my headphones from both sides of the conversation was loud and clear.  It wasn’t until I listened to the playback that I realized that something was wrong. So the audio for Vegas side of the discussion has about the same fidelity as a cell phone. It’s listenable, but disappointing when compared to what it sounded like during the discussion. Still, this was a one shot deal, and the roster of panelists and the resulting conversation was too good and too much fun to scrap just because of an unfortunate technical glitch.   Part 2 of this Collaborate 10 Wrap-Up will run next week. After that, it’s back on track with the previously scheduled program. So stay tuned: RSS del.icio.us Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas Technorati Tags: oracle,otn,collborate 10,c10,oracle ace program,archbeat,arch2arch,oaug,odtug,las vegas

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• Oracle Data Integration 12c: Perspectives of Industry Experts, Customers and Partners

  - by Irem Radzik

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 As you may have seen from our recent blog posts on Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c, we are very excited to share with you the great new features the 12c release brings to Oracle’s data integration solutions. And, fortunately we are not alone in this sentiment. Since the press announcement October 17th, which incorporates our customers' and experts' testimonials, we have seen positive comments in leading technology publications and social media as well. Here are some examples: In CIO and PCWorld you can find Joab Jackson’s article, Oracle Data Integrator 12c ready for real-time analysis, where wrote about the tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate . He noted “Heeding the call from enterprise customers who clamor for more immediacy in their data-driven reports, Oracle has updated its data-integration software portfolio so that it can more rapidly deliver data to data warehouses and analysis applications.” Integration Developer News’ Vance McCarthy wrote the article Oracle Ships ‘Future Proofs’ Integration Tools for Traditional, Cloud, Big Data, Real-Time Projects and mentioned that “Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c sport a wide range of improvements to let devs more easily deliver data integration for cloud, analytics, big data and other new projects that leverage multiple datasets for business.“ InformationWeek’s Doug Henschen gave a great overview to several key features including the new flow-based UI in Oracle Data Integrator. Doug said “Oracle Data Integrator 12c introduces a complete makeover of the job-building experience, while real-time oriented GoldenGate 12c introduces performance gains “. In Database Trends and Applications’ article Oracle Strengthens Data Integration with Release of Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c highlighted the productivity aspect of the new solution with his remarks: “tight integration between Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c enables developers to leverage Oracle GoldenGate’s low overhead, real-time change data capture completely within the Oracle Data Integrator Studio without additional training”. We are also thrilled about what our customers and partners have to say about our products and the new release. And we are equally excited to share those perspectives with you in our upcoming launch video webcast on November 12th. SolarWorld Industries America’s Senior Database Manager, Russ Toyama will join our executives in our studio in Redwood Shores to discuss GoldenGate’s core benefits and the new release, while Surren Partharb, CTO of Strategic Technology Services for BT, and Mark Rittman, CTO of Rittman Mead, will provide their comments via the interviews conducted in the UK. This interactive panel discussion in the video webcast will unveil the new release with the expertise of our development executives and the great insight from our customers and partners. In addition, our product experts will be available online to answer chat questions. This is really a great opportunity to learn how Oracle's data integration offering has changed the integration and replication technology space with the new release, and established itself as the new leader. If you have not registered for this free event yet, you can do so via this link. We will run the live event at 8am PT/4pm GMT, followed by a replay of the event with live chat for Q&A  at 10am PT/6pm GMT. The replay will be available on-demand for those who register but cannot attend either session on November 12th. /* 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:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Upgrading to 9.2 - Info You Can Use (part 1)

  - by John Webb

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Rebekah Jackson joins our blog with a series of helpful hints on planning your upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2.   Find Features & Capabilities There are many ways that you might learn about new features and capabilities within our releases, but if you aren’t sure where to start or how best to go about it, we recommend: Go to www.peoplesoftinfo.com Select the product line you are interested in, and go to the ‘Release Content’ tab Use the Video Feature Overviews (VFOs) on YouTube and the Cumulative Feature Overview (CFO) tool to find features and functions. The VFOs are brief recordings that summarize some of our most popular capabilities. These recordings are great tools for learning about new features, or helping others to visualize the value they can bring to your organization. The VFOs focus on some of our highest value and most compelling new capabilities. We also provide summarized ‘Why Upgrade to 9.2’ VFOs for HCM, Financials, and Supply Chain. The CFO is a spreadsheet based tool that allows you to select the release you are currently on, and compare it to the new release. It will return the list of all new features and capabilities, by product. You can browse the full list and / or highlight areas that look particularly interesting. Once you have a list of features by product, use the Release Value Proposition, Pre-Release Notes, and the Release Notes documents to get more details on and supporting value statements about why those features will be helpful. Gather additional data and supporting information, including: Go to the Product Data Sheets tab, and review the respective data sheets. These summarize the capabilities in the product, and provide succinct value statements for the product and capabilities. The PeopleSoft 9.2 Upgrade page, which has many helpful resources. Important Notes:   -  We recommend that you go through the above steps for the application areas of interest, as well as for PeopleTools. There are many areas in PeopleTools 8.53 and the 9.2 application releases that combine technical and functional capabilities to deliver transformative value.    - We also recommend that you review the Portal Solutions content. With your license to PeopleSoft applications, you have access to many of the most powerful capabilities within the Interaction Hub.    -  If you have recently upgraded to PeopleSoft 9.1, and an immediate upgrade to 9.2 is simply not realistic, you can apply the same approaches described here to find untapped capabilities in your current products. Many of the features in 9.2 were delivered first in our 9.1 Feature Packs. To find the Release Value Proposition, Pre-Release Notes, and Release Notes for these releases, search on ‘PeopleSoft 9.1 Documentation Home Page’ on My Oracle Support, and select your desired product area. /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}

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• Android Studio Could not call IncrementalTask.taskAction() on task ':project:dexDebug'

  - by akenawell85x

  I recently decided to switch from Eclipse to Android Studio. I imported a project I was working on and am now getting this error when I try to run the project. Gradle: Execution failed for task ':project:dexDebug'. > Could not call IncrementalTask.taskAction() on task ':project:dexDebug' I've been cruising this site for 2 days now and trying different suggestions to no avail. I did run gradlew compileDebug --stacktrace and this is what I got: C:\Users\adam\AndroidStudioProjects\projectProject>gradlew compileDebug --stacktrace Relying on packaging to define the extension of the main artifact has been deprecated and is scheduled to be removed in Gradle 2.0 :project:preBuild UP-TO-DATE :project:preDebugBuild UP-TO-DATE :project:preReleaseBuild UP-TO-DATE :project:prepareComAndroidSupportAppcompatV71800Library UP-TO-DATE :project:prepareComGoogleAndroidGmsPlayServices3225Library UP-TO-DATE :project:prepareDebugDependencies :project:compileDebugAidl UP-TO-DATE :project:compileDebugRenderscript UP-TO-DATE :project:generateDebugBuildConfig UP-TO-DATE :project:mergeDebugAssets UP-TO-DATE :project:mergeDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :project:processDebugManifest UP-TO-DATE :project:processDebugResources UP-TO-DATE :project:generateDebugSources UP-TO-DATE :project:compileDebug UP-TO-DATE BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 10.459 secs However I am still getting that error when I try to actually run the project. Here is my build.gradle (i do have a 'libs' folder in my project with all the jars for a google maps/places app): buildscript { repositories { mavenCentral() } dependencies { classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:0.6.+' } } apply plugin: 'android' repositories { mavenCentral() } android { compileSdkVersion 18 buildToolsVersion "18.1.1" defaultConfig { minSdkVersion 8 targetSdkVersion 18 } } dependencies { compile fileTree(dir: 'libs') compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services:3.2.25' compile 'com.android.support:support-v4:18.0.0' compile 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:+' } and my settings.gradle: include ':project', ':project:libs:android-support-v4', ':project:libs:google-api-client-1.10.3-beta', ':project:libs:google-api-client-android2-1.10.3-beta', ':project:libs:google-http-client-1.10.3-beta', ':project:libs:google-http-client-android2-1.10.3-beta', ':project:libs:google-oauth-client-1.10.1-beta', ':project:libs:gson-2.1', ':project:libs:guava-11.0.1', ':project:libs:jackson-core-asl-1.9.4', ':project:libs:jsr305-1.3.9', ':project:libs:protobuf-java-2.2.0', ':project:libs:GoogleAdMobAdsSdk-6.4.1' As I said, I've tried pretty much everything I have read on here about this error and am having no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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• ASP.Net MVC 3 Full Name In DropDownList

  - by tgriffiths

  I am getting a bit confused with this and need a little help please. I am developing a ASP.Net MVC 3 Web application using Entity Framework 4.1. I have a DropDownList on one of my Razor Views, and I wish to display a list of Full Names, for example Tom Jones Michael Jackson James Brown In my Controller I retrieve a List of User Objects, then select the FirstName and LastName of each User, and pass the data to a SelectList. List<User> Requesters = _userService.GetAllUsersByTypeIDOrgID(46, user.organisationID.Value).ToList(); var RequesterNames = from r in Requesters let person = new { UserID = r.userID, FullName = new { r.firstName, r.lastName } } orderby person.FullName ascending select person; viewModel.RequestersList = new SelectList(RequesterNames, "UserID", "FullName"); return View(viewModel); In my Razor View I have the following @Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.requesterID, Model.RequestersList, "Select", new { @class = "inpt_a"}) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.requesterID) However, when I run the code I get the following error At least one object must implement IComparable. I feel as if I am going about this the wrong way, so could someone please help with this? Thanks.

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• Python and csv help

  - by user353064

  I'm trying to create this script that will check the computer host name then search a master list for the value to return a corresponding value in the csv file. Then open another file and do a find an replace. I know this should be easy but haven't done so much in python before. Here is what I have so far... masterlist.txt (tab delimited) Name UID Bob-Smith.local bobs Carmen-Jackson.local carmenj David-Kathman.local davidk Jenn-Roberts.local jennr Here is the script that I have created thus far #GET CLIENT HOST NAME import socket host = socket.gethostname() print host #IMPORT MASTER DATA import csv, sys filename = "masterlist.txt" reader = csv.reader(open(filename, "rU")) #PRINT MASTER DATA for row in reader: print row #SEARCH ON HOSTNAME AND RETURN UID #REPLACE VALUE IN FILE WITH UID #import fileinput #for line in fileinput.FileInput("filetoreplace",inplace=1): # line = line.replace("replacethistext","UID") # print line Right now, it's just set to print the master list. I'm not sure if the list needs to be parsed and placed into a dictionary or what. I really need to figure out how to search the first field for the hostname and then return the field in the second column. Thanks in advance for your help, Aaron

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• In Java it seems Public constructors are always a bad coding practice

  - by Adam Gent

  This maybe a controversial question and may not be suited for this forum (so I will not be insulted if you choose to close this question). It seems given the current capabilities of Java there is no reason to make constructors public ... ever. Friendly, private, protected are OK but public no. It seems that its almost always a better idea to provide a public static method for creating objects. Every Java Bean serialization technology (JAXB, Jackson, Spring etc...) can call a protected or private no-arg constructor. My questions are: I have never seen this practice decreed or written down anywhere? Maybe Bloch mentions it but I don't own is book. Is there a use case other than perhaps not being super DRY that I missed? EDIT: I explain why static methods are better. .1. For one you get better type inference. For example See Guava's http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/wiki/CollectionUtilitiesExplained .2. As a designer of the class you can later change what is returned with a static method. .3. Dealing with constructor inheritance is painful especially if you have to pre-calculate something.

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• Call .NET Webservice with Android

  - by Lasse P

  Hi, I know this question has been asked here before, but I don't think those answers were adequate for my needs. We have a SOAP webservice that is used for an iPhone application, but it is possible that we need an Android specific version or a proxy of the service, so we have the option to go with either SOAP or JSON. I have a few concerns about both methods: SOAP solution: Is it possible to generate java source code from a WSDL file, if so, will it include some kind of proxy class to invoke the webservice and will it work in the Android environment at all? Google has not provided any SOAP library in Android, so i need to use 3rd party, any suggestion? What about the performance/overhead with parsing and transmitting SOAP xml over the wire versus the JSON solution? JSON solution: There is a few classes in the Android sdk that will let me parse JSON, but does it support generic parsing, like if I want the result to be parsed as a complex type? Or would I need to implement that myself? I have read about 2 libraries before here on Stackoverflow, GSON an Jackson. What is the difference performance and usability (from a developers perspective) wise? Do you guys have any experince with either of those libraries? So i guess the big question is, what method to go with? I hope you can help me out. Thanks in advance :-)

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• How to update to jersey 2.X on an app using jersey 1.1X?

  - by Maxrunner

  i recently faced a problem with the handling of exceptions using jersey. In this case it was that the exceptions thrown from Exception mapper are not re thrown to the underlaying container, i searched and found that this has been fixed in the 2.0 version. But i'm using jersey 1.10 and the 2.X dependencies are all different and its also maven based. Since this project is not using maven, how do i use the more recent version?In the 2.X versions there are no jackson json jars for example. So i'm having some doubts in how to upgrade. Here's my web.xml config entry for jerse <servlet> <servlet-name>Jersey REST Service</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.sun.jersey.spi.container.servlet.ServletContainer</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>com.sun.jersey.config.property.packages</param-name> <param-value>com.mobile.rest.resources</param-value> </init-param> <init-param> <param-name>com.sun.jersey.api.json.POJOMappingFeature</param-name> <param-value>true</param-value> </init-param> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>Jersey REST Service</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> regards,

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• XNA Notes 009

  - by George Clingerman

  This past week the MVPs (myself included) were on Microsoft campus for the MVP summit. So I apologize in advance if you did something cool or heard of something cool happening with XNA and XBLIGs and it’s not in my notes. I did my best to stay on top of things, but honestly this community is fast and furious with what it’s doing and creating. I really can’t keep up and that’s fantastic! But here’s what I *did* notice while I was there on Microsoft Campus (and I did make sure to point out to the XNA team several of these very cool happenings while I had their ears). Time Critical XNA News: The XNA team wants you to know that Dream Build Play registration is now open! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/28/registration-now-open-for-dream-build-play-2011-challenge.aspx Join the XNA-UK create on March 24, 2011 at the Microsoft Tech Days Conference http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/27/join-the-xna-uk-crew-at-the-microsoft-tech-days-conference-on-24th-march-2011.aspx XNA Team: Shawn Hargreaves shares one of the coolest things that’s happened in the XNA community http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/03/02/xbox-indies-pivot-view.aspx Nick Gravelyn continues his unique marketing/work prioritization strategy as he tries to get to 5,000 Pixel Man users before he makes Pixel Man 2 (and he’s almost there!) http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: A lot of the XNA MVPs were at the Microsoft MVP Summit 2011. Due to NDAs, most things can’t be shared, but I’m sure if you’re curious you could ask them about the general vibe and feeling they got from the team and the future of XNA/XBLIG and more. Catalin Zima and team release the free WP7 game Chickens Can Dream http://twitter.com/CatalinZima/statuses/41174062923390976 http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/chickens-can-dream-is-live/ Charles Humphrey (NemoKrad) posts his March talk source and PowerPoint http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/03/04/march-2011-talk-post-processing-framework.aspx XNA Developers: Michael B. McLaughlin posts about ANTS Memory Profile and creates a CheckMemoryAllocationGame sample (extremely useful if you’re looking to see how much memory some operation allocates!) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/28/ants-memory-profiler-7.0-review.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/01/checkmemoryallocationgame-sample.aspx Andy Schatz (2009 IGF winner for Monaco) talking XNA at GDC 2011 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33313/GDC_2011_Andy_Schatz_Ill_Make_My_Last_Game_When_I_Die.php Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Clover: A Curious Tale by BinaryTweed is coming as a Deal of the Week during St. Patricks Day http://majornelson.com/archive/2011/03/03/comingsoontothexboxlivemarketplacemarchthird.aspx Ska Studios away at GDC but still very post happy as always http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/02/swamped-picture-pack/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/28/the-february-showcase/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/25/good-morning-gato-51-smelling-the-roses/ Just Press Start interviews Matthew Mikuszewski of Darkwind Media about Blocks Indie http://justpressstart.net/?p=516 Gamergeddon Xbox Indie Game Round Up - February 27th http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/27/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-27th/ http://www.gamergeddon.com/category/xbox-360/indie-games/ GameMarx does a round up of all the Xbox Live Indie Game podcasts that are currently available http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/27/xbox-live-indie-game-podcasts.aspx GameMarx episode 11 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/26/ep-11-february-25-2011.aspx In perhaps what I feel is the most exciting news I’ve heard all week, Michael C. Neel (ViNull of GameMarx fame) re-launch XboxIndies.com! http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/03/01/the-relaunch-of-xboxindies-com.aspx http://xboxindies.com/ Armless Octopus shares a little of what they heard from Luke Schneider of Radiangames during his GDC 2011 talk http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/02/gdc-2011-luke-schneider-offers-insight-into-radiangames-success/ VVGindiecast Episode 1 with guests Derek Strickland(Mr_Deeke), Kris Steele(Kriswd40 from FunInfused Games) and Dave Voyles(From armlessoctopus.com) http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/25/vvgindiecast-xblig-podcast/ If you’re doing Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews get in touch with XboxIndies.com to get into their aggregated feed http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76931/467189.aspx#467189 B.U.T.T.O.N and Flotilla represented XNA very well at the Independent Games Festival (are there any more games entered that were created using XNA? Stand up and be heard!) http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2011.php?id=374 Armless Ocotopus interview at GDC 2011 with Soulcaster creator Ian Stocker http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/04/gdc-2011-interview-with-soulcaster-creator-ian-stocker/ MommysBestGames gets a nod in the DarkBasic newsletter where it features the Explosionade Editor (just do a search for Explosionade to get to the interesting bits!) http://www.thegamecreators.com/pages/newsletters/newsletter_issue_98.html You may be hearing the cries of FortressCraft (coming soon to XBLIG) being so wrong for stealing the idea from MineCraft. But did you know the the game MineCraft started from was an XNA game called Infiniminer? XNA is getting it’s fingers into EVERYTHING! http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Infiniminer XNA Development: TorqueX is NOT dead thanks to the tremendous efforts of the XNA Community working on the CEV (special thanks to @PinoEire for all his hard work on making that happen!) http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20878 http://torquecev.com/ Dave Henry has posted XNA 3.x adding platformer start kit to the network game state management on his new site http://twitter.com/#!/mort8088/status/43407715908853760 http://mort8088.com/2011/03/03/xna-3-x-adding-platformer-starter-kit-to-network-game-state-management/ Mark Bamford releases XNAViewer 4.0, great for running XNA games inside of a Windows Form (for building level editors, etc.) http://twitter.com/#!/xzodia04/status/43466830412660736 http://xnaviewer.codeplex.com/ Unit testing an XNA game with Resharper and NUnit http://smnbss.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/planetx-unit-testing-an-xna-game-with-resharper-and-nunit-wp7-xbox-xna/ XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 5 - Input (touch + gestures) http://ht.ly/1bxwUE Mike McLaughlin shares a link he stumbled across for those looking to understand vector and matrix math http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/42587074725036032 http://chortle.ccsu.edu/VectorLessons/vectorIndex.html DigitalRune Resources Pooling in XNA (Part 1) http://www.digitalrune.com/Support/Blog/tabid/719/EntryId/84/DigitalRune-Helper-Library-Resource-Pooling-in-XNA-Part-1.aspx JohnK “bobthecbuilder” released a new SunBurn Update that lowers the requirements for Windows Games http://twitter.com/#!/bobthecbuilder/status/43457306578522112 http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2011/03/03/sunburn-update-windows-redistributable.aspx Quick update on the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.4 development status http://indiefreaks.com/2011/03/04/quick-update-on-igf-v0-4-development/

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• XNA Notes 011

  - by George Clingerman

  Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-us/news/indie_games_data_delay_march2011 GameMarx is releasing a series of videos to help raise donations for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Help out if you can! http://www.gamemarx.com/video/special/29/help-japan-sushido.aspx XNA MVPs: Catalin Zima shares his thoughts on the MVP summit and my book! http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/ Glenn Wilson (@mykre) helps the XNA team announce some new educational content that you don’t want to miss if you’re porting your app or game to Windows Phone 7 http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/653/Porting-your-App-or-Game-to-Windows-Phone-7.aspx and Windows Phone 7 from scratch http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/654/Windows-Phone-from-Scratch.aspx and shares a link to some free architectural models and textures http://twitter.com/#!/Mykre/status/46410160784158720 George (that’s me!) shares his MVP Summit 2011 summary and XBLIG thoughts http://geekswithblogs.net/clingermangw/archive/2011/03/15/144366.aspx XNA Developers: @SmallCaveGames shares a Code of Ethics for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers http://smallcavegames.blogspot.com/2011/03/unofficial-xblig-developers-code-of.html Derek S adds more Xbox LIVE Indie Game studios to his master list of XBLIG links http://twitter.com/#!/Mr_Deeke/status/46140996056125440 http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/p/xblig-links.html Making games and want to help kids? Then share your story with GameFace: America! http://gameitupinitiative.com/about-the-initiative/programs/gameface-america/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): XonaGames shares some video footage of their booth from GDC 2011 Video 1: http://youtu.be/lxIV9nk3Gq4 Video 2: http://youtu.be/GgfrjqkxR_o Video 3: http://youtu.be/yVcpXrTX7SQ Joystiq on Mommy’s Best Games Serious Sam Double D http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/16/the-most-important-thing-about-serious-sam-double-d/ And The Escapist recommends that gamers start learning to avoid cleavage now http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108543-Boobie-Bomber-Makes-First-Appearance-in-Serious-Sam-Double-D Magiko Gaming started a blog on the XBLIG dashboard daily Top 10 games in the US. Good way to go back in time and look at the history of which games were in the the Top 10. http://dailytop10indiegames.wordpress.com/ Where are they going now? XBLIG developers at a crossroads.. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/where_are_they_going_now_xblig.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33527/InDepth_Where_Are_They_Going_Now_XBLIG_Developers_At_A_Crossroads_.php BinaryTweed’s Clover: A Curious Tail is Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/15/what-luck-clover-a-curious-tale-is-half-price-this-week/ Looking for an Xbox LIVE Indie Game to buy? Writings of Mass Deduction has over 125 suggestions at this point! http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/ SkaStudios shares Vampire Smile Achievements AND their PAX East 2011 Both Setup video http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/14/vampire-smile-achievement/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/15/pax-booth-setup-time-lapse/ MasterBlud and VVGTV starts a new community for XBLIG developers and gamers to join http://vvgtv.forumotion.com/ Raymond Matthews (@DrakstarMatryx) covers Mommy’s Best Games getting Serious http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=286 XNA Development: Dave Henry (@mort8088) posts the 4th tutorial in his series XNA 4.0 SpriteBatch extended http://mort8088.com/2011/03/11/xna-4-0-tutorial-4-spritebatch-extended/ Tutorial 5 - Creating a manual blank texture http://mort8088.com/2011/03/13/xna-4-tutorial-5-manual-blank-texture/ XNA 4.0 Tutorial 6 - Spritesheet Object http://mort8088.com/2011/03/18/xna-4-0-tutorial-6-spritesheet-object/ Jason Mitchell shares a tutorial on setting the alpha value for spritebatch in XNA 4.0 http://www.jason-mitchell.com/index.php/2011/03/13/setting-alpha-value-for-spritebatch-draw-in-xna-4/ XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 7 - Collision Detection http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-7-Collision-detection.aspx Markus Ewald (@Cygon4) shares the full Ninject 2.0 binding for XNA and Sunburn http://twitter.com/#!/Cygon4/status/48330203826622464 Michael B. McLaughlin shares an AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent he created (which I’m probably going to snag for a game I’m working on...) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/17/accelerometerinput-xna-gamecomponent.aspx Extra Credit tackles the building of a good tutorial. Must watch for all Indie game devs (thanks for pointing it out Evan Johnson!) http://twitter.com/#!/johnsonevan/status/48452115680604160 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2921-Tutorials-101 ExEn is fully funded at this point so definitely something for XBLIG developers to keep an eye on as they consider releasing their games on other platforms http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight Channel 9 and Greg Duncan post Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Mixing-the-Game-State-Management-and-Platformer-XNA-Recipes Sgt. Conker has noticed Mike McLaughlin has been crazy productive and has done a recap of his recent posts http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/03/recap-of-mikebmcls-posts/

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• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

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• Must-see sessions at TCUK11

  - by Roger Hart

  Technical Communication UK is probably the best professional conference I've been to. Last year, I spoke there on content strategy, and this year I'll be co-hosting a workshop on embedded user assistance. Obviously, I'd love people to come along to that; but there are some other sessions I'd like to flag up for anybody thinking of attending. Tuesday 20th Sept - workshops This will be my first year at the pre-conference workshop day, and I'm massively glad that our workshop hasn't been scheduled along-side the one I'm really interested in. My picks: It looks like you're embedding user assistance. Would you like help? My colleague Dom and I are presenting this one. It's our paen to Clippy, to the brilliant idea he represented, and the crashing failure he was. Less precociously, we'll be teaching embedded user assistance, Red Gate style. Statistics without maths: acquiring, visualising and interpreting your data This doesn't need to do anything apart from what it says on the tin in order to be gold dust. But given the speakers, I suspect it will. A data-informed approach is a great asset to technical communications, so I'd recommend this session to anybody event faintly interested. The speakers here have a great track record of giving practical, accessible introductions to big topics. Go along. Wednesday 21st Sept - day one There's no real need to recommend the keynote for a conference, but I will just point out that this year it's Google's Patrick Hofmann. That's cool. You know what else is cool: Focus on the user, the rest follows An intro to modelling customer experience. This is a really exciting area for tech comms, and potentially touches on one of my personal hobby-horses: the convergence of technical communication and marketing. It's all part of delivering customer experience, and knowing what your users need lets you help them, sell to them, and delight them. Content strategy year 1: a tale from the trenches It's often been observed that content strategy is great at banging its own drum, but not so hot on compelling case studies. Here you go, folks. This is the presentation I'm most excited about so far. On a mission to communicate! Skype help their users communicate, but how do they communicate with them? I guess we'll find out. Then there's the stuff that I'm not too excited by, but you might just be. The standards geeks and agile freaks can get together in a presentation on the forthcoming ISO standards for agile authoring. Plus, there's a session on VBA for tech comms. I do have one gripe about day 1. The other big UK tech comms conference, UA Europe, have - I think - netted the more interesting presentation from Ellis Pratt. While I have no doubt that his TCUK case study on producing risk assessments will be useful, I'd far rather go to his talk on game theory for tech comms. Hopefully UA Europe will record it. Thursday 22nd Sept - day two Day two has a couple of slots yet to be confirmed. The rumour is that one of them will be the brilliant "Questions and rants" session from last year. I hope so. It's not ranting, but I'll be going to: RTFMobile: beyond stating the obvious Ultan O'Broin is an engaging speaker with a lot to say, and mobile is one of the most interesting and challenging new areas for tech comms. Even if this weren't a research-based presentation from a company with buckets of technology experience, I'd be going. It is, and you should too. Pattern recognition for technical communicators One of the best things about TCUK is the tendency to include sessions that tackle the theoretical and bring them towards the practical. Kai and Chris delivered cracking and well-received talks last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they've got for us on some of the conceptual underpinning of technical communication. Developing an interactive non-text learning programme Annoyingly, this clashes with Pattern Recognition, so I hope at least one of the streams is recorded again this year. The idea of communicating complex information without words us fascinating and this sounds like a great example of this year's third stream: "anything but text". For the localization and DITA crowds, there's rich pickings on day two, though I'm not sure how many of those sessions I'm interested in. In the 13:00 - 13:40 slot, there's an interesting clash between Linda Urban on re-use and training content, and a piece on minimalism I'm sorely tempted by. That's my pick of #TCUK11. I'll be doing a round-up blog after the event, and probably talking a bit more about it beforehand. I'm also reliably assured that there are still plenty of tickets.

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• JustCode Provides Reflector Alternative

  - by Joe Mayo

  If you've been a loyal Reflector user, you've probably been exposed to the debacle surrounding RedGate's decision to no longer offer a free version.  Since then, the race has begun for a replacement with a provider that would stand by their promises to the community.  Mono has an ongoing free alternative, which has been available for a long time.  However, other vendors are stepping up to the plate, with their own offerings. If Not Reflector, Then What? One of these vendors is Telerik.  In their recent Q1 2011 release of JustCode, Telerik offers a decompilation utility rivaling what we've become accustomed to in Reflector.  Not only does Telerik offer a usable replacement, but they've (in my opinion), produced a product that integrates more naturally with visual Studio than any other product ever has.  Telerik's decompilation process is so easy that the accompanying demo in this post is blindingly short (except for the presence of verbose narrative). If you want to follow along with this demo, you'll need to have Telerik JustCode installed.  If you don't have JustCode yet, you can buy it or download a trial at the Telerik Web site . A Tall Tale; Prove It! With JustCode, you can view code in the .NET Framework or any other 3rd party library (that isn't well obfuscated).  This demo depends on LINQ to Twitter, which you can download from CodePlex.com and create a reference or install the package online as described in my previous post on NuGet.  Regardless of the method, you'll have a project with a reference to LINQ to Twitter.  Use a Console Project if you want to follow along with this demo. Note:  If you've created a Console project, remember to ensure that the Target Framework is set to .NET Framework 4.  The default is .NET Framework 4 Client Profile, which doesn't work with LINQ to Twitter.  You can check by double-clicking the Properties folder on the project and inspecting the Target Framework setting. Next, you'll need to add some code to your program that you want to inspect. Here, I add code to instantiate a TwitterContext, which is like a LINQ to SQL DataContext, but works with Twitter: var l2tCtx = new TwitterContext(); If you're following along add the code above to the Main method, which will look similar to this: using LinqToTwitter; namespace NuGetInstall { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var l2tCtx = new TwitterContext(); } } } The code above doesn't really do anything, but it does give something that I can show and demonstrate how JustCode decompilation works. Once the code is in place, click on TwitterContext and press the F12 (Go to Definition) key.  As expected, Visual Studio opens a metadata file with prototypes for the TwitterContext class.  Here's the result: Opening a metadata file is the normal way that Visual Studio works when navigating to the definition of a type where you don't have the code.  The scenario with TwitterContext happens because you don't have the source code to the file.  Visual Studio has always done this and you can experiment by selecting any .NET type, i.e. a string type, and observing that Visual Studio opens a metadata file for the .NET String type. The point I'm making here is that JustCode works the way Visual Studio works and you'll see how this can make your job easier. In the previous figure, you only saw prototypes associated with the code. i.e. Notice that the default constructor is empty.  Again, this is normal because Visual Studio doesn't have the ability to decompile code.  However, that's the purpose of this post; showing you how JustCode fills that gap. To decompile code, right click on TwitterContext in the metadata file and select JustCode Navigate -> Decompile from the context menu.  The shortcut keys are Ctrl+1.  After a brief pause, accompanied by a progress window, you'll see the metadata expand into full decompiled code. Notice below how the default constructor now has code as opposed to the empty member prototype in the original metadata: And Why is This So Different? Again, the big deal is that Telerik JustCode decompilation works in harmony with the way that Visual Studio works.  The navigate to functionality already exists and you can use that, along with a simple context menu option (or shortcut key) to transform prototypes into decompiled code. Telerik is filling the the Reflector/Red Gate gap by providing a supported alternative to decompiling code.  Many people, including myself, used Reflector to decompile code when we were stuck with buggy libraries or insufficient documentation.  Now we have an alternative that's officially supported by a company with an excellent track record for customer (developer) service, Telerik.  Not only that, JustCode has several other IDE productivity tools that make the deal even sweeter. Joe

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• Pace Layering Comes Alive

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Rick Beers is Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle Fusion Middleware. Prior to joining Oracle, Rick held a variety of executive operational positions at Corning, Inc. and Bausch & Lomb. With a professional background that includes senior management positions in manufacturing, supply chain and information technology, Rick brings a unique set of experiences to cover the impact that technology can have on business models, processes and organizations. Rick hosts the IT Leaders Editorial on a monthly basis. By now, readers of this column are quite familiar with Oracle AppAdvantage, a unified framework of middleware technologies, infrastructure and applications utilizing a pace layered approach to enterprise systems platforms. 1. Standardize and Consolidate core Enterprise Applications by removing invasive customizations, costly workarounds and the complexity that multiple instances creates. 2. Move business specific processes and applications to the Differentiate Layer, thus creating greater business agility with process extensions and best of breed applications managed by cross- application process orchestration. 3. The Innovate Layer contains all the business capabilities required for engagement, collaboration and intuitive decision making. This is the layer where innovation will occur, as people engage one another in a secure yet open and informed way. 4. Simplify IT by minimizing complexity, improving performance and lowering cost with secure, reliable and managed systems across the entire Enterprise. But what hasn’t been discussed is the pace layered architecture that Oracle AppAdvantage adopts. What is it, what are its origins and why is it relevant to enterprise scale applications and technologies? It’s actually a fascinating tale that spans the past 20 years and a basic understanding of it provides a wonderful context to what is evolving as the future of enterprise systems platforms. It all begins in 1994 with a book by noted architect Stewart Brand, of ’Whole Earth Catalog’ fame. In his 1994 book How Buildings Learn, Brand popularized the term ‘Shearing Layers’, arguing that any building is actually a hierarchy of pieces, each of which inherently changes at different rates. In 1997 he produced a 6 part BBC Series adapted from the book, in which Part 6 focuses on Shearing Layers. In this segment Brand begins to introduce the concept of ‘pace’. Brand further refined this idea in his subsequent book, The Clock of the Long Now, which began to link the concept of Shearing Layers to computing and introduced the term ‘pace layering’, where he proposes that: “An imperative emerges: an adaptive [system] has to allow slippage between the differently-paced systems … otherwise the slow systems block the flow of the quick ones and the quick ones tear up the slow ones with their constant change. Embedding the systems together may look efficient at first but over time it is the opposite and destructive as well.” In 2000, IBM architects Ian Simmonds and David Ing published a paper entitled A Shearing Layers Approach to Information Systems Development, which applied the concept of Shearing Layers to systems design and development. It argued that at the time systems were still too rigid; that they constrained organizations by their inability to adapt to changes. The findings in the Conclusions section are particularly striking: “Our starting motivation was that enterprises need to become more adaptive, and that an aspect of doing that is having adaptable computer systems. The challenge is then to optimize information systems development for change (high maintenance) rather than stability (low maintenance). Our response is to make it explicit within software engineering the notion of shearing layers, and explore it as the principle that systems should be built to be adaptable in response to the qualitatively different rates of change to which they will be subjected. This allows us to separate functions that should legitimately change relatively slowly and at significant cost from that which should be changeable often, quickly and cheaply.” The problem at the time of course was that this vision of adaptable systems was simply not possible within the confines of 1st generation ERP, which were conceived, designed and developed for standardization and compliance. It wasn’t until the maturity of open, standards based integration, and the middleware innovation that followed, that pace layering became an achievable goal. And Oracle is leading the way. Oracle’s AppAdvantage framework makes pace layering come alive by taking a strategic vision 20 years in the making and transforming it to a reality. It allows enterprises to retain and even optimize their existing ERP systems, while wrapping around those ERP systems three layers of capabilities that inherently adapt as needed, at a pace that’s optimal for the enterprise.

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• What Counts for A DBA: Observant

  - by drsql

  When walking up to the building where I work, I can see CCTV cameras placed here and there for monitoring access to the building. We are required to wear authorization badges which could be checked at any time. Do we have enemies?  Of course! No one is 100% safe; even if your life is a fairy tale, there is always a witch with an apple waiting to snack you into a thousand years of slumber (or at least so I recollect from elementary school.) Even Little Bo Peep had to keep a wary lookout.    We nerdy types (or maybe it was just me?) generally learned on the school playground to keep an eye open for unprovoked attack from simpler, but more muscular souls, and take steps to avoid messy confrontations well in advance. After we’d apprehensively negotiated adulthood with varying degrees of success, these skills of watching for danger, and avoiding it,  translated quite well to the technical careers so many of us were destined for. And nowhere else is this talent for watching out for irrational malevolence so appropriate as in a career as a production DBA.   It isn’t always active malevolence that the DBA needs to watch out for, but the even scarier quirks of common humanity.  A large number of the issues that occur in the enterprise happen just randomly or even just one time ever in a spurious manner, like in the case where a person decided to download the entire MSDN library of software, cross join every non-indexed billion row table together, and simultaneously stream the HD feed of 5 different sporting events, making the network access slow while the corporate online sales just started. The decent DBA team, like the going, gets tough under such circumstances. They spring into action, checking all of the sources of active information, observes the issue is no longer happening now, figures that either it wasn’t the database’s fault and that the reboot of the whatever device on the network fixed the problem.  This sort of reactive support is good, and will be the initial reaction of even excellent DBAs, but it is not the end of the story if you really want to know what happened and avoid getting called again when it isn’t even your fault.   When fires start raging within the corporate software forest, the DBA’s instinct is to actively find a way to douse the flames and get back to having no one in the company have any idea who they are.  Even better for them is to find a way of killing a potential problem while the fires are small, long before they can be classified as raging. The observant DBA will have already been monitoring the server environment for months in advance.  Most troubles, such as disk space and security intrusions, can be predicted and dealt with by alerting systems, whereas other trouble can come out of the blue and requires a skill of observing ongoing conditions and noticing inexplicable changes that could signal an emerging problem.  You can’t automate the DBA, because the bankable skill of a DBA is in detecting the early signs of unexpected problems, and working out how to deal with them before anyone else notices them.    To achieve this, the DBA will check the situation as it is currently happening,  and in many cases is likely to have been the person who submitted the problem to the level 1 support person in the first place, just to let the support team know of impending issues (always well received, I tell you what!). Database and host computer settings, configurations, and even critical data might be profiled and captured for later comparisons. He’ll use Monitoring tools, built-in, commercial (Not to be too crassly commercial or anything, but there is one such tool is SQL Monitor) and lots of homebrew monitoring tools to monitor for problems and changes in the server environment.   You will know that you have it right when a support call comes in and you can look at your monitoring tools and quickly respond that “response time is well within the normal range, the query that supports the failing interface works perfectly and has actually only been called 67% as often as normal, so I am more than willing to help diagnose the problem, but it isn’t the database server’s fault and is probably a client or networking slowdown causing the interface to be used less frequently than normal.” And that is the best thing for any DBA to observe…

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• EBS Techstack Sessions at OAUG/Collaborate 2010

  - by Steven Chan

  We have a large contingent of E-Business Suite Applications Technology Group staff rolling out to the OAUG/Collaborate 2010 conference in Las Vegas new week.  Our Applications Technology Group staff will be appearing as guest speakers or full-speakers at the following E-Business Suite technology stack related sessions:Database Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 11:00 AM, Breakers FSIG Leaders:  Michael Brown, Colibri; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanCovering database upcoming and past desupport dates, and database support policies as they apply to E-Business Suite environments, general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Stack Special Interest GroupSunday, April 18, 3:00 PM, Breakers FSIG Leaders:  Elke Phelps, Paul Jackson, HumanaGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanCovering the latest EBS technology stack certifications, roadmap, desupport noticesupgrade options for Discoverer, OID, SSO, Portal, general Q&A E-Business Suite Applications Technology Roadmap & VisionMonday, April 19, 8:00 AM, South Seas GOracle Speaker:  Uma PrabhalaLatest developments for SOA, AOL, OAF, Web ADI, SES, AMP, ACMP, security, and other technologies Oracle E-Business Suite Applications Strategy and General Manager UpdateMonday, April 19, 2:30 PM, Mandalay Bay Ballroom DOracle Speaker:  Cliff GodwinUpdate on the entire Oracle E-Business Suite product line. The session covers the value delivered by the current release of Oracle E-Business Suite applications, the momentum, and how Oracle E-Business Suite applications integrate into Oracle's overall applications strategy 10 Things You Can Do Today to Prepare for the Next Generation ApplicationsTuesday, April 20, 8:00 AM, South Seas FOracle Speaker:  Nadia Bendjedou"Common sense" and "practical" steps that can be taken today to increase the value of your Oracle Applications (E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JDE) investments by using the latest Oracle solutions and technologiesReducing TCO using Oracle E-Business Suite Management PacksTuesday, April 20, 10:30 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Angelo RosadoLearn how you can reduce the Total Cost of Ownership by implementing Application Management Pack (AMP) and Application Change Management Pack (ACP) for E-Business Suite 11i, R12, R12.1. AMP is Oracle's next generation system manageability product offering that provides a centralized platform to manage and maintain EBS. ACP is Oracle's offering to monitor and manage E-Business Suite changes in the areas of E-Business Suite Customizations, Patches and Functional Setups. E-Business Suite Upgrade Special Interest GroupTuesday, April 20, 3:15 PM, South Seas ESIG Leaders:  John Stouffer; Sandra Vucinic, Vlad GroupGuest Speaker:  Steven ChanParticipating in general Q&A E-Business Suite Technology Essentials: Using the Latest Oracle Technologies with E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 8:00 AM, South Seas HOracle Speaker:  Lisa ParekhOracle continues to build new functionality into the Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and Enterprise Manager. Come see how you can enhance the value of E-Business Suite for your users and lower your costs of ownership by utilizing the latest features of these Oracle technologies with E-Business Suite. Learn about the latest advanced E-Business Suite topologies and features, including new options for security, performance, third-party integration, SOA, virtualization, clouds, systems management, and much more How to Leverage the New E-Business Suite R12.1 Solutions Without Upgrading your 11.5.10 EnvironmentWednesday, April 21, 10:30 AMOracle Speaker:  Nadia Bendjedou, South Seas ELearn how you can use the latest E-Business Suite 12.1 standalone solutions without upgrading from your E-Business Suite 11.5.10 environment Web 2.0 User Experience and Oracle Fusion Middleware Integration with Oracle E-Business SuiteWednesday, April 21, 4:00 PM, South Seas FOracle Speaker:  Padmaprabodh AmbaleSee the next generation Oracle E-Business Suite OA framework improvements that will provide new rich interactions in components such as LOV, Tables and Attachments.  See  new components like the Rich Container that allows any Web 2.0 content like Flash or OBIEE to be embedded in OA Framework pages. Advanced Technology Deployment Architectures for E-Business Suite Wednesday, April 21, 2:15 PM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Steven ChanLearn how to take advantage of the latest version of Oracle Fusion Middleware with Oracle E-Business Suite. Learn how to utilize identity management systems and LDAP directories. In addition, come to this session for answers about advanced network deployments involving reverse proxy servers, load balancers, and DMZ's, and to see how you can take benefit from virtualization and new system management capabilities. Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 - Best PracticesThursday, April 22, 11:00 AM, South Seas EOracle Speaker:  Lester Gutierrez, Udayan ParvateFundamental of upgrading to Release 12.1, which includes the technology stack components and differences, the upgrade path from various releases of Oracle E-Business Suite, upgrade steps, monitoring the upgrade, hints and tips for minimizing downtime and upgrade best practices for making the upgrade to Release 12.1 a success.  We look forward to seeing you there!

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

  - by Brian Schroer

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

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• PeopleSoft at Alliance 2012 Executive Forum

  - by John Webb

  Guest Posting From Rebekah Jackson This week I jointed over 4,800 Higher Ed and Public Sector customers and partners in Nashville at our annual Alliance conference.   I got lost easily in the hallways of the sprawling Gaylord Opryland Hotel. I carried the resort map with me, and I would still stand for several minutes at a very confusing junction, studying the map and the signage on the walls. Hallways led off in many directions, some with elevators going down here and stairs going up there. When I took a wrong turn I would instantly feel stuck, lose my bearings, and occasionally even have to send out a call for help.    It strikes me that the theme for the Executive Forum this year outlines a less tangible but equally disorienting set of challenges that our higher education customer’s CIOs are facing: Making Decisions at the Intersection of Business Value, Strategic Investment, and Enterprise Technology. The forces acting upon higher education institutions today are not neat, straight-forward decision points, where one can glance to the right, glance to the left, and then quickly choose the best course of action. The operational, technological, and strategic factors that must be considered are complex, interrelated, messy…and the stakes are high. Michael Horn, co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”, set the tone for the day. He introduced the model of disruptive innovation, which grew out of the research he and his colleagues have done on ‘Why Successful Organizations Fail’. Highly simplified, the pattern he shared is that things start out decentralized, take a leap to extreme centralization, and then experience progressive decentralization. Using computers as an example, we started with a slide rule, then developed the computer which centralized in the form of mainframes, and gradually decentralized to mini-computers, desktop computers, laptops, and now mobile devices. According to Michael, you have more computing power in your cell phone than existed on the planet 60 years ago, or was on the first rocket that went to the moon. Applying this pattern to Higher Education means the introduction of expensive and prestigious private universities, followed by the advent of state schools, then by community colleges, and now online education. Michael shared statistics that indicate 50% of students will be taking at least one on line course by 2014…and by some measures, that’s already the case today. The implication is that technology moves from being the backbone of the campus, the IT department’s domain, and pushes into the academic core of the institution. Innovative programs are underway at many schools like Bellevue and BYU Idaho, joined by startups and disruptive new players like the Khan Academy.   This presents both threat and opportunity for higher education institutions, and means that IT decisions cannot afford to be disconnected from the institution’s strategic plan. Subsequent sessions explored this theme.    Theo Bosnak, from Attain, discussed the model they use for assessing the complete picture of an institution’s financial health. Compounding the issue are the dramatic trends occurring in technology and the vendors that provide it. Ovum analyst Nicole Engelbert, shared her insights next and suggested that incremental changes are no longer an option, instead fundamental changes are affecting the landscape of enterprise technology in higher ed.    Nicole closed with her recommendation that institutions focus on the trends in higher education with an eye towards the strategic requirements and business value first. Technology then is the enabler.   The last presentation of the day was from Tom Fisher, Sr. Vice President of Cloud Services at Oracle. Tom runs the delivery arm of the Cloud Services group, and shared his thoughts candidly about his experiences with cloud deployments as well as key issues around managing costs and security in cloud deployments. Okay, we’ve covered a lot of ground at this point, from financials planning, business strategy, and cloud computing, with the possibility that half of the institutions in the US might not be around in their current form 10 years from now. Did I forget to mention that was raised in the morning session? Seems a little hard to believe, and yet Michael Horn made a compelling point. Apparently 100 years ago, 8 of the top 10 education institutions in the world were German. Today, the leading German school is ranked somewhere in the 40’s or 50’s. What will the landscape be 100 years from now? Will there be an institution from China, India, or Brazil in the top 10? As Nicole suggested, maybe US parents will be sending their children to schools overseas much sooner, faced with the ever-increasing costs of a US based education. Will corporations begin to view skill-based certification from an online provider as a viable alternative to a 4 year degree from an accredited institution, fundamentally altering the education industry as we know it?

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• Common usecases and techniques when integrating a 3rd party application with Oracle Sales Cloud

  - by asantaga

  Over the last year or so I've see a lot of partners migrating and integrate their applications with Oracle Sales Cloud. Interestingly I'd say 60% of the partners use the same set of design patterns over and over again. Most of the time I see that they want to embed their application into Oracle Sales Cloud, within a tab usually, perhaps click on a link to their application (passing some piece of data + credentials) and then within their application update sales cloud again using webservices. Here are some examples of the different use-cases I've seen , and how partners are embedding their applications into Sales Cloud, NB : The following examples use the "Desktop" User Interface rather than the Newer "Simplified User Interface", I'll update the sample application soon but the integration patterns are precisely the same Use Case 1 :  Navigator "Link out" to third party application This is an example of where the developer has added a link to the global navigator and this links out to the 3rd Party Application. Typically one doesn't pass any contextual data with the exception of perhaps user credentials, or better still JWT Token. Techniques Used   Adding Link to Menu Item Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Use Case 2 : Application Embedded within the Sales Cloud Dashboard Within the Oracle Sales Cloud application there is a tab called "Sales", within this tab its possible to embed a SubTab and embed a iFrame pointing to your application. To do this the developer simply needs to edit the page in customization mode, add the tab and then add the iFrame, simples! The developer can pass credentials/JWT Token and some other pieces of data but not object data (ie the current OpportunityID etc)  Techniques Used Adding a page to the dashboard  Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud  Use Case 3 : Embedding a Tab and Context Linking out from a Sales Cloud object to the 3rd party application In this usecase the developer embeds two components into Oracle Sales Cloud. The first is a SubTab showing summary data to the user (a quote in our case) and then secondly a hyperlink, (although it could be a button) which when clicked navigates the user to the 3rd party application. In this case the developer almost always passes context specific data (i.e. the opportunityId) and a security token (username password combo or JWT Token). The third party application usually takes the data, perhaps queries more data using the Sales Cloud SOAP/WebService interface and then displays the resulting mashup to the user for further processing. When the user has finished their work in the 3rd party application they normally navigate back to Oracle Sales Cloud using what's called a "DeepLink", ie taking them back to the object [opportunity in our case] they came from. This image visually shows a "Happy Path" a user may follow, and combines linking out to an application , webservice calls and deep linking back to Sales Cloud. Techniques Used Extending a SalesCloud application with a custom button Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Extending Oracle Sales Cloud [Opportnity] with a custom tab exposing External Content Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices Coding some groovy script to generate the URLs required (Doc 1571200.1 on MyOracle Support) DeepLinking to specific Oracle Sales Cloud Pages (Doc 1516151.1 on My Oracle Support) Use-Case 4 :  Server Side processing/synchronization This usecase focuses on the Server Side processing of data, in this case synchronizing data. Here the 3rd party application is running on a "timer", e.g. cron or similar, and when triggered it queries data from Oracle Sales Cloud, then it queries data from the 3rd party application, determines the deltas and then inserts the data where required. Specifically here we are calling Oracle Sales Cloud using SOAP/WebServices and the 3rd party application is being communicated to using the REST API, for Oracle Sales Cloud one would use standard JAX-WS WebService calls and for REST one would use the JAX-RS api and perhap the Jackson api for managing JSON objects.. This is a very common use case and one which specifically lends itself to using the Oracle Java Cloud Service as the ideal application server where to host the mediator between the two applications.  Techniques Used Using JWT Token in Sales Cloud Integrating with the Oracle Java Cloud Service Retrieving Data from Oracle Sales cloud using WebServices General Resources The above is just a small set of techniques and use-cases which are used today. There are plenty of other sources of documentation and resources available on the internet but to get you started here are a few of my favourite places  Sales Cloud General Documentation Sales Cloud Customize Tab is useful for general customization of Sales Cloud Sales Cloud Integration Tab focuses on the 3rd party integration techniques  Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations Blog Official Oracle Fusion Developer Relations YouTube Channel Enjoy integrating! 

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• I&rsquo;m sorry RPGs, it&rsquo;s not you, it&rsquo;s me: The birth of my game idea

  - by George Clingerman

  One of the things I’ve had to give up in order to have some development time at night is gaming. It’s something I refused to admit for years but I’ve just had to face the facts. I’m no longer a gamer. I just don’t have hours and hours of free time to pour into gaming and when I do have hours and hours of free time I want to pour them into game development. That doesn’t mean I don’t game at all! I play games pretty much every day. It just means I’ve moved more into the casual game realm. It’s all I have time for when juggling priorities in my life. That means that games like Gears of War 2 sit shrink wrapped on my shelf and although I popped Dragon Age into my Xbox 360 one time, I barely made it through the opening sequence and haven’t had time to sit down and play again. Instead I’m playing short games like Jamestown, Atom Zombie Smasher, Fortix or if I have time to jump in and play a few rounds maybe some Monday Night Combat or Team Fortress 2. These are games I can instantly get into and play for just a short period of time and then walk away. Breath of Death VII saved my life: Back in the day (way, way back in the day) I used to be a pretty big RPG fan. Not big by a lot of RPG gamers' standards (most of the RPGs RPG fans about I’ve never heard of) but I used to LOVE to play them on the NES, SNES and Genesis and considered that my genre. Final Fantasy, Shining in the Darkness, Bard’s Tale, Faxanadu, Shadowrun, Ultima, Dragon Warrior, Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star, Shining Force and well the list could go on but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. I loved playing RPGs and they were my games of choice. After my first son was born (this was just about 12 years ago), I tried to continue playing RPGs and purchased games like Baldur’s Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights, Fable, then a few of the Final Fantasy’s then Kingdom Hearts. I kept buying these games and then only playing for about fifteen minutes and never getting back to them. I still loved RPGs but they just no longer fit into my life (I still haven’t accepted that since I still purchased Dragon Age II for some reason and convinced myself I’d find the time). Adding three more sons to the mix (that’s 4 total) didn’t help much to finding more RPG time (except for Breath of Death VII and other XBLIG RPG titles, thanks guys!) All work and no RPG: A few months ago as I was sitting thinking about the lack of RPGs in my life and talking to my wife about why I wish RPGs were different and easier for a dad like me to get into. She seemed like she was listening, so I started listing all the things that made them impossible for me to play. Here’s a short list I came up with. They take 15 billion hours to complete I have a few minutes at a time I can grab to play them if I want to have time to code. At that rate it would take me 9 trillion years to beat just one RPG. There’s such long spans of times between when I can play them I forget what I was even doing so I have to spend most of the playtime I have just figuring that out and then my play time is over. Repeat. I’ll never finish one and since it takes so long to get to the fun part in an RPG, I’m never having fun. RPGs aren’t fun if you don’t have hours to play them at a time. As you can see based on my science and math, RPGs aren’t fun for me any more. From there my brain started toying around with ideas of RPGs that would work for me. They would have to be a short RPG, you know one you could beat in a single play session. A dad sized play session. I started thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a fifteen minute RPG? That got me laughing and I took that as a good sign that it sounded fun and so I thought about it a little more. I immediately discarded the idea of doing a real RPG. I’m sure a short RPG like that could be done but it wasn’t the vibe that I had in my head. No this was going to be something that just had the core essence of an RPG. In reality what I’d be making would be more of an arcade style game. One with high scores and lots of crazy action on the screen. And that’s when it hit me. It would be a speed run RPG. That’s the basics of the game I’m working on.   The Elevator Pitch: It’s a 2D top down RPG themed arcade game focused on speed. It sounds like an RPG, smells like an RPG but it’s merely emulating an RPG. The game is focused on fun and mayhem in RPG form with players leveling up in seconds instead of hours and rushing to finish quests as quickly as possible because they’ve only got fifteen minutes before EVIL overtakes the world. If the player takes longer than fifteen minutes, it’s game over man. One to four player co-operative play to really see just how fast players can level up and beat the game. Gamers will compete on leaderboards for bragging rights for fastest 1, 2, 3, and 4 player speed runs, lowest leveled characters to beat the game, highest leveled characters to beat the game and so on. Times will be tracked for everything from how long a player sat distributing stats, equipping items, talking to NPCs to running around the level. These stats will be shown at the end of each quest/level so the players can work on improving their speed run for that part of the game next time around. It’s the perfect RPG for those of us who only have fifteen minutes of game time! Where I’m at: I’m still at the prototyping stage attempting to but all the basic framework pieces in place that will at minimum give me one level to rush through. I’ve been working on this prototype for about a month now though so I’m going to have to step it up a bit or I’m not going to get finished in time (remember I’ve only got 85 days left!) Lots of the game code is in place (although pretty sloppy) but I still can’t play through that first quest/level just yet. That’s my goal to finish up by the end of next Sunday (3/25/2012). You can all hold me to that and cheer me on or heckle me throughout the week. Either way that should help me stay a bit more motivated and focused. In my head this feels like it’s going to be a fun game so I’m looking forward to seeing how it actually plays!

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• Too Many Kittens To Juggle At Once

  - by Bil Simser

  Ahh, the Internet. That crazy, mixed up place where one tweet turns into a conversation between dozens of people and spawns a blogpost. This is the direct result of such an event this morning. It started innocently enough, with this: Then followed up by a blog post by Joel here. In the post, Joel introduces us to the term Business Solutions Architect with mad skillz like InfoPath, Access Services, Excel Services, building Workflows, and SSRS report creation, all while meeting the business needs of users in a SharePoint environment. I somewhat disagreed with Joel that this really wasn’t a new role (at least IMHO) and that a good Architect or BA should really be doing this job. As Joel pointed out when you’re building a SharePoint team this kind of role is often overlooked. Engineers might be able to build workflows but is the right workflow for the right problem? Michael Pisarek wrote about a SharePoint Business Architect a few months ago and it’s a pretty solid assessment. Again, I argue you really shouldn’t be looking for roles that don’t exist and I don’t suggest anyone create roles to hire people to fill them. That’s basically creating a solution looking for problems. Michael’s article does have some great points if you’re lost in the quagmire of SharePoint duties though (and I especially like John Ross’ quote “The coolest shit is worthless if it doesn’t meet business needs”). SharePoinTony summed it up nicely with “SharePoint Solutions knowledge is both lacking and underrated in most environments. Roles help”. Having someone on the team who can dance between a business user and a coder can be difficult. Remember the idea of telling something to someone and them passing it on to the next person. By the time the story comes round the circle it’s a shadow of it’s former self with little resemblance to the original tale. This is very much business requirements as they’re told by the user to a business analyst, written down on paper, read by an architect, tuned into a solution plan, and implemented by a developer. Transformations between what was said, what was heard, what was written down, and what was developed can be distant cousins. Not everyone has the skill of communication and even less have negotiation skills to suit the SharePoint platform. Negotiation is important because not everything can be (or should be) done in SharePoint. Sometimes it’s just not appropriate to build it on the SharePoint platform but someone needs to know enough about the platform and what limitations it might have, then communicate that (and/or negotiate) with a customer or user so it’s not about “You can’t have this” to “Let’s try it this way”. Visualize the possible instead of denying the impossible. So what is the right SharePoint team? My cromag brain came with a fairly simpleton answer (and I’m sure people will just say this is a cop-out). The perfect SharePoint team is just enough people to do the job that know the technology and business problem they’re solving. Bridge the gap between business need and technology platform and you have an architect. Communicate the needs of the business effectively so the entire team understands it and you have a business analyst. Can you get this with full time workers? Maybe but don’t expect miracles out of the gate. Also don’t take a consultant’s word as gospel. Some consultants just don’t have the diversity of the SharePoint platform to be worth their value so be careful. You really need someone who knows enough about SharePoint to be able to validate a consultants knowledge level. This is basically try for any consultant, not just a SharePoint one. Specialization is good and needed. A good, well-balanced SharePoint team is one of people that can solve problems with work with the technology, not against it. Having a top developer is great, but don’t rely on them to solve world hunger if they can’t communicate very well with users. An expert business analyst might be great at gathering requirements so the entire team can understand them, but if it means building 100% custom solutions because they don’t fit inside the SharePoint boundaries isn’t of much value. Just repeat. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. A few people pointed out Nick Inglis’ article Excluding The Information Professional In SharePoint. It’s a good read too and hits home that maybe some developers and IT pros need some extra help in the information space. If you’re in an organization that needs labels on people, come up with something everyone understands and go with it. If that’s Business Solutions Architect, SharePoint Advisor, or Guy Who Knows A Lot About Portals, make it work for you. We all wish that one person could master all that is SharePoint but we also know that doesn’t scale very well and you quickly get into the hit-by-a-bus syndrome (with the organization coming to a full crawl when the guy or girl goes on vacation, gets sick, or pops out a baby). There are too many gaps in SharePoint knowledge to have any one person know it all and too many kittens to juggle all at once. We like to consider ourselves experts in our field, but trying to tackle too many roles at once and we end up being mediocre jack of all trades, master of none. Don't fall into this pit. It's a deep, dark hole you don't want to try to claw your way out of. Trust me. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. In the end I don’t disagree with Joel. SharePoint is a beast and not something that should be taken on by newbies. If you just read “Teach Yourself SharePoint in 24 Hours” and want to go build your corporate intranet or the next killer business solution with all your new found knowledge plan to pony up consultant dollars a few months later when everything goes to Hell in a handbasket and falls over. I’m not saying don’t build solutions in SharePoint. I’m just saying that building effective ones takes skill like any craft and not something you can just cobble together with a little bit of cursory knowledge. Thanks to *everyone* who participated in this tweet rush. It was fun and educational.

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• Feedback Filtration&ndash;Processing Negative Comments for Positive Gains

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  After doing 7 conferences, 5 code camps, and countless user group events, I feel that this is a post I need to write. I actually toyed with other names for this post, however those names would just lend itself to the type of behaviour I want people to avoid – the reactionary, emotional response that speaks to some deeper issue beyond immediate facts and context. Humans are incredibly complex creatures. We’re also emotional, which serves us well in certain situations but can hinder us in others. Those of us in leadership build up a thick skin because we tend to encounter those reactionary, emotional responses more often, and we’re held to a higher standard because of our positions. While we could react with emotion ourselves, as the saying goes – fighting fire with fire just makes a bigger fire. So in this post I’ll share my thought process for dealing with negative feedback/comments and how you can still get value from them. The Thought Process Let’s take a real-world example. This week I held the Prairie IT Pro & Dev Con event. We’ve gotten a lot of session feedback already, most of it overwhelmingly positive. But some not so much – and some to an extreme I rarely see but isn’t entirely surprising to me. So here’s the example from a person we’ll refer to as Mr. Horrible: How was the speaker? Horrible! Worst speaker ever! Did the session meet your expectations? Hard to tell, speaker ruined it. Other Comments: DO NOT bring this speaker back! He was at this conference last year and I hoped enough negative feedback would have taught you to not bring him back...obviously not...I will not return to this conference next year if this speaker is brought back. Now those are very strong words. “Worst speaker ever!” “Speaker ruined it” “I will not return to this conference next year if the speaker is brought back”. The speakers I invite to speak at my conference are not just presenters but friends and colleagues. When I see this, my initial reaction is of course very emotional: I get defensive, I get angry, I get offended. So that’s where the process kicks in. Step 1 – Take a Deep Breath Take a deep breath, calm down, and walk away from the keyboard. I didn’t do that recently during an email convo between some colleagues and it ended up in my reacting emotionally on Twitter – did I mention those colleagues follow my Twitter feed? Yes, I ate some crow. Ok, now that we’re calm, let’s move on to step 2. Step 2 – Strip off the Emotion We need to take off the emotion that people wrap their words in and identify the root issues. For instance, if I see: “I hated this session, the presenter was horrible! He spoke so fast I couldn’t make out what he was saying!” then I drop off the personal emoting (“I hated…”) and the personal attack (“the presenter was horrible”) and focus on the real issue this person had – that the speaker was talking too fast. Now we have a root cause of the displeasure. However, we’re also dealing with humans who are all very different. Before I call up the speaker to talk about his speaking pace, I need to do some other things first. Back to our Mr. Horrible example, I don’t really have much to go on. There’s no details of how the speaker “ruined” the session or why he’s the “worst speaker ever”. In this case, the next step is crucial. Step 3 – Validate the Feedback When I tell people that we really like getting feedback for the sessions, I really really mean it. Not just because we want to hear what individuals have to say but also because we want to know what the group thought. When a piece of negative feedback comes in, I validate it against the group. So with the speaker Mr. Horrible commented on, I go to the feedback and look at other people’s responses: 2 x Excellent 1 x Alright 1 x Not Great 1 x Horrible (our feedback guy) That’s interesting, it’s a bit all over the board. If we look at the comments more we find that the people who rated the speaker excellent liked the presentation style and found the content valuable. The one guy who said “Not Great” even commented that there wasn’t anything really wrong with the presentation, he just wasn’t excited about it. In that light, I can try to make a few assumptions: - Mr. Horrible didn’t like the speakers presentation style - Mr. Horrible was expecting something else that wasn’t communicated properly in the session description - Mr. Horrible, for whatever reason, just didn’t like this presenter Now if the feedback was overwhelmingly negative, there’s a different pattern – one that validates the negative feedback. Regardless, I never take something at face value. Even if I see really good feedback, I never get too happy until I see that there’s a group trend towards the positive. Step 4 – Action Plan Once I’ve validated the feedback, then I need to come up with an action plan around it. Let’s go back to the other example I gave – the one with the speaker going too fast. I went and looked at the feedback and sure enough, other people commented that the speaker had spoken too quickly. Now I can go back to the speaker and let him know so he can get better. But what if nobody else complained about it? I’d still mention it to the speaker, but obviously one person’s opinion needs to be weighed as such. When we did PrDC Winnipeg in 2011, I surveyed the attendees about the food. Everyone raved about it…except one person. Am I going to change the menu next time for that one person while everyone else loved it? Of course not. There’s a saying – A sure way to fail is to try to please everyone. Let’s look at the Mr. Horrible example. What can I communicate to the speaker with such limited information provided in the feedback from Mr. Horrible? Well looking at the groups feedback, I can make a few suggestions: - Ensure that people understand in the session description the style of the talk - Ensure that people understand the level of detail/complexity of the talk and what prerequisite knowledge they should have I’m looking at it as possibly Mr. Horrible assumed a much more advanced talk and was disappointed, while the positive feedback by people who – from their comments – suggested this was all new to them, were thrilled with the session level. Step 5 – Follow Up For some feedback, I follow up personally. Especially with negative or constructive feedback, its important to let the person know you heard them and are making changes because of their comments. Even if their comments were emotionally charged and overtly negative, it’s still important to reach out personally and professionally. When you remove the emotion, negative comments can be the best feedback you get. Also, people have bad days. We’ve all had one of “those days” where we talked more sternly than normal to someone, or got angry at something we’d normally shrug off. We have various stresses in our lives and sometimes they seep out in odd ways. I always try to give some benefit of the doubt, and re-evaluate my view of the person after they’ve responded to my communication. But, there is such a thing as garbage feedback. What Mr. Horrible wrote is garbage. It’s mean spirited. It’s hateful. It provides nothing constructive at all. And a tell-tale sign that feedback is garbage – the person didn’t leave their name even though there was a field for it. Step 6 – Delete It Feedback must be processed in its raw form, and the end products should drive improvements. But once you’ve figured out what those things are, you shouldn’t leave raw feedback lying around. They are snapshots in time that taken alone can be damaging. Also, you should never rest on past praise. In a future blog post, I’m going to talk about how we can provide great feedback that, even when its critical, can still be constructive.

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• Creating vCard action result

  - by DigiMortal

  I added support for vCards to one of my ASP.NET MVC applications. I worked vCard support out as very simple and intelligent solution that fits perfectly to ASP.NET MVC applications. In this posting I will show you how to send vCards out as response to ASP.NET MVC request. We need three things: some vCard class, vCard action result, controller method to test vCard action result. Everything is very simple, let’s get hands on. vCard class As first thing we need vCard class. Last year I introduced vCard class that supports also images. Let’s take this class because it is easy to use and some dirty work is already done for us. NB! Take a look at ASP.NET example in the blog posting referred above. We need it later when we close the topic. Now think about how useful blogging and information sharing with others can be. With this class available at public I saved pretty much time now. :) vCardResult As we have vCard it is now time to write action result that we can use in our controllers. Here’s the code. public class vCardResult : ActionResult {     private vCard _card;       protected vCardResult() { }       public vCardResult(vCard card)     {         _card = card;     }       public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)     {         var response = context.HttpContext.Response;         response.ContentType = "text/vcard";         response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; fileName=" + _card.FirstName + " " + _card.LastName + ".vcf");           var cardString = _card.ToString();         var inputEncoding = Encoding.Default;         var outputEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1257");         var cardBytes = inputEncoding.GetBytes(cardString);           var outputBytes = Encoding.Convert(inputEncoding,                                 outputEncoding, cardBytes);           response.OutputStream.Write(outputBytes, 0, outputBytes.Length);     } } And we are done. Some notes: vCard is sent to browser as downloadable file (user can save or open it with Outlook or any other e-mail client that supports vCards), File name is made of first and last name of contact. Encoding is important because Outlook may not understand vCards otherwise (don’t know if this problem is solved in Outlook 2010). Using vCardResult in controller Now let’s tale a look at simple controller method that accepts person ID and returns vCardResult. public class ContactsController : Controller {       // ... other controller methods ...       public vCardResult vCard(int id)     {         var person = _partyRepository.GetPersonById(id);         var card = new vCard                 {                     FirstName=person.FirstName,                     LastName = person.LastName,                     StreetAddress = person.StreetAddress,                     City = person.City,                     CountryName = person.Country.Name,                       Mobile = person.Mobile,                     Phone = person.Phone,                     Email = person.Email,                 };           return new vCardResult(card);     } } Now you can run Visual Studio and check out how your vCard is moving from your web application to your e-mail client. Conclusion We took old code that worked well with ASP.NET Forms and we divided it into action result and controller method that uses vCard as bridge between our controller and action result. All functionality is located where it should be and we did nothing complex. We wrote only couple of lines of very easy code to achieve our goal. Do you understand now why I love ASP.NET MVC? :)

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