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  • [JAX-B] How can I ignore a superclass?

    - by MrSpandex
    I'm trying to write a web service for the java.util.logging api. So I wrote a class MyLogRecord that inherits from LogRecord. I annotated this class with JAX-B annotations, including @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE) so it would ignore non-annotated fields and properties. When I start up tomcat, I get errors that java.util.logging.Level and other java.util.logging classes do not have a default constructor, but none of my annotated methods make any reference to the Level class or any of the other java.util.logging classes. These are referenced by the parent class. My sub-class has everything it needs defined. How can I get JAX-B to ignore the parent class completely? Update: I found another post on this, which suggests modifying the parent class. This is obviously not possible because I am extending a java.util class. IS there any way to do this without modifying the superclass? Update2: I found a thread on java.net for a similar problem. That thread resulted in an enhancement request, which was marked as a duplicate of another issue, which resulted in the @XmlTransient annotation. The comments on these bug reports lead me to believe this is impossible in the current spec.

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  • Scheme: what are the benefits of letrec?

    - by Ixmatus
    While reading "The Seasoned Schemer" I've begun to learn about letrec. I understand what it does (can be duplicated with a Y-Combinator) but the book is using it in lieu of recurring on the already defined function operating on arguments that remain static. An example of an old function using the defined function recurring on itself (nothing special): (define (substitute new old lat) (cond ((null? l) '()) ((eq? (car l) old) (cons new (substitute new old (cdr l)))) (else (cons (car l) (substitute new old (cdr l)))))) Now for an example of that same function but using letrec: (define (substitute new old lat) (letrec ((replace (lambda (l) (cond ((null? l) '()) ((eq? (car l) old) (cons new (replace (cdr l)))) (else (cons (car l) (replace (cdr l)))))))) (replace lat))) Aside from being slightly longer and more difficult to read I don't know why they are rewriting functions in the book to use letrec. Is there a speed enhancement when recurring over a static variable this way because you don't keep passing it?? Is this standard practice for functions with arguments that remain static but one argument that is reduced (such as recurring down the elements of a list)? Some input from more experienced Schemers/LISPers would help!

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  • What should the name of this class be?

    - by Tim Murphy
    Naming classes is sometimes hard. What do you think name of the class should be? I originally created the class to use as a cache but can see its may have other uses. Example code to use the class. Dim cache = New NamePendingDictionary(Of String, Sample) Dim value = cache("a", Function() New Sample()) And here is the class that needs a name. ''' <summary> ''' Enhancement of <see cref="System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary"/>. See the Item property ''' for more details. ''' </summary> ''' <typeparam name="TKey">The type of the keys in the dictionary.</typeparam> ''' <typeparam name="TValue">The type of the values in the dictionary.</typeparam> Public Class NamePendingDictionary(Of TKey, TValue) Inherits Dictionary(Of TKey, TValue) Delegate Function DefaultValue() As TValue ''' <summary> ''' Gets or sets the value associated with the specified key. If the specified key does not exist ''' then <paramref name="createDefaultValue"/> is invoked and added to the dictionary. The created ''' value is then returned. ''' </summary> ''' <param name="key">The key of the value to get.</param> ''' <param name="createDefaultValue"> ''' The delegate to invoke if <paramref name="key"/> does not exist in the dictionary. ''' </param> ''' <exception cref="T:System.ArgumentNullException"><paramref name="key" /> is null.</exception> Default Public Overloads ReadOnly Property Item(ByVal key As TKey, ByVal createDefaultValue As DefaultValue) As TValue Get Dim value As TValue If createDefaultValue Is Nothing Then Throw New ArgumentNullException("createValue") End If If Not Me.TryGetValue(key, value) Then value = createDefaultValue.Invoke() Me.Add(key, value) End If Return value End Get End Property End Class

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  • What is the IoC / "Springy" way to handle MVP in GWT? (Hint, probably not the Spring Roo 1.1 way)

    - by Ehrann Mehdan
    This is the Spring Roo 1.1 way of doing a factory that returns a GWT Activity (Yes, Spring Framework) public Activity getActivity(ProxyPlace place) { switch (place.getOperation()) { case DETAILS: return new EmployeeDetailsActivity((EntityProxyId<EmployeeProxy>)place.getProxyId(), requests, placeController, ScaffoldApp.isMobile() ? EmployeeMobileDetailsView.instance() : EmployeeDetailsView.instance()); case EDIT: return makeEditActivity(place); case CREATE: return makeCreateActivity(); } throw new IllegalArgumentException("Unknown operation " + place.getOperation()); } It seems to me that we just went back hundred of years if we use a switch case with constants to make a factory. Now this is official auto generated Spring roo 1.1 with GWT / GAE integration, I kid you not I can only assume this is some executives empty announcements because this is definitly not Spring It seems VMWare and Google were too fast to get something out and didn't quite finish it, isn't it? Am I missing something or this is half baked and by far not the way Spring + GWT MVP should work? Do you have a better example of how Spring, GWT (2.1 MVP approach) and GAE should connect? I would hate to do all the plumbing of managing history and activities like this. (no annotations? IOC?) I also would hate to reinvent the wheel and write my own Spring enhancement just to find someone else did the same, or worse, find out that SpringSource and Google will release roo 1.2 soon and make it right

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  • TicTacToe strategic reduction

    - by NickLarsen
    I decided to write a small program that solves TicTacToe in order to try out the effect of some pruning techniques on a trivial game. The full game tree using minimax to solve it only ends up with 549,946 possible games. With alpha-beta pruning, the number of states required to evaluate was reduced to 18,297. Then I applied a transposition table that brings the number down to 2,592. Now I want to see how low that number can go. The next enhancement I want to apply is a strategic reduction. The basic idea is to combine states that have equivalent strategic value. For instance, on the first move, if X plays first, there is nothing strategically different (assuming your opponent plays optimally) about choosing one corner instead of another. In the same situation, the same is true of the center of the walls of the board, and the center is also significant. By reducing to significant states only, you end up with only 3 states for evaluation on the first move instead of 9. This technique should be very useful since it prunes states near the top of the game tree. This idea came from the GameShrink method created by a group at CMU, only I am trying to avoid writing the general form, and just doing what is needed to apply the technique to TicTacToe. In order to achieve this, I modified my hash function (for the transposition table) to enumerate all strategically equivalent positions (using rotation and flipping functions), and to only return the lowest of the values for each board. Unfortunately now my program thinks X can force a win in 5 moves from an empty board when going first. After a long debugging session, it became apparent to me the program was always returning the move for the lowest strategically significant move (I store the last move in the transposition table as part of my state). Is there a better way I can go about adding this feature, or a simple method for determining the correct move applicable to the current situation with what I have already done?

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  • What's the best way to link formal specs to JIRA enchancement requests?

    - by Adam
    What's the best way to link formal specs to JIRA enhancement requests? I want to track changes to specifications using JIRA. Ideally, I'd like to refer to a functional ID reference in a JIRA ticket (e.g. MYAPPAPPROVAL LOGICMAIN SCREEN), so that program managers can retrospectively categorise defects. The reason for this, is so that QA scripts and documentation tickets can be searched/categorised meaningfully in the tracking system. There seems to be a million possible ways to do this, e.g. should I write a custom component to select functional IDs from a tree? should I write the specs in confluence, or another CMS with a TrackBack facility? should I include a link to the documentation URL? should I use some other 3rd party plugin application? should I use some Atlassian application that i'm unaware of? am I using the wrong tracking tool/process to measure spec growth? What's the best way, in your experience?

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  • Tuning Red Gate: #2 of Many

    - by Grant Fritchey
    In the last installment, I used the SQL Monitor tool to get a snapshot view of the current state of the servers at Red Gate that are giving us trouble. That snapshot suggested some areas where I should focus some time, primarily in which queries were being called most frequently or were running the longest. But, you don't want to just run off & start tuning queries. Remember, the foundation for query tuning is the server itself. So, I want to be sure I'm not looking at some major hardware or configuration issues that I need to address first. Rather than look at the current status of the server, I'm going to look at historical data. Clicking on the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor I get a whole list of counters that I can look at. More importantly, I can look at them over a period of time. Even more importantly, I can compare past periods with current periods to see if we're looking at a progressive issue or not. There are counters here that will give me an indication of load, and there are counters here that will tell me specifics about that load. First, I want to just look at the load to understand where the pain points might be. Trying to drill down before you have detailed information is just bad planning. First thing I'm going to check is the CPU, just to see what's up there. I have two servers I'm interested in, so I'll show you both: Looking at the last 30 days for both servers, well, let's just say that the first server is about what I would expect. It has an average baseline behavior with occasional, regular, peaks. This looks like a system with a fairly steady & predictable load that probably has a nightly batch process that spikes the processor. In short, normal stuff. The points there where the CPU drops radically. that might be worth investigating further because something changed the processing on this system a lot. But the first server. It's all over the place. There's no steady CPU behavior at all. It's spike high for long periods of time. It's up, it's down. I'm really going to have to spend time looking at CPU issues on this server to try to figure out what's up. It might be other processes being shared on the server, it might be something else. Either way, I'm going to have to spend time evaluating this CPU, especially those peeks about a week ago. Looking at the Pages/sec, again, just a measure of load, I see that there are some peaks on the rg-sql02 server, but over all, it looks like a fairly standard load. Plus, the peaks are only up to 550 pages/sec. Remember, this isn't a performance measure, but just a load measurement, but from this, I don't think we're looking at major memory issues, but I may want to correlate these counters with the CPU counters. Again, the other server looks like there's stuff going on. The load is not at all consistent. In fact there was a point earlier in the year that looks pretty severe. Plus the spikes here are twice the size of the other system. We've got a lot more load going on here and I will probably need to drill down on memory usage on this server. Taking a look at the disk transfers/sec the load on both systems seems to roughly correspond to the other load indicators. Notice that drop right in the middle of the graph for rg-sql02. I wonder if the office was closed over that period or a system was down for maintenance. If I saw spikes in memory or disk that corresponded to the drip in CPU, you can assume something was using those other resources and causing a drop, but when everything goes down, it just means that the system isn't gettting used. The disk on the rg-sql01 system isn't spiking exactly the same way as the memory & cpu, so there's a good chance (chance mind you) that any performance issues might not be disk related. However, notice that huge jump at the beginning of the month. Several disks were used more than they were for the rest of the month. That's the load on the server. What about the load on SQL Server itself? Next time.

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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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  • A Knights Tale

    - by Phil Factor
    There are so many lessons to be learned from the story of Knight Capital losing nearly half a billion dollars as a result of a deployment gone wrong. The Knight Capital Group (KCG N) was an American global financial services firm engaging in market making, electronic execution, and institutional sales and trading. According to the recent order (File No.3.15570) against Knight Capital by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission?, Knight had, for many years used some software which broke up incoming “parent” orders into smaller “child” orders that were then transmitted to various exchanges or trading venues for execution. A tracking ‘cumulative quantity’ function counted the number of ‘child’ orders and stopped the process once the total of child orders matched the ‘parent’ and so the parent order had been completed. Back in the mists of time, some code had been added to it  which was excuted if a particular flag was set. It was called ‘power peg’ and seems to have had a similar design and purpose, but, one guesses, would have shared the same tracking function. This code had been abandoned in 2003, but never deleted. In 2005, The tracking function was moved to an earlier point in the main process. It would seem from the account that, from that point, had that flag ever been set, the old ‘Power Peg’ would have been executed like Godzilla bursting from the ice, making child orders without limit without any tracking function. It wasn’t, presumably because the software that set the flag was removed. In 2012, nearly a decade after ‘Power Peg’ was abandoned, Knight prepared a new module to their software to cope with the imminent Retail Liquidity Program (RLP) for the New York Stock Exchange. By this time, the flag had remained unused and someone made the fateful decision to reuse it, and replace the old ‘power peg’ code with this new RLP code. Had the two actions been done together in a single automated deployment, and the new deployment tested, all would have been well. It wasn’t. To quote… “Beginning on July 27, 2012, Knight deployed the new RLP code in SMARS in stages by placing it on a limited number of servers in SMARS on successive days. During the deployment of the new code, however, one of Knight’s technicians did not copy the new code to one of the eight SMARS computer servers. Knight did not have a second technician review this deployment and no one at Knight realized that the Power Peg code had not been removed from the eighth server, nor the new RLP code added. Knight had no written procedures that required such a review.” (para 15) “On August 1, Knight received orders from broker-dealers whose customers were eligible to participate in the RLP. The seven servers that received the new code processed these orders correctly. However, orders sent with the repurposed flag to the eighth server triggered the defective Power Peg code still present on that server. As a result, this server began sending child orders to certain trading centers for execution. Because the cumulative quantity function had been moved, this server continuously sent child orders, in rapid sequence, for each incoming parent order without regard to the number of share executions Knight had already received from trading centers. Although one part of Knight’s order handling system recognized that the parent orders had been filled, this information was not communicated to SMARS.” (para 16) SMARS routed millions of orders into the market over a 45-minute period, and obtained over 4 million executions in 154 stocks for more than 397 million shares. By the time that Knight stopped sending the orders, Knight had assumed a net long position in 80 stocks of approximately $3.5 billion and a net short position in 74 stocks of approximately $3.15 billion. Knight’s shares dropped more than 20% after traders saw extreme volume spikes in a number of stocks, including preferred shares of Wells Fargo (JWF) and semiconductor company Spansion (CODE). Both stocks, which see roughly 100,000 trade per day, had changed hands more than 4 million times by late morning. Ultimately, Knight lost over $460 million from this wild 45 minutes of trading. Obviously, I’m interested in all this because, at one time, I used to write trading systems for the City of London. Obviously, the US SEC is in a far better position than any of us to work out the failings of Knight’s IT department, and the report makes for painful reading. I can’t help observing, though, that even with the breathtaking mistakes all along the way, that a robust automated deployment process that was ‘all-or-nothing’, and tested from soup to nuts would have prevented the disaster. The report reads like a Greek Tragedy. All the way along one wants to shout ‘No! not that way!’ and ‘Aargh! Don’t do it!’. As the tragedy unfolds, the audience weeps for the players, trapped by a cruel fate. All application development and deployment requires defense in depth. All IT goes wrong occasionally, but if there is a culture of defensive programming throughout, the consequences are usually containable. For financial systems, these defenses are required by statute, and ignored only by the foolish. Knight’s mistakes weren’t made by just one hapless sysadmin, but were progressive errors by an  IT culture spanning at least ten years.  One can spell these out, but I think they’re obvious. One can only hope that the industry studies what happened in detail, learns from the mistakes, and draws the right conclusions.

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  • Blank Mail from PHP application

    - by brettlwilliams
    Problem: Blank email from PHP web application. Confirmed: App works in Linux, has various problems in Windows server environment. Blank emails are the last remaining problem. PHP Version 5.2.6 on the server I'm a librarian implementing a PHP based web application to help students complete their assignments.I have installed this application before on a Linux based free web host and had no problems. Email is controlled by two files, email_functions.php and email.php. While email can be sent, all that is sent is a blank email. My IT department is an ASP only shop, so I can get little to no help there. I also cannot install additional libraries like PHPmail or Swiftmailer. You can see a functional copy at http://rpc.elm4you.org/ You can also download a copy from Sourceforge from the link there. Thanks in advance for any insight into this! email_functions.php <?php /********************************************************** Function: build_multipart_headers Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: September 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Creates email headers for a message of type multipart/mime This will include a plain text part and HTML. **********************************************************/ function build_multipart_headers($boundary_rand) { global $EMAIL_FROM_DISPLAY_NAME, $EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS, $CALC_PATH, $CALC_TITLE, $SERVER_NAME; // Using \n instead of \r\n because qmail doubles up the \r and screws everything up! $crlf = "\n"; $message_date = date("r"); // Construct headers for multipart/mixed MIME email. It will have a plain text and HTML part $headers = "X-Calc-Name: $CALC_TITLE" . $crlf; $headers .= "X-Calc-Url: http://{$SERVER_NAME}/{$CALC_PATH}" . $crlf; $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0" . $crlf; $headers .= "Content-type: multipart/alternative;" . $crlf; $headers .= " boundary=__$boundary_rand" . $crlf; $headers .= "From: $EMAIL_FROM_DISPLAY_NAME <$EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS>" . $crlf; $headers .= "Sender: $EMAIL_FROM_DISPLAY_NAME <$EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS>" . $crlf; $headers .= "Reply-to: $EMAIL_FROM_DISPLAY_NAME <$EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS>" . $crlf; $headers .= "Return-Path: $EMAIL_FROM_DISPLAY_NAME <$EMAIL_FROM_ADDRESS>" . $crlf; $headers .= "Date: $message_date" . $crlf; $headers .= "Message-Id: $boundary_rand@$SERVER_NAME" . $crlf; return $headers; } /********************************************************** Function: build_multipart_body Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: September 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Builds the email body content to go with the headers from build_multipart_headers() **********************************************************/ function build_multipart_body($plain_text_message, $html_message, $boundary_rand) { //$crlf = "\r\n"; $crlf = "\n"; $boundary = "__" . $boundary_rand; // Begin constructing the MIME multipart message $multipart_message = "This is a multipart message in MIME format." . $crlf . $crlf; $multipart_message .= "--{$boundary}{$crlf}Content-type: text/plain; charset=\"us-ascii\"{$crlf}Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit{$crlf}{$crlf}"; $multipart_message .= $plain_text_message . $crlf . $crlf; $multipart_message .= "--{$boundary}{$crlf}Content-type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"{$crlf}Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit{$crlf}{$crlf}"; $multipart_message .= $html_message . $crlf . $crlf; $multipart_message .= "--{$boundary}--$crlf$crlf"; return $multipart_message; } /********************************************************** Function: build_step_email_body_text Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: September 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Returns a plain text version of the email body to be used for individually sent step reminders **********************************************************/ function build_step_email_body_text($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $teacher_info ,$name, $class, $project_id) { global $CALC_PATH, $CALC_TITLE, $SERVER_NAME; $step_email_body =<<<BODY $CALC_TITLE Step $stepnum: {$arr_instructions["step$stepnum"]["title"]} Name: $name Class: $class BODY; $step_email_body .= build_text_single_step($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $teacher_info); $step_email_body .= "\n\n"; $step_email_body .=<<<FOOTER The $CALC_TITLE offers suggestions, but be sure to check with your teacher to find out the best working schedule for your assignment! If you would like to stop receiving further reminders for this project, click the link below: http://$SERVER_NAME/$CALC_PATH/deleteproject.php?proj=$project_id FOOTER; // Wrap text to 78 chars per line // Convert any remaining HTML <br /> to \r\n // Strip out any remaining HTML tags. $step_email_body = strip_tags(linebreaks_html2text(wordwrap($step_email_body, 78, "\n"))); return $step_email_body; } /********************************************************** Function: build_step_email_body_html Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: September 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Same as above, but with HTML **********************************************************/ function build_step_email_body_html($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $teacher_info, $name, $class, $project_id) { global $CALC_PATH, $CALC_TITLE, $SERVER_NAME; $styles = build_html_styles(); $step_email_body =<<<BODY <html> <head> <title> $CALC_TITLE </title> $styles </head> <body> <h1> $CALC_TITLE Schedule </h1> <strong>Name:</strong> $name <br /> <strong>Class:</strong> $class <br /> BODY; $step_email_body .= build_html_single_step($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $teacher_info); $step_email_body .=<<<FOOTER <p> The $CALC_TITLE offers suggestions, but be sure to check with your teacher to find out the best working schedule for your assignment! </p> <p> If you would like to stop receiving further reminders for this project, <a href="http://{$SERVER_NAME}/$CALC_PATH/deleteproject.php?proj=$project_id">click this link.</a> </p> </body> </html> FOOTER; return $step_email_body; } /********************************************************** Function: build_html_styles Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: September 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Just returns a string of <style /> for the HTML message body **********************************************************/ function build_html_styles() { $styles =<<<STYLES <style type="text/css"> body { font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 85%; } h1 { font-size: 120%; } table { border: none; } tr { vertical-align: top; } img { display: none; } hr { border: 0; } </style> STYLES; return $styles; } /********************************************************** Function: linebreaks_html2text Author: Michael Berkowski Last Modified: October 2007 *********************************************************** Purpose: Convert <br /> html tags to \n line breaks **********************************************************/ function linebreaks_html2text($in_string) { $out_string = ""; $arr_br = array("<br>", "<br />", "<br/>"); $out_string = str_replace($arr_br, "\n", $in_string); return $out_string; } ?> email.php <?php require_once("include/config.php"); require_once("include/instructions.php"); require_once("dbase/dbfunctions.php"); require_once("include/email_functions.php"); ini_set("sendmail_from", "[email protected]"); ini_set("SMTP", "mail.qatar.net.qa"); // Verify that the email has not already been sent by checking for a cookie // whose value is generated each time the form is loaded freshly. if (!(isset($_COOKIE['rpc_transid']) && $_COOKIE['rpc_transid'] == $_POST['transid'])) { // Setup some preliminary variables for email. // The scanning of $_POST['email']already took place when this file was included... $to = $_POST['email']; $subject = $EMAIL_SUBJECT; $boundary_rand = md5(rand()); $mail_type = ""; switch ($_POST['reminder-type']) { case "progressive": $arr_dbase_dates = array(); $conn = rpc_connect(); if (!$conn) { $mail_success = FALSE; $mail_status_message = "Could not register address!"; break; } // Sanitize all the data that will be inserted into table... // We need to remove "CONTENT-TYPE:" from name/class to defang them. // Additionall, we can't allow any line-breaks in those fields to avoid // hacks to email headers. $ins_name = mysql_real_escape_string($name); $ins_name = eregi_replace("CONTENT-TYPE", "...Content_Type...", $ins_name); $ins_name = str_replace("\n", "", $ins_name); $ins_class = mysql_real_escape_string($class); $ins_class = eregi_replace("CONTENT-TYPE", "...Content_Type...", $ins_class); $ins_class = str_replace("\n", "", $ins_class); $ins_email = mysql_real_escape_string($email); $ins_teacher_info = $teacher_info ? "YES" : "NO"; switch ($format) { case "Slides": $ins_format = "SLIDES"; break; case "Video": $ins_format = "VIDEO"; break; case "Essay": default: $ins_format = "ESSAY"; break; } // The transid from the previous form will be used as a project identifier // Steps will be grouped by project identifier. $ins_project_id = mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['transid'] . md5(rand())); $arr_dbase_dates = dbase_dates($dates); $arr_past_dates = array(); // Iterate over the dates array and build a SQL statement for each one. $insert_success = TRUE; // $min_reminder_date = date("Ymd", mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d")+$EMAIL_REMINDER_DAYS_AHEAD,date("Y"))); for ($date_index = 0; $date_index < sizeof($arr_dbase_dates); $date_index++) { // Make sure we're using the right keys... $ins_date_index = $date_index + 1; // The insert will only happen if the date of the event is in the future. // For dates today and earlier, no insert. // For dates today or after the reminder deadline, we'll send the email immediately after the inserts. if ($arr_dbase_dates[$date_index] > (int)$min_reminder_date) { $qry =<<<QRY INSERT INTO email_queue ( NOTIFICATION_ID, PROJECT_ID, EMAIL, NAME, CLASS, FORMAT, TEACHER_INFO, STEP, MESSAGE_DATE ) VALUES ( NULL, '$ins_project_id', '$ins_email', '$ins_name', '$ins_class', '$ins_format', '$ins_teacher_info', $ins_date_index, /*step number*/ {$arr_dbase_dates[$date_index]} /* Date in the integer format yyyymmdd */ ) QRY; // Attempt to do the insert... $result = mysql_query($qry); // If even one insert fails, bail out. if (!$result) { $mail_success = FALSE; $mail_status_message = "Could not register address!"; break; } } // For dates today or earlier, store the steps=>dates in an array so the mails can // be sent immediately. else { $arr_past_dates[$ins_date_index] = $arr_dbase_dates[$date_index]; } } // Close the connection resources. mysql_close($conn); // SEND OUT THE EMAILS THAT HAVE TO GO IMMEDIATELY... // This should only be step 1, but who knows... //var_dump($arr_past_dates); for ($stepnum=1; $stepnum<=sizeof($arr_past_dates); $stepnum++) { $email_teacher_info = ($teacher_info && $EMAIL_TEACHER_REMINDERS) ? TRUE : FALSE; $boundary = md5(rand()); $plain_text_body = build_step_email_body_text($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $email_teacher_info ,$name, $class, $ins_project_id); $html_body = build_step_email_body_html($stepnum, $arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $email_teacher_info ,$name, $class, $ins_project_id); $multipart_headers = build_multipart_headers($boundary); $multipart_body = build_multipart_body($plain_text_body, $html_body, $boundary); mail($to, $subject . ": Step " . $stepnum, $multipart_body, $multipart_headers, "[email protected]"); } // Set appropriate flags and messages $mail_success = TRUE; $mail_status_message = "Email address registered!"; $mail_type = "progressive"; set_mail_success_cookie(); break; // Default to a single email message. case "single": default: // We don't want to send images in the message, so strip them out of the existing structure. // This big ugly regex strips the whole table cell containing the image out of the table. // Must find a better solution... //$email_table_html = eregi_replace("<td class=\"stepImageContainer\" width=\"161px\">[\s\r\n\t]*<img class=\"stepImage\" src=\"images/[_a-zA-Z0-9]*\.gif\" alt=\"Step [1-9]{1} logo\" />[\s\r\n\t]*</td>", "\n", $table_html); // Show more descriptive text based on the value of $format switch ($format) { case "Video": $format_display = "Video"; break; case "Slides": $format_display = "Presentation with electronic slides"; break; case "Essay": default: $format_display = "Essay"; break; } $days = (int)$days; $html_message = ""; $styles = build_html_styles(); $html_message =<<<HTMLMESSAGE <html> <head> <title> $CALC_TITLE </title> $styles </head> <body> <h1> $CALC_TITLE Schedule </h1> <strong>Name:</strong> $name <br /> <strong>Class:</strong> $class <br /> <strong>Email:</strong> $email <br /> <strong>Assignment type:</strong> $format_display <br /><br /> <strong>Starting on:</strong> $date1 <br /> <strong>Assignment due:</strong> $date2 <br /> <strong>You have $days days to finish.</strong><br /> <hr /> $email_table_html </body> </html> HTMLMESSAGE; // Create the plain text version of the message... $plain_text_message = strip_tags(linebreaks_html2text(build_text_all_steps($arr_instructions, $dates, $query_string, $teacher_info))); // Add the title, since it doesn't get built in by build_text_all_steps... $plain_text_message = $CALC_TITLE . " Schedule\n\n" . $plain_text_message; $plain_text_message = wordwrap($plain_text_message, 78, "\n"); $multipart_headers = build_multipart_headers($boundary_rand); $multipart_message = build_multipart_body($plain_text_message, $html_message, $boundary_rand); $mail_success = FALSE; if (mail($to, $subject, $multipart_message, $multipart_headers, "[email protected]")) { $mail_success = TRUE; $mail_status_message = "Email sent!"; $mail_type = "single"; set_mail_success_cookie(); } else { $mail_success = FALSE; $mail_status_message = "Could not send email!"; } break; } } function set_mail_success_cookie() { // Prevent the mail from being resent on page reload. Set a timestamp cookie. // Expires in 24 hours. setcookie("rpc_transid", $_POST['transid'], time() + 86400); } ?>

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  • How do you unit test a unit test?

    - by FlySwat
    I was watching Rob Connerys webcasts on the MVCStoreFront App, and I noticed he was unit testing even the most mundane things, things like: public Decimal DiscountPrice { get { return this.Price - this.Discount; } } Would have a test like: [TestMethod] public void Test_DiscountPrice { Product p = new Product(); p.Price = 100; p.Discount = 20; Assert.IsEqual(p.DiscountPrice,80); } While, I am all for unit testing, I sometimes wonder if this form of test first development is really beneficial, for example, in a real process, you have 3-4 layers above your code (Business Request, Requirements Document, Architecture Document), where the actual defined business rule (Discount Price is Price - Discount) could be misdefined. If that's the situation, your unit test means nothing to you. Additionally, your unit test is another point of failure: [TestMethod] public void Test_DiscountPrice { Product p = new Product(); p.Price = 100; p.Discount = 20; Assert.IsEqual(p.DiscountPrice,90); } Now the test is flawed. Obviously in a simple test, it's no big deal, but say we were testing a complicated business rule. What do we gain here? Fast forward two years into the application's life, when maintenance developers are maintaining it. Now the business changes its rule, and the test breaks again, some rookie developer then fixes the test incorrectly...we now have another point of failure. All I see is more possible points of failure, with no real beneficial return, if the discount price is wrong, the test team will still find the issue, how did unit testing save any work? What am I missing here? Please teach me to love TDD, as I'm having a hard time accepting it as useful so far. I want too, because I want to stay progressive, but it just doesn't make sense to me. EDIT: A couple people keep mentioned that testing helps enforce the spec. It has been my experience that the spec has been wrong as well, more often than not, but maybe I'm doomed to work in an organization where the specs are written by people who shouldn't be writing specs.

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  • How to write this Linq SQL as a Dynamic Query (using strings)?

    - by Dr. Zim
    Skip to the "specific question" as needed. Some background: The scenario: I have a set of products with a "drill down" filter (Query Object) populated with DDLs. Each progressive DDL selection will further limit the product list as well as what options are left for the DDLs. For example, selecting a hammer out of tools limits the Product Sizes to only show hammer sizes. Current setup: I created a query object, sent it to a repository, and fed each option to a SQL "table valued function" where null values represent "get all products". I consider this a good effort, but far from DDD acceptable. I want to avoid any "programming" in SQL, hopefully doing everything with a repository. Comments on this topic would be appreciated. Specific question: How would I rewrite this query as a Dynamic Query? A link to something like 101 Linq Examples would be fantastic, but with a Dynamic Query scope. I really want to pass to this method the field in quotes "" for which I want a list of options and how many products have that option. from p in db.Products group p by p.ProductSize into g select new Category { PropertyType = g.Key, Count = g.Count() } Each DDL option will have "The selection (21)" where the (21) is the quantity of products that have that attribute. Upon selecting an option, all other remaining DDLs will update with the remaining options and counts. Edit: Additional notes: .OrderBy("it.City") // "it" refers to the entire record .GroupBy("City", "new(City)") // This produces a unique list of City .Select("it.Count()") //This gives a list of counts... getting closer .Select("key") // Selects a list of unique City .Select("new (key, count() as string)") // +1 to me LOL. key is a row of group .GroupBy("new (City, Manufacturer)", "City") // New = list of fields to group by .GroupBy("City", "new (Manufacturer, Size)") // Second parameter is a projection Product .Where("ProductType == @0", "Maps") .GroupBy("new(City)", "new ( null as string)")// Projection not available later? .Select("new (key.City, it.count() as string)")// GroupBy new makes key an object Product .Where("ProductType == @0", "Maps") .GroupBy("new(City)", "new ( null as string)")// Projection not available later? .Select("new (key.City, it as object)")// the it object is the result of GroupBy var a = Product .Where("ProductType == @0", "Maps") .GroupBy("@0", "it", "City") // This fails to group Product at all .Select("new ( Key, it as Product )"); // "it" is property cast though What I have learned so far is LinqPad is fantastic, but still looking for an answer. Eventually, completely random research like this will prevail I guess. LOL. Edit:

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  • CSS3's border-radius property and border-collapse:collapse don't mix. How can I use border-radius to

    - by vamin
    Edit - Original Title: Is there an alternative way to achieve border-collapse:collapse in CSS (in order to have a collapsed, rounded corner table)? Since it turns out that simply getting the table's borders to collapse does not solve the root problem, I have updated the title to better reflect the discussion. I am trying to make a table with rounded corners using the CSS3 border-radius property. The table styles I'm using look something like this: table { -moz-border-radius:10px; -webkit-border-radius:10px; border-radius:10px} Here's the problem. I also want to set the border-collapse:collapse property, and when that is set border-radius no longer works (at least in Firefox)(edit- I thought this might just be a difference in mozilla's implementation, but it turns out this is the way it's supposed to work according to the w3c). Is there a CSS-based way I can get the same effect as border-collapse:collapse without actually using it? Edits: I've made a simple page to demonstrate the problem here (Firefox/Safari only). It seems that a large part of the problem is that setting the table to have rounded corners does not affect the corners of the corner td elements. If the table was all one color, this wouldn't be a problem since I could just make the top and bottom td corners rounded for the first and last row respectively. However, I am using different background colors for the table to differentiate the headings and for striping, so the inner td elements would show their rounded corners as well. Summary of proposed solutions: Surrounding the table with another element with round corners doesn't work because the table's square corners "bleed through." Specifying border width to 0 doesn't collapse the table. Bottom td corners still square after setting cellspacing to zero. Using javascript instead- works by avoiding the problem. Possible solutions: The tables are generated in php, so I could just apply a different class to each of the outer th/tds and style each corner separately. I'd rather not do this, since it's not very elegant and a bit of a pain to apply to multiple tables, so please keep suggestions coming. Possible solution 2 is to use javascript (jQuery, specifically) to style the corners. This solution also works, but still not quite what I'm looking for (I know I'm picky). I have two reservations: 1) this is a very lightweight site, and I'd like to keep javascript to the barest minimum 2) part of the appeal that using border-radius has for me is graceful degradation and progressive enhancement. By using border-radius for all rounded corners, I hope to have a consistently rounded site in CSS3-capable browsers and a consistently square site in others (I'm looking at you, IE). I know that trying to do this with CSS3 today may seem needless, but I have my reasons. I would also like to point out that this problem is a result of the w3c speficication, not poor CSS3 support, so any solution will still be relevant and useful when CSS3 has more widespread support.

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  • What makes great software?

    - by VirtuosiMedia
    From the perspective of an end user, what makes a software great rather than just good or functional? What are some fundamental principles that can shift the way a software is used and perceived? What are some of the little finishing touches that help put an application over the top? I'm in the later stages of developing a web app and I'm looking for ideas or concepts that I may have missed. If you have specific examples of software or apps that you absolutely love, please share the reasons or features that make it special. Keep in mind that I'm looking for examples that directly affect the end user, but not necessarily just UI suggestions. Here are some of the principles and little touches I'm trying to use: Keep the UI as simple as possible. Remove absolutely everything that isn't necessary. Use progressive disclosure when more information can be needed sometimes but isn't needed all the time. Provide inline help and useful error messages. Verbs on buttons wherever possible. Make anything that's clickable obvious. Fast, responsive UI. Accessibility (this is a work in progress). Reusable UI patterns. Once a user learns a skill, they will be able to use it in multiple places. Intelligent default settings. Auto-focusing forms when filling out the form is the primary action to be taken on the page. Clear metaphors (like tabs) and headings indicating location within the app. Automating repetitive tasks (with the ability to disable the automation). Use standardized or accepted metaphors for icons (like an "x" for delete). Larger text sizes for improved readability. High contrast so that each section is distinct. Making sure that it's obvious on every page what the user is supposed to do by establishing a clear information hierarchy and drawing the eye to the call to action. Most deletions can be undone. Discoverability - Make it easy to learn how to do new tasks. Group similar elements together.

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  • Framework 4 Features: Summary of Security enhancements

    - by Anthony Shorten
    In the last log entry I mentioned one of the new security features in Oracle Utilities Application Framework 4.0.1. Security is one of the major "tent poles" (to borrow a phrase from Steve Jobs) in this release of the framework. There are a number of security related enhancements requested by customers and as a result of internal reviews that we have introduced. Here is a summary of some of the security enchancements we have added in this release: Security Cache Changes - Security authorization information is automatically cached on the server for performance reasons (security is checked for every single call the product makes for all modes of access). Prior to this release the cache auto-refreshed every 30 minutes (or so). This has beem made more nimble by supporting a cache refresh every minute (or so). This means authorization changes are reflected quicker than before. Business Level security - Business Services are configurable services that are based upon Application Services. Typically, the business service inherited its security profile from its parent service. Whilst this is sufficient for most needs, it is now required to further specify security on the Business Service definition itself. This will allow granular security and allow the same application service to be exposed as different Business Services with their own security. This is particularly useful when you base a Business Service on a query zone. User Propogation - As with other client server applications, the database connections are pooled and shared as needed. This means that a common database user is used to access the database from the pool to allow sharing. Unfortunently, this means that tracability at the database level is that much harder. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework V4 the end userid is now propogated to the database using the CLIENT_IDENTIFIER as part of the Oracle JDBC connection API. This not only means that the common database userid is still used but the end user is indentifiable for the duration of the database call. This can be used for monitoring or to hook into Oracle's database security products. This enhancement is only available to Oracle Database customers. Enhanced Security Definitions - Security Administrators use the product browser front end to control access rights of defined users. While this is sufficient for most sites, a new security portal has been introduced to speed up the maintenance of security information. Oracle Identity Manager Integration - With the popularity of Oracle's Identity Management Suite, the Framework now provides an integration adapter and Identity Manager Generic Transport Connector (GTC) to allow users and group membership to be provisioned to any Oracle Utilities Application Framework based product from Oracle's Identity Manager. This is also available for Oracle Utilties Application Framework V2.2 customers. Refer to My Oracle Support KBid 970785.1 - Oracle Identity Manager Integration Overview. Audit On Inquiry - Typically the configurable audit facility in the Oracle Utilities Application Framework is used to audit changes to records. In Oracle Utilities Application Framework the Business Services and Service Scripts could be configured to audit inquiries as well. Now it is possible to attach auditing capabilities to zones on the product (including base package ones). Time Zone Support - In some of the Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products, the timezone of the end user is a factor in the processing. The user object has been extended to allow the recording of time zone information for use in product functionality. JAAS Suport - Internally the Oracle Utilities Application Framework uses a number of techniques to validate and transmit security information across the architecture. These various methods have been reconciled into using Java Authentication and Authorization Services for standardized security. This is strictly an internal change with no direct on how security operates externally. JMX Based Cache Management - In the last bullet point, I mentioned extra security applied to cache management from the browser. Alternatively a JMX based interface is now provided to allow IT operations to control the cache without the browser interface. This JMX capability can be initiated from a JSR120 compliant JMX console or JMX browser. I will be writing another more detailed blog entry on the JMX enhancements as it is quite a change and an exciting direction for the product line. Data Patch Permissions - The database installer provided with the product required lower levels of security for some operations. At some sites they wanted the ability for non-DBA's to execute the utilities in a controlled fashion. The framework now allows feature configuration to allow delegation for patch execution. User Enable Support - At some sites, the use of temporary staff such as contractors is commonplace. In this scenario, temporary security setups were required and used. A potential issue has arisen when the contractor left the company. Typically the IT group would remove the contractor from the security repository to prevent login using that contractors userid but the userid could NOT be removed from the authorization model becuase of audit requirements (if any user in the product updates financials or key data their userid is recorded for audit purposes). It is now possible to effectively diable the user from the security model to prevent any use of the useridwhilst retaining audit information. These are a subset of the security changes in Oracle Utilities Application Framework. More details about the security capabilities of the product is contained in My Oracle Support KB Id 773473.1 - Oracle Utilities Application Framework Security Overview.

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  • New MySQL Cluster 7.3 Previews: Foreign Keys, NoSQL Node.js API and Auto-Tuned Clusters

    - by Mat Keep
    At this weeks MySQL Connect conference, Oracle previewed an exciting new wave of developments for MySQL Cluster, further extending its simplicity and flexibility by expanding the range of use-cases, adding new NoSQL options, and automating configuration. What’s new: Development Release 1: MySQL Cluster 7.3 with Foreign Keys Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Early Access “Labs” Preview: MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer In this blog, I'll introduce you to the features being previewed. Review the blogs listed below for more detail on each of the specific features discussed. Save the date!: A live webinar is scheduled for Thursday 25th October at 0900 Pacific Time / 1600UTC where we will discuss each of these enhancements in more detail. Registration will be open soon and published to the MySQL webinars page MySQL Cluster 7.3: Development Release 1 The first MySQL Cluster 7.3 Development Milestone Release (DMR) previews Foreign Keys, bringing powerful new functionality to MySQL Cluster while eliminating development complexity. Foreign Key support has been one of the most requested enhancements to MySQL Cluster – enabling users to simplify their data models and application logic – while extending the range of use-cases for both custom projects requiring referential integrity and packaged applications, such as eCommerce, CRM, CMS, etc. Implementation The Foreign Key functionality is implemented directly within the MySQL Cluster data nodes, allowing any client API accessing the cluster to benefit from them – whether they are SQL or one of the NoSQL interfaces (Memcached, C++, Java, JPA, HTTP/REST or the new Node.js API - discussed later.) The core referential actions defined in the SQL:2003 standard are implemented: CASCADE RESTRICT NO ACTION SET NULL In addition, the MySQL Cluster implementation supports the online adding and dropping of Foreign Keys, ensuring the Cluster continues to serve both read and write requests during the operation.  This represents a further enhancement to MySQL Cluster's support for on0line schema changes, ie adding and dropping indexes, adding columns, etc.  Read this blog for a demonstration of using Foreign Keys with MySQL Cluster.  Getting Started with MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR1: Users can download either the source or binary and evaluate the MySQL Cluster 7.3 DMR with Foreign Keys now! (Select the Development Release tab). MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js Node.js is hot! In a little over 3 years, it has become one of the most popular environments for developing next generation web, cloud, mobile and social applications. Bringing JavaScript from the browser to the server, the design goal of Node.js is to build new real-time applications supporting millions of client connections, serviced by a single CPU core. Making it simple to further extend the flexibility and power of Node.js to the database layer, we are previewing the Node.js Javascript API for MySQL Cluster as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/. Select the following build: MySQL-Cluster-NoSQL-Connector-for-Node-js Alternatively, you can clone the project at the MySQL GitHub page.  Implemented as a module for the V8 engine, the new API provides Node.js with a native, asynchronous JavaScript interface that can be used to both query and receive results sets directly from MySQL Cluster, without transformations to SQL. Figure 1: MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js enables end-to-end JavaScript development Rather than just presenting a simple interface to the database, the Node.js module integrates the MySQL Cluster native API library directly within the web application itself, enabling developers to seamlessly couple their high performance, distributed applications with a high performance, distributed, persistence layer delivering 99.999% availability. The new Node.js API joins a rich array of NoSQL interfaces available for MySQL Cluster. Whichever API is chosen for an application, SQL and NoSQL can be used concurrently across the same data set, providing the ultimate in developer flexibility.  Get started with MySQL Cluster NoSQL API for Node.js tutorial MySQL Cluster GUI-Based Auto-Installer Compatible with both MySQL Cluster 7.2 and 7.3, the Auto-Installer makes it simple for DevOps teams to quickly configure and provision highly optimized MySQL Cluster deployments – whether on-premise or in the cloud. Implemented with a standard HTML GUI and Python-based web server back-end, the Auto-Installer intelligently configures MySQL Cluster based on application requirements and auto-discovered hardware resources Figure 2: Automated Tuning and Configuration of MySQL Cluster Developed by the same engineering team responsible for the MySQL Cluster database, the installer provides standardized configurations that make it simple, quick and easy to build stable and high performance clustered environments. The auto-installer is previewed as an Early Access release, available for download now from http://labs.mysql.com/, by selecting the MySQL-Cluster-Auto-Installer build. You can read more about getting started with the MySQL Cluster auto-installer here. Watch the YouTube video for a demonstration of using the MySQL Cluster auto-installer Getting Started with MySQL Cluster If you are new to MySQL Cluster, the Getting Started guide will walk you through installing an evaluation cluster on a singe host (these guides reflect MySQL Cluster 7.2, but apply equally well to 7.3 and the Early Access previews). Or use the new MySQL Cluster Auto-Installer! Download the Guide to Scaling Web Databases with MySQL Cluster (to learn more about its architecture, design and ideal use-cases). Post any questions to the MySQL Cluster forum where our Engineering team and the MySQL Cluster community will attempt to assist you. Post any bugs you find to the MySQL bug tracking system (select MySQL Cluster from the Category drop-down menu) And if you have any feedback, please post them to the Comments section here or in the blogs referenced in this article. Summary MySQL Cluster 7.2 is the GA, production-ready release of MySQL Cluster. The first Development Release of MySQL Cluster 7.3 and the Early Access previews give you the opportunity to preview and evaluate future developments in the MySQL Cluster database, and we are very excited to be able to share that with you. Let us know how you get along with MySQL Cluster 7.3, and other features that you want to see in future releases, by using the comments of this blog.

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  • Silverlight 5 Hosting :: Features in Silverlight 5 and Release Date

    - by mbridge
    Silverlight 5 is finally announced in the Silverlight FireStarter Event on the 2nd December, 2010. This new version of Silverlight which was earlier labeled as 'Future of Microsoft Silverlight' has now come much closer to go live as the first Silverlight 5 Beta version is expected to be shipped during the early months of 2011. However for the full fledged and the final release of Silverlight 5, we have to wait many more months as the same is likely to be made available within the Q3 2011. As would have been usually expected, this latest edition would feature many new capabilities thereby extending the developer productivity to a whole new dimension of premium media experience and feature-rich business applications. It comes along with many new feature updates as well as the inclusion of new technologies to improve the standard of the Silverlight applications which are now fine-tuned to produce next generation business and media solutions that is capable to meet the requirements of the advanced web-based app development. The Silverlight 5 is all set to replace the previous fourth version which now includes more than forty new features while also dropping various deprecated elements that was prevalent earlier. It has brought around some major performance enhancements and also included better support for various other tools and technologies. Following are some of the changes that are registered to be available under the Silverlight 5 Beta edition which is scheduled to be launched during the Q1 2011. Silverlight 5 : Premium Media Experiences The media features of Silverlight 5 has seen some major enhancements with a lot of optimizations being made to deliver richer solutions. It's capability has now been extended to make things easier, faster and capable of performing the desired tasks in the most efficient manner. The Silverlight media solutions has already been a part of many companies in the recent days where various on-demand Silverlight services were featured but with the arrival of the next generation premium media solution of Silverlight 5, it is expected to register new heights of success and global user acclamation for using it with many esteemed web-based projects and media solutions. - The most happening element in the new Silverlight 5 will be its support for utilizing the GPU based hardware acceleration which is intended to lower down the CPU load to a significant extent and thereby allowing faster rendering of media contents without consuming much resources. This feature is believed to be particularly helpful for low configured machines to run full HD media content without any lagging caused due to processor load. It will hence be one great feature to revolutionize the new generation high quality media contents to be available within the web in a more efficient manner with its hardware decoded video playback capabilities. - With the inclusion of hardware video decoding to minimize the processor load, the Silverlight 5 also comes with another optimization enhancement to also reduce the power consumption level by making new methods to deal with the power-saver settings. With this optimization in effect, the computer would be automatically allowed to switch to sleep mode while no video playback is in progress and also to prevent any screensavers to popup and cause annoyances during any video playback. There would also be other power saver options which will be made available to best suit the users requirements and purpose. - The Silverlight trickplay feature is another great way to tweak any silverlight powered media content as is used for many video tutorial sites or for dealing with any sort of presentations. This feature enables the user to modify the playback speed to either slowdown or speedup during the playback durations based on the requirements without compromising on the quality of output. Normally such manipulations always makes the content's audio to go off-pitch, but the same will not be the case with TrickPlay and the audio would seamlessly progress with the video without skipping any of its part. - In addition to all of the above, the new Silverlight 5 will be featuring wireless control of all the media contents by making use of remote controllers. With the use of such remote devices, it will be easier to handle the various media playback controls thereby providing more freedom while experiencing the premium media services. Silverlight 5 : Business Application Development The application development standard has been extended with more possibilities by bringing forth new and useful technologies and also reviving the existing methods to work better than what it was used to. From the UI improvements to advanced technical aspects, the Silverlight 5 scores high on all grounds to produce great next generation business delivered applications by putting in more creativity and resourceful touch to all the apps being produced with it. - The WPF feature of Silverlight is made more effective by introducing new standards of Databinding which is intended to improve the productivity standards of the Silverlight application developer. It brings in a lot of convenience in debugging the databinding components or expressions and hence making things work in a flawless manner. Some additional features related to databinding includes that of Ancestor RelativeSource, Implicit DataTemplates and Model View ViewModel (MVVM) support with DataContextChanged event and many other new features relating it. - It now comes with a refined text and printing service which facilitates better clarity of the text rendering and also many positive changes which are being applied to the layout pattern. New supports has been added to include OpenType font, multi-column text, linked-text containers and character leading support to name a few among the available features.This also includes some important printing aspects like that of Postscript Vector Printing API which allows to program our printing tasks in a user defined way and Pivot functionality for visualization concerns of informations. - The Graphics support is the key improvements being incorporated which now enables to utilize three dimensional graphics pattern using GPU acceleration. It can manage to provide some really cool visualizations being curved to provide media contents within the business apps with also the support for full HD contents at 1080p quality. - Silverlight 5 includes the support for 64-bit operating systems and relevant browsers and is also optimized to provide better performance. It can support the background thread for the networking which can reduce the latency of the network to a considerable extent. The Out-of-Browser functionality adds the support for utilizing various libraries and also the Win32 API. It also comes with testing support with VS 2010 which is mostly an automated procedure and has also enabled increased security aspects of all the Silverlight 5 developed applications by using the improved version of group policy support.

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  • Good ol fashioned debugging

    - by Tim Dexter
    I have been helping out one of our new customers over the last day or two and I have even managed to get to the bottom of their problem FTW! They use BIEE and BIP and wanted to mount a BIP report in a dashboard page, so far so good, BIP does that! Just follow the instructions in the BIEE user guide. The wrinkle is that they want to enter some fixed instruction strings into the dashboard prompts to help the user. These are added as fixed values to the prompt as the default values so they appear first. Once the user makes a selection, the default strings disappear. Its a fair requirement but the BIP report chokes Now, the BIP report had been setup with the Autorun checkbox, unchecked. I expected the BIP report to wait for the Go button to be hit but it was trying to run immediately and failing. That was the first issue. You can not stop the BIP report from trying to run in a dashboard. Even if the Autorun is turned off, it seems that dashboard still makes the request to BIP to run the report. Rather than BIP refusing because its waiting for input it goes ahead anyway, I guess the mechanism does not check the autorun flag when the request is coming from the dashboard. It appears that between BIEE and BIP, they collectively ignore the autorun flag. A bug? might be, at least an enhancement request. With that in mind, how could we get BIP to not at least not fail? This fact was stumping me on the parameter error, if the autorun flag was being respected then why was BIP complaining about the parameter values it should not even be doing anything until the Go button is clicked. I now knew that the autorun flag was being ignored, it was a simple case of putting BIP into debug mode. I use the OC4J server on my laptop so debug msgs are routed through the dos box used to start the OC4J container. When I changed a value on the dashboard prompt I spotted some debug text rushing by that subsequently disappeared from the log once the operation was complete. Another bug? I needed to catch that text as it went by, using the print screen function with some software to grab multiple screens as the log appeared and then disappeared. The upshot is that when you change the dashboard prompt value, BIP validates the value against its own LOVs, if its not in the list then it throws the error. Because 'Fill this first' and 'Fill this second' ie fixed strings from the dashboard prompts, are not in the LOV lists and because the report is auto running as soon as the dashboard page is brought up, the report complains about invalid parameters. To get around this, I needed to get the strings into the LOVs. Easily done with a UNION clause: select 'Fill this first' from SH.Products Products UNION select Products."Prod Category" as "Prod Category" from SH.Products Products Now when BIP wants to validate the prompt value, the LOV query fires and finds the fixed string -> No Error. No data, but definitely no errors :0) If users do run with the fixed values, you can capture that in the template. If there is no data in the report, either the fixed values were used or the parameters selected resulted in no rows. You can capture this in the template and display something like. 'Either your parameter values resulted in no data or you have not changed the default values' Thats the upside, the downside is that if your users run the report in the BP UI they re going to see the fixed strings. You could alleviate that by having BIP display the fixed strings in top of its parameter drop boxes (just set them as the default value for the parameter.) But they will not disappear like they do in the dashboard prompts, see below. If the expected autorun behaviour worked ie wait for the Go button, then we would not have to workaround it but for now, its a pretty good solution. It was an enjoyable hour or so for me, took me back to my developer daze, when we used to race each other for the most number of bug fixes. I used to run a distant 2nd behind 'Bugmeister Chen Hu' but led the chasing pack by a reasonable distance.

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  • Running Jetty under Windows Azure Using RoleEntryPoint in a Worker Role

    - by Shawn Cicoria
    This post is built upon the work of Mario Kosmiskas and David C. Chou’s prior postings – from here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariok/archive/2011/01/05/deploying-java-applications-in-azure.aspx  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2010/03/21/run-java-with-jetty-in-windows-azure.aspx As Mario points out in his post, when you need to have more control over the process that starts, it generally is better left to a RoleEntryPoint capability that as of now, requires the use of a CLR based assembly that is deployed as part of the package to Azure. There were things I liked especially about Mario’s post – specifically, the ability to pull down the JRE and Jetty runtimes at role startup and instantiate the process using the extracted bits.  The way Mario initialized the java process (and Jetty) was to take advantage of a role startup task configured as part of the service definition.  This is a great quick way to kick off processes or tasks prior to your role entry point.  However, if you need access to service configuration values or role events, that’s where RoleEntryPoint comes in.  For this PoC sample I moved the logic for retrieving the bits for the jre and jetty to the worker roles OnStart – in addition to moving the process kickoff to the OnStart method.  The Run method at this point is there to loop and just report the status of the java process. Beyond just making things more parameterized, both Mario’s and David’s articles still form the essence of the approach. The solution that accompanies this post provides all the necessary .NET based Visual Studio project.  In addition, you’ll need: 1. Jetty 7 runtime http://www.eclipse.org/jetty/downloads.php 2. JRE http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html Once you have these the first step is to create archives (zips) of the distributions.  For this PoC, the structure of the archive requires that the root of the archive looks as follows: JRE6.zip jetty---.zip Upload the contents to a storage container (block blob), and for this example I used /archives as the location.  The service configuration has several settings that allow, which is the advantage of using RoleEntryPoint, the ability to provide these things via native configuration support from Azure in a worker role. Storage Explorer You can use development storage for testing this out – the zipped version of the solution is configured for development storage.  When you’re ready to deploy, you update the two settings – 1 for diagnostics and the other for the storage container where the /archives are going to be stored. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="HostedJetty" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="JettyWorker"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <!--<Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=<accountName>;AccountKey=<accountKey>" />--> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="JettyArchive" value="jetty-distribution-7.3.0.v20110203b.zip" /> <Setting name="StartRole" value="true" /> <Setting name="BlobContainer" value="archives" /> <Setting name="JreArchive" value="jre6.zip" /> <!--<Setting name="StorageCredentials" value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=<accountName>;AccountKey=<accountKey>"/>--> <Setting name="StorageCredentials" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" />   For interacting with Storage you can use several tools – one tool that I like is from the Windows Azure CAT team located here: http://appfabriccat.com/2011/02/exploring-windows-azure-storage-apis-by-building-a-storage-explorer-application/  and shown in the prior picture At runtime, during role initialization and startup, Azure will call into your RoleEntryPoint.  At that time the code will do a dynamic pull of the 2 archives and extract – using the Sharp Zip Lib <link> as Mario had demonstrated in his sample.  The only different here is the use of CLR code vs. PowerShell (which is really CLR, but that’s another discussion). At this point, once the 2 zips are extracted, the Role’s file system looks as follows: Worker Role approot From there, the OnStart method (which also does the download and unzip using a simple StorageHelper class) kicks off the Java path and now you have Java! Task Manager Jetty Sample Page A couple of things I’m working on to enhance this is to extract the jre and jetty bits not to the appRoot but to a resource location defined as part of the service definition. ServiceDefinition.csdef <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="HostedJetty" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="JettyWorker"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> <Endpoints> <InputEndpoint name="JettyPort" protocol="tcp" port="80" localPort="8080" /> </Endpoints> <LocalResources> <LocalStorage name="Archives" cleanOnRoleRecycle="false" sizeInMB="100" /> </LocalResources>   As the concept matures a bit, being able to update dynamically the content or jar files as part of a running java solution is something that is possible through continued enhancement of this simple model. The Visual Studio 2010 Solution is located here: HostingJavaSln_NDA.zip

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  • HTML5 and Visual Studio 2010

    - by Harish Ranganathan
    All of us work with Visual Studio (or the free Visual Web Developer Express Edition) for developing web applications targeting ASP.NET / ASP.NET MVC or Silverlight etc.,  Over the years, Visual Studio has grown to a great extent.  From being a simple limited functionality tool in VS.NET 2002 to the multi-faceted, MEF driven Visual Studio 2010, it has come a long way.  And as much as Visual Studio supports rapid web development by generating HTML mark up, it also added intellisense for some of the HTML specifications that one has otherwise monotonously type every time.  Ex.- In Visual Studio 2010, one can just type the angular bracket “<” and then the first keyword “h” or “x” for html or xhtml respectively and then press tab twice and it would render the entire markup required for XHTML or HTML 1.0/1.1 strict/transitional and the fully qualified W3C URL. The same holds good for specifying HTML type declaration.  Now, the difference between HTML and XHTML has been discussed in detail already, though, if you are interested to know, you can read it from http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_html.asp But, the industry trend or the buzz around is HTML5.  With browsers like IE9 Beta, Google Chrome, Firefox 4 etc., supporting HTML5 standards big time, everyone wants to start developing HTML5 based websites. VS developers (like me) often get the question around when would VS start supporting HTML5.  VS 2010 was released last year and HTML5 is still specifications under development.  Clearly, with the timelines we started developing Visual Studio (way back in 2008), HTML5 specs were almost non-existent.  Even today, the HTML5 body recommends not to fully depend on the entire mark up set as they are still under development specs and might change in the future. However, with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 beta, there is quite a bit of support for HTML5 based web development.  In fact, one of my colleagues pointed out that SP1 beta’s major enhancement is its ability to support HTML5 tags and even add server mode to them. Lets look at the existing validation schema available in Visual Studio (Tools – Options – Validation) This is before installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta.  Clearly, the validation options are restricted to HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 transitional and below. Also, lets consider using some of the new HTML5 input type elements.  (I found out this, just today from my friend, also an, ASP.NET team member) <input type=”email”> is one of the new input type elements according to the HTML5 specification.  Now, this works well if you type it as is  in Visual Studio and the page renders without any issue (since the default behaviour is, if there is an “undefined” type specified to input tag, it would fall back on the default mode, which is text. The moment you add <input type=”email” runat=”server” >, you get an error Naturally you don’t get intellisense support as well for these new tags.  Once you install Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta from here (it takes a while so you need to be patient for the installation to complete), you will start getting additional Validation templates for HTML5, as below:- Once you set this, you can start using HTML5 elements in your web page without getting errors/warnings.  Look at the screen shot below, for the new “video” tag which is showing up in intellisense (video is a part of the new HTML5 specifications)     note that, you still need to hook up the <!DOCTYPE html /> on the top manually as it doesn’t change automatically  (from the default XHTML 1.0 strict) when you create a new page. Also, the new input type tags in HTML5 are also supported One, can also use the <asp:TextBox type=”email” which would in turn generate the <input type=”email”> markup when the page is rendered.  In fact, as of SP1 beta, this is the only way to put the new input type tags with the runat=”server” attribute (otherwise you will get the parser error mentioned above.  This issue would be fixed by the final release of SP1 beta) Going further, there may be more support for having server tags for some of the common HTML5 elements, but this is work in progress currently. So, other than not having runat=”server” support for the new HTML5  input tags, you can pretty much build and target HTML5 websites with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta, today.  For those who are running Visual Studio 2008, you also have the “HTML5 intellisense for Visual Studio 2010 and 2008” available for download, from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d771cbc8-d60a-40b0-a1d8-f19fc393127d/ Note that, if you are running Visual Studio 2010, the recommended approach is to install the SP1 beta which would be the way forward for HTML5 support in Visual Studio. Of course, you need to test these on a browser supporting HTML5 such as IE9 Beta or Chrome or FireFox 4.  You can download IE9 Beta from here You can also follow the Visual Web Developer Team Blog for more updates on the stuff they are building. Cheers !!!

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  • How to Use RDA to Generate WLS Thread Dumps At Specified Intervals?

    - by Daniel Mortimer
    Introduction There are many ways to generate a thread dump of a WebLogic Managed Server. For example, take a look at: Taking Thread Dumps - [an excellent blog post on the Middleware Magic site]or  Different ways to take thread dumps in WebLogic Server (Document 1098691.1) There is another method - use Remote Diagnostic Agent! The solution described below is not documented, but it is relatively straightforward to execute. One advantage of using RDA to collect the thread dumps is RDA will also collect configuration, log files, network, system, performance information at the same time. Instructions 1. Not familiar with Remote Diagnostic Agent? Take a look at my previous blog "Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile" 2. Choose a profile, which includes the WebLogic Server data collection modules (for example the profile "WebLogicServer"). At RDA setup time you should see the prompt below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S301WLS: Collects Oracle WebLogic Server Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enter the location of the directory where the domains to analyze are located (For example in UNIX, <BEA Home>/user_projects/domains or <Middleware Home>/user_projects/domains) Hit 'Return' to accept the default (/oracle/11AS/Middleware/user_projects/domains) > For a successful WLS connection, ensure that the domain Admin Server is up and running. Data Collection Type:   1  Collect for a single server (offline mode)   2  Collect for a single server (using WLS connection)   3  Collect for multiple servers (using WLS connection) Enter the item number Hit 'Return' to accept the default (1) > 2 Choose option 2 or 3. Note: Collect for a single server or multiple servers using WLS connection means that RDA will attempt to connect to execute online WLST commands against the targeted server(s). The thread dumps are collected using the WLST function - "threadDumps()". If WLST cannot connect to the managed server, RDA will proceed to collect other data and ignore the request to collect thread dumps. If in the final output you see no Thread Dump menu item, then it's likely that the managed server is in a state which prevents new connections to it. If faced with this scenario, you would have to employ alternative methods for collecting thread dumps. 3. The RDA setup will create a setup.cfg file in the RDA_HOME directory. Open this file in an editor. You will find the following parameters which govern the number of thread dumps and thread dump interval. #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=5000 The example lines above show the default settings. In other words, RDA will collect 10 thread dumps at 5000 millisecond (5 second) intervals. You may want to change this to something like: #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=30000 However, bear in mind, that such change will increase the total amount of time it takes for RDA to complete its run. 4. Once you are happy with the setup.cfg, run RDA. RDA will collect, render, generate and package all files in the output directory. 5. For ease of viewing, open up the RDA Start html file - "xxxx__start.htm". The thread dumps can be found under the WLST Collections for the target managed server(s). See screenshots belowScreenshot 1:RDA Start Page - Main Index Screenshot 2: Managed Server Sub Index Screenshot 3: WLST Collections Screenshot 4: Thread Dump Page - List of dump file links Screenshot 5: Thread Dump Dat File Link Additional Comment: A) You can view the thread dump files within the RDA Start Page framework, but most likely you will want to download the dat files for in-depth analysis via thread dump analysis tools such as: Thread Dump Analyzer -  Samurai - a GUI based tail , thread dump analysis tool If you are new to thread dump analysis - take a look at this recorded Support Advisor Webcast  Oracle WebLogic Server: Diagnosing Performance Issues through Java Thread Dumps[Slidedeck from webcast in PDF format]B) I have logged a couple of enhancement requests for the RDA Development Team to consider: Add timestamp to dump file links, dat filename and at the top of the body of the dat file Package the individual thread dumps in a zip so all dump files can be conveniently downloaded in one go.

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  • Blog Buzz - Devoxx 2011

    - by Janice J. Heiss
    Some day I will make it to Devoxx – for now, I’m content to vicariously follow the blogs of attendees and pick up on what’s happening.  I’ve been doing more blog "fishing," looking for the best commentary on 2011 Devoxx. There’s plenty of food for thought – and the ideas are not half-baked.The bloggers are out in full, offering useful summaries and commentary on Devoxx goings-on.Constantin Partac, a Java developer and a member of Transylvania JUG, a community from Cluj-Napoca/Romania, offers an excellent summary of the Devoxx keynotes. Here’s a sample:“Oracle Opening Keynote and JDK 7, 8, and 9 Presentation•    Oracle is committed to Java and wants to provide support for it on any device.•    JSE 7 for Mac will be released next week.•    Oracle would like Java developers to be involved in JCP, to adopt a JSR and to attend local JUG meetings.•    JEE 7 will be released next year.•    JEE 7 is focused on cloud integration, some of the features are already implemented in glassfish 4 development branch.•    JSE 8 will be release in summer of 2013 due to “enterprise community request” as they can not keep the pace with an 18    month release cycle.•    The main features included in JSE8 are lambda support, project Jigsaw, new Date/Time API, project Coin++ and adding   support for sensors. JSE 9 probably will focus on some of these features:1.    self tuning JVM2.    improved native language integration3.    processing enhancement for big data4.    reification (adding runtime class type info for generic types)5.    unification of primitive and corresponding object classes6.    meta-object protocol in order to use type and methods define in other JVM languages7.    multi-tenancy8.    JVM resource management” Thanks Constantin! Ivan St. Ivanov, of SAP Labs Bulgaria, also commented on the keynotes with a different focus.  He summarizes Henrik Stahl’s look ahead to Java SE 8 and JavaFX 3.0; Cameron Purdy on Java EE and the cloud; celebrated Java Champion Josh Bloch on what’s good and bad about Java; Mark Reinhold’s quick look ahead to Java SE 9; and Brian Goetz on lambdas and default methods in Java SE 8. Here’s St. Ivanov’s account of Josh Bloch’s comments on the pluses of Java:“He started with the virtues of the platform. To name a few:    Tightly specified language primitives and evaluation order – int is always 32 bits and operations are executed always from left  to right, without compilers messing around    Dynamic linking – when you change a class, you need to recompile and rebuild just the jar that has it and not the whole application    Syntax  similarity with C/C++ – most existing developers at that time felt like at home    Object orientations – it was cool at that time as well as functional programming is today    It was statically typed language – helps in faster runtime, better IDE support, etc.    No operator overloading – well, I’m not sure why it is good. Scala has it for example and that’s why it is far better for defining DSLs. But I will not argue with Josh.”It’s worth checking out St. Ivanov’s summary of Bloch’s views on what’s not so great about Java as well. What's Coming in JAX-RS 2.0Marek Potociar, Principal Software Engineer at Oracle and currently specification lead of Java EE RESTful web services API (JAX-RS), blogged on his talk about what's coming in JAX-RS 2.0, scheduled for final release in mid-2012.  Here’s a taste:“Perhaps the most wanted addition to the JAX-RS is the Client API, that would complete the JAX-RS story, that is currently server-side only. In JAX-RS 2.0 we are adding a completely interface-based and fluent client API that blends nicely in with the existing fluent response builder pattern on the server-side. When we started with the client API, the first proposal contained around 30 classes. Thanks to the feedback from our Expert Group we managed to reduce the number of API classes to 14 (2 of them being exceptions)! The resulting is compact while at the same time we still managed to create an API that reflects the method invocation context flow (e.g. once you decide on the target URI and start setting headers on the request, your IDE will not try to offer you a URI setter in the code completion). This is a subtle but very important usability aspect of an API…” Obviously, Devoxx is a great Java conference, one that is hitting this year at a time when much is brewing in the platform and beginning to be anticipated.

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  • Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

    - by user12244672
    It's not surprising that Engineered Systems accelerate the debugging and resolution of customer issues. But what has surprised me is just how much faster issue resolution is with Engineered Systems such as SPARC SuperCluster. These are powerful, complex, systems used by customers wanting extreme database performance, app performance, and cost saving server consolidation. A SPARC SuperCluster consists or 2 or 4 powerful T4-4 compute nodes, 3 or 6 extreme performance Exadata Storage Cells, a ZFS Storage Appliance 7320 for general purpose storage, and ultra fast Infiniband switches.  Each with its own firmware. It runs Solaris 11, Solaris 10, 11gR2, LDoms virtualization, and Zones virtualization on the T4-4 compute nodes, a modified version of Solaris 11 in the ZFS Storage Appliance, a modified and highly tuned version of Oracle Linux running Exadata software on the Storage Cells, another Linux derivative in the Infiniband switches, etc. It has an Infiniband data network between the components, a 10Gb data network to the outside world, and a 1Gb management network. And customers can run whatever middleware and apps they want on it, clustered in whatever way they want. In one word, powerful.  In another, complex. The system is highly Engineered.  But it's designed to run general purpose applications. That is, the physical components, configuration, cabling, virtualization technologies, switches, firmware, Operating System versions, network protocols, tunables, etc. are all preset for optimum performance and robustness. That improves the customer experience as what the customer runs leverages our technical know-how and best practices and is what we've tested intensely within Oracle. It should also make debugging easier by fixing a large number of variables which would otherwise be in play if a customer or Systems Integrator had assembled such a complex system themselves from the constituent components.  For example, there's myriad network protocols which could be used with Infiniband.  Myriad ways the components could be interconnected, myriad tunable settings, etc. But what has really surprised me - and I've been working in this area for 15 years now - is just how much easier and faster Engineered Systems have made debugging and issue resolution. All those error opportunities for sub-optimal cabling, unusual network protocols, sub-optimal deployment of virtualization technologies, issues with 3rd party storage, issues with 3rd party multi-pathing products, etc., are simply taken out of the equation. All those error opportunities for making an issue unique to a particular set-up, the "why aren't we seeing this on any other system ?" type questions, the doubts, just go away when we or a customer discover an issue on an Engineered System. It enables a really honed response, getting to the root cause much, much faster than would otherwise be the case. Here's a couple of examples from the last month, one found in-house by my team, one found by a customer: Example 1: We found a node eviction issue running 11gR2 with Solaris 11 SRU 12 under extreme load on what we call our ExaLego test system (mimics an Exadata / SuperCluster 11gR2 Exadata Storage Cell set-up).  We quickly established that an enhancement in SRU12 enabled an 11gR2 process to query Infiniband's Subnet Manager, replacing a fallback mechanism it had used previously.  Under abnormally heavy load, the query could return results which were misinterpreted resulting in node eviction.  In several daily joint debugging sessions between the Solaris, Infiniband, and 11gR2 teams, the issue was fully root caused, evaluated, and a fix agreed upon.  That fix went back into all Solaris releases the following Monday.  From initial issue discovery to the fix being put back into all Solaris releases was just 10 days. Example 2: A customer reported sporadic performance degradation.  The reasons were unclear and the information sparse.  The SPARC SuperCluster Engineered Systems support teams which comprises both SPARC/Solaris and Database/Exadata experts worked to root cause the issue.  A number of contributing factors were discovered, including tunable parameters.  An intense collaborative investigation between the engineering teams identified the root cause to a CPU bound networking thread which was being starved of CPU cycles under extreme load.  Workarounds were identified.  Modifications have been put back into 11gR2 to alleviate the issue and a development project already underway within Solaris has been sped up to provide the final resolution on the Solaris side.  The fixed SPARC SuperCluster configuration greatly aided issue reproduction and dramatically sped up root cause analysis, allowing the correct workarounds and fixes to be identified, prioritized, and implemented.  The customer is now extremely happy with performance and robustness.  Since the configuration is common to other customers, the lessons learned are being proactively rolled out to other customers and incorporated into the installation procedures for future customers.  This effectively acts as a turbo-boost to performance and reliability for all SPARC SuperCluster customers.  If this had occurred in a "home grown" system of this complexity, I expect it would have taken at least 6 months to get to the bottom of the issue.  But because it was an Engineered System, known, understood, and qualified by both the Solaris and Database teams, we were able to collaborate closely to identify cause and effect and expedite a solution for the customer.  That is a key advantage of Engineered Systems which should not be underestimated.  Indeed, the initial issue mitigation on the Database side followed by final fix on the Solaris side, highlights the high degree of collaboration and excellent teamwork between the Oracle engineering teams.  It's a compelling advantage of the integrated Oracle Red Stack in general and Engineered Systems in particular.

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  • #OOW 2012 : IaaS, Private Cloud, Multitenant Database, and X3H2M2

    - by Eric Bezille
    The title of this post is a summary of the 4 announcements made by Larry Ellison today, during the opening session of Oracle Open World 2012... To know what's behind X3H2M2, you will have to wait a little, as I will go in order, beginning with the IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service - announcement. Oracle IaaS goes Public... and Private... Starting in 2004 with Fusion development, Oracle Cloud was launch last year to provide not only SaaS Application, based on standard development, but also the underlying PaaS, required to build the specifics, and required interconnections between applications, in and outside of the Cloud. Still, to cover the end-to-end Cloud  Services spectrum, we had to provide an Infrastructure as a Service, leveraging our Servers, Storage, OS, and Virtualization Technologies, all "Engineered Together". This Cloud Infrastructure, was already available for our customers to build rapidly their own Private Cloud either on SPARC/Solaris or x86/Linux... The second announcement made today bring that proposition a big step further : for cautious customers (like Banks, or sensible industries) who would like to benefits from the Cloud value of "as a Service", but don't want their Data out in the Cloud... We propose to them to operate the same systems, Exadata, Exalogic & SuperCluster, that are providing our Public Cloud Infrastructure, behind their firewall, in a Private Cloud model. Oracle 12c Multitenant Database This is also a major announcement made today, on what's coming with Oracle Database 12c : the ability to consolidate multiple databases with no extra additional  cost especially in terms of memory needed on the server node, which is often THE consolidation limiting factor. The principle could be compare to Solaris Zones, where, you will have a Database Container, who is "owning" the memory and Database background processes, and "Pluggable" Database in this Database Container. This particular feature is a strong compelling event to evaluate rapidly Oracle Database 12c once it will be available, as this is major step forward into true Database consolidation with Multitenancy on a shared (optimized) infrastructure. X3H2M2, enabling the new Exadata X3 in-Memory Database Here we are :  X3H2M2 stands for X3 (the new version of Exadata announced also today) Heuristic Hierarchical Mass Memory, providing the capability to keep most if not all the Data in the memory cache hierarchy. Of course, this is the major software enhancement of the new X3 Exadata machine, but as this is a software, our current customers would be able to benefit from it on their existing systems by upgrading to the new release. But that' not the only thing that we did with X3, at the same time we have upgraded everything : the CPUs, adding more cores per server node (16 vs. 12, with the arrival of Intel E5 / Sandy Bridge), the memory with 512GB memory as well per node,  and the new Flash Fire card, bringing now up to 22 TB of Flash cache. All of this 4TB of RAM + 22TB of Flash being use cleverly not only for read but also for write by the X3H2M2 algorithm... making a very big difference compare to traditional storage flash extension. But what does those extra performances brings to you on an already very efficient system: double your performances compare to the fastest storage array on the market today (including flash) and divide you storage price x10 at the same time... Something to consider closely this days... Especially that we also announced the availability of a new Exadata X3-2 8th rack : a good starting point. As you have seen a major opening for this year again with true innovation. But that was not the only thing that we saw today, as before Larry's talk, Fujitsu did introduce more in deep the up coming new SPARC processor, that they are co-developing with us. And as such Andrew Mendelsohn - Senior Vice President Database Server Technologies came on stage to explain that the next step after I/O optimization for Database with Exadata, was to accelerate the Database at execution level by bringing functions in the SPARC processor silicium. All in all, to process more and more Data... The big theme of the day... and of the Oracle User Groups Conferences that were also happening today and where I had the opportunity to attend some interesting sessions on practical use cases of Big Data one in Finances and Fraud profiling and the other one on practical deployment of Oracle Exalytics for Data Analytics. In conclusion, one picture to try to size Oracle Open World ... and you can understand why, with such a rich content... and this only the first day !

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  • Windows Phone 8 Announcement

    - by Tim Murphy
    As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

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