Search Results

Search found 20433 results on 818 pages for 'marketing always wins'.

Page 120/818 | < Previous Page | 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127  | Next Page >

  • Why do we need private variables?

    - by rak
    Why do we need private variables in classes in the context of programming? Every book on programming I've read says this is a private variable, this is how you define it but stops there. The wording of these explanations always seemed to me like we really have a crisis of trust in our profession. The explanations always sounded like other programmers are out to mess up our code. Yet, there are many programming languages that do not have private variables. What do private variables help prevent? How do you decide if a particular of properties should be private or not? If by default every field SHOULD be private then why are there public data members in a class? Under what circumstances should a variable be made public?

    Read the article

  • Is there ever a time when creating a level/world editor with your game is a bad idea?

    - by Borgel
    I have created a few smaller games on my own in the past. My approach has always been to create a completed editor where it has all the functionality needed to save a level file and load it into the game. This has always made most sense to me but I keep hearing from people that a game is never fully done in the editor. I have never worked in a game development team and so I don't have first hand experience, but not adding everything needed to make the game to the editor just seams wrong. Am I missing something? Is there ever a reason not to add a tool to the editor?

    Read the article

  • Do ALL your variables need to be declared private?

    - by shovonr
    I know that it's best practice to stay safe, and that we should always prevent others from directly accessing a class' properties. I hear this all the time from university professors, and I also see this all the time in a lot of source code released on the App Hub. In fact, professors say that they will actually take marks off for every variable that gets declared public. Now, this leaves me always declaring variables as private. No matter what. Even if each of these variables were to have both a getter and a setter. But here's the problem: it's tedious work. I tend to quickly loose interest in a project every time I need to have a variable in a class that could have simply been declared public instead of private with a getter and a setter. So my question is, do I really need to declare all my variables private? Or could I declare some variables public whenever they require both a getter and a setter?

    Read the article

  • Is it better to use preprocessor directive or if(constant) statement?

    - by MByD
    Let's say we have a codebase that is used for many different costumer, and we have some code in it that relevant only for costumers of type X. Is it better to use preprocessor directives to include this code only in costumer of type X, or to use if statement, to be more clear: // some code #if TYPE_X_COSTUMER = 1 // do some things #endif // rest of the code or if(TYPE_X_COSTUMER) { // do some things } The arguments I can think about are: Preprocessor directive results in smaller code footprint and less branches (on non-optimizing compilers) If statements results with code that always compiles, e.g. if someone will make a mistake that will harm the irrelevant code for the project he works on, the error will still appear, and he will not corrupt the code base. Otherwise he will not be aware of the corruption. I was always been told to prefer the usage of the processor over the usage of the preprocessor (If this is an argument at all...) What is preferable - when talking about a code base for many different costumers?

    Read the article

  • How to name a clamp function that only clamps from one side?

    - by dog_funtom
    Clamp() is a function that ensures that provided variable is in provided range. You can find such function in .NET, in Unity, and probably anywhere. While it is useful, I often need to clamp my value from one side only. For example, to ensure that float is always non-negative or always positive (like radius value from inspector). I used names ClampFromAbove() and ClampFromBelow(), but I wonder if such names is good or even grammatically valid in programming-English. Also, it probably make sense to distinguish non-negative case too. How'd you name such function? Something like EnsureNonNegative()? My intention is creating pair of extension methods and use them like this: var normalizedRadius = originalRadius.ClampFromBelow(0.0001); var distance = someVector.Magnitude.ClampFromAbove(maxDistance);

    Read the article

  • How to install nvidia optimus driver on ubuntu 12.10?

    - by Adam
    I have followed http://ubuntuportal.com/2012/01/bumblebee-3-0-tumblewed-nvidia-optimus-gpu-switching-for-linux-has-been-released-how-to-install-bumblebee-3-0-on-ubuntu.html this guide to install nvidia driver on my Dell Inspiron N5110 notebook (Intel HD Graphics 3000 + NVIDIA GeForce GT525M), but i always get some error while i want to start any program with the optirun command. Terminal says: adam@Adam-LT:~$ optirun firefox [ 1482.559417] [ERROR]Cannot access secondary GPU - error: Could not load GPU driver [ 1482.559517] [ERROR]Aborting because fallback start is disabled. My laptop cooler always cools the laptop, which means that nvidia card is consuming power in the background. (Terminal sometimes says something daemon-server is not running.) Can you give me some solution for this?

    Read the article

  • can't chmod on external hard disk?

    - by G. He
    I have an USB3.0 external hard disk, partitioned to 3 NTFS partitions. When I plug the hard disk in, the 3 partitions automatically mounted under /media. So far so good. I can read and write to files, or mkdir, etc on these partitions. But I can't do chmod/chown on any of the files/directories on these partitions. The owner:group always myself, and the mode are always 700 for directories and 600 for files. I have another partition on internal harddisk also mounted. That partition works fine. I looked the output of mount command, the only difference between mount options is that there is one extra 'default_permissions' on the external hard disks. Anyway I can set the owner:group and mode on these files and directories.

    Read the article

  • How to Use Text in Unity3d

    - by ZiG-ZaG
    How Can i Create Text in Unity3D? I Use "3D Text" But Its Always on Top Of Everything! Can You Suggest Anything? I creating a 2D Game So its not Necessarily a 3D Text.. Edit: Because I Building a 2D Game My Scene is Full of Planes in Front of Camera And I want My Text to be Over One of the Planes and when plane is moving My Text appears behind it. But When I Use "3D Text" Its Always In Front of Everything. Sorry for My Bad English...

    Read the article

  • If I have true i/o false or vice versa, is it an OBOE?

    - by Protector one
    I often make the mistake of inverting my truth values in my code (e.g. in my if clauses). It gives me the same feeling as when making an OBOE (Off By One Error), even though it's technically not. Would you call it an OBOE, or better yet, is there a specific term for "off by truth value"-errors? My reasoning is that all possible values of a boolean are true and false. In other words, the possible values are contained in the array: [true, false]. If you access this array by index, you'll always be off by one… when selecting the wrong one. This becomes especially obvious when you calculate your index as: index = someInt % 2. Now I understand that this usually not the case, but in my mind, it always feels like this. Almost got it, just off by one…

    Read the article

  • When should I clear an auxilliary render target?

    - by Raptormeat
    I'm using a few different render targets in my game in addition to the back buffer. These other render targets are only used in a few places, for specific tasks. I'm wondering when I should be clearing them. Right now I clear all of my render targets at the beginning of the frame, and it seems like I'm waiting for all the textures to clear before the rest of the drawing gets underway. Would it be more efficient to clear these textures later in the frame, when they aren't being used? Is there any hope of the GPU sort of clearing them "on the side" while unrelated rendering is happening? Or are these tasks always sequential and will I always need to wait for clearing?

    Read the article

  • Make the player run onto stairs smoothly

    - by misiMe
    I have a 2D Platform game, where the player Always runs to the right, but the terrain isn't Always horizontal. Example: I implemented a bounding-box collision system that just checks for intersections with player box and the other blocks, to stop player from running if you encounter a big block, so that you have to jump, but when I put stairs, I want him to run smoothly just like he is on the horizontal ground. With the collision system you have to jump the stairs in order to pass them! I thought about generating a line between the edges of the stairs, and imposing the player movement on that line... What do you think? Is there something more clever to do?

    Read the article

  • Is `catch(...) { throw; }` a bad practice?

    - by ereOn
    While I agree that catching ... without rethrowing is indeed wrong, I however believe that using constructs like this: try { // Stuff } catch (...) { // Some cleanup throw; } Is acceptable in cases where RAII is not applicable. (Please, don't ask... not everybody in my company likes object-oriented programming and RAII is often seen as "useless school stuff"...) My coworkers says that you should always know what exceptions are to be thrown and that you can always use constructs like: try { // Stuff } catch (exception_type1&) { // Some cleanup throw; } catch (exception_type2&) { // Some cleanup throw; } catch (exception_type3&) { // Some cleanup throw; } Is there a well admited good practice regarding these situations?

    Read the article

  • Does GPG allow encryption of multiple files using a wild card like *filename*? [on hold]

    - by user47427
    I am trying to automate the encryption of files on a windows server using a .bat file I created. As long as the filename is hardcoded in the .bat file this works. I want to encrypt numerous files using this .bat file but files are not encrypted when I use wildcards in the filename like filename.txt. I've been trying various version of the following command at the DOS prompt to no avail. All attempts have returned syntax for usage. C:\gpg -v --batch -- yes --always-trust -e -r <encryption-key> *part-of-the-file-name* usage: gpg [options] --encrypt [filename] I received the same usage message with this command: C:\gpg -v --batch -- yes --always-trust -e -r --encrypt part-of-the-file-name I tried without the -v and some of the other options and I still received the same message. I have spent hours today searching the internet for an answer and I can't find one anywhere? Please help.

    Read the article

  • Laptop Hibernates after adapter is unplugged

    - by SpyrosR
    Hello i am experiencing a strange problem under Ubuntu 12.04. If I unplug the charger while my laptop is on,i don't see any messages but my laptop goes straight into a suspend or hibernate mode and it's a real pain to get it stable again afterwards. It always suspends (or hibernates) It always takes 2 attempts to restart it (press power button, it starts and it hibernates again, press power button and it starts and stays on) It sometimes has an effect on the wireless which doesn't come back clean and i either have to switch the wireless on and off a couple of times. I sometimes have to restart the laptop totally Is anyone else experiencing the same issues and if yes,is there any solution? Thank you in advance.

    Read the article

  • Edit of self referencing HABTM in cakephp works, sometimes

    - by Odegard
    I'm using a self referencing HABTM model with Participants. You sign up for an event and when you log in to your reservation/profile you see a list of other participants and you can choose to add yourself and others into various groups; share hotel room, share transportation from airport etc. What I've managed so far: 1) In my profile I see the list of all other participants with checkboxes. Great so far. 2) Adding another participant works fine. Next time I edit, the participant I added is shown as checked. 3) Removing another participant works fine too as long as you still have checked participants before you submit! Again, with words: There are 3 participants. I'm logged in as one of them, and I see the 2 other people on the participants list. I choose to check both of them. This works fine (always). Later I choose to remove one of them (by unchecking the checkbox and hitting submit). This also works fine (always). If I want to remove the last checkbox... nothing is updated (always!). What's curious is that I can add and remove any odd combination of participants and it will always work UNLESS I choose to remove every participants in one go (removing a one and only participant is a special case of "remove all checked participants"). As far as I know, HABTMs work by first deleting all relations, then re-saving them. I can see that in my tables when I remove, add, remove, add the same participant over and over again - the id on the HABTM table is always increasing. When I deselect all participants at once, however, the relations are not updated. The ids stay the same, so it's like the save never happened. This behaviour is so specific and peculiar, I have a feeling I'm missing something obvious here. Anyway, here's the relevant code: Model class Participant extends AppModel { var $hasAndBelongsToMany = array( 'buddy' = array( 'className' = 'Participant', 'joinTable' = 'participants_participants', 'foreignKey' = 'participant_id', 'associationForeignKey' = 'buddy_id', 'unique' = true, ) ); Controller function edit($id = null) { if (!$id && empty($this-data)) { $this-Session-setFlash(__('Invalid Participant', true)); $this-redirect(array('action'='index')); } if (!empty($this-data)) { if ($this-Participant-saveAll($this-data)) { $this-Session-setFlash(__('The Participant has been saved', true)); $this-redirect(array('action'='index')); } else { $this-Session-setFlash(__('The Participant could not be saved. Please, try again.', true)); } } if (empty($this-data)) { $this-data = $this-Participant-read(null, $id); } // Fetching all participants except yourself $allParticipants = $this-Participant-find('list', array('conditions' = array('participant.id ' = $id))); // Fetching every participant that has added you to their list $allBuddies = $this-Participant-ParticipantsParticipant-find('list', array( 'conditions' = array('buddy_id' = $id), 'fields' = 'ParticipantsParticipant.participant_id', 'order' = 'ParticipantsParticipant.participant_id ASC' )); $this-set(compact('allParticipants','allBuddies')); } View echo $form-create('Participant'); echo $associations-habtmCheckBoxes($allParticipants, $this-data['buddy'], 'buddy', 'div', '\'border: 1px solid #000;\'', '\'border: 1px solid #000;\''); echo $form-end('Submit'); I'm using a slightly modified helper, habtmCheckBoxes, found here: http://cakeforge.org/snippet/detail.php?type=snippet&id=190 It works like this: function habtmCheckBoxes($rows=array(), $selectedArr=array(), $modelName, $wrapTag='p', $checkedDiv, $uncheckedDiv) {}

    Read the article

  • I need some help with either my SQL or my PHP I do not know which...

    - by sico87
    Hello I am creating a CMS and some of the functionality of it that the images that are within the content are managable. I currently trying to display a table that shows the the content title and then the associated images, ideally I would like a layout similar to this, Content Title Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Content Title 2 Image 1 Image 2 Content Title 3 Image 1 The SQL the returns the data is actually formed using Codeigniters Active Record class, function getAllContentImages() { $this->db->select('*'); $this->db->from('contentImagesTable'); $this->db->join('contentTable', 'contentTable.contentId = contentImagesTable.contentId'); $this->db->join('categoryTable', 'categoryTable.categoryId = contentTable.categoryId'); $query = $this->db->get(); return $query->result_array(); } The array that is returned is looks like this, I have cut the size down for readability. Array ( [0] => Array ( [contentImageId] => 25 [contentImageName] => green.png [contentImageType] => .png [contentImagePath] => /var/www/bangmarketing.bang/media/uploads/contentImages/2/green.png [isHeadlineImage] => 1 [contentImageDateUploaded] => 1265222654 [contentId] => 2 [dashboardUserId] => 0 [contentTitle] => sadsadsadassss [contentAbstract] => <p>Pllllleeeeeeeaaaaasssssseeeeee Work</p> [contentBody] => <p>Please work :-( please</p> [contentOnline] => 0 [contentAllowComments] => 0 [contentDateCreated] => 1265124038 [categoryId] => 1 [categoryTitle] => blogsss [categoryAbstract] => <p>asdsdsadasdsadfdsgdgdsgdsgssssssssssss</p> [categorySlug] => blog [categoryIsSpecial] => 0 [categoryOnline] => 1 [categoryDateCreated] => 1266588327 ) [1] => Array ( [contentImageId] => 28 [contentImageName] => yellow.png [contentImageType] => .png [contentImagePath] => /var/www/bangmarketing.bang/media/uploads/contentImages/7/yellow.png [isHeadlineImage] => 1 [contentImageDateUploaded] => 1265388055 [contentId] => 7 [dashboardUserId] => 0 [contentTitle] => Another Blog [contentAbstract] => <p>This is another blog and it is shit becuase this does not work</p> [contentBody] => <p>ioasfihfududfhdufhuishdfiudshfiudhsfiuhdsiufhusdhfuids</p> [contentOnline] => 1 [contentAllowComments] => 0 [contentDateCreated] => 1265388034 [categoryId] => 1 [categoryTitle] => blogsss [categoryAbstract] => <p>asdsdsadasdsadfdsgdgdsgdsgssssssssssss</p> [categorySlug] => blog [categoryIsSpecial] => 0 [categoryOnline] => 1 [categoryDateCreated] => 1266588327 ) [2] => Array ( [contentImageId] => 33 [contentImageName] => portaski.jpg [contentImageType] => .jpg [contentImagePath] => /var/www/bangmarketing.bang/media/uploads/contentImages/11/portaski.jpg [isHeadlineImage] => 1 [contentImageDateUploaded] => 1265714175 [contentId] => 11 [dashboardUserId] => 0 [contentTitle] => Portaski - new product and brand launch by Bang [contentAbstract] => <p>Bang's experience in new product development has helped launch PortaSki &ndash; the pocket-sized device which is set to revolutionise skiing.</p> [contentBody] => <p>After developing Portaski's brand identity and positioning, Bang re-designed the product and its packaging ahead of launch in late 2008.</p> <p>A media and PR strategy was devised and implemented using Bang's close relationship with two of the UK's most influential organisations in the Advertising and Media Buying industries. On-line advertising was supported with editorial reviews in the UK's leading broadsheets and tabloids, which combined with pin-point HTML direct mail to drive consumers to the new e-commerce site.</p> <p>Impressive month-on-month growth has been achieved since launch, and the direct marketing activity resulted in an unprecedented 2.71% of targets going on-line to purchase a PortaSki.</p> <p>For further information visit <a href="http://www.portaski.com" target="_blank">www.portaski.com</a></p> [contentOnline] => 1 [contentAllowComments] => 0 [contentDateCreated] => 1265718184 [categoryId] => 1 [categoryTitle] => blogsss [categoryAbstract] => <p>asdsdsadasdsadfdsgdgdsgdsgssssssssssss</p> [categorySlug] => blog [categoryIsSpecial] => 0 [categoryOnline] => 1 [categoryDateCreated] => 1266588327 ) [3] => Array ( [contentImageId] => 26 [contentImageName] => housingplus.jpg [contentImageType] => .jpg [contentImagePath] => /var/www/bangmarketing.bang/media/uploads/contentImages/5/housingplus.jpg [isHeadlineImage] => 1 [contentImageDateUploaded] => 1265284989 [contentId] => 5 [dashboardUserId] => 0 [contentTitle] => Bang launches Housing Plus [contentAbstract] => <p>Bang has launched Housing Plus, the new brand for the Central Borders Housing Group, along with new sub-brands Property Care and SSHA.</p> [contentBody] => <p>The Midlands based Group, with turnover in excess of &pound;21M, appointed Bang in 2008 following an open pitch of over 40 agencies. Bang's work began with an extensive marketing research strategy that challenged the Group's former positioning and brand structure.</p> <p>The research unveiled that the housing sector demanded a values-led Group. This led Bang to develop the brave &lsquo;Together for the Right Reasons' positioning for Housing Plus.</p> <p>Chris Garratt, Marketing Director at Bang explained "The housing sector has witnessed wholesale change in recent years. Much to tenant's dismay, many associations and Groups appear to be losing touch with their roots, we wanted to develop a Group for associations who place principles at the heart of their corporate strategy".</p> <p>The repositioned sub-brands also play an important role in the Group's revised brand by highlighting Housing Plus' willingness to embrace and nurture individual identities. Chris Garratt continued "By adopting a &lsquo;house of brands' hierarchy from the outset, Housing Plus has sent out a strong message to prospective strategic partners".</p> <p>Bang handled all aspects of work for the redevelopment of the three brands, including research, brand creation, naming, positioning, internal branding and communications, advertising, the brand launches, building the brands' on-line presence and the creation of a powerful brand film &ndash; which is already attracting significant interest from across the sector.</p> [contentOnline] => 1 [contentAllowComments] => 0 [contentDateCreated] => 1265285940 [categoryId] => 8 [categoryTitle] => News [categoryAbstract] => <p>The world at Bang Marketing moves fast, keep up to date w [categorySlug] => news [categoryIsSpecial] => 0 [categoryOnline] => 1 [categoryDateCreated] => 1265283717 ) I need a way that I can get all the content images associated with the same content title in one group and then display under the content title. Can anyone help?

    Read the article

  • A New Threat To Web Applications: Connection String Parameter Pollution (CSPP)

    - by eric.maurice
    Hi, this is Shaomin Wang. I am a security analyst in Oracle's Security Alerts Group. My primary responsibility is to evaluate the security vulnerabilities reported externally by security researchers on Oracle Fusion Middleware and to ensure timely resolution through the Critical Patch Update. Today, I am going to talk about a serious type of attack: Connection String Parameter Pollution (CSPP). Earlier this year, at the Black Hat DC 2010 Conference, two Spanish security researchers, Jose Palazon and Chema Alonso, unveiled a new class of security vulnerabilities, which target insecure dynamic connections between web applications and databases. The attack called Connection String Parameter Pollution (CSPP) exploits specifically the semicolon delimited database connection strings that are constructed dynamically based on the user inputs from web applications. CSPP, if carried out successfully, can be used to steal user identities and hijack web credentials. CSPP is a high risk attack because of the relative ease with which it can be carried out (low access complexity) and the potential results it can have (high impact). In today's blog, we are going to first look at what connection strings are and then review the different ways connection string injections can be leveraged by malicious hackers. We will then discuss how CSPP differs from traditional connection string injection, and the measures organizations can take to prevent this kind of attacks. In web applications, a connection string is a set of values that specifies information to connect to backend data repositories, in most cases, databases. The connection string is passed to a provider or driver to initiate a connection. Vendors or manufacturers write their own providers for different databases. Since there are many different providers and each provider has multiple ways to make a connection, there are many different ways to write a connection string. Here are some examples of connection strings from Oracle Data Provider for .Net/ODP.Net: Oracle Data Provider for .Net / ODP.Net; Manufacturer: Oracle; Type: .NET Framework Class Library: - Using TNS Data Source = orcl; User ID = myUsername; Password = myPassword; - Using integrated security Data Source = orcl; Integrated Security = SSPI; - Using the Easy Connect Naming Method Data Source = username/password@//myserver:1521/my.server.com - Specifying Pooling parameters Data Source=myOracleDB; User Id=myUsername; Password=myPassword; Min Pool Size=10; Connection Lifetime=120; Connection Timeout=60; Incr Pool Size=5; Decr Pool Size=2; There are many variations of the connection strings, but the majority of connection strings are key value pairs delimited by semicolons. Attacks on connection strings are not new (see for example, this SANS White Paper on Securing SQL Connection String). Connection strings are vulnerable to injection attacks when dynamic string concatenation is used to build connection strings based on user input. When the user input is not validated or filtered, and malicious text or characters are not properly escaped, an attacker can potentially access sensitive data or resources. For a number of years now, vendors, including Oracle, have created connection string builder class tools to help developers generate valid connection strings and potentially prevent this kind of vulnerability. Unfortunately, not all application developers use these utilities because they are not aware of the danger posed by this kind of attacks. So how are Connection String parameter Pollution (CSPP) attacks different from traditional Connection String Injection attacks? First, let's look at what parameter pollution attacks are. Parameter pollution is a technique, which typically involves appending repeating parameters to the request strings to attack the receiving end. Much of the public attention around parameter pollution was initiated as a result of a presentation on HTTP Parameter Pollution attacks by Stefano Di Paola and Luca Carettoni delivered at the 2009 Appsec OWASP Conference in Poland. In HTTP Parameter Pollution attacks, an attacker submits additional parameters in HTTP GET/POST to a web application, and if these parameters have the same name as an existing parameter, the web application may react in different ways depends on how the web application and web server deal with multiple parameters with the same name. When applied to connections strings, the rule for the majority of database providers is the "last one wins" algorithm. If a KEYWORD=VALUE pair occurs more than once in the connection string, the value associated with the LAST occurrence is used. This opens the door to some serious attacks. By way of example, in a web application, a user enters username and password; a subsequent connection string is generated to connect to the back end database. Data Source = myDataSource; Initial Catalog = db; Integrated Security = no; User ID = myUsername; Password = XXX; In the password field, if the attacker enters "xxx; Integrated Security = true", the connection string becomes, Data Source = myDataSource; Initial Catalog = db; Integrated Security = no; User ID = myUsername; Password = XXX; Intergrated Security = true; Under the "last one wins" principle, the web application will then try to connect to the database using the operating system account under which the application is running to bypass normal authentication. CSPP poses serious risks for unprepared organizations. It can be particularly dangerous if an Enterprise Systems Management web front-end is compromised, because attackers can then gain access to control panels to configure databases, systems accounts, etc. Fortunately, organizations can take steps to prevent this kind of attacks. CSPP falls into the Injection category of attacks like Cross Site Scripting or SQL Injection, which are made possible when inputs from users are not properly escaped or sanitized. Escaping is a technique used to ensure that characters (mostly from user inputs) are treated as data, not as characters, that is relevant to the interpreter's parser. Software developers need to become aware of the danger of these attacks and learn about the defenses mechanism they need to introduce in their code. As well, software vendors need to provide templates or classes to facilitate coding and eliminate developers' guesswork for protecting against such vulnerabilities. Oracle has introduced the OracleConnectionStringBuilder class in Oracle Data Provider for .NET. Using this class, developers can employ a configuration file to provide the connection string and/or dynamically set the values through key/value pairs. It makes creating connection strings less error-prone and easier to manager, and ultimately using the OracleConnectionStringBuilder class provides better security against injection into connection strings. For More Information: - The OracleConnectionStringBuilder is located at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/win.111/b28375/OracleConnectionStringBuilderClass.htm - Oracle has developed a publicly available course on preventing SQL Injections. The Server Technologies Curriculum course "Defending Against SQL Injection Attacks!" is located at http://st-curriculum.oracle.com/tutorial/SQLInjection/index.htm - The OWASP web site also provides a number of useful resources. It is located at http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page

    Read the article

  • Columnstore Case Study #2: Columnstore faster than SSAS Cube at DevCon Security

    - by aspiringgeek
    Preamble This is the second in a series of posts documenting big wins encountered using columnstore indexes in SQL Server 2012 & 2014.  Many of these can be found in my big deck along with details such as internals, best practices, caveats, etc.  The purpose of sharing the case studies in this context is to provide an easy-to-consume quick-reference alternative. See also Columnstore Case Study #1: MSIT SONAR Aggregations Why Columnstore? As stated previously, If we’re looking for a subset of columns from one or a few rows, given the right indexes, SQL Server can do a superlative job of providing an answer. If we’re asking a question which by design needs to hit lots of rows—DW, reporting, aggregations, grouping, scans, etc., SQL Server has never had a good mechanism—until columnstore. Columnstore indexes were introduced in SQL Server 2012. However, they're still largely unknown. Some adoption blockers existed; yet columnstore was nonetheless a game changer for many apps.  In SQL Server 2014, potential blockers have been largely removed & they're going to profoundly change the way we interact with our data.  The purpose of this series is to share the performance benefits of columnstore & documenting columnstore is a compelling reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2014. The Customer DevCon Security provides home & business security services & has been in business for 135 years. I met DevCon personnel while speaking to the Utah County SQL User Group on 20 February 2012. (Thanks to TJ Belt (b|@tjaybelt) & Ben Miller (b|@DBADuck) for the invitation which serendipitously coincided with the height of ski season.) The App: DevCon Security Reporting: Optimized & Ad Hoc Queries DevCon users interrogate a SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services cube via SSRS. In addition, the SQL Server 2012 relational back end is the target of ad hoc queries; this DW back end is refreshed nightly during a brief maintenance window via conventional table partition switching. SSRS, SSAS, & MDX Conventional relational structures were unable to provide adequate performance for user interaction for the SSRS reports. An SSAS solution was implemented requiring personnel to ramp up technically, including learning enough MDX to satisfy requirements. Ad Hoc Queries Even though the fact table is relatively small—only 22 million rows & 33GB—the table was a typical DW table in terms of its width: 137 columns, any of which could be the target of ad hoc interrogation. As is common in DW reporting scenarios such as this, it is often nearly to optimize for such queries using conventional indexing. DevCon DBAs & developers attended PASS 2012 & were introduced to the marvels of columnstore in a session presented by Klaus Aschenbrenner (b|@Aschenbrenner) The Details Classic vs. columnstore before-&-after metrics are impressive. Scenario   Conventional Structures   Columnstore   Δ SSRS via SSAS 10 - 12 seconds 1 second >10x Ad Hoc 5-7 minutes (300 - 420 seconds) 1 - 2 seconds >100x Here are two charts characterizing this data graphically.  The first is a linear representation of Report Duration (in seconds) for Conventional Structures vs. Columnstore Indexes.  As is so often the case when we chart such significant deltas, the linear scale doesn’t expose some the dramatically improved values corresponding to the columnstore metrics.  Just to make it fair here’s the same data represented logarithmically; yet even here the values corresponding to 1 –2 seconds aren’t visible.  The Wins Performance: Even prior to columnstore implementation, at 10 - 12 seconds canned report performance against the SSAS cube was tolerable. Yet the 1 second performance afterward is clearly better. As significant as that is, imagine the user experience re: ad hoc interrogation. The difference between several minutes vs. one or two seconds is a game changer, literally changing the way users interact with their data—no mental context switching, no wondering when the results will appear, no preoccupation with the spinning mind-numbing hurry-up-&-wait indicators.  As we’ve commonly found elsewhere, columnstore indexes here provided performance improvements of one, two, or more orders of magnitude. Simplified Infrastructure: Because in this case a nonclustered columnstore index on a conventional DW table was faster than an Analysis Services cube, the entire SSAS infrastructure was rendered superfluous & was retired. PASS Rocks: Once again, the value of attending PASS is proven out. The trip to Charlotte combined with eager & enquiring minds let directly to this success story. Find out more about the next PASS Summit here, hosted this year in Seattle on November 4 - 7, 2014. DevCon BI Team Lead Nathan Allan provided this unsolicited feedback: “What we found was pretty awesome. It has been a game changer for us in terms of the flexibility we can offer people that would like to get to the data in different ways.” Summary For DW, reports, & other BI workloads, columnstore often provides significant performance enhancements relative to conventional indexing.  I have documented here, the second in a series of reports on columnstore implementations, results from DevCon Security, a live customer production app for which performance increased by factors of from 10x to 100x for all report queries, including canned queries as well as reducing time for results for ad hoc queries from 5 - 7 minutes to 1 - 2 seconds. As a result of columnstore performance, the customer retired their SSAS infrastructure. I invite you to consider leveraging columnstore in your own environment. Let me know if you have any questions.

    Read the article

  • Ensuring a repeatable directory ordering in linux

    - by Paul Biggar
    I run a hosted continuous integration company, and we run our customers' code on Linux. Each time we run the code, we run it in a separate virtual machine. A frequent problem that arises is that a customer's tests will sometimes fail because of the directory ordering of their code checked out on the VM. Let me go into more detail. On OSX, the HFS+ file system ensures that directories are always traversed in the same order. Programmers who use OSX assume that if it works on their machine, it must work everywhere. But it often doesn't work on Linux, because linux file systems do not offer ordering guarantees when traversing directories. As an example, consider there are 2 files, a.rb, b.rb. a.rb defines MyObject, and b.rb uses MyObject. If a.rb is loaded first, everything will work. If b.rb is loaded first, it will try to access an undefined variable MyObject, and fail. But worse than this, is that it doesn't always just fail. Because the file system ordering on Linux is not ordered, it will be a different order on different machines. This is worse because sometimes the tests pass, and sometimes they fail. This is the worst possible result. So my question is, is there a way to make file system ordering repeatable. Some flag to ext4 perhaps, that says it will always traverse directories in some order? Or maybe a different file system that has this guarantee?

    Read the article

  • Cannot set up dual monitors correctly in Fedora15 with KDE.

    - by adivasile
    I have 2 monitors: 24" LCD connected via DVI(primary) 19" LCD connected via VGA(secondary) Everytime Fedora starts the second display is always set to clone the first one and they both run at 1280x1024 and I always have to disable the 19" monitor, in order for the bigger one to run at 1920x1080. I want to set them up so that my secondary monitor extends the primary one.The problem is that no matter what kind of configuration I choose it has no effect.My secondary monitor remains disabled. I've tried using both the Display manager from KDE and the ATI Control Panel and the behaviour is always the same.The moment I click apply, the screen flickers and nothing changes. I've succesfully used the extended setup in Fedora15 with Gnome3. I have a RadeonHD 4300 series videocard and I'm using the drivers downloaded from the AMD site. This is the output of xrandr -q : Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 1920 x 1920 VGA-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1280x960 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1024x768 75.0 70.1 66.0 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2 640x480 75.0 72.8 66.7 59.9 720x400 70.1 DVI-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm 1920x1080 60.0*+ 60.0 1680x1050 59.9 1600x900 60.0 1280x1024 75.0 60.0 1280x960 60.0 1152x864 75.0 1280x720 60.0 1152x720 60.0 1024x768 75.0 60.0 832x624 74.6 800x600 75.0 60.3 640x480 75.0 59.9 720x400 70.1 Later edit: The problem seems to come from the ATI drivers.I managed to set up the monitors like I wanted after I uninstalled the drivers. Unfortunately I'm working on an OpenCL project so I had to reinstall them.The moment I did that, all my previous settings were forgotten and I was back to square one.

    Read the article

  • How do you automatically close 3rd party applications when LiberKey is shut down?

    - by NoCatharsis
    Within LiberKey, I have added my own portable applications that are not included within the LiberKey library. When you go into the Properties menu for the app in the LiberKey UI, the Advanced tab has an option for Autoexecute. This dropdown menu seems to have no visible effect, at least on my current installation. I found that I could right click within the primary GUI and select "Add software group", add all 3rd party applications, then go to the Advanced tab within THAT Properties screen and select Autoexecute - "Always on startup". This solved the problem for starting the apps when LiberKey starts. However, now I'm having the same issue when closing out LiberKey. I have created a new 3rd party app that calls the same .exe, but sends the Parameter "/close". I then went to the Advanced tab and selected Autoexecute - "Always on shutdown". Seems pretty logical right? But the apps will not close on LiberKey shutdown. I cannot handle the app close-outs in the same way with a software group, as I did with the startup issue because the Autoexecute drop-down does not have an "Always on shutdown" option. Unfortunately, many of the Q&A forums on liberkey.com are in French and I took Spanish in high school. Otherwise I've not been able to find a workable answer. Any suggestions?

    Read the article

  • Unexplained cache RAM drops on Linux machine

    - by FunkyChicken
    I run a CentOS 5.7 64 machine with 24gb ram and running kernel 2.6.18-274.12.1.el5. This machine runs only Nginx, php-fpm and Xcache as extra applications. Since about 3 weeks my memory behavior on this machine has changed and I cannot explain why. There are no crons running which flush anything like this. There are also no large numbers of files being deleted/changed during these drops. The 'cached' memory gets dropped about every few hours, but it's never a set gap between flushes, this indicates to me that some bottleneck gets reached instead. It also always seems to be when total memory usages gets to about 18GB, but again, not always exactly 18GB. This is a graph of my memory usage: As you can see in the graph the 'buffers' always stay more or less the same, it is mainly the 'cache' that gets dropped. Running vmstat -m I have outputted the memory usage just before and just after a memory drop. The output is here: http://pastebin.com/diff.php?i=hJqZqztm 'old version' being before, 'new version' being after a drop. About 3 weeks ago my server crashed during a heavy DDOS attack, after I rebooted the machine this odd behavior started. I have checked a bunch of logs, restarted the machine again, and cannot find any indication what changed. During these 'cache' memory drops, my iNode usage drops at the same time. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this behavior? Clearly my RAM isn't full, so I am curious why this could be happening.

    Read the article

  • Can I use a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller but my home router for DNS?

    - by NetworkingWannabie
    Hi All Probably easiest to start with a description of my current setup, which works (oh, and this is a home setup not an office or anything): I have an ADSL modem with a static IP address (192.168.128.1), and its DHCP capability is disabled. I have a permanently powered up Windows Server 2003 machine with a fixed IP (192.168.128.2) which provides my domain controller, dhcp, and dns. The default gateway for everything is my ADSL modem everything is setup to use the WS2003 machine as the primary DNS with the ADSL modem as Secondary DNS just in case the server goes down (everything includes the server itself). Lastly, just in case it's relevant, I have my DHCP leases set to infinite (or whatever the right term is). Everything is pretty hunky dory. Except, that is, for the fact that my server is ALWAYS on, and it isn't always used, so I'm burning juice that I don't need to - my server burns around 120W which isn't immense but isn't irrelevant either, so I'd like to put it into a stand-by state when it isn't being used (the more standby the better) and then get the clients to wake it up. Am I correct in assuming that this won't work at the moment - A given client would need an IP address to wake the machine up, and it needs to machine to be awake to get an IP - catch 22? Assuming I'm correct, can I move to using my router (which is always on) for DHCP? What impact will this have on DC and DNS? Alternatively, does anyone have a better way for me to achieve this? Can I get the server to wake up when it sees clients look for a DHCP server, etc? Wow, that came out longer than expected! Thanks for your help.

    Read the article

  • Site hanging in iis7 - how do I troubleshoot?

    - by Chris Foot
    I am currently having a problem with a windows 2008 server running IIS 7. The server runs several sites but only seems to have the issue with one particular site. Every so often, the whole server slows to a crawl with nearly all requests timing out! Invariably, when we log in to take a look there is always an IIS process using up around 90% cpu. Looking into the worker processes in IIS there are usually one or two requests that have been running for a long time. They are always in the ExecuteRequestHandler state with ManagedPipeline as the module name and the current ones i'm looking at have been running for 7686248 (what units is this in, it doesn't say?). It is also not always the same page, in fact we have seen at least 3 different pages listed under url when this has happened. It seems that the only way to bring the server back to life is to kill the 90% process! The site is running under .Net 4.0 and the code on it is very similar to other sites on the server which do not have the problem! How do I start troubleshooting this?

    Read the article

  • Router not connecting to the internet

    - by Peter
    I had a weird problem this morning with my router - it's an Alice Gate VoIP 2 Plus WI-FI - not connecting to the internet after more or less 1 hour online (I'm always connected with the ethernet cable). The led status lights for Power, WI-FI, ADSL, Internet, Service should be on in order to be connected and navigate online. The problem was that the leds ADSL, Internet were off and I did not know why because it never happened before. I looked at the stats in the settings and the numbers for Bytes/Packages for both Sent/Received were there and increasing but I couldn't connect to the internet. I called tech support, they checked and told me to keep the router on for 48 hours because they were checking it. I've reset it twice before and after I called tech support and it still did not work so after about 2 hours of waiting I tried connecting using WI-FI and the leds 'magically' turned on, first the ADSL and Internet(Internet led always turns on last). At this point I'm curious what could of caused this and I'm doubting that the tech-support guys did something. What could of been the problem with the ethernet cable not connecting in the first place? It always works. What do the tech support guys normally do when they tell me to keep the router on so they can 'check it'? PS: I'm using ubuntu 32 bit

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127  | Next Page >