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• how do i see if a big JSON object contains a value?

  - by Haroldo

  I'm using PHP to json encode a massive multi-dimensional array of events, so i get something like this: var ents = {"7":{"event_id":"7","nn":"The Whisky Drifters","nn_url":"the-whisky-drifters","venue":"The Grain Barge","date_num":"2010-06-11","date_txt":"Friday 11th June","gig_club":"1","sd":"A New Acoustic String Band...","ven_id":"44","art":0},"15":{"event_id":"15","nn":"Bass Kitchen","nn_url":"bass-kitchen","venue":"Timbuk2","date_num":"2010-06-11","date_txt":"Friday 11th June","gig_club":"2","sd":"Hexadecimal \/ DJ Derek \/ Id","ven_id":"21","art":1}, the first dimension is the id, see var ents = {"7":{ So its possible to get the ids without examining the nested objects... What's the fastest, most efficent way to check if my JSON contains an id?

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• Ruby (on Rails) && PHP - two great things that work great together???

  - by pedalpete

  I've done very little work with Ruby, and have an app I've written in PHP. I would like to add some functionality which is available in open sourced Ruby code. I could either try to translate the Ruby to PHP, or try mixing the two. Though I think the mixing part would be somewhat silly. I believe my options are to either mix ruby with php, or translate the ruby code into php. Anybody have any suggestions on this, or other ideas? I am not really interested in converting my entire app into Ruby just so I can get this feature (I saw Derek Sivers post about that which convinced me. http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2007/09/7%5Freasons%5Fi%5Fswitched%5Fback%5Fto%5Fp%5F1.html)

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• Chicago SQL Saturday

  - by Johnm

  This past Saturday, April 17, 2010, I journeyed North to the great city of Chicago for some SQL Server fun, learning and fellowship. The Chicago edition of this grassroots phenomenon was the 31st scheduled SQL Saturday since the program's birth in late 2007. The Chicago SQL Saturday consisted of four tracks with eight sessions each and was a very energetic and fast paced day for the 300+/- SQL Server enthusiasts in attendance. The speaker line up included national notables such as Kevin Kline, Brent Ozar, and Brad McGehee. My hometown of Indianapolis was well represented in the speaker line up with Arie Jones, Aaron King and Derek Comingore. The day began with a very humorous keynote by Kevin Kline and Brent Ozar who emphasized the importance of community events such as SQL Saturday and the monthly user group meetings. They also brilliantly included the impact that getting involved in the SQL community through social media can have on your professional career. My approach to the day was to try to experience as much of the event as I could, so there were very few sessions that I attended for their full duration. I leaped from session to session like a bumble bee, gleaning bits of nectar from each session. Amid these leaps I took the opportunity to briefly chat with some of the in-the-queue speakers as well as other attendees that wondered the hallways. I especially enjoyed a great discussion with Devin Knight about his plans regarding the upcoming Jacksonville SQL Saturday as well as an interesting SQL interpretation of the Iron Chef, which I think would catch on like wild-fire. There were two sessions that stood out as exceptional. So much so that I could not pull myself away: Kevin Kline presented on "SQL Server Internals and Architecture". This session could have been classified as one that is intended for the beginner. Kevin even personally warned me of such as I entered the room. I am a believer in revisiting the basics regardless of the level of your mastery, so I entered into this session in that spirit. It was a very clear and precise presentation. Masterfully illustrated and demonstrated. Brad McGehee presented on "How and When to Use Indexed Views". This was a topic that I was recently exploring and was considering to for use in an integration project. Brad effectively communicated the complexity of this feature and what is involved to gain their full benefit. It was clear at the conclusion of this session that it was not the right feature for my specific needs. Overall, the event was a great success. The use of volunteers, from an attendee's perspective was masterful. The only recommendation that I would have for the next Chicago SQL Saturday would be to include more time in between sessions to permit some level of networking among the attendees, one-on-one questions for speakers and visits to the sponsor booths. Congratulations to Wendy Pastrick, Ted Krueger, and Aaron Lowe for their efforts and a very successful SQL Saturday!

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• Oracle Leader in Transportation Management

  - by John Murphy

  Oracle Named a Leader in the Transportation Management Systems Market by Leading Analyst Firm Redwood Shores, Calif. – October 15, 2012 News Facts Gartner, Inc. has placed Oracle Transportation Management in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2012 report, “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems (TMS).” (1) Gartner Magic Quadrants position vendors within a particular market segment based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. According to the report, “Multiple subcomponents make up a comprehensive TMS across planning (for example, load consolidation, routing, mode selection and carrier selection) and execution (for example, tendering loads to carriers, shipment track and trace, and freight audit and payment).” Built on modern, flexible, Internet based architecture, Oracle Transportation Management is a global transportation and logistics operations system that allows companies to minimize cost, optimize service levels, support sustainability initiatives, and create flexible business process automation within their transportation and logistics networks. With a share of 26% of worldwide software revenue for 2011, Oracle is also number one in TMS vendor share according to Gartner’s report, “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016.” (2) Supporting Quote “Shippers and logistics service providers face increasingly complex challenges as they try to reduce costs, secure capacity and improve overall freight efficiency,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president, logistics product strategy, Oracle. “We believe our high standing in both Gartner reports is a reflection of Oracle’s commitment to addressing these challenges by delivering the industry’s broadest and deepest transportation management platform. With a flexible and modern platform, we are able to support customers with both basic transportation needs, as well as those with highly complex logistics requirements.” Supporting Resources Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016 Oracle Transportation Management (1) Gartner, Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Transportation Management Systems,” by C. Dwight Klappich, August 23, 2012 (2) Gartner, Inc., “Market Trends: A Golden Opportunity in the Transportation Management System Market, 2012 – 2016,” by Chad Eschinger and C. Dwight Klappich, September 24, 2012. About Oracle Applications Over 65,000 customers worldwide rely on Oracle's complete, open and integrated enterprise applications to achieve superior results. Oracle provides a secure path for customers to benefit from the latest technology advances that improve the customer software experience and drive better business performance. Oracle Applications Unlimited is Oracle's commitment to customer choice through continuous investment and innovation in current applications offerings. Oracle's next-generation Fusion Applications build upon that commitment, and are designed to work with and evolve Oracle's Applications Unlimited offerings. Oracle's lifetime support policy helps ensure customers will continue to have a choice in upgrade paths, based on their enterprise needs. For more information on the latest Oracle Applications releases go towww.oracle.com/applications About Oracle Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit www.oracle.com. Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. ###   Karen [email protected] Simon JonesBlanc & [email protected]

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• vCenter 5.1 SSO Configuration option not available in Web Client?

  - by goober

  Problem I just finished separately installing vCenter Server 5.1. I installed the components separately but on the same machine using a local SQL 2008 R2 DB (not SQL express). Everything appears to be working correctly with the exception of SSO. It doesn't find the AD server. This is to be expected (see below) but I don't know how to fix it. Potential Leads / Steps taken During the install of SSO, I was logged on as a local administrator (waiting on central IT dept to create a service account). As a result, I received a message saying that SSO wouldn't be able to automatically locate the AD. (fair eonugh) After I read up on it a little bit, I believed I could go into the SSO Configuration option in the Web client, like so: However, what I actually see is: I also notice that the "SSO Users and Groups" entry is not there. Betting that has something to do with it as well. Question How can I get the "Configure" Option to show up for SSO? Overall goal: How can I manually enter the AD server in this scenario while logged in as a local administrator? References VMWare vCenter 5.1 Installation: Part 9 (Optional SSO Configuration) [Derek Seaman's Blog] (used the image of correct configuration menu)

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• WebCenter Customer Spotlight: Ancestry.com

  - by me

  Author: Peter Reiser - Social Business Evangelist, Oracle WebCenter  Solution SummaryAncestry.com Inc is the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world and it operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites focused on the U.S. and nine foreign countries, develops and markets genealogical software, and offers a wide array of genealogical related services. As of June 2012, the company provided access to more than 10 billion records, 38 million family trees, and 2 million paying subscribers. Their main business challenges were to improve time to market and agility to respond quickly to fast changing Internet waves while integrating with their existing content (4 PetaByte) and legacy systems. Ancestry.com implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites as their Web Experience Management System for their landing pages and marketing micro sites, added dynamic sections to their existing websites and integrated the existing content and legacy systems through web services. The Ancestry.com landing pages and marketing sites are now managed by the business team without any involvement of engineering resources. Managed content can quickly be added to existing pages without having to refactor the whole page and existing content (4 PetaBytes)  is now served trough Oracle WebCenter Sites without having to migrate from existing systems. Company OverviewAncestry.com Inc is a publicly traded Internet company (NASDAQ: ACOM) based in Provo, Utah, USA. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites focused on the U.S. and nine foreign countries, develops and markets genealogical software, and offers a wide array of genealogical related services. As of June 2012, the company provided access to more than 10 billion records, 38 million family trees, and 2 million paying subscribers. Business ChallengesAncestry main business challenge was to respond quickly to fast changing Internet waves.  Product marketing could not change Web site content without going through development. They needed dedicated developers just to support their marketing efforts. Technical Requirements Support current systems and environments - ASP.NET, MVC.NET, Java, JSP, PHP Scalable and manageable for a world wide network Marketing Requirements Easy to enter content – Without having a degree in HTML Scheduling of content – When is content visible to users Product Requirements Easy to manage content – See when content is out-of-date Rotation of content – Producing new content as old content expires Solution DeployedAncestry implemented  Oracle WebCenter Sites as their Web Experience Management System to manage their landing pages and marketing micro sites. This sites are fully managed by their business team without involvement of any engineering resources. The integration with their existing Web sites is done through Spot Management which allows the ability to add dynamic content to certain sections of a web page. The dynamic content is managed by  Oracle WebCenter Sites. The integration with the existing content (4 PetaBytes!) is done trough  a custom content provider interface which allows to mix existing content with content from  Oracle WebCenter Sites. Business ResultsAncestry.com has achieved following impressive business results: Landing pages and marketing sites are now managed by the business team without any involvement of engineering resources Managed content can quickly be added to existing pages without having to refactor the whole page Provide access to existing content (4 PetaBytes)  without having to migrate from existing systems Additional Information Ancestry Webcast Oracle WebCenter Sites

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• Delphi - Is there a better way to get state abbreviations from state names

  - by Bill

  const states : array [0..49,0..1] of string = ( ('Alabama','AL'), ('Montana','MT'), ('Alaska','AK'), ('Nebraska','NE'), ('Arizona','AZ'), ('Nevada','NV'), ('Arkansas','AR'), ('New Hampshire','NH'), ('California','CA'), ('New Jersey','NJ'), ('Colorado','CO'), ('New Mexico','NM'), ('Connecticut','CT'), ('New York','NY'), ('Delaware','DE'), ('North Carolina','NC'), ('Florida','FL'), ('North Dakota','ND'), ('Georgia','GA'), ('Ohio','OH'), ('Hawaii','HI'), ('Oklahoma','OK'), ('Idaho','ID'), ('Oregon','OR'), ('Illinois','IL'), ('Pennsylvania','PA'), ('Indiana','IN'), ('Rhode Island','RI'), ('Iowa','IA'), ('South Carolin','SC'), ('Kansas','KS'), ('South Dakota','SD'), ('Kentucky','KY'), ('Tennessee','TN'), ('Louisiana','LA'), ('Texas','TX'), ('Maine','ME'), ('Utah','UT'), ('Maryland','MD'), ('Vermont','VT'), ('Massachusetts','MA'), ('Virginia','VA'), ('Michigan','MI'), ('Washington','WA'), ('Minnesota','MN'), ('West Virginia','WV'), ('Mississippi','MS'), ('Wisconsin','WI'), ('Missouri','MO'), ('Wyoming','WY') ); function getabb(state:string):string; var I:integer; begin for I := 0 to length(states) -1 do if lowercase(state) = lowercase(states[I,0]) then begin result:= states[I,1]; end; end; function getstate(state:string):string; var I:integer; begin for I := 0 to length(states) -1 do if lowercase(state) = lowercase(states[I,1]) then begin result:= states[I,0]; end; end; procedure TForm2.Button1Click(Sender: TObject); begin edit1.Text:=getabb(edit1.Text); end; procedure TForm2.Button2Click(Sender: TObject); begin edit1.Text:=getstate(edit1.Text); end; end. Is there a bette way to do this?

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• how to display my list with n amount on each line in Python

  - by user1786698

  im trying to display my list with 7 states on each line here is what i have so far, but it displays as one long string of all the states with quotes around each state. I forgot to mention that this is for my CS class and we havent learned iter yet so we not allowed to use it. the only hint i was given was to to turn STATE_LIST into a string then use '\n' to break it up state = str(STATE_LIST) displaystates = Text(Point(WINDOW_WIDTH/2, WINDOW_HEIGHT/2), state.split('\n')) displaystates.draw(win) and STATE_LIST looks like this STATE_VOTES = { "AL" : 9, # Alabama "AK" : 3, # Alaska "AZ" : 11, # Arizona "AR" : 6, # Arkansas "CA" : 55, # California "CO" : 9, # Colorado "CT" : 7, # Connecticut "DE" : 3, # Delaware "DC" : 3, # Washington DC "FL" : 29, # Florida "GA" : 16, # Georgia "HI" : 4, # Hawaii "ID" : 4, # Idaho "IL" : 20, # Illinois "IN" : 11, # Indiana "IA" : 6, # Iowa "KS" : 6, # Kansas "KY" : 8, # Kentucky "LA" : 8, # Louisiana "ME" : 4, # Maine "MD" : 10, # Maryland "MA" : 11, # Massachusetts "MI" : 16, # Michigan "MN" : 10, # Minnesota "MS" : 6, # Mississippi "MO" : 10, # Missouri "MT" : 3, # Montana "NE" : 5, # Nebraska "NV" : 6, # Nevada "NH" : 4, # New Hampshire "NJ" : 14, # New Jersey "NM" : 5, # New Mexico "NY" : 29, # New York "NC" : 15, # North Carolina "ND" : 3, # North Dakota "OH" : 18, # Ohio "OK" : 7, # Oklahoma "OR" : 7, # Oregon "PA" : 20, # Pennsylvania "RI" : 4, # Rhode Island "SC" : 9, # South Carolina "SD" : 3, # South Dakota "TN" : 11, # Tennessee "TX" : 38, # Texas "UT" : 6, # Utah "VT" : 3, # Vermont "VA" : 13, # Virginia "WA" : 12, # Washington "WV" : 5, # West Virginia "WI" : 10, # Wisconsin "WY" : 3 # Wyoming } STATE_LIST = sorted(list(STATE_VOTES.keys())) I am trying to get it to look somewhat like this

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• Partial slideDown with jQuery

  - by Jon

  I have some buttons that have drawer menus and what I'd like to do is add a state so that when the user hovers over the button, the drawer bumps out slightly (maybe with a little wiggle/rubber-banding) so that they know that there's a drawer with more information. I have the sliding working and a hover function set up, but I don't know how to implement a partial slideDown. Any ideas? FIDDLE. Code: <div class="clause"> <div class="icon"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/rTu40.png"/></div> <div class="label">Location</div> <div class="info">Midwest > Indiana, Kentucky; Southwest > Texas, Nevada, Utah; Pacific > California, Hawaii</div> </div> <div class="drawer">Info 1<br/><br/></div> <div class="drawerBottom"></div> $(".clause").click(function() { var tmp = $(this).next("div.drawer"); if(tmp.is(":hidden")) tmp.slideDown('3s'); else tmp.slideUp('3s'); }); $(".clause").hover(function() { });

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• TomCat starts, but does not load properly

  - by user37136

  Hey guys, I've been working on this for a day now and still don't know what's wrong. I am essentially building a second environment for our web and app server. I got apache to load up just fine, but tomcat is proving to be difficult. It appears to start and load just fine, but when it comes to loading our application, its just got stuck for 2-5 minutes and then shut down. Here is the log on the original machine where it works fine: 2010-02-12 11:52:40,506 INFO Web application servlet context is initializing... 2010-02-12 11:52:40,540 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: select_jobType=[{1,Undefined}, {100,Completion}, {200,Plugging}, {300,R+M}, {400,Workover}, {500,Swab - tubing}, {600,Swab - fluid}] 2010-02-12 11:52:40,540 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: select_jobTaskType=[{1,Undefined}, {100,Rod part}, {200,Tubing leak}, {300,Pump change}, {400,Stripping job}, {500,Long stroke}, {600,A/L optimization}] 2010-02-12 11:52:40,541 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: select_wellType=[{1,Undefined}, {100,Rod pump}, {200,ESP}, {300,Injector}, {400,PC pump}, {500,Co-Rod}, {600,Flowing}, {700,Storage}] 2010-02-12 11:52:40,541 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: select_assetType=[{1,Rig}, {100,Disabled rig}] 2010-02-12 11:52:40,542 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: select_state=[{AL,Alabama}, {AK,Alaska}, {AZ,Arizona}, {AR,Arkansas}, {CA,California}, {CO,Colorado}, {CT,Connecticut}, {DE,Delaware}, {FL,Florida}, {GA,Georgia}, {HI,Hawaii}, {ID,Idaho}, {IL,Illinois}, {IN,Indiana}, {IA,Iowa}, {KS,Kansas}, {KY,Kentucky}, {LA,Louisiana}, {ME,Maine}, {MD,Maryland}, {MA,Massachusetts}, {MI,Michigan}, {MN,Minnesota}, {MS,Mississippi}, {MO,Missouri}, {MT,Montana}, {NE,Nebraska}, {NV,Nevada}, {NH,New Hampshire}, {NJ,New Jersey}, {NM,New Mexico}, {NY,New York}, {NC,North Carolina}, {ND,North Dakota}, {OH,Ohio}, {OK,Oklahoma}, {OR,Oregon}, {PA,Pennsylvania}, {RI,Rhode Island}, {SC,South Carolina}, {SD,South Dakota}, {TN,Tennessee}, {TX,Texas}, {UT,Utah}, {VT,Vermont}, {VA,Virginia}, {WA,Washington}, {WV,West Virginia}, {WI,Wisconsin}, {WY,Wyoming}, {ACO,Atlantic Coast Offshore}, {FOAK,Federal Offshore Alaska}, {NGOM,Northern Gulf of Mexico}, {PCO,Pacific Coastal Offshore}] 2010-02-12 11:52:40,542 INFO KeyviewContextMonitor.contextInitialized: Loaded drop-down lists:com/key/portal/web/common/lists.properties 2010-02-12 11:52:40,937 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.SERVLET_MAPPING=*.do 2010-02-12 11:52:40,937 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.ACTION_SERVLET=org.apache.struts.action.ActionServlet@155d578 2010-02-12 11:52:41,939 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.MODULE=org.apache.struts.config.impl.ModuleConfigImpl@e08e9d 2010-02-12 11:52:41,962 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.FORM_BEANS=org.apache.struts.action.ActionFormBeans@b31c3c 2010-02-12 11:52:41,967 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.FORWARDS=org.apache.struts.action.ActionForwards@102c646 2010-02-12 11:52:41,973 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.MAPPINGS=org.apache.struts.action.ActionMappings@127276a 2010-02-12 11:52:41,974 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.MESSAGE=org.apache.struts.util.PropertyMessageResources@18cae13 2010-02-12 11:52:41,984 DEBUG Servlet context attribute added: org.apache.struts.action.PLUG_INS=[Lorg.apache.struts.action.PlugIn;@f875ae 2010-02-12 11:52:46,816 INFO Sucessfully loaded application properties com/key/core/properties/application On my second environment, it didn't execute the last line. I start tomcat with the exact same command line !/bin/ksh export JAVA_HOME=/app/java export CATALINA_HOME=/app/tomcat export CATALINA_BASE=/app/keyview/appserver CATALINA_OPTS=" -Xms128m -Xmx800m -Dapplication.props=com/key/core/properties/application -Dlog4j.configuration=com/key/core/log/log4j.xml -Djava.awt.headless=true -Dlog4j.debug" export CATALINA_OPTS ${CATALINA_HOME}/bin/startup.sh I bolded the line that I think are in error. Thanks

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• How can I copy a SQL record which has related records in other tables to the same database?

  - by DerekVS

  Hi. I created a function in C# which allows me to copy a record and its related children to a new record and new related children in the same database. (This is for an application that allows the use of previous work as a template for new work.) Anyway, it works great... Here's a description of how it accomplishes the copy: It populates a two-column memory-based look-up table with the current primary key of each record. Next, as it individually creates each new copy record, it updates the look-up table with the Identity PK of the new record [retrieved from SCOPE_IDENTITY()]. Now, when it copies over any related children, it can look up the new parent PK to set the FK on the new record. In testing, it only took a minute to copy a relational structure on a local instance of SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Unfortunately it is proving to be horribly slow in production! My users are dealing with 60,000+ records per parent record over the LAN to our SQL Server! While my copy function still works, each of those records represents an individual SQL UPDATE command and it loads the SQL Server at about 17% CPU from its normal 2% idle. I just finished testing a 50,000 record copy and it took almost 20 minutes! Is there a way to duplicate this functionality in SQL queries or stored procecures to make the SQL server do all of the copy work instead of blasting it over the LAN from each client? (We're running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition.) Thanks! -Derek

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• Silverlight databinding error

  - by Petezah

  I found an example online that explains how to perform databinding to a ListBox control using LINQ in WPF. The example works fine but when I replicate the same code in Silverlight it doesn't work. Is there a fundamental difference between Silverlight and WPF that I'm not aware of? Here is an Example of the XAML: <ListBox x:Name="listBox1"> <ListBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <StackPanel> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}" FontSize="18"/> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Role}" /> </StackPanel> </DataTemplate> </ListBox.ItemTemplate> </ListBox> Here is an example of my code behind: private void UserControl_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { string[] names = new string[] { "Captain Avatar", "Derek Wildstar", "Queen Starsha" }; string[] roles = new string[] { "Hero", "Captain", "Queen of Iscandar" }; listBox1.ItemSource = from n in names from r in roles select new { Name = n, Role = r} }

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• C: 8x8 -> 16 bit multiply precision guaranteed by integer promotions?

  - by craig-blome

  I'm trying to figure out if the C Standard (C90, though I'm working off Derek Jones' annotated C99 book) guarantees that I will not lose precision multiplying two unsigned 8-bit values and storing to a 16-bit result. An example statement is as follows: unsigned char foo; unsigned int foo_u16 = foo * 10; Our Keil 8051 compiler (v7.50 at present) will generate a MUL AB instruction which stores the MSB in the B register and the LSB in the accumulator. If I cast foo to a unsigned int first: unsigned int foo_u16 = (unsigned int)foo * 10; then the compiler correctly decides I want a unsigned int there and generates an expensive call to a 16x16 bit integer multiply routine. I would like to argue beyond reasonable doubt that this defensive measure is not necessary. As I read the integer promotions described in 6.3.1.1, the effect of the first line shall be as if foo and 10 were promoted to unsigned int, the multiplication performed, and the result stored as unsigned int in foo_u16. If the compiler knows an instruction that does 8x8-16 bit multiplications without loss of precision, so much the better; but the precision is guaranteed. Am I reading this correctly? Best regards, Craig Blome

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• XNA Notes 007

  - by George Clingerman

  Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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• IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager User Community Twitter Chat and Sessions at OpenWorld

  - by Anand Akela

  Like last many years, we will have annual Oracle Users Forum on Sunday, September 30th, 2012 at Moscone West, Levels 2 & 3 . It will be open to all registered attendees of Oracle Open World and conferences running from September 29 to October 5, 2012 . This will be a great  opportunity to meet with colleagues, peers, and subject matter experts to share best practices, tips, and techniques around Oracle technologies. You could sit in on a special interest group (SIG) meeting or session and learn how to get more out of Oracle technologies and applications. IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager team invites you to join a Twitter Chat on Sunday, Sep. 30th from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM.  IOUG leaders, Enterprise Manager SIG contributors and many Oracle Users Forum speakers will answer questions related to their experience with Oracle Enterprise Manager and the activities and resources available for  Enterprise Manager SIG members. You can participate in the chat using hash tag #em12c on Twitter.com or by going to  tweetchat.com/room/em12c      (Needs Twitter credential for participating).  Feel free to join IOUG and Enterprise team members at the User Group Pavilion on 2nd Floor, Moscone West. Here is the complete list of Oracle Enterprise Manager sessions during the Oracle Users Forum : Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Time Session Title Speakers Location 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF4569 - Oracle RAC Migration with Oracle Automatic Storage Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c VINOD Emmanuel -Database Engineering, Dell, Inc. Wendy Chen - Sr. Systems Engineer, Dell, Inc. Moscone West - 2011 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF10389 -  Monitoring Storage Systems for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Anand Ranganathan - Product Manager, NetApp Moscone West - 2016 9:00AM - 10:00AM UGF2571 - Make Oracle Enterprise Manager Sing and Dance with the Command-Line Interface Ray Smith - Senior Database Administrator, Portland General Electric Moscone West - 2011 10:30AM - 11:30AM UGF2850 - Optimal Support: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, My Oracle Support, and More April Sims - DBA, Southern Utah University Moscone West - 2011 11:30AM - 12:30PM IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager Joint Tweet Chat  Join IOUG Leaders, IOUG's Enterprise Manager SIG Contributors and Speakers on Twitter and ask questions related to practitioner's experience with Oracle Enterprise Manager and the new IOUG 's Enterprise Manager SIG. To attend and participate in the chat, please use hash tag #em12c on twitter.com or your favorite Twitter client. You can also go to tweetchat.com/room/em12c to watch the conversation or login with your twitter credentials to ask questions. User Group Pavilion 2nd Floor, Moscone West 12:30PM-2:00PM UGF5131 - Migrating from Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control to 12c Cloud Control    Leighton Nelson - Database Administrator, Mercy Moscone West - 2011 2:15PM-3:15PM UGF6511 -  Database Performance Tuning: Get the Best out of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Mike Ault - Oracle Guru, TEXAS MEMORY SYSTEMS INC Tariq Farooq - CEO/Founder, BrainSurface Moscone West - 2011 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF4556 - Will It Blend? Verifying Capacity in Server and Database Consolidations Jeremiah Wilton - Database Technology, Blue Gecko / DatAvail Moscone West - 2018 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF10400 - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Monitoring, Metric Extensions, and Configuration Best Practices Kellyn Pot'Vin - Sr. Technical Consultant, Enkitec Moscone West - 2011 Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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• 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 ? 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.

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• XNA Notes 009

  - by George Clingerman

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

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• XNA Notes 011

  - by George Clingerman

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

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• Icon placement relative to list items

  - by Ronedog

  When I show a hidden div that is stored inside an <li> tag the icons are pushing down to the bottom of the <li>. How can I prevent this? Here's the HTML: <ul> <li>Utah <ul> <li>Park City <ul> <li>Park Cat 1 <div><img class="portf_edit" /></div> <div><img class="portf_archive" /></div> <div><img class="portf_delete" /></div> </li> <li>Skiing <div><img class="portf_edit" /></div> <div><img class="portf_archive" /></div> <div><img class="portf_delete" /></div> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> Here's the li css: li { list-style-type:none; vertical-align: top; list-style-image: none; left:0px; text-align:left; clear: both; } .portf_edit{ float:right; position: relative; right:50px; display:block; } .portf_archive{ float:right; position: relative; right:-5px; display:block; } .portf_delete{ float:right; position: relative; right: -60px; display:block; } Here's a screen shot prior to expanding which shows the icons how I want them to line up: Here's the screen shot prior to expanding which shows where the icons are being pushed to:

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• 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.

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• Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions.  The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice?   A. The new and old manager  are in the workflow.  The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses.  It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING?   A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog?   A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING?   A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications.   Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity?   A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management.   For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server.  We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based?   A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users.  We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers.   A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements.  The role captures the required application entitlements.  To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business.  It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far?  A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down   A. Yes  The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS?  A. No.  We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers.  (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD  checks.  Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles?   A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio.  From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions.  For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees.  For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ?   A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free)  online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed  in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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• css, unordered list not displaying icon in right place...

  - by Ronedog

  I'm really frustrated with this one. A few weeks ago I got it working in both firefox and ie just fine. Went back today to do some testing and found a problem with the display in firefox and I've been searching the code but can't find anything. I could use a few tips from anyone willing, I'm sure I'm looking at the wrong things. I upgraded my firefox version but I imagine my code is broke, not firefox. I'm assuming the problem is somewhere in my css file, but I'm not sure. Here's what I've confirmed so far. There don't seem to be conflicts in other css files with < ul 's or < li 's that may be overriding settings. The other confirmation is that This works fine in Internet Explorer...therefore I must be an idiot, because its usually been the other way around (working in FF, but failing in IE). Here's How it looks in IE (Notice the position of the folder icon right next to the text): Here's how it looks in FF (Notice the folder icon is not being pushed down with its corresponding text). Here's the Unordered List: <ul id="nav"> <li><a>Utah</a></li> <ul> <li><a>ParkCity</a> <ul> <li><a>Com1</a></li> <ul> <li class="folder_closed"><a>Timber</a></li> <div>SQUARE CONTAINER IS INSIDE THIS DIV</div> </ul> </ul> </ul> </ul> Here's the CSS that is used for the whole menu: /* MENU NAVIGATION (<UL><LI> LISTS ****************************************/ ul#nav{ /* This handles the main root <ul> */ margin-left:0; margin-right:0; padding-left:0px; text-indent:15px; } ul#nav div{ overflow: hidden; } #nav li>a:hover { cursor: pointer; } #nav li > ul{ /* This will hide any element with an id of "nav" and an "li" that has a direct child that is a "ul" */ display:none; margin-left:0px; margin-right:0px; padding-left:15px; padding-right:0px; text-indent:15px; } #nav li { list-style-type:none; list-style-image: none; } #nav > li{ vertical-align: top; left:0px; text-align:left; clear: both; margin:0px; margin-right:0px; padding-right:0px; } .menu_parent{ background-image: url(../images/maximize.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 0px 1px; position:relative; } .menu_parent_minimized{ background-image: url(../images/minimize.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 0px 1px; position:relative; } .folder_closed{ position:relative; background-image: url(../images/folder_closed12x14.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 0px -2px; } .folder_open{ position:relative; background-image: url(../images/folder_open12x14.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 0px -2px; } </ul>

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• NSUserDefaults loses 3 rows each time it's called

  - by Jeff Decker

  Hello Everyone! Brand new programmer here, so off-topic help/constructive criticism welcome. I am saving a default state (such as "New York") in a UIPickerView which is in a FlipSideView. It certainly saves for the first and second time I check to make sure it's the same state (I am clicking "done" and then "info" repeatedly), but on the third check the picker has moved up three states (to "New Hampshire") and then every time I check the picker progresses three more states. Here's the .h and .m files of the FlipSideViewController: #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> import "Calculator.h" @protocol FlipsideViewControllerDelegate; @interface FlipsideViewController : UIViewController { id delegate; UIPickerView *myPickerView; NSArray *pickerViewArray; } @property (nonatomic, assign) id delegate; @property (nonatomic, retain) UIPickerView *myPickerView; @property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *pickerViewArray; (IBAction)done; @end @protocol FlipsideViewControllerDelegate - (void)flipsideViewControllerDidFinish:(FlipsideViewController *)controller; @end import "FlipsideViewController.h" @implementation FlipsideViewController @synthesize delegate; @synthesize myPickerView, pickerViewArray; -(CGRect)pickerFrameWithSize:(CGSize)size;{ CGRect screenRect = [[UIScreen mainScreen] applicationFrame]; CGRect pickerRect = CGRectMake( 0.0, screenRect.size.height - size.height, size.width, size.height); return pickerRect; } (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.view.backgroundColor = [UIColor viewFlipsideBackgroundColor]; [self createPicker]; } -(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated;{ [super viewWillAppear:NO]; NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; [myPickerView selectRow:[defaults integerForKey:@"pickerRow"] inComponent:0 animated:NO]; } -(void)createPicker;{ pickerViewArray = [[NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"Alabama",@"Alaska", @"Arizona",@"Arkansas",@"California",@"Colorado",@"Connecticut",@"Delaware", @"District of Columbia",@"Florida",@"Georgia",@"Hawaii",@"Idaho",@"Illinois",@"Indiana",@"Iowa", @"Kansas",@"Kentucky",@"Louisiana",@"Maine",@"Maryland",@"Massachusetts",@"Michigan", @"Minnesota",@"Mississippi",@"Missouri",@"Montana",@"Nebraska",@"Nevada",@"New Hampshire",@"New Jersey", @"New Mexico",@"New York",@"North Carolina",@"North Dakota",@"Ohio",@"Oklahoma", @"Oregon",@"Pennsylvania",@"Rhode Island",@"South Carolina",@"South Dakota",@"Tennessee", @"Texas",@"Utah",@"Vermont",@"Virginia",@"Washington",@"West Virginia",@"Wisconsin",@"Wyoming", nil] retain]; myPickerView = [[UIPickerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero]; CGSize pickerSize = [myPickerView sizeThatFits:CGSizeZero]; myPickerView.frame = [self pickerFrameWithSize:pickerSize]; myPickerView.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth; myPickerView.showsSelectionIndicator = YES; myPickerView.delegate = self; myPickerView.dataSource = self; [self.view addSubview:myPickerView]; } (IBAction)done { [self.delegate flipsideViewControllerDidFinish:self]; } pragma mark - pragma mark UIPickerViewDataSource (NSString *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView titleForRow:(NSInteger)row forComponent:(NSInteger)component { NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; [defaults setInteger:row forKey:@"pickerRow"]; [defaults setObject:[pickerViewArray objectAtIndex:row] forKey:@"pickerString"]; return [pickerViewArray objectAtIndex:row]; } (void)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView didSelectRow:(NSInteger)row inComponent:(NSInteger)component { NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; [defaults setInteger:row forKey:@"pickerRow"]; [defaults setObject:[pickerViewArray objectAtIndex:row] forKey:@"pickerString"]; } (CGFloat)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView widthForComponent:(NSInteger)component { return 240.0; } (CGFloat)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView rowHeightForComponent:(NSInteger)component { return 40.0; } (NSInteger)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView numberOfRowsInComponent:(NSInteger)component { return [pickerViewArray count]; } (NSInteger)numberOfComponentsInPickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView { return 1; } call me mystified! Thanks for any help. Please let me know if I can make myself more clear...

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• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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• Issue with 'selected' value within form

  - by JM4

  I currently have a form built in which after validation, if errors exist, the data stays on screen for the consumer to correct. An example of how this works for say the 'Year of Birth' is: <select name="DOB3"> <option value="">Year</option> <?php for ($i=date('Y'); $i>=1900; $i--) { echo "<option value='$i'"; if ($fields["DOB3"] == $i) echo " selected"; echo ">$i</option>"; } ?> </select> If an error is found, the year of birth value returns the year previously entered. I am able to have this work on all field with the exception of my 'State' field. I build the array and function for the drop down with the following code: <?php $states_arr = array('AL'=>"Alabama",'AK'=>"Alaska",'AZ'=>"Arizona",'AR'=>"Arkansas",'CA'=>"California",'CO'=>"Colorado",'CT'=>"Connecticut",'DE'=>"Delaware",'DC'=>"District Of Columbia",'FL'=>"Florida",'GA'=>"Georgia",'HI'=>"Hawaii",'ID'=>"Idaho",'IL'=>"Illinois", 'IN'=>"Indiana", 'IA'=>"Iowa", 'KS'=>"Kansas",'KY'=>"Kentucky",'LA'=>"Louisiana",'ME'=>"Maine",'MD'=>"Maryland", 'MA'=>"Massachusetts",'MI'=>"Michigan",'MN'=>"Minnesota",'MS'=>"Mississippi",'MO'=>"Missouri",'MT'=>"Montana",'NE'=>"Nebraska",'NV'=>"Nevada",'NH'=>"New Hampshire",'NJ'=>"New Jersey",'NM'=>"New Mexico",'NY'=>"New York",'NC'=>"North Carolina",'ND'=>"North Dakota",'OH'=>"Ohio",'OK'=>"Oklahoma", 'OR'=>"Oregon",'PA'=>"Pennsylvania",'RI'=>"Rhode Island",'SC'=>"South Carolina",'SD'=>"South Dakota",'TN'=>"Tennessee",'TX'=>"Texas",'UT'=>"Utah",'VT'=>"Vermont",'VA'=>"Virginia",'WA'=>"Washington",'WV'=>"West Virginia",'WI'=>"Wisconsin",'WY'=>"Wyoming"); function showOptionsDrop($array, $active, $echo=true){ $string = ''; foreach($array as $k => $v){ $s = ($active == $k)? ' selected="selected"' : ''; $string .= '<option value="'.$k.'"'.$s.'>'.$v.'</option>'."\n"; } if($echo) { echo $string;} else { return $string;} } ?> I then call the function from within the form using: <td><select name="State"><option value="">Choose a State</option><?php showOptionsDrop($states_arr, null, true); ?></select></td> Not sure what I'm missing but would love any assistance if somebody sees the error in my code. Thanks!

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