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• FFmpeg Video Hosting for Linux and Windows Server

  - by Aditi

  FFmpeg hosting is a special type of web hosting where the host servers have video transcoding software loaded on them, which allows the automatic conversion of videos from one format to another. FFmpeg is a cross-platform solution for recording, converting, transcoding and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec – the leading audio/video codec library. FFmpeg hosting gets its name from a set of server side programs (modules) called FFmpeg. There are a number of applications or web scripts available, which allow webmasters to create their own video sharing websites. Video hosting typically requires: PHP 4.3 and above (including support of CLI) Mencoder and also Mplayer FFMpeg-PHP MySQL database server LAME MP3 Encoder Libogg + Libvorbis GD Library 2 or higher CGI-BIN There are number of web service providers who provide FFmpeg hosting service. Following is a list of some of the Best FFmpeg hosting providers for both Linux and Windows Server below. Dream Host Dreamhost provides for web based email access, mail filtering, spam filtering, unlimited email ids, vacation autoresponder, python support, full CGI access and many more services. Price: $7.95 View Details Micfo It offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Other services include free domain for life and free Website Transfer with many more services. All in all one of the best option to consider. Price: $5 View Details Host Upon HostUpon offers FFMpeg Hosting on all their hosting packages, with readily installed modules to start a Video website or Social Network with Video uploading. These scripts such as Boonex Dolphin / PHPMotion / Social Engine / ABKsoft Scripts / Joomla Video Plugin / Clipshare / ClipBucket / Social Media / Rayzz / Vidi Script work with their ffmpeg. Their FFMPEG hosting plan offers 24/7/365 support with typical response time of 15min or less. Price: $5.95 View Details DownTown Host DownTown Host provides full and exceptional support by live chat and telephone. It has high-power, modern servers and the finest web server technology. It offers free search engine Submission and continuous data backup protection with free email forwarding and site move. There are many more services too. Site5 This ffmpeg service provider offers uptime guarantee, a real time stats on each server and many more attractive services. Price: $4.95 View Details Cirtex Hosting Cirtex Hosting allows to host 7 websites & domains and provides for unlimited storage space and monthly bandwidth. It also offers FTP and email accounts and many more services. Price: $2.49 View Details FLV Hosting FLV hosting supplies RTMP SERVER STREAMING for large size video streaming and server side recording. It is flexible and costs less. They customize to the clients requirements. Price: $9.95 View Details AptHost This hosting service provides for 24x7x365 Premium Support and fully ffmpeg enabled services. Price: $4.95 View Details HostMDS Great Support, Priced Low. It provides for SSH access, CGI, Ruby on Rails, Perl, PHP, MySQL, front page extentions, 24/7 Support, FREE Domain transfer and spam filtering. It offers instant account setup, low latency fast bandwidth & much more! They were formerly known as Vistapages. Price: $4.95 View Details Related posts:Best WordPress Video Themes for a Video Blog Free Web Based Applications 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

  - by Fatherjack

  So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via  sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc **  What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me  to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing.   * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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• Experience the iPad UI On Your PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to test drive iPad without heading over to an Apple store?  Here’s a way you can experience some of the iPad UI straight from your browser! The iPad is the latest gadget from Apple to wow the tech world, and people even waited in line all night to be one of the first to get their hands on one.  Thanks to a simple JavaScript trick, however, you can get a feel for some of its new features without leaving your computer.  This won’t let you try out everything on the iPad, but it will let you see how the new lists and pop-over menus work just like they do in the new apps. Test drive the iPad’s UI from your browser Normally, the Apple iPhone developer library online looks like a standard webpage. But, on the iPad, it looks and feels like a full-blown native iPad app.  With a nifty JavaScript trick from boredzo.org you can use this same interface on your PC.  Since the iPad uses the Safari browser, we ran this test in Safari for Windows.  If you don’t already have it installed, you can download it from Apple (link below) and setup as normal. Now, open Safari and browse to Apple’s developer page at: http://www.developer.apple.com   Now, enter the following in the address bar, and press Enter. javascript:localStorage.setItem('debugSawtooth', 'true')   Finally, click this link to go to the iPhone OS documentation. http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/iPad/ After a short delay, it should open in full iPad style! The left menu works just like the menus on the iPad, complete with transitions.  It feels entirely like a native application, instead of a webpage.  To scroll through text, click and pull up or down similar to the way you would use it on a touch screen. Some pages even include a pop-over menu like many of the new iPad apps use. Note that the page will be rendered for the size of your browser, and if you resize your window the page will not resize with it.  Simply press F5 to reload the page, and it will resize to fit the new window size.  If you resize your window to be tall and narrow, like the iPad in horizontal mode, the webpage will change and the left menu will disappear in lieu of a drop-down menu just like it would if you rotated the iPad. This works in Chrome as well, since it, like Safari, is based on Webkit.  However, it didn’t seem to work in our test on Firefox or other browsers. We’ve previously covered how you can experience some of the iPhone’s UI with the online iPhone user guide.  Check it out if you haven’t yet: View Mobile Websites in Windows with Safari 4 Developer Tools Conclusion Although this doesn’t let you really try out all of the iPad’s interface, it at least gives you a taste of how it works.  It’s exciting to see how much functionality can be packed into webapps today.  And don’t forget, How-to Geek is giving away an iPad to a random fan!  Head over to our Facebook page and fan How-to Geek if you haven’t already done so. Win an iPad on the How-To Geek Facebook Fan Page Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Want an iPad? How-To Geek is Giving One Away!Why Wait? Amazing New Add-on Turns Your iPhone into an iPad! [Comic]The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and TutorialsShare Your Windows Vista Experience Index ScoreAnother Blog You Should Subscribe To TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Awesome Lyrics Finder for Winamp & Windows Media Player Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses

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• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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• Measuring ASP.NET and SharePoint output cache

  - by DigiMortal

  During ASP.NET output caching week in my local blog I wrote about how to measure ASP.NET output cache. As my posting was based on real work and real-life results then I thought that this posting is maybe interesting to you too. So here you can read what I did, how I did and what was the result. Introduction Caching is not effective without measuring it. As MVP Henn Sarv said in one of his sessions then you will get what you measure. And right he is. Lately I measured caching on local Microsoft community portal to make sure that our caching strategy is good enough in environment where this system lives. In this posting I will show you how to start measuring the cache of your web applications. Although the application measured is built on SharePoint Server publishing infrastructure, all those counters have same meaning as similar counters under pure ASP.NET applications. Measured counters I used Performance Monitor and the following performance counters (their names are similar on ASP.NET and SharePoint WCMS): Total number of objects added – how much objects were added to output cache. Total object discards – how much objects were deleted from output cache. Cache hit count – how many times requests were served by cache. Cache hit ratio – percent of requests served from cache. The first three counters are cumulative while last one is coefficient. You can use also other counters to measure the full effect of caching (memory, processor, disk I/O, network load etc before and after caching). Measuring process The measuring I describe here started from freshly restarted web server. I measured application during 12 hours that covered also time ranges when users are most active. The time range does not include late evening hours and night because there is nothing to measure during these hours. During measuring we performed no maintenance or administrative tasks on server. All tasks performed were related to usual daily content management and content monitoring. Also we had no advertisement campaigns or other promotions running at same time. The results You can see the results on following graphic.   Total number of objects added   Total object discards   Cache hit count   Cache hit ratio You can see that adds and discards are growing in same tempo. It is good because cache expires and not so popular items are not kept in memory. If there are more popular content then the these lines may have bigger distance between them. Cache hit count grows faster and this shows that more and more content is served from cache. In current case it shows that cache is filled optimally and we can do even better if we tune caches more. The site contains also pages that are discarded when some subsite changes (page was added/modified/deleted) and one modification may affect about four or five pages. This may also decrease cache hit count because during day the site gets about 5-10 new pages. Cache hit ratio is currently extremely good. The suggested minimum is about 85% but after some tuning and measuring I achieved 98.7% as a result. This is due to the fact that new pages are most often requested and after new pages are added the older ones are requested only sometimes. So they get discarded from cache and only some of these will return sometimes back to cache. Although this may also indicate the need for additional SEO work the result is very well in technical means. Conclusion Measuring ASP.NET output cache is not complex thing to do and you can start by measuring performance of cache as a start. Later you can move on and measure caching effect to other counters such as disk I/O, network, processors etc. What you have to achieve is optimal cache that is not full of items asked only couple of times per day (you can avoid this by not using too long cache durations). After some tuning you should be able to boost cache hit ratio up to at least 85%.

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• Build Your Own CE6 Kernel

  - by Kate Moss' Big Fan

  The Share Source Program in Windows CE provides many modules in %_WINCEROOT%\Private\ tree, and the kernel is one of them! Although it is not full source of kernel but it is good enough for tracing it, even tweak the kernel. Tracing the kernel and see how it works is lots of fun, but it is fascinated to modify and verify the change you made. So first comes first, where is the source of kernel? It's in your %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ And next question will be "How do I build it?", Some of you may say just "build -c" there and it should be good. If you are the owner of kernel and got full source, that is definitely the right answer, but none of them are applied to our case though. So what should I do? Let's dig deeper into the coreos\nk folder, there are a couples of subfolder, CELOG, KDSTUB, KERNEL and etc. KERNEL\ is the main component of kernel.dll, in the other word, most of the modify to kernel is going to happen here. And the good thing is, you could "build -c" in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ with no error at all. But before doing that, remember to backup eveything you are going to modify, including the source and binaries; remember, this is not something belong to you, and if you didn't restore them back later, it could end up confuse the subsequence QFE updates! Here is the steps Backup the source code, I will suggest the whole %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\ Backup the binaries in common\oak\lib\, and again if you are not sure which files, backup the whole %_WINCEROOT%\common\oak\lib\ is the safest way. Do whatever modification you want in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\ build -c in %_WINCEROOT%\private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel If everything went well so far, you should get a new nkmain.lib,nkmain.pdb, nkprmain.lib and nkprmain.pdb in %_WINCEROOT%\public\common\oak\lib\%_TGTCPU%\%WINCEDEBUG%\ Basically, you just rebuild your new kernel, the rest is to "blddemo clean -q" to have your new kernel SYSGEN'd and include in your OS Image. Or just "set WINCEREL=1" then "sysgen -p common nk nkprof" and "makeimg" if you can't wait another minutes for "blddemo clean -q" Tat sounds good, but some of you may not like the idea to alter any code in private folder, and not to mention how annoying to backup/restore files every time. Better idea? Yes, Microsoft provides a tool SYSGEN_CAPTURE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504678.aspx for detail and usage) to creates Sources files for public drivers that you want to modify and build in your platform directory. In fact, not only public drivers, virtually anything in the %_WINCEROOT%\public\<project name>\cesysgen\makefile can be captured, and of course including kernel. So I am going to introduce a second way to build your own kernel by using SYSGEN_CAPTURE tool. Again the steps Create a folder in your BSP for building kernel, says %_TARGETPLATROOT%\SRC\Kernel. Use "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nk" and then you will get a SOURCES.KERN, you could also "SYSGEN_CAPTURE -p common nkprof" to generate profiler enabled kernel. rename the SOURCE.KERN to SOURCES and copy one of the sample makefile into your kernel directory. For example the one in PRIVATE\WINCEOS\COREOS\NK\KERNEL\NKNORMAL. Copy the source files you want to modify from private\winceos\coreos\nk\kernel\ into your kernel directory. Modifying the SOURCES= macro to the source files you addes in step 4. For example, if you copied the vm.c, it is going to be SOURCES=vm.c Refer to the private\winceos\COREOS\nk\kernel\sources.inc and add macro defines and proper include path in your SOURCES file. "set WINCEREL=1", "build -c" in your kernel directory and "makeimg", voila! Here is an example for the MACROS you need to add in x86 Here are the macros for x86 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DIN_KERNEL -DWINCEMACRO -DKERN_CORE # Machine independent defines CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDBGSUPPORT _COREOSROOT=$(_WINCEROOT)\private\winceos\coreos INCLUDES=$(_COREOSROOT)\inc;$(_COREOSROOT)\nk\inc !IFDEF DP_SETTINGS CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -DDP_SETTINGS=$(DP_SETTINGS) !ENDIF ASM_SAFESEH=1 CDEFINES=$(CDEFINES) -Gs100000 -DENCODE_GS_COOKIE

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• SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

  - by mseika

  Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners  More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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• SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

  - by mseika

  Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners  More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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• SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

  - by mseika

  Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners  More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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• SPARC T5-8 Servers EMEA Acceleration Promotion for Partners

  - by mseika

  Dear all We are pleased to announce the EMEA T5-8 Acceleration Promotion, a price promotion that, for a limited time, makes the T5-8 server available to our EMEA partners at a very attractive discount. Why the SPARC T5-8 server Oracle's SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris are ideal for mission-critical applications requiring high performance, best-in-class availability, and unmatched scalability on all application tiers. SPARC servers include built-in virtualization, systems management, and security at no additional cost. Designed for applications that demand the highest performance and 24x7 availability. Oracle's SPARC T5-8 server is the fastest and the most advanced, scalable midrange server in the Oracle portfolio. The Oracle SPARC T5-8 server is in the sweet spot of the UNIX midrange, and directly competing with IBM P770(+) and P780(+) systems, with a 7x price advantage (see official Oracle press release) over a similarly configured P780 system! What are we offering Effective immediately, the fully-configured T5-8 server is available to VADs with a 38% discount off price list: this is 8 additional points on top of the standard 30% contractual discount. The promo will be communicated to VADs and VARs, and VADs are expected to pass the additional discount through to the VARs. Resellers will be encouraged to use this attractive price to position T5-8 versus the competition, accelerate T5-8 sales, and use the increased margin to offer additional services to their end users - thus expanding their footprint within their customers and making the T5-8 business proposition even more compelling. This is a unique opportunity for partners to expand their base and beat the competition with a 7x price advantage over a similarly configured IBM P780. This price promotion is only available to OPN Partners, and is valid until November 30, 2013. What's in it for Partners  More competitive price More customer budget available for more projects: attach migration services, training, ... Opportunity to attach Storage, and additional Software Higher win rate Additional Details The promotion is valid for the existing configurations of T5-8 with 8 CPU and different memory configurations, including all X-options that are part of the system and ordered at the same time. 8% additional discount to the VAD on full T5-8 - Including X-Options: Cat V (30% + 8% additional): System, CPU, Memory, Disks, Ethernet Cat U (22% + 8% additional): Infiniband HCA Cat W (30% + 8% additional): FC/SAS HBA / FCoE CNA Partner eligibilty criteria Standard requirements apply. Partners must: be an OPN member in good standing, at Gold level or above meet the Resale criteria in the SPARC T-Series servers Knowledge Zone have a right to distribute hardware via the Full Use Distribution Agreement, with Hardware Addendum if applicable. Order process The promotion is available until November 30, 2013. VADs place the order via Oracle Partner Store. A request for extra-discount has to be raised in advance using the standard process for available configs: input the configuration apply the suggested discounts submit the request in the request documentation, please refer to EMEA T5-8 FY14H1 Channel Promotion as approved in GDMT GT-EB2-Q413-107C This promotion is only valid for the T5-8 configurations stated in this announcement. Any change, or additional products / items not listed explicitly, can be ordered at the same time and will follow standard approval process. Key contacts Your local A&C organization For questions on EMEA Partner Programs for Servers: Giuseppe Facchetti For questions on the T5-8 product: Martin de Jong Best regards, Olivier Tordo Senior Director, Sales & Strategy, Hardware SolutionsEMEA Alliances & Channels Paul Flannery Senior Director, EMEA Servers Product Management

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• Where is the value of OEA

  - by [email protected]

  In a room full of architects, if you were to ask for the definition of enterprise architecture, or the importance thereof,  you are likely to get a number of varying view points ranging from,  a complete analysis of the digital assets of an organization,  to, a strategic alignment of business goals/objectives to IT initiatives.  Similiarily in a room full of senior business executives,  if you asked them how they see their IT groups and their effectiveness to align to business strategy,  you would get a myriad of responses,  ranging from, “a huge drain on our bottom line”, “always more expensive than budgeted”, “lack of agility,  by the time IT is ready,  my business strategy has changed”, and on the rare occurrence, “ a leader of innovation,  that is lock step with my business strategy”. However does this necessarily demonstrate the overall value of enterprise architecture.  Having a framework, and process is of critical importance to help produce a number of the artefacts that ultimately align technology goals and initiatives to business strategy,  however,  is that really where the value is?  I believe that first we need to understand the concept of value.  Value typically is a measure of sorts,  when we purchase a product it’s value is equivalent to the maximum amount that someone is willing to pay for the product,  however,  is the same equation valid in terms of the business value of enterprise architecture? Is the library of artefacts generated through a process/framework, inclusive of a strategic roadmap to realize the enterprise architecture where the value is? If we agree that enterprise architecture is the alignment of IT and IT assets to support business strategy, and by achieving our business strategy, we have we have increased the business value of the enterprise then;  it seems that, in order to really identify the true value of an enterprise architecture,  we need to understand how we measure business value .  A number of formal measurement methodologies exist for this purpose, business models, balanced scorecards, etc   After we have an understanding on how to measure the business value of each of the organizational units within an enterprise, then we understand how the enterprise architecture contributes to the success of business strategy,  and EXECUTE on the roadmap to implement, and deliver the IT initiatives that provide MEASUREABLE returns, As we analyse the value chain of each of the individual organizational units within the enterprise we may identify how that unit has performed by quantitatively measuring it proximity to achieving the goals defined by the business for each unit. However, It would appear that true business value (the aggregate of all of the business units in the value chain), is to some degree subjectively measured  as for public companies this lies in shareholder value,  as the true value, or be it, the maximum amount that someone would pay for shares of an organization.

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• Lies, damned lies, and statistics Part 2

  - by Maria Colgan

  There was huge interest in our OOW session last year on Managing Optimizer Statistics. It seems statistics and the maintenance of them continues to baffle people. In order to help dispel the mysteries surround statistics management we have created a two part white paper series on Optimizer statistics.  Part one of this series was released in November last years and describes in detail, with worked examples, the different concepts of Optimizer statistics. Today we have published part two of the series, which focuses on the best practices for gathering statistics, and examines specific use cases including, the fears that surround histograms and statistics management of volatile tables like Global Temporary Tables. Here is a quick look at the Introduction and the start of the paper. You can find the full paper here. Happy Reading! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Introduction The Oracle Optimizer examines all of the possible plans for a SQL statement and picks the one with the lowest cost, where cost represents the estimated resource usage for a given plan. In order for the Optimizer to accurately determine the cost for an execution plan it must have information about all of the objects (table and indexes) accessed in the SQL statement as well as information about the system on which the SQL statement will be run. This necessary information is commonly referred to as Optimizer statistics. Understanding and managing Optimizer statistics is key to optimal SQL execution. Knowing when and how to gather statistics in a timely manner is critical to maintaining acceptable performance. This whitepaper is the second of a two part series on Optimizer statistics. The first part of this series, Understanding Optimizer Statistics, focuses on the concepts of statistics and will be referenced several times in this paper as a source of additional information. This paper will discuss in detail, when and how to gather statistics for the most common scenarios seen in an Oracle Database. The topics are · How to gather statistics · When to gather statistics · Improving the efficiency of gathering statistics · When not to gather statistics · Gathering other types of statistics How to gather statistics The preferred method for gathering statistics in Oracle is to use the supplied automatic statistics-gathering job. Automatic statistics gathering job The job collects statistics for all database objects, which are missing statistics or have stale statistics by running an Oracle AutoTask task during a predefined maintenance window. Oracle internally prioritizes the database objects that require statistics, so that those objects, which most need updated statistics, are processed first. The automatic statistics-gathering job uses the DBMS_STATS.GATHER_DATABASE_STATS_JOB_PROC procedure, which uses the same default parameter values as the other DBMS_STATS.GATHER_*_STATS procedures. The defaults are sufficient in most cases. However, it is occasionally necessary to change the default value of one of the statistics gathering parameters, which can be accomplished by using the DBMS_STATS.SET_*_PREF procedures. Parameter values should be changed at the smallest scope possible, ideally on a per-object bases. You can find the full paper here. Happy Reading! +Maria Colgan

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• Application Performance Episode 2: Announcing the Judges!

  - by Michaela Murray

  The story so far… We’re writing a new book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it! If you work with ASP.NET applications, and have top tips, hard-won lessons, or sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing performance problems, we want to hear from you! And if your app uses SQL Server, even better – interaction with the database is critical to application performance, so we’re looking for database top tips too. There’s a Microsoft Surface apiece for the person who comes up with the best tip for SQL Server and the best tip for .NET. Of course, if your suggestion is selected for the book, you’ll get full credit, by name, Twitter handle, GitHub repository, or whatever you like. To get involved, just email your nuggets of performance wisdom to [email protected] – there are examples of what we’re looking for and full competition details at Application Performance: The Best of the Web. Enter the judges… As mentioned in my last blogpost, we have a mystery panel of celebrity judges lined up to select the prize-winning performance pointers. We’re now ready to reveal their secret identities! Judging your ASP.NET  tips will be: Jean-Phillippe Gouigoux, MCTS/MCPD Enterprise Architect and MVP Connected System Developer. He’s a board member at French software company MGDIS, and teaches algorithms, security, software tests, and ALM at the Université de Bretagne Sud. Jean-Philippe also lectures at IT conferences and writes articles for programming magazines. His book Practical Performance Profiling is published by Simple-Talk. Nik Molnar,  a New Yorker, ASP Insider, and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source ASP.NET diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Florida, Nik specializes in web development, building scalable, client-centric solutions. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects. Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# and DotNetNuke MVP. Mitchel is an experienced software architect, business leader, public speaker, and educator. He works with companies across the globe, as CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Mitchel writes technical articles for online and print publications and is the author of Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming. He frequently answers questions on StackOverflow and MSDN and is an active participant in the .NET and DotNetNuke communities. Clive Tong, Software Engineer at Red Gate. In previous roles, Clive spent a lot of time working with Common LISP and enthusing about functional languages, and he’s worked with managed languages since before his first real job (which was a long time ago). Long convinced of the productivity benefits of managed languages, Clive is very interested in getting good runtime performance to keep managed languages practical for real-world development. And our trio of SQL Server specialists, ready to select your top suggestion, are (drumroll): Rodney Landrum, a SQL Server MVP who writes regularly about Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He’s authored SQL Server Tacklebox, three Reporting Services books, and contributes regularly to SQLServerCentral, SQL Server Magazine, and Simple–Talk. His day job involves overseeing a large SQL Server infrastructure in Orlando. Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist at Red Gate and SQL Server MVP. In an IT career spanning more than 20 years, Grant has written VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java. He’s been working with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant volunteers with the Editorial Committee at PASS and has written books for Apress and Simple-Talk. Jonathan Allen, leader and founder of the PASS SQL South West user group. He’s been working with SQL Server since 1999 and enjoys performance tuning, development, and using SQL Server for business solutions. He’s spoken at SQLBits and SQL in the City, as well as local user groups across the UK. He’s also a moderator at ask.sqlservercentral.com.

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• Siebel CRM: Alive and Jamming at OpenWorld

  - by Tony Berk

  Yes, a rock 'n roll reference in a CRM/Customer Experience blog entry! Sorry, but we are getting excited about OpenWorld and all of the great CRM and Customer Experience sessions we've been planning for the past 6 months (yes, we really do start planning in March!). I also heard that some band named Pearl Jam is making an appearance. Who's tried the Rock Band guitar solo for Alive? Way too difficult for an amateur like me. Anyhow, we are supposed to be highlighting Siebel CRM at OpenWorld. Yes, Siebel will once again have a major presence at OpenWorld and there is a lot of new things to tell you about. If you search the OpenWorld Content Catalog with the tag "siebel", you'll find over 75 sessions. That's over 75 hours of opportunity to hear from Siebel customers, product managers, and implementers. While I invite you to read through the descriptions of all 75+ sessions or check out the OpenWorld Focus On Siebel document, I'd like to try and help with some highlights. The roadmap and strategy session was mentioned in my previous post, but it is important enough to mention again. Siebel CRM Overview, Strategy, and Roadmap (CON9700) - Oct 1, 12:15PM. Come to this session to learn about the Siebel product roadmap and how Oracle is committed to accelerating the pace of innovation and value for its customers on this platform. Additionally, the session covers how Siebel customers can leverage many Oracle assets such as Oracle WebCenter Sites; InQuira, RightNow, and ATG/Endeca applications, and Oracle Policy Automation in conjunction with their current Siebel investments. This session was FULL last year, so I strongly suggest you pre-register via the OpenWorld Schedule Builder. Every year, my favorites are the customer panels, where you get hear 2, 3 or even 4 customers talk about their implementations and often share best practices and lessons learned. Customer Panel: Business Benefits of Deploying Siebel CRM (Session ID: CON9717) - Oct 1, 10:45AM featuring GlaxoSmithKline, PNC Bank and Southwest Airlines. Maximizing User Adoption Rates for Siebel Sales and Siebel Partner Relationship Management (CON9690) Oct 1, 12:15PM featuring CSL Behring, Intuit and McKesson. Best Practices for Upgrading Your Siebel CRM Implementations: Customer Successes (CON9715) - Oct 1, 3:15PM featuring Citrix, Sunlife Financial and Oracle experts. Driving Great Customer Experiences with Siebel Service Applications (CON9604) - Oct 1, 4:45 featuring Farmers Insurance, US Department of Homeland Security and Waste Management There are also a number of customer case study sessions including: Lowe's (CON9740), American Red Cross (CON6535), Ontario Lottery & Gaming's Siebel Marketing and Loyalty (CON4114), and LexisNexis (CON9551). Also, an interesting session on optimizing Siebel on Oracle with ACCOR (CON4289). Have you heard about the new Open UI for Siebel? If you haven't, you should! There are sessions focused on introducing you to the new functionality and how you can unleash the power of the new user interface: User Interface Innovations with the New Siebel “Open UI” (CON9703) Oct 2, 10:15AM and Unleash the Power of “Open UI” (CON9705) - Oct 3, 11:45AM. Other Siebel-related topics you might want to check out: Knowledge Management: Increasing Return on Your CRM Investments with Knowledge (CON9779) - Oct 1, 3:15PM Mobile: Mobile Solutions for Siebel CRM (CON9697) - Oct 2, 5:00PM Siebel Loyalty: Best Practices for Maximizing the Success of Your Loyalty Program with Siebel Loyalty (CON9588) - Oct 2, 5:00PM  Siebel Marketing: Next-Generation Cross-Channel Insight-Driven Customer Dialogue with Siebel Marketing (CON9600) - Oct 3, 10:15AM Integrating with Oracle Commerce: Administer Once and Deploy Everywhere: Integrating the Siebel, ATG, and Endeca Platforms (CON9761) - Oct 2 5:00PM Finally, don't forget the Oracle Applications User Group (OAUG) Special Interest Group for Siebel on Sunday, September 30 at 2:15PM. And of course, the Demogrounds in Moscone West will be full of Oracle and partner demos and information on new solutions. Wow! I told you there was a lot! Good luck finding the best sessions for you and have a great time at OpenWorld. Don't forget to sing along with Pearl Jam!

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• Using GMail's SMTP and IMAP servers in Notification Mailer

  - by Saroja Kandepuneni

  Overview GMail offers free, reliable, popular SMTP and IMAP services, because of which many people are interested to use it. GMail can be used when there are no in-house SMTP/IMAP servers for testing or debugging purposes. This blog explains how to install GMail SSL certificate in Concurrent Tier, testing the connection using a standalone program, running Mailer diagnostics and configuring GMail IMAP and SMTP servers for Workflow Notification Mailer Inbound and Outbound connections. GMail servers configuration SMTP server Host Name  smtp.gmail.com SSL Port  465 TLS/SSL required  Yes User Name  Your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com) Password  Your gmail passwor  IMAP server  Host Name imap.gmail.com  SSL Port 993 TLS/SSL Required Yes  User Name  Your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com)  Password Your gmail password GMail SSL Certificate Installation The following is the procedure to install the GMail SSL certificate Copy the below GMail SSL certificate to a file eg: gmail.cer -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE----- Install the SSL certificate into the default JRE location or any other location using below command Installing into a dfeault JRE location in EBS instance         # keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore $AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts  -storepass changeit -alias gmail-lnx_chainnedcert -file gmail.cer Install into a custom location         # keytool -import -trustcacerts -keystore <customLocation>  -storepass changeit -alias gmail-lnx_chainnedcert -file gmail.cer       <customLocation> -- directory in instance where the certificate need to be installed After running the above command you can see the following response         Trust this certificate? [no]:  yes        Certificate was added to keystore Running Mailer Command Line Diagnostics Run Mailer command line diagnostics from conccurrent tier where Mailer is running, to check the IMAP connection using the below command $AFJVAPRG -classpath $AF_CLASSPATH -Dprotocol=imap -Ddbcfile=$FND_SECURE/$TWO_TASK.dbc -Dserver=imap.gmail.com -Dport=993 -Dssl=Y -Dtruststore=$AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts -Daccount=<gmail username> -Dpassword=<password> -Dconnect_timeout=120 -Ddebug=Y -Dlogfile=GmailImapTest.log -DdebugMailSession=Y oracle.apps.fnd.wf.mailer.Mailer Run Mailer command line diagnostics from concurrent tier where Mailer is running, to check the SMTP connection using the below command   $AFJVAPRG -classpath $AF_CLASSPATH -Dprotocol=smtp -Ddbcfile=$FND_SECURE/$TWO_TASK.dbc -Dserver=smtp.gmail.com -Dport=465 -Dssl=Y -Dtruststore=$AF_JRE_TOP/lib/security/cacerts -Daccount=<gmail username> -Dpassword=<password> -Dconnect_timeout=120 -Ddebug=Y -Dlogfile=GmailSmtpTest.log -DdebugMailSession=Y oracle.apps.fnd.wf.mailer.Mailer Standalone program to verify the IMAP connection Run the below standalone program from the concurrent tier node where Mailer is running to verify the connection with GMail IMAP server. It connects to the Gmail IMAP server with the given GMail user name and password and lists all the folders that exist in that account. If the Gmail IMAP server is not working for the  Mailer check whether the PROCESSED and DISCARD folders exist for the GMail account, if not create manually by logging into GMail account.Sample program to test GMail IMAP connection  The standalone program can be run as below  $java GmailIMAPTest GmailUsername GMailUserPassword            Standalone program to verify the SMTP connection Run the below standalone program from the concurrent tier node where Mailer is running to verify the connection with GMail SMTP server. It connects to the GMail SMTP server by authenticating with the given user name and password  and sends a test email message to the give recipient user email address. Sample program to test GMail SMTP connection The standalone program can be run as below  $java GmailSMTPTest GmailUsername gMailPassword recipientEmailAddress    Warnings As gmail.com is an external domain, the Mailer concurrent tier should allow the connection with GMail server Please keep in mind when using it for corporate facilities, that the e-mail data would be stored outside the corporate network

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• First Day of Data Integration Track at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Irem Radzik

  OpenWorld started full speed for us today with a great set of sessions in the Data Integration track. After the exciting keynote session on Oracle Database 12c in the morning; Brad Adelberg, VP of Development for Data Integration products, presented Oracle’s data integration product strategy. His session highlighted the new requirements for data integration to achieve pervasive and continuous access to trusted data. The new requirements and product focus areas presented in this session are: Provide access to any data at any source On premise or on cloud Enable zero downtime operations and maximum performance Leverage real-time data for accurate business insights And ensure high quality data is used across the enterprise During the session Brad walked over how Oracle’s data integration products, Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, and Oracle Data Service Integrator, deliver on these requirements and how recent product releases build on this strategy. Soon after Brad’s session we heard from a panel of Oracle GoldenGate customers, St. Jude Medical, Equifax, and Bank of America, how they achieved zero downtime operations using Oracle GoldenGate. The panel presented different use cases of GoldenGate, from Active-Active replication to offloading reporting. Especially St. Jude Medical’s implementation, which involves the alert management system for patients that use their pacemakers, reminded me in some cases downtime of mission-critical systems can be a matter of life or death. It is very comforting to hear that GoldenGate delivers highly-reliable continuous availability for life-saving medical systems. In the afternoon, Nick Wagner from the Product Management team and I followed the customer panel with the review of Oracle GoldenGate 11gR2’s New Features.  Many questions we received from audience were about GoldenGate’s new Integrated Capture for Oracle Database and the enhanced Conflict Management features, as well as how GoldenGate compares to Oracle Streams. In addition to giving details on GoldenGate’s unique capability to capture changed data with a direct integration to the Oracle DBMS engine, we reminded the audience that enhancements to Oracle GoldenGate will continue, while Streams will be primarily maintained. Last but not least, Tim Garrod and Ryan Fonnett from Raymond James presented a unified real-time data integration solution using Oracle Data Integrator and GoldenGate for their operational data store (ODS). The ODS supports application services across the enterprise and providing timely data is a critical requirement. In this solution, Oracle GoldenGate does the log-based change data capture for Oracle Data Integrator’s near real-time data integration between heterogeneous systems. As Raymond James’ ODS supports mission-critical services for their advisors, the project team had to set up this integration environment to be highly available. During the session, Ryan and Tim explained how they use ODI to enable automated process execution and “always-on” integration processes. Their presentation included 2 demonstrations that focused on CDC patterns deployed with ODI and the automated multi-instance execution and monitoring. We are very grateful to Tim and Ryan for their very-well prepared presentation at OpenWorld this year. Day 2 (Tuesday) will be also a busy day in our track. In addition to the Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards ceremony at 11:45am at Moscone West 3001, we have the following DI sessions Real-World Operational Reporting Customer Panel 11:45am Moscone West- 3005 Oracle Data Integrator Product Update and Future Strategy 1:15pm Moscone West- 3005 High-volume OLTP with Oracle GoldenGate: Best Practices from Comcast 1:15pm Moscone West- 3005 Everything You need to Know about Monitoring Oracle GoldenGate 5pm Moscone West-3005 If you are at OpenWorld please join us in these sessions. For a full review of data integration track at OpenWorld please see our Focus-On document.

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• The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment

  - by Bill Evjen

  This is a group that is focused on entertainment in the aviation industry. I am attending their conference for the first time as it relates to my job at Swank Motion Pictures and what we do for our various markets. I will post my notes here. The Evolution of Television and Home Entertainment by Patrick Cosson, Veebeam TV has been the center of living rooms for sometime. Conversations and culture evolve around the TV. The way we consume this content has dramatically been changing. After TV, we had the MTV revolution of TV. It has created shorter attention spans, it made us more materialistic, narcissistic, and not easily impressed. Then we came to the Internet. The amount of content has expanded. It contains a ton of user-generated content, provides filtering, organization, distribution. We now have a problem. We are in the age of digital excess. We can access whatever we want. In conjunction with this – we are moving. The challenge we have now is curation. The trends  we see: rapid shift from scheduled to on demand consumption. A move to Internet protocols from cable Rapid fragmentation of media a transition from the TV set to a variety of screens Social connections bring mediators and amplifiers. TiVo – the shift to on demand It is because of a time-crunch Provides personal experiences Once old consumption habits are changed, there is no way back! Experiences are that people are loading up content and then bringing it with them on planes, to hotels, etc. Rapid fragmentation of media sources Many new professional content sources and channels, the rise of digital distribution, and the rise of user-generated content contribute to the wealth of content sources and abundant choice. Netflix, BBC iPlayer, hulu, Pandora, iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Voddler, Spotify (these companies didn’t exist 5 years ago). People now expect this kind of consumption. People are now thinking how to deliver all these tools. Transition from the TV set to multi-screens The TV screen has traditionally been the dominant consumption screen for TV and video. Now the PC, game consoles, and various mobile devices are rapidly becoming common video devices. Multi-screens are now the norm. Social connections becoming key mediators What increasingly funnels traffic on the web, social networking enablers, will become an integral part of the discovery, consumption and sharing model for Television. The revolution will be broadcasted on Facebook and Twitter. There is business disruption There are a lot of new entrants Rapid internationalization Increasing competition from existing media players A fragmenting audience base Web browser Freedom to access any site The fight over the walled garden Most devices are not powerful enough to support a full browser PC will always be present in the living room Wireless link between PC and TV Output 1080p, plays anything, secure Key players and their challenges Services Internet media is increasingly interconnected to social media and publicly shared UGC Content delivery moving to IPTV Rights management issues are creating silos and hindering a great user experience and growth Devices Devices are becoming people’s windows into all kinds of media from all kinds of sources There won’t be a consolidation of the device landscape, rather the opposite Finding the right niche makes the most sense. We are moving to an on demand world of streaming world. People want full access to anything.

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• Tip on Reusing Classes in Different .NET Project Types

  - by psheriff

  All of us have class libraries that we developed for use in our projects. When you create a .NET Class Library project with many classes, you can use that DLL in ASP.NET, Windows Forms and WPF applications. However, for Silverlight and Windows Phone, these .NET Class Libraries cannot be used. The reason is Silverlight and Windows Phone both use a scaled down version of .NET and thus do not have access to the full .NET framework class library. However, there are many classes and functionality that will work in the full .NET and in the scaled down versions that Silverlight and Windows Phone use.Let’s take an example of a class that you might want to use in all of the above mentioned projects. The code listing shown below might be something that you have in a Windows Form or an ASP.NET application. public class StringCommon{  public static bool IsAllLowerCase(string value)  {    return new Regex(@"^([^A-Z])+$").IsMatch(value);  }   public static bool IsAllUpperCase(string value)  {    return new Regex(@"^([^a-z])+$").IsMatch(value);  }} The StringCommon class is very simple with just two methods, but you know that the System.Text.RegularExpressions namespace is available in Silverlight and Windows Phone. Thus, you know that you may reuse this class in your Silverlight and Windows Phone projects. Here is the problem: if you create a Silverlight Class Library project and you right-click on that project in Solution Explorer and choose Add | Add Existing Item… from the menu, the class file StringCommon.cs will be copied from the original location and placed into the Silverlight Class Library project. You now have two files with the same code. If you want to change the code you will now need to change it in two places! This is a maintenance nightmare that you have just created. If you then add this to a Windows Phone Class Library project, you now have three places you need to modify the code! Add As LinkInstead of creating three separate copies of the same class file, you want to leave the original class file in its original location and just create a link to that file from the Silverlight and Windows Phone class libraries. Visual Studio will allow you to do this, but you need to do one additional step in the Add Existing Item dialog (see Figure 1). You will still right mouse click on the project and choose Add | Add Existing Item… from the menu. You will still highlight the file you want to add to your project, but DO NOT click on the Add button. Instead click on the drop down portion of the Add button and choose the “Add As Link” menu item. This will now create a link to the file on disk and will not copy the file into your new project. Figure 1: Add as Link will create a link, not copy the file over. When this linked file is added to your project, there will be a different icon next to that file in the Solution Explorer window. This icon signifies that this is a link to a file in another folder on your hard drive.   Figure 2: The Linked file will have a different icon to show it is a link. Of course, if you have code that will not work in Silverlight or Windows Phone -- because the code has dependencies on features of .NET that are not supported on those platforms – you  can always wrap conditional compilation code around the offending code so it will be removed when compiled in those class libraries. SummaryIn this short blog entry you learned how to reuse one of your class libraries from ASP.NET, Windows Forms or WPF applications in your Silverlight or Windows Phone class libraries. You can do this without creating a maintenance nightmare by using the “Add a Link” feature of the Add Existing Item dialog. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free video on Silverlight entitled Silverlight XAML for the Complete Novice - Part 1.

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• DAC pack up all your troubles

  - by Tony Davis

  Visual Studio 2010, or perhaps its apparently-forthcoming sister, "SQL Studio", is being geared up to become the natural way for developers to create databases. Central to this drive is the introduction of 'data-tier application components', or DACs. Applications are developed as normal but when it comes to deployment, instead of supplying the DBA with a bunch of scripts to create the required database objects, the developer creates a single DAC Package ("DAC Pack"); a zipped XML file containing all the database objects needed by the application, along with versioning information, policies for deployment, and so on. It's an intriguing prospect. Developers can work on their development database using their existing tools and source control, and then package up the changes into a single DACPAC for deployment and management. DBAs get an "application level view" of how their instances are being used and the ability to collectively, rather than individually, manage the objects. The DBA needing to manage a large number of relatively small databases can use "DAC snapshots" to get a quick overview of what has changed across all the databases they manage. The reason that DAC packs haven't caused more excitement is that they can only be pushed to SQL Server 2008 R2, and they must be developed or inspected using Visual Studio 2010. Furthermore, what we see right now in VS2010 is more of a 'work-in-progress' or 'vision of the future', with serious shortcomings and restrictions that render it unsuitable for anything but small 'non-critical' departmental databases. The first problem is that DAC packs support a limited set of schema objects (corresponding closely to the features available on 'Azure'). This means that Service Broker queues, CLR Objects, and perhaps most critically security (permissions, certificates etc.), are off-limits. Applications that require these objects will need to add them via a post-deployment TSQL script, rather defeating the whole idea. More worrying still is the process for altering a database with a DAC pack. The grand 'collective' philosophy, whereby a single XML file can be used for deploying and managing builds and changes, extends, unfortunately, to database upgrades. Any change to a database object will result in the creation of a new database, copying the data from the old version, nuking the previous one, and then renaming the new one. Simple eh? The problem is that even something as trivial as adding a comment to a stored procedure in a 5GB database will require the server to find at least twice as much space, as well sufficient elbow-room in the transaction log for copying the largest table. Of course, you'll need to take the database offline for the full course of the deployment, which is likely to take a long time if there is a lot of data. This upgrade/rename process breaks the log chain, makes any subsequent full restore operation highly complicated, and will also break log shipping. As with any grand vision, the devil is always in the detail. It's hard to fathom why Microsoft hasn't used a SQL Compare-style approach to the upgrade process, altering a database with a change script, and this will surely be adopted in the near future. Something had to be in place for VS2010, but right now DAC packs only make sense for Azure. For this, they're cute, but hardly compelling. Nevertheless, DBAs would do well to get familiar with VS 2010 and DAC packs. Like it or not, they're both coming. Cheers, Tony.

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• How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?

  - by user127817

  I'm developing a classical 2d RPG (in a similar vein to final fantasy) and I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to do damage formulas/links to resources/examples? I'll explain my current setup. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it with this question, and I apologize if my questions is too large/broad My Characters stats are composed of the following: enum Stat { HP = 0, MP = 1, SP = 2, Strength = 3, Vitality = 4, Magic = 5, Spirit = 6, Skill = 7, Speed = 8, //Speed/Agility are the same thing Agility = 8, Evasion = 9, MgEvasion = 10, Accuracy = 11, Luck = 12, }; Vitality is basically defense to physical attacks and spirit is defense to magic attacks. All stats have fixed maximums (9999 for HP, 999 for MP/SP and 255 for the rest). With abilities, the maximums can be increased (99999 for HP, 9999 for HP/SP, 999 for the rest) with typical values (at level 100) before/after abilities+equipment+etc will be 8000/20,000 for HP, 800/2000 for SP/MP, 180/350 for other stats Late game Enemy HP will typically be in the lower millions (with a super boss having the maximum of ~12 million). I was wondering how do people actually develop proper damage formulas that scale correctly? For instance, based on this data, using the damage formulas for Final Fantasy X as a base looked very promising. A full reference here http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/197344-final-fantasy-x/faqs/31381 but as a quick example: Str = 127, 'Attack' command used, enemy Def = 34. 1. Physical Damage Calculation: Step 1 ------------------------------------- [{(Stat^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x DmCon ÷16] Step 2 ---------------------------------------- [{(127^3 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 3 -------------------------------------- [{(2048383 ÷ 32) + 32} x 16 ÷ 16] Step 4 --------------------------------------------------- [{(64011) + 32} x 1] Step 5 -------------------------------------------------------- [{(64043 x 1)}] Step 6 ---------------------------------------------------- Base Damage = 64043 Step 7 ----------------------------------------- [{(Def - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------ [{(34 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ------------------------------------------------- [(-246)^2) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 ---------------------------------------------------- [60516 ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [550] + 16 Step 12 ---------------------------------------------------------- DefNum = 566 Step 13 ---------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * DefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [64043 * 566 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------------ [36248338 ÷ 730] Step 16 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 49655 Step 17 ------------ Base Damage 2 * {730 - (Def * 51 - Def^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ---------------------- 49655 * {730 - (34 * 51 - 34^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 ------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 1156 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1734 - 105) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 21 ------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - (1629) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 22 --------------------------------------------- 49655 * {730 - 162} ÷ 730 Step 23 ----------------------------------------------------- 49655 * 568 ÷ 730 Step 24 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 38635 I simply modified the dividers to include the attack rating of weapons and the armor rating of armor. Magic Damage is calculated as follows: Mag = 255, Ultima is used, enemy MDef = 1 Step 1 ----------------------------------- [DmCon * ([Stat^2 ÷ 6] + DmCon) ÷ 4] Step 2 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([255^2 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 3 ------------------------------------------ [70 * ([65025 ÷ 6] + 70) ÷ 4] Step 4 ------------------------------------------------ [70 * (10837 + 70) ÷ 4] Step 5 ----------------------------------------------------- [70 * (10907) ÷ 4] Step 6 ------------------------------------ Base Damage = 190872 [cut to 99999] Step 7 ---------------------------------------- [{(MDef - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 8 ------------------------------------------- [{(1 - 280.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 9 ---------------------------------------------- [{(-279.4)^2} ÷ 110] + 16 Step 10 -------------------------------------------------- [(78064) ÷ 110] + 16 Step 11 ------------------------------------------------------------ [709] + 16 Step 12 --------------------------------------------------------- MDefNum = 725 Step 13 --------------------------------------------- [BaseDmg * MDefNum ÷ 730] Step 14 --------------------------------------------------- [99999 * 725 ÷ 730] Step 15 ------------------------------------------------- Base Damage 2 = 99314 Step 16 ---------- Base Damage 2 * {730 - (MDef * 51 - MDef^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 17 ------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (1 * 51 - 1^2 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 18 ------------------------------ 99314 * {730 - (51 - 1 ÷ 11) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 19 --------------------------------------- 99314 * {730 - (49) ÷ 10} ÷ 730 Step 20 ----------------------------------------------------- 99314 * 725 ÷ 730 Step 21 -------------------------------------------------- Final Damage = 98633 The problem is that the formulas completely fall apart once stats start going above 255. In particular Defense values over 300 or so start generating really strange behavior. High Strength + Defense stats lead to massive negative values for instance. While I might be able to modify the formulas to work correctly for my use case, it'd probably be easier just to use a completely new formula. How do people actually develop damage formulas? I was considering opening excel and trying to build the formula that way (mapping Attack Stats vs. Defense Stats for instance) but I was wondering if there's an easier way? While I can't convey the full game mechanics of my game here, might someone be able to suggest a good starting place for building a damage formula? Thanks

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• Love and Hate Outlook autocomplete, Outlook 2010/Exchange 2010

  - by Kay Sellenrode

  I think that almost every Exchange admin can concur with me that the Outlook autocomplete cache is one of those things you love but at the same time also hate. Users mostly love this function, except when it fails.Luckily since Outlook 2010 things got a little better and we got rid of the dreaded nk2 files.Outlook 2010 now includes a folder named "Suggested Contacts", all users you send an email to and that don't already have an contact object are saved in this suggested contacts folder.A lot of people thought this folder is also the source for the autocomplete cache, which would make it somewhat easy to manage, I wish the solution was that easy.Badly enough separate from the suggested contacts, outlook still maintains a cache for the autocomplete function. Let us say you run in to the following situation: John works for company A and is a popular contact for almost everyone in your organization.Now John quit his job at Company A and moved to Company B.Luckily John maintains your company as customer, but his email address is now changed from companyA.com to companyB.comSince you don't want to do any business with Company A anymore, you want to make sure none of your users accidentally mail to his old address.Now this is where the real fun starts, cause almost all of your 1000 users have mailed at least once with John.Resulting in the fact that every user has John most probably listed in their autocomplete cache.  I have run into sort like situations multiple times with several customers, which is always a pain.And of course this blog post is the result of one of those issues once again.I knew that with the Suggested contacts we could do more than previously, but still never spent time on it before.But today I thought lets nail this now and forever!!  Ok let's start of that things are different for every combination of outlook and exchange.I explain the procedure for Exchange 2010 SP1+ in combination with Outlook 2010.At first we want to get rid of all contact objects that contain [email protected] do this we need to be assigned to the RBAC role "Mailbox Import Export", which can be done through the Exchange Control panel.In my test environment I assigned this role to the Organization admins, but in real life you might want to add it to a custom role. Open the Exchange control panel by logging in to the ecp url, in my case https://ITFEX.itf.local/ECP, and make sure you selected your organization as management scope.Browse to Roles & Auditing, and open the properties for the organization management role group.click on the Add button to add a new role to the Organization Management role group, select the Mailbox Import Export role and click on add and OK to add it to the role.  Once you have assigned that role to your account you can open the Exchange Management Shell and execute the following command: Get-mailbox –resultsize unlimited | search-mailbox –targetmailbox "your.account" –targetfolder searchanddelete –loglevel full –logonly –searchquery "kind:contact AND [email protected]" This command will create a list with all mailboxes and any contacts that were found with an email address that contains [email protected], this list is then posted in the mailbox you specified at your.account in the folder searchanddelete.Now examine the report that was created and posted in the mailbox to see if it matches what you think it should match.My results looked like this:  When you're confident that the search includes all references and no false positives you can execute almost the same command, but this time with an delete action instead of the logonly. Get-mailbox –resultsize unlimited | search-mailbox –targetmailbox "your.account" –targetfolder searchanddelete –loglevel full –DeleteContent –searchquery "kind:contact AND [email protected]" Now most people would think this would remove the contact object from the suggested contacts, resulting in a removal from the autocomplete list.Sad but not true, to clean up the autocomplete list start Outlook with the command: "outlook /cleanautocompletecache" This will result in an empty cache, but luckily this is rebuild based on the suggested contacts, which now doesn't include the [email protected] contact anymore.

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• maintaining a growing, diverse codebase with continuous integration

  - by Nate

  I am in need of some help with philosophy and design of a continuous integration setup. Our current CI setup uses buildbot. When I started out designing it, I inherited (well, not strictly, as I was involved in its design a year earlier) a bespoke CI builder that was tailored to run the entire build at once, overnight. After a while, we decided that this was insufficient, and started exploring different CI frameworks, eventually choosing buildbot. One of my goals in transitioning to buildbot (besides getting to enjoy all the whiz-bang extras) was to overcome some of the inadequacies of our bespoke nightly builder. Humor me for a moment, and let me explain what I have inherited. The codebase for my company is almost 150 unique c++ Windows applications, each of which has dependencies on one or more of a dozen internal libraries (and many on 3rd party libraries as well). Some of these libraries are interdependent, and have depending applications that (while they have nothing to do with each other) have to be built with the same build of that library. Half of these applications and libraries are considered "legacy" and unportable, and must be built with several distinct configurations of the IBM compiler (for which I have written unique subclasses of Compile), and the other half are built with visual studio. The code for each compiler is stored in two separate Visual SourceSafe repositories (which I am simply handling using a bunch of ShellCommands, as there is no support for VSS). Our original nightly builder simply took down the source for everything, and built stuff in a certain order. There was no way to build only a single application, or pick a revision, or to group things. It would launched virtual machines to build a number of the applications. It wasn't very robust, it wasn't distributable. It wasn't terribly extensible. I wanted to be able to overcame all of these limitations in buildbot. The way I did this originally was to create entries for each of the applications we wanted to build (all 150ish of them), then create triggered schedulers that could build various applications as groups, and then subsume those groups under an overall nightly build scheduler. These could run on dedicated slaves (no more virtual machine chicanery), and if I wanted I could simply add new slaves. Now, if we want to do a full build out of schedule, it's one click, but we can also build just one application should we so desire. There are four weaknesses of this approach, however. One is our source tree's complex web of dependencies. In order to simplify config maintenace, all builders are generated from a large dictionary. The dependencies are retrieved and built in a not-terribly robust fashion (namely, keying off of certain things in my build-target dictionary). The second is that each build has between 15 and 21 build steps, which is hard to browse and look at in the web interface, and since there are around 150 columns, takes forever to load (think from 30 seconds to multiple minutes). Thirdly, we no longer have autodiscovery of build targets (although, as much as one of my coworkers harps on me about this, I don't see what it got us in the first place). Finally, aformentioned coworker likes to constantly bring up the fact that we can no longer perform a full build on our local machine (though I never saw what that got us, either, considering that it took three times as long as the distributed build; I think he is just paranoically phobic of ever breaking the build). Now, moving to new development, we are starting to use g++ and subversion (not porting the old repository, mind you - just for the new stuff). Also, we are starting to do more unit testing ("more" might give the wrong picture... it's more like any), and integration testing (using python). I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fit these into my existing configuration. So, where have I gone wrong philosophically here? How can I best proceed forward (with buildbot - it's the only piece of the puzzle I have license to work on) so that my configuration is actually maintainable? How do I address some of my design's weaknesses? What really works in terms of CI strategies for large, (possibly over-)complex codebases?

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• SQL SERVER – How to Roll Back SQL Server Database Changes

  - by Pinal Dave

  In a perfect scenario, no unexpected and unplanned changes occur. There are no unpleasant surprises, no inadvertent changes. However, even with all precautions and testing, there is sometimes a need to revert a structure or data change. One of the methods that can be used in this situation is to use an older database backup that has the records or database object structure you want to revert to. For this method, you have to have the adequate full database backup and a tool that will help you with comparison and synchronization is preferred. In this article, we will focus on another method: rolling back the changes. This can be done by using: An option in SQL Server Management Studio T-SQL, or ApexSQL Log The first two solutions have been described in this article The disadvantages of these methods are that you have to know when exactly the change you want to revert happened and that all transactions on the database executed in a specific time range are rolled back – the ones you want to undo and the ones you don’t. How to easily roll back SQL Server database changes using ApexSQL Log? The biggest challenge is to roll back just specific changes, not all changes that happened in a specific time range. While SQL Server Management Studio option and T-SQL read and roll forward all transactions in the transaction log files, I will show you a solution that finds and scripts only the specific changes that match your criteria. Therefore, you don’t need to worry about all other database changes that you don’t want to roll back. ApexSQL Log is a SQL Server disaster recovery tool that reads transaction logs and provides a wide range of filters that enable you to easily rollback only specific data changes. First, connect to the online database where you want to roll back the changes. Once you select the database, ApexSQL Log will show its recovery model. Note that changes can be rolled back even for a database in the Simple recovery model, when no database and transaction log backups are available. However, ApexSQL Log achieves best results when the database is in the Full recovery model and you have a chain of subsequent transaction log backups, back to the moment when the change occurred. In this example, we will use only the online transaction log. In the next step, use filters to read only the transactions that happened in a specific time range. To remove noise, it’s recommended to use as many filters as possible. Besides filtering by the time of the transaction, ApexSQL Log can filter by the operation type: Table name: As well as transaction state (committed, aborted, running, and unknown), name of the user who committed the change, specific field values, server process IDs, and transaction description. You can select only the tables affected by the changes you want to roll back. However, if you’re not certain which tables were affected, you can leave them all selected and once the results are shown in the main grid, analyze them to find the ones you to roll back. When you set the filters, you can select how to present the results. ApexSQL Log can automatically create undo or redo scripts, export the transactions into an XML, HTML, CSV, SQL, or SQL Bulk file, and create a batch file that you can use for unattended transaction log reading. In this example, I will open the results in the grid, as I want to analyze them before rolling back the transactions. The results contain information about the transaction, as well as who and when made it. For UPDATEs, ApexSQL Log shows both old and new values, so you can easily see what has happened. To create an UNDO script that rolls back the changes, select the transactions you want to roll back and click Create undo script in the menu. For the DELETE statement selected in the screenshot above, the undo script is: INSERT INTO [Sales].[PersonCreditCard] ([BusinessEntityID], [CreditCardID], [ModifiedDate]) VALUES (297, 8010, '20050901 00:00:00.000') When it comes to rolling back database changes, ApexSQL Log has a big advantage, as it rolls back only specific transactions, while leaving all other transactions that occurred at the same time range intact. That makes ApexSQL Log a good solution for rolling back inadvertent data and schema changes on your SQL Server databases. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: ApexSQL

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• Windows 8 Camp&ndash;Ways to Prepare

  - by Lori Lalonde

  When Windows 8 was announced at the BUILD conference back in September, it created quite a buzz among the developer community. By the spring of 2012,  Windows 8 Developer Camps started popping up everywhere imaginable. I received a lot of questions from CTTDNUG members about whether or not we would be hosting one locally. If you recall my post about the Windows Phone/Azure Developer Workshop that CTTDNUG hosted back in March, you’ll remember that the biggest hurdle to overcome when planning this type of event was finding the right venue. It took some time, but I finally found a venue that was available and provided the prerequisites needed to ensure this camp is a success. I am very excited that CTTDNUG will be hosting a Windows 8 Camp this summer in the Kitchener/Waterloo area. In fact, it’s coming up in less than 2 weeks. Clearly other developers are excited as well, because our registration numbers show that the event is already 70% full! On top of that, I was fortunate enough to also book two well-known evangelists to present and teach at this full day developer camp: Andrei Marukovich and Atley Hunter. This was the icing on the cake. With the content provided by Microsoft, and two local experts that live and breathe Windows 8 development, I know that I, along with other developers that attend this event, will have the opportunity to maximize our learning potential and hit the ground running. If you plan on attending a Windows 8 Developer Camp soon, and want to ensure you get the most “bang for your buck” (figuratively speaking, since these camps are free), there are some things you can do to prepare before the big day: 1) Install the prerequisites on your own device before the big day I can’t stress this enough. Otherwise, you will be spending valuable time during the hands-on period downloading and installing what is needed, rather than digging into the development and using that time to ask the experts on-hand about programming challenges, issues, questions you may have with respect to your development. Prerequisites: Windows 8 Release Preview Visual Studio 2012 RC Download the Windows 8 SDK Samples 2) Purchase, download, and read Charles Petzold’s newest book:  Programming Windows 6th Edition This is a great introduction to the type of content you will be learning about during the camp. Doing some light reading beforehand might raise some questions about the concepts discussed in the book, which will give you the opportunity to write them down and bring them with you to the camp. The experts on hand will be able to answer them for you. 3) Make use of the freebies that are available Telerik has recently released a preview of their RadControls for Metro. You can sign up to receive a license code to give you access to install the preview for free and start playing around with it. Syncfusion also offers a free download of their Metro Studio package, which is a collection of metro style icons that you can customize and use in your own applications. Last but not least, once you’ve installed the Windows 8 Release Preview on your own device, go to the Windows 8 Store and download a handful of the free apps that are available. Testing out other Metro apps may give you ideas of what you can do in your own apps and analyze what features you like: application flow, type of animations used, concepts that were leveraged, how live tiles were used, etc. I hope you found these tips to be useful as you embark on a new development journey! Although this post focused on how to prepare for a Windows 8 camp, the same ideas are there whichever developer camp/workshop/event you attend. Learning does not begin and end on the day of the event. Attending a developer camp is just one step of many to master whatever technology you are interested in. It is a continuous process, which is fully maximized when you do your homework beforehand, actively participate during,  and follow up by putting what you learned to practice afterwards. Happy coding!

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