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• What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

  - by jatin.thaker

  Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; John Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and John Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. John Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patanjali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardinian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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• Establishing WebLogic Server HTTPS Trust of IIS Using a Microsoft Local Certificate Authority

  - by user647124

  Everyone agrees that self-signed and demo certificates for SSL and HTTPS should never be used in production and preferred not to be used elsewhere. Most self-signed and demo certificates are provided by vendors with the intention that they are used only to integrate within the same environment. In a vendor’s perfect world all application servers in a given enterprise are from the same vendor, which makes this lack of interoperability in a non-production environment an advantage. For us working in the real world, where not only do we not use a single vendor everywhere but have to make do with self-signed certificates for all but production, testing HTTPS between an IIS ASP.NET service provider and a WebLogic J2EE consumer application can be very frustrating to set up. It was for me, especially having found many blogs and discussion threads where various solutions were described but did not quite work and were all mostly similar but just a little bit different. To save both you and my future (who always seems to forget the hardest-won lessons) all of the pain and suffering, I am recording the steps that finally worked here for reference and sanity. How You Know You Need This The first cold clutches of dread that tells you it is going to be a long day is when you attempt to a WSDL published by IIS in WebLogic over HTTPS and you see the following: <Jul 30, 2012 2:51:31 PM EDT> <Warning> <Security> <BEA-090477> <Certificate chain received from myserver.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure.> weblogic.wsee.wsdl.WsdlException: Failed to read wsdl file from url due to -- javax.net.ssl.SSLKeyException: [Security:090477]Certificate chain received from myserver02.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure. The above is what started a three day sojourn into searching for a solution. Even people who had solved it before would tell me how they did, and then shrug when I demonstrated that the steps did not end in the success they claimed I would experience. Rather than torture you with the details of everything I did that did not work, here is what finally did work. Export the Certificates from IE First, take the offending WSDL URL and paste it into IE (if you have an internal Microsoft CA, you have IE, even if you don’t use it in favor of some other browser). To state the semi-obvious, if you received the error above there is a certificate configured for the IIS host of the service and the SSL port has been configured properly. Otherwise there would be a different error, usually about the site not found or connection failed. Once the WSDL loads, to the right of the address bar there will be a lock icon. Click the lock and then click View Certificates in the resulting dialog (if you do not have a lock icon but do have a Certificate Error message, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931850 for steps to install the certificate then you can continue from the point of finding the lock icon). Figure 1: View Certificates in IE Next, select the Details tab in the resulting dialog Figure 2: Use Certificate Details to Export Certificate Click Copy to File, then Next, then select the Base-64 encoded option for the format Figure 3: Select the Base-64 encoded option for the format For the sake of simplicity, I choose to save this to the root of the WebLogic domain. It will work from anywhere, but later you will need to type in the full path rather than just the certificate name if you save it elsewhere. Figure 4: Browse to Save Location Figure 5: Save the Certificate to the Domain Root for Convenience This is the point where I ran into some confusion. Some articles mentioned exporting the entire chain of certificates. This supposedly works for some types of certificates, or if you have a few other tools and the time to learn them. For the SSL experts out there, they already have these tools, know how to use them well, and should not be wasting their time reading this article meant for folks who just want to get things wired up and back to unit testing and development. For the rest of us, the easiest way to make sure things will work is to just export all the links in the chain individually and let WebLogic Server worry about re-assembling them into a chain (which it does quite nicely). While perhaps not the most elegant solution, the multi-step process is easy to repeat and uses only tools that are immediately available and require no learning curve. So… Next, go to Tools then Internet Options then the Content tab and click Certificates. Go to the Trust Root Certificate Authorities tab and find the certificate root for your Microsoft CA cert (look for the Issuer of the certificate you exported earlier). Figure 6: Trusted Root Certification Authorities Tab Export this one the same way as before, with a different name Figure 7: Use a Unique Name for Each Certificate Repeat this once more for the Intermediate Certificate tab. Import the Certificates to the WebLogic Domain Now, open an command prompt, navigate to [WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN_ROOT]\bin and execute setDomainEnv. You should then be in the root of the domain. If not, CD to the domain root. Assuming you saved the certificate in the domain root, execute the following: keytool -importcert -alias [ALIAS-1] -trustcacerts -file [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] -keystore truststore.jks -storepass [PASSWORD] An example with the variables filled in is: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password After several lines out output you will be prompted with: Trust this certificate? [no]: The correct answer is ‘yes’ (minus the quotes, of course). You’ll you know you were successful if the response is: Certificate was added to keystore If not, check your typing, as that is generally the source of an error at this point. Repeat this for all three of the certificates you exported, changing the [ALIAS-1] and [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] value each time. For example: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertRoot.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-3 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertIntermediate.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password In the above we created a new JKS key store. You can re-use an existing one by changing the name of the JKS file to one you already have and change the password to the one that matches that JKS file. For the DemoTrust.jks  that is included with WebLogic the password is DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase. An example here would be: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsoft.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftRoot.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftInter.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase Whichever keystore you use, you can check your work with: keytool -list -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password Where “truststore.jks” and “password” can be replaced appropriately if necessary. The output will look something like this: Figure 8: Output from keytool -list -keystore Update the WebLogic Keystore Configuration If you used an existing keystore rather than creating a new one, you can restart your WebLogic Server and skip the rest of this section. For those of us who created a new one because that is the instructions we found online… Next, we need to tell WebLogic to use the JKS file (truststore.jks) we just created. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console and navigate to Servers > AdminServer > Configuration > Keystores. Scroll down to “Custom Trust Keystore:” and change the value to “truststore.jks” and the value of “Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” and “Confirm Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” to the password you used when earlier, then save your changes. You will get a nice message similar to the following: Figure 9: To Be Safe, Restart Anyways The “No restarts are necessary” is somewhat of an exaggeration. If you want to be able to use the keystore you may need restart the server(s). To save myself aggravation, I always do. Your mileage may vary. Conclusion That should get you there. If there are some erroneous steps included for your situation in particular, I will offer up a semi-apology as the process described above does not take long at all and if there is one step that could be dropped from it, is still much faster than trying to figure this out from other sources.

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• Microsoft Business Intelligence Seminar 2011

  - by DavidWimbush

  I was lucky enough to attend the maiden presentation of this at Microsoft Reading yesterday. It was pretty gripping stuff not only because of what was said but also because of what could only be hinted at. Here's what I took away from the day. (Disclaimer: I'm not a BI guru, just a reasonably experienced BI developer, so I may have misunderstood or misinterpreted a few things. Particularly when so much of the talk was about the vision and subtle hints of what is coming. Please comment if you think I've got anything wrong. I'm also not going to even try to cover Master Data Services as I struggled to imagine how you would actually use it.) I was a bit worried when I learned that the whole day was going to be presented by one guy but Rafal Lukawiecki is a very engaging speaker. He's going to be presenting this about 20 times around the world over the coming months. If you get a chance to hear him speak, I say go for it. No doubt some of the hints will become clearer as Denali gets closer to RTM. Firstly, things are definitely happening in the SQL Server Reporting and BI world. Traditionally IT would build a data warehouse, then cubes on top of that, and then publish them in a structured and controlled way. But, just as with many IT projects in general, by the time it's finished the business has moved on and the system no longer meets their requirements. This not sustainable and something more agile is needed but there has to be some control. Apparently we're going to be hearing the catchphrase 'Balancing agility with control' a lot. More users want more access to more data. Can they define what they want? Of course not, but they'll recognise it when they see it. It's estimated that only 28% of potential BI users have meaningful access to the data they need, so there is a real pent-up demand. The answer looks like: give them some self-service tools so they can experiment and see what works, and then IT can help to support the results. It's estimated that 32% of Excel users are comfortable with its analysis tools such as pivot tables. It's the power user's preferred tool. Why fight it? That's why PowerPivot is an Excel add-in and that's why they released a Data Mining add-in for it as well. It does appear that the strategy is going to be to use Reporting Services (in SharePoint mode), PowerPivot, and possibly something new (smiles and hints but no details) to create reports and explore data. Everything will be published and managed in SharePoint which gives users the ability to mash-up, share and socialise what they've found out. SharePoint also gives IT tools to understand what people are looking at and where to concentrate effort. If PowerPivot report X becomes widely used, it's time to check that it shows what they think it does and perhaps get it a bit more under central control. There was more SharePoint detail that went slightly over my head regarding where Excel Services and Excel Web Application fit in, the differences between them, and the suggestion that it is likely they will one day become one (but not in the immediate future). That basic pattern is set to be expanded upon by further exploiting Vertipaq (the columnar indexing engine that enables PowerPivot to store and process a lot of data fast and in a small memory footprint) to provide scalability 'from the desktop to the data centre', and some yet to be detailed advances in 'frictionless deployment' (part of which is about making the difference between local and the cloud pretty much irrelevant). Excel looks like becoming Microsoft's primary BI client. It already has: the ability to consume cubes strong visualisation tools slicers (which are part of Excel not PowerPivot) a data mining add-in PowerPivot A major hurdle for self-service BI is presenting the data in a consumable format. You can't just give users PowerPivot and a server with a copy of the OLTP database(s). Building cubes is labour intensive and doesn't always give the user what they need. This is where the BI Semantic Model (BISM) comes in. I gather it's a layer of metadata you define that can combine multiple data sources (and types of data source) into a clear 'interface' that users can work with. It comes with a new query language called DAX. SSAS cubes are unlikely to go away overnight because, with their pre-calculated results, they are still the most efficient way to work with really big data sets. A few other random titbits that came up: Reporting Services is going to get some good new stuff in Denali. Keep an eye on www.projectbotticelli.com for the slides. You can also view last year's seminar sessions which covered a lot of the same ground as far as the overall strategy is concerned. They plan to add more material as Denali's features are publicly exposed. Check out the PASS keynote address for a showing of Yahoo's SQL BI servers. Apparently they wheeled the rack out on stage still plugged in and running! Check out the Excel 2010 Data Mining Add-Ins. 32 bit only at present but 64 bit is on the way. There are lots of data sets, many of them free, at the Windows Azure Marketplace Data Market (where you can also get ESRI shape files). If you haven't already seen it, have a look at the Silverlight Pivot Viewer (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/29/silverlight-pivotviewer-now-available.aspx). The Bing Maps Data Connector is worth a look if you're into spatial stuff (http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/07/13/data-connector-sql-server-2008-spatial-amp-bing-maps.aspx).  

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - "Is It Time for an Upgrade?"

  - by Tanu Sood

  Is your organization debating their next step with regard to Identity Management? While all the stakeholders are well aware that the one-size-fits-all doesn’t apply to identity management, just as true is the fact that no two identity management implementations are alike. Oracle’s recent release of Identity Governance Suite 11g Release 2 has innovative features such as a customizable user interface, shopping cart style request catalog and more. However, only a close look at the use cases can help you determine if and when an upgrade to the latest R2 release makes sense for your organization. This post will describe a few of the situations that PwC has helped our clients work through. “Should I be considering an upgrade?” If your organization has an existing identity management implementation, the questions below are a good start to assessing your current solution to see if you need to begin planning for an upgrade: Does the current solution scale and meet your projected identity management needs? Does the current solution have a customer-friendly user interface? Are you completely meeting your compliance objectives? Are you still using spreadsheets? Does the current solution have the features you need? Is your total cost of ownership in line with well-performing similar sized companies in your industry? Can your organization support your existing Identity solution? Is your current product based solution well positioned to support your organization's tactical and strategic direction? Existing Oracle IDM Customers: Several existing Oracle clients are looking to move to R2 in 2013. If your organization is on Sun Identity Manager (SIM) or Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and if your current assessment suggests that you need to upgrade, you should strongly consider OIM 11gR2. Oracle provides upgrade paths to Oracle Identity Manager 11gR2 from SIM 7.x / 8.x as well as Oracle Identity Manager 10g / 11gR1. The following are some of the considerations for migration: Check the end of product support (for Sun or legacy OIM) schedule There are several new features available in R2 (including common Helpdesk scenarios, profiling of disconnected applications, increased scalability, custom connectors, browser-based UI configurations, portability of configurations during future upgrades, etc) Cost of ownership (for SIM customers)\ Customizations that need to be maintained during the upgrade Time/Cost to migrate now vs. waiting for next version If you are already on an older version of Oracle Identity Manager and actively maintaining your support contract with Oracle, you might be eligible for a free upgrade to OIM 11gR2. Check with your Oracle sales rep for more details. Existing IDM infrastructure in place: In the past year and half, we have seen a surge in IDM upgrades from non-Oracle infrastructure to Oracle. If your organization is looking to improve the end-user experience related to identity management functions, the shopping cart style access request model and browser based personalization features may come in handy. Additionally, organizations that have a large number of applications that include ecommerce, LDAP stores, databases, UNIX systems, mainframes as well as a high frequency of user identity changes and access requests will value the high scalability of the OIM reconciliation and provisioning engine. Furthermore, we have seen our clients like OIM's out of the box (OOB) support for multiple authoritative sources. For organizations looking to integrate applications that do not have an exposed API, the Generic Technology Connector framework supported by OIM will be helpful in quickly generating custom connector using OOB wizard. Similarly, organizations in need of not only flexible on-boarding of disconnected applications but also strict access management to these applications using approval flows will find the flexible disconnected application profiling feature an extremely useful tool that provides a high degree of time savings. Organizations looking to develop custom connectors for home grown or industry specific applications will likewise find that the Identity Connector Framework support in OIM allows them to build and test a custom connector independently before integrating it with OIM. Lastly, most of our clients considering an upgrade to OIM 11gR2 have also expressed interest in the browser based configuration feature that allows an administrator to quickly customize the user interface without adding any custom code. Better yet, code customizations, if any, made to the product are portable across the future upgrades which, is viewed as a big time and money saver by most of our clients. Below are some upgrade methodologies we adopt based on client priorities and the scale of implementation. For illustration purposes, we have assumed that the client is currently on Oracle Waveset (formerly Sun Identity Manager).   Integrated Deployment: The integrated deployment is typically where a client wants to split the implementation to where their current IDM is continuing to handle the front end workflows and OIM takes over the back office operations incrementally. Once all the back office operations are moved completely to OIM, the front end workflows are migrated to OIM. Parallel Deployment: This deployment is typically done where there can be a distinct line drawn between which functionality the platforms are supporting. For example the current IDM implementation is handling the password reset functionality while OIM takes over the access provisioning and RBAC functions. Cutover Deployment: A cutover deployment is typically recommended where a client has smaller less complex implementations and it makes sense to leverage the migration tools to move them over immediately. What does this mean for YOU? There are many variables to consider when making upgrade decisions. For most customers, there is no ‘easy’ button. Organizations looking to upgrade or considering a new vendor should start by doing a mapping of their requirements with product features. The recommended approach is to take stock of both the short term and long term objectives, understand product features, future roadmap, maturity and level of commitment from the R&D and build the implementation plan accordingly. As we said, in the beginning, there is no one-size-fits-all with Identity Management. So, arm yourself with the knowledge, engage in industry discussions, bring in business stakeholders and start building your implementation roadmap. In the next post we will discuss the best practices on R2 implementations. We will be covering the Do's and Don't's and share our thoughts on making implementations successful. Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years.

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• The Application Architecture Domain

  - by Michael Glas

  I have been spending a lot of time thinking about Application Architecture in the context of EA. More specifically, as an Enterprise Architect, what do I need to consider when looking at/defining/designing the Application Architecture Domain?There are several definitions of Application Architecture. TOGAF says “The objective here [in Application Architecture] is to define the major kinds of application system necessary to process the data and support the business”. FEA says the Application Architecture “Defines the applications needed to manage the data and support the business functions”.I agree with these definitions. They reflect what the Application Architecture domain does. However, they need to be decomposed to be practical.I find it useful to define a set of views into the Application Architecture domain. These views reflect what an EA needs to consider when working with/in the Applications Architecture domain. These viewpoints are, at a high level:Capability View: This view reflects how applications alignment with business capabilities. It is a super set of the following views when viewed in aggregate. By looking at the Application Architecture domain in terms of the business capabilities it supports, you get a good perspective on how those applications are directly supporting the business.Technology View: The technology view reflects the underlying technology that makes up the applications. Based on the number of rationalization activities I have seen (more specifically application rationalization), the phrase “complexity equals cost” drives the importance of the technology view, especially when attempting to reduce that complexity through standardization type activities. Some of the technology components to be considered are: Software: The application itself as well as the software the application relies on to function (web servers, application servers). Infrastructure: The underlying hardware and network components required by the application and supporting application software. Development: How the application is created and maintained. This encompasses development components that are part of the application itself (i.e. customizable functions), as well as bolt on development through web services, API’s, etc. The maintenance process itself also falls under this view. Integration: The interfaces that the application provides for integration as well as the integrations to other applications and data sources the application requires to function. Type: Reflects the kind of application (mash-up, 3 tiered, etc). (Note: functional type [CRM, HCM, etc.] are reflected under the capability view). Organization View: Organizations are comprised of people and those people use applications to do their jobs. Trying to define the application architecture domain without taking the organization that will use/fund/change it into consideration is like trying to design a car without thinking about who will drive it (i.e. you may end up building a formula 1 car for a family of 5 that is really looking for a minivan). This view reflects the people aspect of the application. It includes: Ownership: Who ‘owns’ the application? This will usually reflect primary funding and utilization but not always. Funding: Who funds both the acquisition/creation as well as the on-going maintenance (funding to create/change/operate)? Change: Who can/does request changes to the application and what process to the follow? Utilization: Who uses the application, how often do they use it, and how do they use it? Support: Which organization is responsible for the on-going support of the application? Information View: Whether or not you subscribe to the view that “information drives the enterprise”, it is a fact that information is critical. The management, creation, and organization of that information are primary functions of enterprise applications. This view reflects how the applications are tied to information (or at a higher level – how the Application Architecture domain relates to the Information Architecture domain). It includes: Access: The application is the mechanism by which end users access information. This could be through a primary application (i.e. CRM application), or through an information access type application (a BI application as an example). Creation: Applications create data in order to provide information to end-users. (I.e. an application creates an order to be used by an end-user as part of the fulfillment process). Consumption: Describes the data required by applications to function (i.e. a product id is required by a purchasing application to create an order. Application Service View: Organizations today are striving to be more agile. As an EA, I need to provide an architecture that supports this agility. One of the primary ways to achieve the required agility in the application architecture domain is through the use of ‘services’ (think SOA, web services, etc.). Whether it is through building applications from the ground up utilizing services, service enabling an existing application, or buying applications that are already ‘service enabled’, compartmentalizing application functions for re-use helps enable flexibility in the use of those applications in support of the required business agility. The applications service view consists of: Services: Here, I refer to the generic definition of a service “a set of related software functionalities that can be reused for different purposes, together with the policies that should control its usage”. Functions: The activities within an application that are not available / applicable for re-use. This view is helpful when identifying duplication functions between applications that are not service enabled. Delivery Model View: It is hard to talk about EA today without hearing the terms ‘cloud’ or shared services.  Organizations are looking at the ways their applications are delivered for several reasons, to reduce cost (both CAPEX and OPEX), to improve agility (time to market as an example), etc.  From an EA perspective, where/how an application is deployed has impacts on the overall enterprise architecture. From integration concerns to SLA requirements to security and compliance issues, the Enterprise Architect needs to factor in how applications are delivered when designing the Enterprise Architecture. This view reflects how applications are delivered to end-users. The delivery model view consists of different types of delivery mechanisms/deployment options for applications: Traditional: Reflects non-cloud type delivery options. The most prevalent consists of an application running on dedicated hardware (usually specific to an environment) for a single consumer. Private Cloud: The application runs on infrastructure provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers. Public Cloud: The application runs on infrastructure provisioned for open use by the general public. Hybrid: The application is deployed on two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability. While by no means comprehensive, I find that applying these views to the application domain gives a good understanding of what an EA needs to consider when effecting changes to the Application Architecture domain.Finally, the application architecture domain is one of several architecture domains that an EA must consider when developing an overall Enterprise Architecture. The Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework defines four Primary domains: Business Architecture, Application Architecture, Information Architecture, and Technology Architecture. Each domain links to the others either directly or indirectly at some point. Oracle links them at a high level as follows:Business Capabilities and/or Business Processes (Business Architecture), links to the Applications that enable the capability/process (Applications Architecture – COTS, Custom), links to the Information Assets managed/maintained by the Applications (Information Architecture), links to the technology infrastructure upon which all this runs (Technology Architecture - integration, security, BI/DW, DB infrastructure, deployment model). There are however, times when the EA needs to narrow focus to a particular domain for some period of time. These views help me to do just that.

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• What Makes a Good Design Critic? CHI 2010 Panel Review

  - by Applications User Experience

  Author: Daniel Schwartz, Senior Interaction Designer, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle Applications UX Chief Evangelist Patanjali Venkatacharya organized and moderated an innovative and stimulating panel discussion titled "What Makes a Good Design Critic? Food Design vs. Product Design Criticism" at CHI 2010, the annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The panelists included Janice Rohn, VP of User Experience at Experian; Tami Hardeman, a food stylist; Ed Seiber, a restaurant architect and designer; Jonathan Kessler, a food critic and writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and Larry Powers, Chef de Cuisine at Shaun's restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia. Building off the momentum of his highly acclaimed panel at CHI 2009 on what interaction design can learn from food design (for which I was on the other side as a panelist), Venkatacharya brought together new people with different roles in the restaurant and software interaction design fields. The session was also quite delicious -- but more on that later. Criticism, as it applies to food and product or interaction design, was the tasty topic for this forum and showed that strong parallels exist between food and interaction design criticism. Figure 1. The panelists in discussion: (left to right) Janice Rohn, Ed Seiber, Tami Hardeman, and Jonathan Kessler. The panelists had great insights to share from their respective fields, and they enthusiastically discussed as if they were at a casual collegial dinner. Jonathan Kessler stated that he prefers to have one professional critic's opinion in general than a large sampling of customers, however, "Web sites like Yelp get users excited by the collective approach. People are attracted to things desired by so many." Janice Rohn added that this collective desire was especially true for users of consumer products. Ed Seiber remarked that while people looked to the popular view for their target tastes and product choices, "professional critics like John [Kessler] still hold a big weight on public opinion." Chef Powers indicated that chefs take in feedback from all sources, adding, "word of mouth is very powerful. We also look heavily at the sales of the dishes to see what's moving; what's selling and thus successful." Hearing this discussion validates our design work at Oracle in that we listen to our users (our diners) and industry feedback (our critics) to ensure an optimal user experience of our products. Rohn considers that restaurateur Danny Meyer's book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, which is about creating successful restaurant experiences, has many applicable parallels to user experience design. Meyer actually argues that the customer is not always right, but that "they must always feel heard." Seiber agreed, but noted "customers are not designers," and while designers need to listen to customer feedback, it is the designer's job to synthesize it. Seiber feels it's the critic's job to point out when something is missing or not well-prioritized. In interaction design, our challenges are quite similar, if not parallel. Software tasks are like puzzles that are in search of a solution on how to be best completed. As a food stylist, Tami Hardeman has the demanding and challenging task of presenting food to be as delectable as can be. To present food in its best light requires a lot of creativity and insight into consumer tastes. It's no doubt then that this former fashion stylist came up with the ultimate catch phrase to capture the emotion that clients want to draw from their users: "craveability." The phrase was a hit with the audience and panelists alike. Sometime later in the discussion, Seiber remarked, "designers strive to apply craveability to products, and I do so for restaurants in my case." Craveabilty is also very applicable to interaction design. Creating straightforward and smooth workflows for users of Oracle Applications is a primary goal for my colleagues. We want our users to really enjoy working with our products where it makes them more efficient and better at their jobs. That's our "craveability." Patanjali Venkatacharya asked the panel, "if a design's "craveability" appeals to some cultures but not to others, then what is the impact to the food or product design process?" Rohn stated that "taste is part nature and part nurture" and that the design must take the full context of a product's usage into consideration. Kessler added, "good design is about understanding the context" that the experience necessitates. Seiber remarked how important seat comfort is for diners and how the quality of seating will add so much to the complete dining experience. Sometimes if these non-food factors are not well executed, they can also take away from an otherwise pleasant dining experience. Kessler recounted a time when he was dining at a restaurant that actually had very good food, but the photographs hanging on all the walls did not fit in with the overall décor and created a negative overall dining experience. While the tastiness of the food is critical to a restaurant's success, it is a captivating complete user experience, as in interaction design, which will keep customers coming back and ultimately making the restaurant a hit. Figure 2. Patnajali Venkatacharya enjoyed the Sardian flatbread salad. As a surprise Chef Powers brought out a signature dish from Shaun's restaurant for all the panelists to sample and critique. The Sardinian flatbread dish showcased Atlanta's taste for fresh and local produce and cheese at its finest as a salad served on a crispy flavorful flat bread. Hardeman said it could be photographed from any angle, a high compliment coming from a food stylist. Seiber really enjoyed the colors that the dish brought together and thought it would be served very well in a casual restaurant on a summer's day. The panel really appreciated the taste and quality of the different components and how the rosemary brought all the flavors together. Seiber remarked that "a lot of effort goes into the appearance of simplicity." Rohn indicated that the same notion holds true with software user interface design. A tremendous amount of work goes into crafting straightforward interfaces, including user research, prototyping, design iterations, and usability studies. Design criticism for food and software interfaces clearly share many similarities. Both areas value expert opinions and user feedback. Both areas understand the importance of great design needing to work well in its context. Last but not least, both food and interaction design criticism value "craveability" and how having users excited about experiencing and enjoying the designs is an important goal. Now if we can just improve the taste of software user interfaces, people may choose to dine on their enterprise applications over a fresh organic salad.

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• The Business of Winning Innovation: An Exclusive Blog Series

  - by Kerrie Foy

  "The Business of Winning Innovation” is a series of articles authored by Oracle Agile PLM experts on what it takes to make innovation a successful and lucrative competitive advantage. Our customers have proven Agile PLM applications to be enormously flexible and comprehensive, so we’ve launched this article series to showcase some of the most fascinating, value-packed use cases. In this article by Keith Colonna, we kick-off the series by taking a look at the science side of innovation within the Consumer Products industry and how PLM can help companies innovate faster, cheaper, smarter. This article will review how innovation has become the lifeline for growth within consumer products companies and how certain companies are “winning” by creating a competitive advantage for themselves by taking a more enterprise-wide,systematic approach to “innovation”.   Managing the Science of Innovation within the Consumer Products Industry By: Keith Colonna, Value Chain Solution Manager, Oracle The consumer products (CP) industry is very mature and competitive. Most companies within this industry have saturated North America (NA) with their products thus maximizing their NA growth potential. Future growth is expected to come from either expansion outside of North America and/or by way of new ideas and products. Innovation plays an integral role in both of these strategies, whether you’re innovating business processes or the products themselves, and may cause several challenges for the typical CP company, Becoming more innovative is both an art and a science. Most CP companies are very good at the art of coming up with new innovative ideas, but many struggle with perfecting the science aspect that involves the best practice processes that help companies quickly turn ideas into sellable products and services. Symptoms and Causes of Business Pain Struggles associated with the science of innovation show up in a variety of ways, like: · Establishing and storing innovative product ideas and data · Funneling these ideas to the chosen few · Time to market cycle time and on-time launch rates · Success rates, or how often the best idea gets chosen · Imperfect decision making (i.e. the ability to kill projects that are not projected to be winners) · Achieving financial goals · Return on R&D investment · Communicating internally and externally as more outsource partners are added globally · Knowing your new product pipeline and project status These challenges (and others) can be consolidated into three root causes: A lack of visibility Poor data with limited access The inability to truly collaborate enterprise-wide throughout your extended value chain Choose the Right Remedy Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions are uniquely designed to help companies solve these types challenges and their root causes. However, PLM solutions can vary widely in terms of configurability, functionality, time-to-value, etc. Business leaders should evaluate PLM solution in terms of their own business drivers and long-term vision to determine the right fit. Many of these solutions are point solutions that can help you cure only one or two business pains in the short term. Others have been designed to serve other industries with different needs. Then there are those solutions that demo well but are owned by companies that are either unable or unwilling to continuously improve their solution to stay abreast of the ever changing needs of the CP industry to grow through innovation. What the Right PLM Solution Should Do for You Based on more than twenty years working in the CP industry, I recommend investing in a single solution that can help you solve all of the issues associated with the science of innovation in a totally integrated fashion. By integration I mean the (1) integration of the all of the processes associated with the development, maintenance and delivery of your product data, and (2) the integration, or harmonization of this product data with other downstream sources, like ERP, product catalogues and the GS1 Global Data Synchronization Network (or GDSN, which is now a CP industry requirement for doing business with most retailers). The right PLM solution should help you: Increase Revenue. A best practice PLM solution should help a company grow its revenues by consolidating product development cycle-time and helping companies get new and improved products to market sooner. PLM should also eliminate many of the root causes for a product being returned, refused and/or reclaimed (which takes away from top-line growth) by creating an enterprise-wide, collaborative, workflow-driven environment. Reduce Costs. A strong PLM solution should help shave many unnecessary costs that companies typically take for granted. Rationalizing SKU’s, components (ingredients and packaging) and suppliers is a major opportunity at most companies that PLM should help address. A natural outcome of this rationalization is lower direct material spend and a reduction of inventory. Another cost cutting opportunity comes with PLM when it helps companies avoid certain costs associated with process inefficiencies that lead to scrap, rework, excess and obsolete inventory, poor end of life administration, higher cost of quality and regulatory and increased expediting. Mitigate Risk. Risks are the hardest to quantify but can be the most costly to a company. Food safety, recalls, line shutdowns, customer dissatisfaction and, worst of all, the potential tarnishing of your brands are a few of the debilitating risks that CP companies deal with on a daily basis. These risks are so uniquely severe that they require an enterprise PLM solution specifically designed for the CP industry that safeguards product information and processes while still allowing the art of innovation to flourish. Many CP companies have already created a winning advantage by leveraging a single, best practice PLM solution to establish an enterprise-wide, systematic approach to innovation. Oracle’s Answer for the Consumer Products Industry Oracle is dedicated to solving the growth and innovation challenges facing the CP industry. Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management for Process solution was originally developed with and for CP companies and is driven by a specialized development staff solely focused on maintaining and continuously improving the solution per the latest industry requirements. Agile PLM for Process helps CP companies handle all of the processes associated with managing the science of the innovation process, including: specification management, new product development/project and portfolio management, formulation optimization, supplier management, and quality and regulatory compliance to name a few. And as I mentioned earlier, integration is absolutely critical. Many Oracle CP customers, both with Oracle ERP systems and non-Oracle ERP systems, report benefits from Oracle’s Agile PLM for Process. In future articles we will explain in greater detail how both existing Oracle customers (like Gallo, Smuckers, Land-O-Lakes and Starbucks) and new Oracle customers (like ConAgra, Tyson, McDonalds and Heinz) have all realized the benefits of Agile PLM for Process and its integration to their ERP systems. More to Come Stay tuned for more articles in our blog series “The Business of Winning Innovation.” While we will also feature articles focused on other industries, look forward to more on how Agile PLM for Process addresses innovation challenges facing the CP industry. Additional topics include: Innovation Data Management (IDM), New Product Development (NPD), Product Quality Management (PQM), Menu Management,Private Label Management, and more! . Watch this video for more info about Agile PLM for Process

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• Integrating Oracle Hyperion Smart View Data Queries with MS Word and Power Point

  - by Andreea Vaduva

  Untitled Document table { border: thin solid; } Most Smart View users probably appreciate that they can use just one add-in to access data from the different sources they might work with, like Oracle Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning, Oracle Hyperion Financial Management and others. But not all of them are aware of the options to integrate data analyses not only in Excel, but also in MS Word or Power Point. While in the past, copying and pasting single numbers or tables from a recent analysis in Excel made the pasted content a static snapshot, copying so called Data Points now creates dynamic, updateable references to the data source. It also provides additional nice features, which can make life easier and less stressful for Smart View users. So, how does this option work: after building an ad-hoc analysis with Smart View as usual in an Excel worksheet, any area including data cells/numbers from the database can be highlighted in order to copy data points - even single data cells only.   TIP It is not necessary to highlight and copy the row or column descriptions   Next from the Smart View ribbon select Copy Data Point. Then transfer to the Word or Power Point document into which the selected content should be copied. Note that in these Office programs you will find a menu item Smart View;from it select the Paste Data Point icon. The copied details from the Excel report will be pasted, but showing #NEED_REFRESH in the data cells instead of the original numbers. =After clicking the Refresh icon on the Smart View menu the data will be retrieved and displayed. (Maybe at that moment a login window pops up and you need to provide your credentials.) It works in the same way if you just copy one single number without any row or column descriptions, for example in order to incorporate it into a continuous text: Before refresh: After refresh: From now on for any subsequent updates of the data shown in your documents you only need to refresh data by clicking the Refresh button on the Smart View menu, without copying and pasting the context or content again. As you might realize, trying out this feature on your own, there won’t be any Point of View shown in the Office document. Also you have seen in the example, where only a single data cell was copied, that there aren’t any member names or row/column descriptions copied, which are usually required in an ad-hoc report in order to exactly define where data comes from or how data is queried from the source. Well, these definitions are not visible, but they are transferred to the Word or Power Point document as well. They are stored in the background for each individual data cell copied and can be made visible by double-clicking the data cell as shown in the following screen shot (but which is taken from another context).   So for each cell/number the complete connection information is stored along with the exact member/cell intersection from the database. And that’s not all: you have the chance now to exchange the members originally selected in the Point of View (POV) in the Excel report. Remember, at that time we had the following selection:   By selecting the Manage POV option from the Smart View meny in Word or Power Point…   … the following POV Manager – Queries window opens:   You can now change your selection for each dimension from the original POV by either double-clicking the dimension member in the lower right box under POV: or by selecting the Member Selector icon on the top right hand side of the window. After confirming your changes you need to refresh your document again. Be aware, that this will update all (!) numbers taken from one and the same original Excel sheet, even if they appear in different locations in your Office document, reflecting your recent changes in the POV. TIP Build your original report already in a way that dimensions you might want to change from within Word or Power Point are placed in the POV. And there is another really nice feature I wouldn’t like to miss mentioning: Using Dynamic Data Points in the way described above, you will never miss or need to search again for your original Excel sheet from which values were taken and copied as data points into an Office document. Because from even only one single data cell Smart View is able to recreate the entire original report content with just a few clicks: Select one of the numbers from within your Word or Power Point document by double-clicking.   Then select the Visualize in Excel option from the Smart View menu. Excel will open and Smart View will rebuild the entire original report, including POV settings, and retrieve all data from the most recent actual state of the database. (It might be necessary to provide your credentials before data is displayed.) However, in order to make this work, an active online connection to your databases on the server is necessary and at least read access to the retrieved data. But apart from this, your newly built Excel report is fully functional for ad-hoc analysis and can be used in the common way for drilling, pivoting and all the other known functions and features. So far about embedding Dynamic Data Points into Office documents and linking them back into Excel worksheets. You can apply this in the described way with ad-hoc analyses directly on Essbase databases or using Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management ad-hoc web forms. If you are also interested in other new features and smart enhancements in Essbase or Hyperion Planning stay tuned for coming articles or check our training courses and web presentations. You can find general information about offerings for the Essbase and Planning curriculum or other Oracle-Hyperion products here (please make sure to select your country/region at the top of this page) or in the OU Learning paths section , where Planning, Essbase and other Hyperion products can be found under the Fusion Middleware heading (again, please select the right country/region). Or drop me a note directly: [email protected] . About the Author: Bernhard Kinkel started working for Hyperion Solutions as a Presales Consultant and Consultant in 1998 and moved to Hyperion Education Services in 1999. He joined Oracle University in 2007 where he is a Principal Education Consultant. Based on these many years of working with Hyperion products he has detailed product knowledge across several versions. He delivers both classroom and live virtual courses. His areas of expertise are Oracle/Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Web Analysis.  

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• How-to delete a tree node using the context menu

  - by frank.nimphius

  Hierarchical trees in Oracle ADF make use of View Accessors, which means that only the top level node needs to be exposed as a View Object instance on the ADF Business Components Data Model. This also means that only the top level node has a representation in the PageDef file as a tree binding and iterator binding reference. Detail nodes are accessed through tree rule definitions that use the accessor mentioned above (or nested collections in the case of POJO or EJB business services). The tree component is configured for single node selection, which however can be declaratively changed for users to press the ctrl key and selecting multiple nodes. In the following, I explain how to create a context menu on the tree for users to delete the selected tree nodes. For this, the context menu item will access a managed bean, which then determines the selected node(s), the internal ADF node bindings and the rows they represent. As mentioned, the ADF Business Components Data Model only needs to expose the top level node data sources, which in this example is an instance of the Locations View Object. For the tree to work, you need to have associations defined between entities, which usually is done for you by Oracle JDeveloper if the database tables have foreign keys defined Note: As a general hint of best practices and to simplify your life: Make sure your database schema is well defined and designed before starting your development project. Don't treat the database as something organic that grows and changes with the requirements as you proceed in your project. Business service refactoring in response to database changes is possible, but should be treated as an exception, not the rule. Good database design is a necessity – even for application developers – and nothing evil. To create the tree component, expand the Data Controls panel and drag the View Object collection to the view. From the context menu, select the tree component entry and continue with defining the tree rules that make up the hierarchical structure. As you see, when pressing the green plus icon  in the Edit Tree Binding  dialog, the data structure, Locations -  Departments – Employees in my sample, shows without you having created a View Object instance for each of the nodes in the ADF Business Components Data Model. After you configured the tree structure in the Edit Tree Binding dialog, you press OK and the tree is created. Select the tree in the page editor and open the Structure Window (ctrl+shift+S). In the Structure window, expand the tree node to access the conextMenu facet. Use the right mouse button to insert a Popup  into the facet. Repeat the same steps to insert a Menu and a Menu Item into the Popup you created. The Menu item text should be changed to something meaningful like "Delete". Note that the custom menu item later is added to the context menu together with the default context menu options like expand and expand all. To define the action that is executed when the menu item is clicked on, you select the Action Listener property in the Property Inspector and click the arrow icon followed by the Edit menu option. Create or select a managed bean and define a method name for the action handler. Next, select the tree component and browse to its binding property in the Property Inspector. Again, use the arrow icon | Edit option to create a component binding in the same managed bean that has the action listener defined. The tree handle is used in the action listener code, which is shown below: public void onTreeNodeDelete(ActionEvent actionEvent) {   //access the tree from the JSF component reference created   //using the af:tree "binding" property. The "binding" property   //creates a pair of set/get methods to access the RichTree instance   RichTree tree = this.getTreeHandler();   //get the list of selected row keys   RowKeySet rks = tree.getSelectedRowKeys();   //access the iterator to loop over selected nodes   Iterator rksIterator = rks.iterator();          //The CollectionModel represents the tree model and is   //accessed from the tree "value" property   CollectionModel model = (CollectionModel) tree.getValue();   //The CollectionModel is a wrapper for the ADF tree binding   //class, which is JUCtrlHierBinding   JUCtrlHierBinding treeBinding =                  (JUCtrlHierBinding) model.getWrappedData();          //loop over the selected nodes and delete the rows they   //represent   while(rksIterator.hasNext()){     List nodeKey = (List) rksIterator.next();     //find the ADF node binding using the node key     JUCtrlHierNodeBinding node =                       treeBinding.findNodeByKeyPath(nodeKey);     //delete the row.     Row rw = node.getRow();       rw.remove();   }          //only refresh the tree if tree nodes have been selected   if(rks.size() > 0){     AdfFacesContext adfFacesContext =                          AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance();     adfFacesContext.addPartialTarget(tree);   } } Note: To enable multi node selection for a tree, select the tree and change the row selection setting from "single" to "multiple". Note: a fully pictured version of this post will become available at the end of the month in a PDF summary on ADF Code Corner : http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/adf/learnmore/index-101235.html 

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• SQL SERVER – Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. What is the report Wizard? In today’s world automation is all around you. Henry Ford began building his Model T automobiles on a moving assembly line a century ago and changed the world. The moving assembly line allowed Ford to build identical cars quickly and cheaply. Henry Ford said in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Today you can buy a car straight from the factory with your choice of several colors and with many options like back up cameras, built-in navigation systems and heated leather seats. The assembly lines now use robots to perform some tasks along with human workers. When you order your new car, if you want something special, not offered by the manufacturer, you will have to find a way to add it later. In computer software, we also have “assembly lines” called wizards. A wizard will ask you a series of questions, often branching to specific questions based on earlier answers, until you get to the end of the wizard. These wizards are used for many things, from something simple like setting up a rule in Outlook to performing administrative tasks on a server. Often, a wizard will get you part of the way to the end result, enough to get much of the tedious work out of the way. Once you get the product from the wizard, if the wizard is not capable of doing something you need, you can tweak the results. Create a Report with the Report Wizard Let’s get started with your first report!  Launch SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) from the Start menu under SQL Server 2012. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to launch the New Project dialog box. On the left side of the screen expand Business Intelligence and select Reporting Services. Configure the properties as shown in . Be sure to select Report Server Project Wizard as the type of report and to save the project in the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Project folder. Click OK and wait for the Report Wizard to launch. Click Next on the Welcome screen.  On the Select the Data Source screen, make sure that New data source is selected. Type JProCo as the data source name. Make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is selected in the Type dropdown. Click Edit to configure the connection string on the Connection Properties dialog box. If your SQL Server database server is installed on your local computer, type in localhost for the Server name and select the JProCo database from the Select or enter a database name dropdown. Click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box. Check Make this a shared data source and click Next. On the Design the Query screen, you can use the query builder to build a query if you wish. Since this post is not meant to teach you T-SQL queries, you will copy all queries from files that have been provided for you. In the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Resources folder open the sales by employee.sql file. Copy and paste the code from the file into the Query string Text Box. Click Next. On the Select the Report Type screen, choose Tabular and click Next. On the Design the Table screen, you have to figure out the groupings of the report. How do you do this? Well, you often need to know a bit about the data and report requirements. I often draw the report out on paper first to help me determine the groups. In the case of this report, I could group the data several ways. Do I want to see the data grouped by Year and Month? Do I want to see the data grouped by Employee or Category? The only thing I know for sure about this ahead of time is that the TotalSales goes in the Details section. Let’s assume that the CIO asked to see the data grouped first by Year and Month, then by Category. Let’s move the fields to the right-hand side. This is done by selecting Page > Group or Details >, as shown in, and click Next. On the Choose the Table Layout screen, select Stepped and check Include subtotals and Enable drilldown, as shown in. On the Choose the Style screen, choose any color scheme you wish (unlike the Model T) and click Next. I chose the default, Slate. On the Choose the Deployment Location screen, change the Deployment folder to Chapter 3 and click Next. At the Completing the Wizard screen, name your report Employee Sales and click Finish. After clicking Finish, the report and a shared data source will appear in the Solution Explorer and the report will also be visible in Design view. Click the Preview tab at the top. This report expects the user to supply a year which the report will then use as a filter. Type in a year between 2006 and 2013 and click View Report. Click the plus sign next to the Sales Year to expand the report to see the months, then expand again to see the categories and finally the details. You now have the assembly line report completed, and you probably already have some ideas on how to improve the report. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your own data sources and data sets in SSRS. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• Where to look for real url

  - by smallB

  I'm trying to write simple application for downloading videos from youtube. My code for getting file (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg) looks like: bool FD_core::get_file() { QNetworkRequest request; request.setUrl(QUrl("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg")); connect(network_access_manager_, SIGNAL(finished(QNetworkReply*)), this, SLOT(onRequestCompleted(QNetworkReply *))); network_access_manager_->get(request); return true; } void FD_core::onRequestCompleted(QNetworkReply * reply) { QByteArray data_ = reply->readAll(); cout << data_.constData(); qDebug() << "size: " << data_.size(); } In the above function data_.constData() produces lots of text, part (very small) of it: <!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en" dir="ltr" > <head> <script> var yt = yt || {};yt.timing = yt.timing || {};yt.timing.tick = function(label, opt_time) {var timer = yt.timing['timer'] || {};if(opt_time) {timer[label] = opt_time;}else {timer[label] = new Date().getTime();}yt.timing['timer'] = timer;};yt.timing.info = function(label, value) {var info_args = yt.timing['info_args'] || {};info_args[label] = value;yt.timing['info_args'] = info_args;};yt.timing.info('e', "907050,906359,927900,919320,914021,916611,922401,920704,912806,927201,925706,928001,922403,913546,913556,920201,911116,901451");yt.timing.wff = true;yt.timing.info('pr', "1");yt.timing.info('an', "dclk,aftv,afv");if (document.webkitVisibilityState == 'prerender') {document.addEventListener('webkitvisibilitychange', function() {yt.timing.tick('start');}, false);}yt.timing.tick('start');yt.timing.info('li','0');try {yt.timing['srt'] = window.gtbExternal && window.gtbExternal.pageT() ||window.external && window.external.pageT;} catch(e) {}if (window.chrome && window.chrome.csi) {yt.timing['srt'] = Math.floor(window.chrome.csi().pageT);}if (window.msPerformance && window.msPerformance.timing) {yt.timing['srt'] = window.msPerformance.timing.responseStart - window.msPerformance.timing.navigationStart;} </script> <script>var yt = yt || {};yt.preload = {};yt.preload.counter_ = 0;yt.preload.start = function(src) {var img = new Image();var counter = ++yt.preload.counter_;yt.preload[counter] = img;img.onload = img.onerror = function () {delete yt.preload[counter];};img.src = src;img = null;};yt.preload.start("http:\/\/o-o---preferred---sn-xn5ucu-q0ce---v3---lscache7.c.youtube.com\/crossdomain.xml");yt.preload.start("http:\/\/o-o---preferred---sn-xn5ucu-q0ce---v3---lscache7.c.youtube.com\/generate_204?ip=95.83.224.63\u0026upn=A3aUhLYV55M\u0026sparams=algorithm%2Cburst%2Ccp%2Cfactor%2Cgcr%2Cid%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire\u0026fexp=907050%2C906359%2C927900%2C919320%2C914021%2C916611%2C922401%2C920704%2C912806%2C927201%2C925706%2C928001%2C922403%2C913546%2C913556%2C920201%2C911116%2C901451\u0026mt=1354207274\u0026key=yt1\u0026algorithm=throttle-factor\u0026burst=40\u0026ipbits=8\u0026itag=34\u0026sver=3\u0026signature=692E605215EB4D2CA407291CA26E14B844768A89.7A2930CE25FDDFC7C4FF5AA56DD02538B0020267\u0026mv=m\u0026source=youtube\u0026ms=au\u0026gcr=ie\u0026expire=1354228237\u0026factor=1.25\u0026cp=U0hUSVJNVl9IUUNONF9KR1pDOi0tSFhhRzVFRkd6\u0026id=a5588ccd1ff29578");</script><title>Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers (Mike Tyson&#39;s Words NOT DJ Hi-Teks) - YouTube</title><link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="http://www.youtube.com/opensearch?locale=en_US" title="YouTube Video Search"><link rel="icon" href="http://s.ytimg.com/yts/img/favicon-vfldLzJxy.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://s.ytimg.com/yts/img/favicon-vfldLzJxy.ico" type="image/x-icon"> <link rel="icon" href="//s.ytimg.com/yts/img/favicon_32-vflWoMFGx.png" sizes="32x32"><link rel="canonical" href="/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg"><link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg"><link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg"><link rel="shortlink" href="http://youtu.be/pViMzR_ylXg"> <meta name="title" content="Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers (Mike Tyson&#39;s Words NOT DJ Hi-Teks)"> <meta name="description" content="Some of the lyrics of &quot;Die Antwoord&quot; new single &quot;Fok Julle Naaiers&quot; have caused such controversy that Die Antwoord have split with their record label Intersc..."> <meta name="keywords" content="Die Antwoord, Fok Julle Naaiers, Mike Tyson, DJ Hi-Tek, Faggot"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/json+oembed" href="http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpViMzR_ylXg&amp;format=json" title="Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers (Mike Tyson&#39;s Words NOT DJ Hi-Teks)"> <link rel="alternate" type="text/xml+oembed" href="http://www.youtube.com/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpViMzR_ylXg&amp;format=xml" title="Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers (Mike Tyson&#39;s Words NOT DJ Hi-Teks)"> <meta property="og:url" content="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pViMzR_ylXg"> <meta property="og:title" content="Die Antwoord - Fok Julle Naaiers (Mike Tyson&#39;s Words NOT DJ Hi-Teks)"> <meta property="og:description" content="Some of the lyrics of &quot;Die Antwoord&quot; new single &quot;Fok Julle Naaiers&quot; have caused such controversy that Die Antwoord have split with their record label Intersc..."> <meta property="og:type" content="video"> <meta property="og:image" content="http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/pViMzR_ylXg/mqdefault.jpg"> <meta property="og:video" content="http://www.youtube.com/v/pViMzR_ylXg?version=3&amp;autohide=1"> <meta property="og:video:type" content="application/x-shockwave-flash"> <meta property="og:video:width" content="853"> <meta property="og:video:height" content="480"> <meta property="og:site_name" content="YouTube"> <meta property="fb:app_id" content="87741124305"> <meta name="twitter:card" value="player"> <meta name="twitter:site" value="@youtube"> <meta name="twitter:player" value="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pViMzR_ylXg"> <meta property="twitter:player:width" content="853"> <meta property="twitter:player:height" content="480"> So my question is, where in this file is the url hidden which will allow me to download the wanted file?

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• DRY and SRP

  - by Timothy Klenke

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TimothyK/archive/2014/06/11/dry-and-srp.aspxKent Beck’s XP Simplicity Rules (aka Four Rules of Simple Design) are a prioritized list of rules that when applied to your code generally yield a great design.  As you’ll see from the above link the list has slightly evolved over time.  I find today they are usually listed as: All Tests Pass Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) Express Intent Minimalistic These are prioritized.  If your code doesn’t work (rule 1) then everything else is forfeit.  Go back to rule one and get the code working before worrying about anything else. Over the years the community have debated whether the priority of rules 2 and 3 should be reversed.  Some say a little duplication in the code is OK as long as it helps express intent.  I’ve debated it myself.  This recent post got me thinking about this again, hence this post.   I don’t think it is fair to compare “Expressing Intent” against “DRY”.  This is a comparison of apples to oranges.  “Expressing Intent” is a principal of code quality.  “Repeating Yourself” is a code smell.  A code smell is merely an indicator that there might be something wrong with the code.  It takes further investigation to determine if a violation of an underlying principal of code quality has actually occurred. For example “using nouns for method names”, “using verbs for property names”, or “using Booleans for parameters” are all code smells that indicate that code probably isn’t doing a good job at expressing intent.  They are usually very good indicators.  But what principle is the code smell of Duplication pointing to and how good of an indicator is it? Duplication in the code base is bad for a couple reasons.  If you need to make a change and that needs to be made in a number of locations it is difficult to know if you have caught all of them.  This can lead to bugs if/when one of those locations is overlooked.  By refactoring the code to remove all duplication there will be left with only one place to change, thereby eliminating this problem. With most projects the code becomes the single source of truth for a project.  If a production code base is inconsistent with a five year old requirements or design document the production code that people are currently living with is usually declared as the current reality (or truth).  Requirement or design documents at this age in a project life cycle are usually of little value. Although comparing production code to external documentation is usually straight forward, duplication within the code base muddles this declaration of truth.  When code is duplicated small discrepancies will creep in between the two copies over time.  The question then becomes which copy is correct?  As different factions debate how the software should work, trust in the software and the team behind it erodes. The code smell of Duplication points to a violation of the “Single Source of Truth” principle.  Let me define that as: A stakeholder’s requirement for a software change should never cause more than one class to change. Violation of the Single Source of Truth principle will always result in duplication in the code.  However, the inverse is not always true.  Duplication in the code does not necessarily indicate that there is a violation of the Single Source of Truth principle. To illustrate this, let’s look at a retail system where the system will (1) send a transaction to a bank and (2) print a receipt for the customer.  Although these are two separate features of the system, they are closely related.  The reason for printing the receipt is usually to provide an audit trail back to the bank transaction.  Both features use the same data:  amount charged, account number, transaction date, customer name, retail store name, and etcetera.  Because both features use much of the same data, there is likely to be a lot of duplication between them.  This duplication can be removed by making both features use the same data access layer. Then start coming the divergent requirements.  The receipt stakeholder wants a change so that the account number has the last few digits masked out to protect the customer’s privacy.  That can be solve with a small IF statement whilst still eliminating all duplication in the system.  Then the bank wants to take a picture of the customer as well as capture their signature and/or PIN number for enhanced security.  Then the receipt owner wants to pull data from a completely different system to report the customer’s loyalty program point total. After a while you realize that the two stakeholders have somewhat similar, but ultimately different responsibilities.  They have their own reasons for pulling the data access layer in different directions.  Then it dawns on you, the Single Responsibility Principle: There should never be more than one reason for a class to change. In this example we have two stakeholders giving two separate reasons for the data access class to change.  It is clear violation of the Single Responsibility Principle.  That’s a problem because it can often lead the project owner pitting the two stakeholders against each other in a vein attempt to get them to work out a mutual single source of truth.  But that doesn’t exist.  There are two completely valid truths that the developers need to support.  How is this to be supported and honour the Single Responsibility Principle?  The solution is to duplicate the data access layer and let each stakeholder control their own copy. The Single Source of Truth and Single Responsibility Principles are very closely related.  SST tells you when to remove duplication; SRP tells you when to introduce it.  They may seem to be fighting each other, but really they are not.  The key is to clearly identify the different responsibilities (or sources of truth) over a system.  Sometimes there is a single person with that responsibility, other times there are many.  This can be especially difficult if the same person has dual responsibilities.  They might not even realize they are wearing multiple hats. In my opinion Single Source of Truth should be listed as the second rule of simple design with Express Intent at number three.  Investigation of the DRY code smell should yield to the proper application SST, without violating SRP.  When necessary leave duplication in the system and let the class names express the different people that are responsible for controlling them.  Knowing all the people with responsibilities over a system is the higher priority because you’ll need to know this before you can express it.  Although it may be a code smell when there is duplication in the code, it does not necessarily mean that the coder has chosen to be expressive over DRY or that the code is bad.

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• Use a Fake Http Channel to Unit Test with HttpClient

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Applications get data from lots of different sources. The most common is to get data from a database or a web service. Typically, we encapsulate calls to a database in a Repository object and we create some sort of IRepository interface as an abstraction to decouple between layers and enable easier unit testing by leveraging faking and mocking. This works great for database interaction. However, when consuming a RESTful web service, this is is not always the best approach. The WCF Web APIs that are available on CodePlex (current drop is Preview 3) provide a variety of features to make building HTTP REST services more robust. When you download the latest bits, you’ll also find a new HttpClient which has been updated for .NET 4.0 as compared to the one that shipped for 3.5 in the original REST Starter Kit. The HttpClient currently provides the best API for consuming REST services on the .NET platform and the WCF Web APIs provide a number of extension methods which extend HttpClient and make it even easier to use. Let’s say you have a client application that is consuming an HTTP service – this could be Silverlight, WPF, or any UI technology but for my example I’ll use an MVC application: 1: using System; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3: using System.Web.Mvc; 4: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 5: using Microsoft.Runtime.Serialization; 6:   7: namespace FakeChannelExample.Controllers 8: { 9: public class HomeController : Controller 10: { 11: private readonly HttpClient httpClient; 12:   13: public HomeController(HttpClient httpClient) 14: { 15: this.httpClient = httpClient; 16: } 17:   18: public ActionResult Index() 19: { 20: var response = httpClient.Get("Person(1)"); 21: var person = response.Content.ReadAsDataContract<Person>(); 22:   23: this.ViewBag.Message = person.FirstName + " " + person.LastName; 24: 25: return View(); 26: } 27: } 28: } On line #20 of the code above you can see I’m performing an HTTP GET request to a Person resource exposed by an HTTP service. On line #21, I use the ReadAsDataContract() extension method provided by the WCF Web APIs to serialize to a Person object. In this example, the HttpClient is being passed into the constructor by MVC’s dependency resolver – in this case, I’m using StructureMap as an IoC and my StructureMap initialization code looks like this: 1: using StructureMap; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3:   4: namespace FakeChannelExample 5: { 6: public static class IoC 7: { 8: public static IContainer Initialize() 9: { 10: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x => 11: { 12: x.For<HttpClient>().Use(() => new HttpClient("http://localhost:31614/")); 13: }); 14: return ObjectFactory.Container; 15: } 16: } 17: } My controller code currently depends on a concrete instance of the HttpClient. Now I *could* create some sort of interface and wrap the HttpClient in this interface and use that object inside my controller instead – however, there are a few why reasons that is not desirable: For one thing, the API provided by the HttpClient provides nice features for dealing with HTTP services. I don’t really *want* these to look like C# RPC method calls – when HTTP services have REST features, I may want to inspect HTTP response headers and hypermedia contained within the message so that I can make intelligent decisions as to what to do next in my workflow (although I don’t happen to be doing these things in my example above) – this type of workflow is common in hypermedia REST scenarios. If I just encapsulate HttpClient behind some IRepository interface and make it look like a C# RPC method call, it will become difficult to take advantage of these types of things. Second, it could get pretty mind-numbing to have to create interfaces all over the place just to wrap the HttpClient. Then you’re probably going to have to hard-code HTTP knowledge into your code to formulate requests rather than just “following the links” that the hypermedia in a message might provide. Third, at first glance it might appear that we need to create an interface to facilitate unit testing, but actually it’s unnecessary. Even though the code above is dependent on a concrete type, it’s actually very easy to fake the data in a unit test. The HttpClient provides a Channel property (of type HttpMessageChannel) which allows you to create a fake message channel which can be leveraged in unit testing. In this case, what I want is to be able to write a unit test that just returns fake data. I also want this to be as re-usable as possible for my unit testing. I want to be able to write a unit test that looks like this: 1: [TestClass] 2: public class HomeControllerTest 3: { 4: [TestMethod] 5: public void Index() 6: { 7: // Arrange 8: var httpClient = new HttpClient("http://foo.com"); 9: httpClient.Channel = new FakeHttpChannel<Person>(new Person { FirstName = "Joe", LastName = "Blow" }); 10:   11: HomeController controller = new HomeController(httpClient); 12:   13: // Act 14: ViewResult result = controller.Index() as ViewResult; 15:   16: // Assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("Joe Blow", result.ViewBag.Message); 18: } 19: } Notice on line #9, I’m setting the Channel property of the HttpClient to be a fake channel. I’m also specifying the fake object that I want to be in the response on my “fake” Http request. I don’t need to rely on any mocking frameworks to do this. All I need is my FakeHttpChannel. The code to do this is not complex: 1: using System; 2: using System.IO; 3: using System.Net.Http; 4: using System.Runtime.Serialization; 5: using System.Threading; 6: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 7:   8: namespace FakeChannelExample.Tests 9: { 10: public class FakeHttpChannel<T> : HttpClientChannel 11: { 12: private T responseObject; 13:   14: public FakeHttpChannel(T responseObject) 15: { 16: this.responseObject = responseObject; 17: } 18:   19: protected override HttpResponseMessage Send(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) 20: { 21: return new HttpResponseMessage() 22: { 23: RequestMessage = request, 24: Content = new StreamContent(this.GetContentStream()) 25: }; 26: } 27:   28: private Stream GetContentStream() 29: { 30: var serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T)); 31: Stream stream = new MemoryStream(); 32: serializer.WriteObject(stream, this.responseObject); 33: stream.Position = 0; 34: return stream; 35: } 36: } 37: } The HttpClientChannel provides a Send() method which you can override to return any HttpResponseMessage that you want. You can see I’m using the DataContractSerializer to serialize the object and write it to a stream. That’s all you need to do. In the example above, the only thing I’ve chosen to do is to provide a way to return different response objects. But there are many more features you could add to your own re-usable FakeHttpChannel. For example, you might want to provide the ability to add HTTP headers to the message. You might want to use a different serializer other than the DataContractSerializer. You might want to provide custom hypermedia in the response as well as just an object or set HTTP response codes. This list goes on. This is the just one example of the really cool features being added to the next version of WCF to enable various HTTP scenarios. The code sample for this post can be downloaded here.

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• 5 Best Practices - Laying the Foundation for WebCenter Projects

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Today’s guest post comes from Oracle WebCenter expert John Brunswick. John specializes in enterprise portal and content management solutions and actively contributes to the enterprise software business community and has authored a series of articles about optimal business involvement in portal, business process management and SOA development, examining ways of helping organizations move away from monolithic application development. We’re happy to have John join us today! Maximizing success with Oracle WebCenter portal requires a strategic understanding of Oracle WebCenter capabilities.  The following best practices enable the creation of portal solutions with minimal resource overhead, while offering the greatest flexibility for progressive elaboration. They are inherently project agnostic, enabling a strong foundation for future growth and an expedient return on your investment in the platform.  If you are able to embrace even only a few of these practices, you will materially improve your deployment capability with WebCenter. 1. Segment Duties Around 3Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data "Agility" is one of the most common business benefits touted by modern web platforms.  It sounds good - who doesn't want to be Agile, right?  How exactly IT organizations go about supplying agility to their business counterparts often lacks definition - hamstrung by ambiguity. Ultimately, businesses want to benefit from reduced development time to deliver a solution to a particular constituent, which is augmented by as much self-service as possible to develop and manage the solution directly. All done in the absence of direct IT involvement. With Oracle WebCenter's depth in the areas of content management, pallet of native collaborative services, enterprise mashup capability and delegated administration, it is very possible to execute on this business vision at a technical level. To realize the benefits of the platform depth we can think of Oracle WebCenter's segmentation of duties along the lines of the 3 Cs - Content, Collaboration and Contextual Data.  All three of which can have their foundations developed by IT, then provisioned to the business on a per role basis. Content – Oracle WebCenter benefits from an extremely mature content repository.  Work flow, audit, notification, office integration and conversion capabilities for documents (HTML & PDF) make this a haven for business users to take control of content within external and internal portals, custom applications and web sites.  When deploying WebCenter portal take time to think of areas in which IT can provide the "harness" for content to reside, then allow the business to manage any content items within the site, using the content foundation to ensure compliance with business rules and process.  This frees IT to work on more mission critical challenges and allows the business to respond in short order to emerging market needs. Collaboration – Native collaborative services and WebCenter spaces are a perfect match for business users who are looking to enable document sharing, discussions and social networking.  The ability to deploy the services is granular and on the basis of roles scoped to given areas of the system - much like the first C “content”.  This enables business analysts to design the roles required and IT to provision with peace of mind that users leveraging the collaborative services are only able to do so in explicitly designated areas of a site. Bottom line - business will not need to wait for IT, but cannot go outside of the scope that has been defined based on their roles. Contextual Data – Collaborative capabilities are most powerful when included within the context of business data.  The ability to supply business users with decision shaping data that they can include in various parts of a portal or portals, just as they would with content items, is one of the most powerful aspects of Oracle WebCenter.  Imagine a discussion about new store selection for a retail chain that re-purposes existing information from business intelligence services about various potential locations and or custom backend systems - presenting it directly in the context of the discussion.  If there are some data sources that are preexisting in your enterprise take a look at how they can be made into discrete offerings within the portal, then scoped to given business user roles for inclusion within collaborative activities. 2. Think Generically, Execute Specifically Constructs.  Anyone who has spent much time around me knows that I am obsessed with this word.  Why? Because Constructs offer immense power - more than APIs, Web Services or other technical capability. Constructs offer organizations the ability to leverage a platform's native characteristics to offer substantial business functionality - without writing code.  This concept becomes more powerful with the additional understanding of the concepts from the platform that an organization learns over time.  Let's take a look at an example of where an Oracle WebCenter construct can substantially reduce the time to get a subscription-based site out the door and into the hands of the end consumer. Imagine a site that allows members to subscribe to specific disciplines to access information and application data around that various discipline.  A space is a collection of secured pages within Oracle WebCenter.  Spaces are not only secured, but also default content stored within it to be scoped automatically to that space. Taking this a step further, Oracle WebCenter’s Activity Stream surfaces events, discussions and other activities that are scoped to the given user on the basis of their space affiliations.  In order to have a portal that would allow users to "subscribe" to information around various disciplines - spaces could be used out of the box to achieve this capability and without using any APIs or low level technical work to achieve this. 3. Make Governance Work for You Imagine driving down the street without the painted lines on the road.  The rules of the road are so ingrained in our minds, we often do not think about the process, but seemingly mundane lane markers are critical enablers. Lane markers allow us to travel at speeds that would be impossible if not for the agreed upon direction of flow. Additionally and more importantly, it allows people to act autonomously - going where they please at any given time. The return on the investment for mobility is high enough for people to buy into globally agreed up governance processes. In Oracle WebCenter we can use similar enablers to lane markers.  Our goal should be to enable the flow of information and provide end users with the ability to arrive at business solutions as needed, not on the basis of cumbersome processes that cannot meet the business needs in a timely fashion. How do we do this? Just as with "Segmentation of Duties" Oracle WebCenter technologies offer the opportunity to compartmentalize various business initiatives from each other within the system due to constructs and security that are available to use within the platform. For instance, when a WebCenter space is created, any content added within that space by default will be secured to that particular space and inherits meta data that is associated with a folder created for the space. Oracle WebCenter content uses meta data to support a broad range of rich ECM functionality and can automatically impart retention, workflow and other policies automatically on the basis of what has been defaulted for that space. Depending on your business needs, this paradigm will also extend to sub sections of a space, offering some interesting possibilities to enable automated management around content. An example may be press releases within a particular area of an extranet that require a five year retention period and need to the reviewed by marketing and legal before release.  The underlying content system will transparently take care of this process on the basis of the above rules, enabling peace of mind over unstructured data - which could otherwise become overwhelming. 4. Make Your First Project Your Second Imagine if Michael Phelps was competing in a swimming championship, but told right before his race that he had to use a brand new stroke.  There is no doubt that Michael is an outstanding swimmer, but chances are that he would like to have some time to get acquainted with the new stroke. New technologies should not be treated any differently.  Before jumping into the deep end it helps to take time to get to know the new approach - even though you may have been swimming thousands of times before. To quickly get a handle on Oracle WebCenter capabilities it can be helpful to deploy a sandbox for the team to use to share project documents, discussions and announcements in an effort to help the actual deployment get under way, while increasing everyone’s knowledge of the platform and its functionality that may be helpful down the road. Oracle Technology Network has made a pre-configured virtual machine available for download that can be a great starting point for this exercise. 5. Get to Know the Community If you are reading this blog post you have most certainly faced a software decision or challenge that was solved on the basis of a small piece of missing critical information - which took substantial research to discover.  Chances were also good that somewhere, someone had already come across this information and would have been excited to share it. There is no denying the power of passionate, connected users, sharing key tips around technology.  The Oracle WebCenter brand has a rich heritage that includes industry-leading technology and practitioners.  With the new Oracle WebCenter brand, opportunities to connect with these experts has become easier. Oracle WebCenter Blog Oracle Social Enterprise LinkedIn WebCenter Group Oracle WebCenter Twitter Oracle WebCenter Facebook Oracle User Groups Additionally, there are various Oracle WebCenter related blogs by an excellent grouping of services partners.

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• Oracle OpenWorld 2013 – Wrap up by Sven Bernhardt

  - by JuergenKress

  OOW 2013 is over and we’re heading home, so it is time to lean back and reflecting about the impressions we have from the conference. First of all: OOW was great! It was a pleasure to be a part of it. As already mentioned in our last blog article: It was the biggest OOW ever. Parallel to the conference the America’s Cup took place in San Francisco and the Oracle Team America won. Amazing job by the team and again congratulations from our side Back to the conference. The main topics for us are: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c Adaptive Case management (ACM) Big Data Fast Data Cloud Mobile Below we will go a little more into detail, what are the key takeaways regarding the mentioned points: Oracle SOA / BPM Suite 12c During the five days at OOW, first details of the upcoming major release of Oracle SOA Suite 12c and Oracle BPM Suite 12c have been introduced. Some new key features are: Managed File Transfer (MFT) for transferring big files from a source to a target location Enhanced REST support by introducing a new REST binding Introduction of a generic cloud adapter, which can be used to connect to different cloud providers, like Salesforce Enhanced analytics with BAM, which has been totally reengineered (BAM Console now also runs in Firefox!) Introduction of templates (OSB pipelines, component templates, BPEL activities templates) EM as a single monitoring console OSB design-time integration into JDeveloper (Really great!) Enterprise modeling capabilities in BPM Composer These are only a few points from what is coming with 12c. We are really looking forward for the new realese to come out, because this seems to be really great stuff. The suite becomes more and more integrated. From 10g to 11g it was an evolution in terms of developing SOA-based applications. With 12c, Oracle continues it’s way – very impressive. Adaptive Case Management Another fantastic topic was Adaptive Case Management (ACM). The Oracle PMs did a great job especially at the demo grounds in showing the upcoming Case Management UI (will be available in 11g with the next BPM Suite MLR Patch), the roadmap and the differences between traditional business process modeling. They have been very busy during the conference because a lot of partners and customers have been interested Big Data Big Data is one of the current hype themes. Because of huge data amounts from different internal or external sources, the handling of these data becomes more and more challenging. Companies have a need for analyzing the data to optimize their business. The challenge is here: the amount of data is growing daily! To store and analyze the data efficiently, it is necessary to have a scalable and flexible infrastructure. Here it is important that hardware and software are engineered to work together. Therefore several new features of the Oracle Database 12c, like the new in-memory option, have been presented by Larry Ellison himself. From a hardware side new server machines like Fujitsu M10 or new processors, such as Oracle’s new M6-32 have been announced. The performance improvements, when using one of these hardware components in connection with the improved software solutions were really impressive. For more details about this, please take look at our previous blog post. Regarding Big Data, Oracle also introduced their Big Data architecture, which consists of: Oracle Big Data Appliance that is preconfigured with Hadoop Oracle Exdata which stores a huge amount of data efficently, to achieve optimal query performance Oracle Exalytics as a fast and scalable Business analytics system Analysis of the stored data can be performed using SQL, by streaming the data directly from Hadoop to an Oracle Database 12c. Alternatively the analysis can be directly implemented in Hadoop using “R”. In addition Oracle BI Tools can be used to analyze the data. Fast Data Fast Data is a complementary approach to Big Data. A huge amount of mostly unstructured data comes in via different channels with a high frequency. The analysis of these data streams is also important for companies, because the incoming data has to be analyzed regarding business-relevant patterns in real-time. Therefore these patterns must be identified efficiently and performant. To do so, in-memory grid solutions in combination with Oracle Coherence and Oracle Event Processing demonstrated very impressive how efficient real-time data processing can be. One example for Fast Data solutions that was shown during the OOW was the analysis of twitter streams regarding customer satisfaction. The feeds with negative words like “bad” or “worse” have been filtered and after a defined treshold has been reached in a certain timeframe, a business event was triggered. Cloud Another key trend in the IT market is of course Cloud Computing and what it means for companies and their businesses. Oracle announced their Cloud strategy and vision – companies can focus on their real business while all of the applications are available via Cloud. This also includes Oracle Database or Oracle Weblogic, so that companies can also build, deploy and run their own applications within the cloud. Three different approaches have been introduced: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform as a Service (PaaS) Software as a Service (SaaS) Using the IaaS approach only the infrastructure components will be managed in the Cloud. Customers will be very flexible regarding memory, storage or number of CPUs because those parameters can be adjusted elastically. The PaaS approach means that besides the infrastructure also the platforms (such as databases or application servers) necessary for running applications will be provided within the Cloud. Here customers can also decide, if installation and management of these infrastructure components should be done by Oracle. The SaaS approach describes the most complete one, hence all applications a company uses are managed in the Cloud. Oracle is planning to provide all of their applications, like ERP systems or HR applications, as Cloud services. In conclusion this seems to be a very forward-thinking strategy, which opens up new possibilities for customers to manage their infrastructure and applications in a flexible, scalable and future-oriented manner. As you can see, our OOW days have been very very interresting. We collected many helpful informations for our projects. The new innovations presented at the confernce are great and being part of this was even greater! We are looking forward to next years’ conference! Links: http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.html http://thecattlecrew.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/first-impressions-from-oracle-open-world-2013 SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: cattleCrew,Sven Bernhard,OOW2013,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Augmenting your Social Efforts via Data as a Service (DaaS)

  - by Mike Stiles

  The following is the 3rd in a series of posts on the value of leveraging social data across your enterprise by Oracle VP Product Development Don Springer and Oracle Cloud Data and Insight Service Sr. Director Product Management Niraj Deo. In this post, we will discuss the approach and value of integrating additional “public” data via a cloud-based Data-as-as-Service platform (or DaaS) to augment your Socially Enabled Big Data Analytics and CX Management. Let’s assume you have a functional Social-CRM platform in place. You are now successfully and continuously listening and learning from your customers and key constituents in Social Media, you are identifying relevant posts and following up with direct engagement where warranted (both 1:1, 1:community, 1:all), and you are starting to integrate signals for communication into your appropriate Customer Experience (CX) Management systems as well as insights for analysis in your business intelligence application. What is the next step? Augmenting Social Data with other Public Data for More Advanced Analytics When we say advanced analytics, we are talking about understanding causality and correlation from a wide variety, volume and velocity of data to Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to achieve and optimize business value. And in some cases, to predict future performance to make appropriate course corrections and change the outcome to your advantage while you can. The data to acquire, process and analyze this is very nuanced: It can vary across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data It can span across content, profile, and communities of profiles data It is increasingly public, curated and user generated The key is not just getting the data, but making it value-added data and using it to help discover the insights to connect to and improve your KPIs. As we spend time working with our larger customers on advanced analytics, we have seen a need arise for more business applications to have the ability to ingest and use “quality” curated, social, transactional reference data and corresponding insights. The challenge for the enterprise has been getting this data inline into an easily accessible system and providing the contextual integration of the underlying data enriched with insights to be exported into the enterprise’s business applications. The following diagram shows the requirements for this next generation data and insights service or (DaaS): Some quick points on these requirements: Public Data, which in this context is about Common Business Entities, such as - Customers, Suppliers, Partners, Competitors (all are organizations) Contacts, Consumers, Employees (all are people) Products, Brands This data can be broadly categorized incrementally as - Base Utility data (address, industry classification) Public Master Reference data (trade style, hierarchy) Social/Web data (News, Feeds, Graph) Transactional Data generated by enterprise process, workflows etc. This Data has traits of high-volume, variety, velocity etc., and the technology needed to efficiently integrate this data for your needs includes - Change management of Public Reference Data across all categories Applied Big Data to extract statics as well as real-time insights Knowledge Diagnostics and Data Mining As you consider how to deploy this solution, many of our customers will be using an online “cloud” service that provides quality data and insights uniformly to all their necessary applications. In addition, they are requesting a service that is: Agile and Easy to Use: Applications integrated with the service can obtain data on-demand, quickly and simply Cost-effective: Pre-integrated into applications so customers don’t have to Has High Data Quality: Single point access to reference data for data quality and linkages to transactional, curated and social data Supports Data Governance: Becomes more manageable and cost-effective since control of data privacy and compliance can be enforced in a centralized place Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) Just as the cloud has transformed and now offers a better path for how an enterprise manages its IT from their infrastructure, platform, and software (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS), the next step is data (DaaS). Over the last 3 years, we have seen the market begin to offer a cloud-based data service and gain initial traction. On one side of the DaaS continuum, we see an “appliance” type of service that provides a single, reliable source of accurate business data plus social information about accounts, leads, contacts, etc. On the other side of the continuum we see more of an online market “exchange” approach where ISVs and Data Publishers can publish and sell premium datasets within the exchange, with the exchange providing a rich set of web interfaces to improve the ease of data integration. Why the difference? It depends on the provider’s philosophy on how fast the rate of commoditization of certain data types will occur. How do you decide the best approach? Our perspective, as shown in the diagram below, is that the enterprise should develop an elastic schema to support multi-domain applicability. This allows the enterprise to take the most flexible approach to harness the speed and breadth of public data to achieve value. The key tenet of the proposed approach is that an enterprise carefully federates common utility, master reference data end points, mobility considerations and content processing, so that they are pervasively available. One way you may already be familiar with this approach is in how you do Address Verification treatments for accounts, contacts etc. If you design and revise this service in such a way that it is also easily available to social analytic needs, you could extend this to launch geo-location based social use cases (marketing, sales etc.). Our fundamental belief is that value-added data achieved through enrichment with specialized algorithms, as well as applying business “know-how” to weight-factor KPIs based on innovative combinations across an ever-increasing variety, volume and velocity of data, will be where real value is achieved. Essentially, Data-as-a-Service becomes a single entry point for the ever-increasing richness and volume of public data, with enrichment and combined capabilities to extract and integrate the right data from the right sources with the right factoring at the right time for faster decision-making and action within your core business applications. As more data becomes available (and in many cases commoditized), this value-added data processing approach will provide you with ongoing competitive advantage. Let’s look at a quick example of creating a master reference relationship that could be used as an input for a variety of your already existing business applications. In phase 1, a simple master relationship is achieved between a company (e.g. General Motors) and a variety of car brands’ social insights. The reference data allows for easy sort, export and integration into a set of CRM use cases for analytics, sales and marketing CRM. In phase 2, as you create more data relationships (e.g. competitors, contacts, other brands) to have broader and deeper references (social profiles, social meta-data) for more use cases across CRM, HCM, SRM, etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as the amount of master reference relationships is constrained only by your imagination and the availability of quality curated data you have to work with. DaaS is just now emerging onto the marketplace as the next step in cloud transformation. For some of you, this may be the first you have heard about it. Let us know if you have questions, or perspectives. In the meantime, we will continue to share insights as we can.Photo: Erik Araujo, stock.xchng

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 29, 2013Popular ReleasesAudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features -------- list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed ----- case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download end...Activity Viewer 2012: Activity Viewer 2012 V 5.0.0.3: Planning to add new features: 1. Import/Export rules 2. Tabular mode multi servers connections.Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...AcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...OfflineBrowser: Release v1.2: This release includes some multi-threading support, a better progress bar, more JavaScript fixes, and a help system. This release is also portable (can run with no issues from a flash drive).CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.0.0.34288 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-0-0-34288-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of ...CrmSvcUtil Generate Attribute Constants: Generate Attribute Constants (1.0.5018.28159): Built against version 5.0.15 of the CRM SDK Fixed issue where constant for primary key attribute was being duplicated in all entity classes Added ability to override base class for entity classesC# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.CS-Script for Notepad++: Release v1.0.6.0: Added support for classless scripts To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.02: SourceCode and SampleMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.0. Breaking changes: - ToBitmap method of MagickImage returns a png instead of a bmp. - Changed the value for full transparency from 255(Q8)/65535(Q16) to 0. - MagickColor now uses floats instead of Byte/UInt16.Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.578b: With the feedback received over the renaming of Movie Folders, and files, there has been some refinement done. As well as I would like to introduce Blu-Ray movie folder support, for Pre-Frodo and Frodo onwards versions of XBMC. To start with, Context menu option for renaming movies, now has three sub options: Movie & Folder, Movie only & Folder only. The option Manual Movie Rename needs to be selected from Movie Preferences, but the autoscrape boxes do not need to be selected. Blu Ray Fo...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen v2.1.3.api release: This is for the brave at heart, this is the maint release to update to the new movie api. please send feedback on fix requests.FFXIV Crafting Simulator: Crafting Simulator 2.3: - Major refactoring of the code behind. - Added a current durability and a current CP textbox.DNN CMS Platform: 07.01.02: Major HighlightsAdded the ability to manage the Vanity URL prefix Added the ability to filter members in the member directory by role Fixed issue where the user could inadvertently click the login button multiple times Fixed issues where core classes could not be used in out of process cache provider Fixed issue where profile visibility submenu was not displayed correctly Fixed issue where the member directory was broken when Convert URL to lowercase setting was enabled Fixed issu...Rawr: Rawr 5.4.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Sample MVC4 EF Codefirst Architecture: RazMVCWebApp ver 1.1: Signal R sample is added.CODE Framework: 4.0.30923.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.JayData -The unified data access library for JavaScript: JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like WebAPI, OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SQLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with KendoUI, Angular.js, Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video KendoUI examples: JayData example site Examples for map integration JayData example site What's new in JayData 1.3.2 - Indian Summer Edition For detai...ZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.12.0.0: sync with rev. 2892 of the java version new PDF417 decoder improved Aztec decoder global speed improvements direct Kinect support for ColorImageFrame better Structured Append support many other small bug fixes and improvementsNew ProjectsCACHEDB: CLIENT-DATABASE || CLIENT_CACHEDB-DATABASEClassic WiX Burn Theme: A WiX Burn theme inspired by the classic WiX wizard user interface.CryptStr.Fody: A post-build weaver that encrypts literal strings in your .NET assemblies without breaking ClickOnce.Easy Code: A setting framework.EduSoft: This is a school eg.GameStuff: GameStuff is a library of Physics and Geometrics concepts for video game. Nekora Test Project: Nekora test projectPopCorn Console Game: Simple console gameRadioController: This project started from people installing Tablets in Mustangs. You would typically loose most control of the radio. This projects brings that back!Random searcher i pochodne: Wyszukiwarka plików multimedialnych i czego dusza zapragnie.SporkRandom: A .NET (C#, Visual Basic) interface for the true random number generator service of random.org

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• A Bite With No Teeth&ndash;Demystifying Non-Compete Clauses

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  *DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this post in no way should be considered legal advice. I’m also in Canada, so references made are to Canadian court cases. I received a signed letter the other day, a reminder from my previous employer about some clauses associated with my employment and entry into an employee stock purchase program. So since this is in effect for the next 12 months, I guess I’m not starting that new job tomorrow. I’m kidding of course. How outrageous, how presumptuous, pompous, and arrogant that a company – any company – would actually place these conditions upon an employee. And yet, this is not uncommon. Especially in the IT industry, we see time and again similar wording in our employment agreements. But…are these legal? Is there any teeth behind the threat of the bite? Luckily, the answer seems to be ‘No’. I want to highlight two cases that support this. The first is Lyons v. Multari. In a nutshell, Dentist hires younger Dentist to be an associate. In their short, handwritten agreement, a non-compete clause was written stating “Protective Covenant. 3 yrs. – 5mi” (meaning you can’t set up shop within 5 miles for 3 years). Well, the young dentist left and did start an oral surgery office within 5 miles and within 3 years. Off to court they go! The initial judge sided with the older dentist, but on appeal it was overturned. Feel free to read the transcript of the decision here, but let me highlight one portion from section [19]: The general rule in most common law jurisdictions is that non-competition clauses in employment contracts are void. The sections following [19] explain further, and discuss Elsley v. J.G. Collins Insurance Agency Ltd. and its impact on Canadian law in this regard. The second case is Winnipeg Livestock Sales Ltd. v. Plewman. Desmond Plewman is an auctioneer, and worked at Winnipeg Livestock Sales. Part of his employment agreement was that he could not work for a competitor for 18 months if he left the company. Well, he left, and took up an important role in a competing company. The case went to court and as with Lyons v. Multari, the initial judge found in favour of the plaintiffs. Also as in the first case, that was overturned on appeal. Again, read through the transcript of the decision, but consider section [28]: In other words, even though Plewman has a great deal of skill as an auctioneer, Winnipeg Livestock has no proprietary interest in his professional skill and experience, even if they were acquired during his time working for Winnipeg Livestock.  Thus, Winnipeg Livestock has the burden of establishing that it has a legitimate proprietary interest requiring protection.  On this key question there is little evidence before the Court.  The record discloses that part of Plewman’s job was to “mingle with the … crowd” and to telephone customers and prospective customers about future prospects for the sale of livestock.  It may seem reasonable to assume that Winnipeg Livestock has a legitimate proprietary interest in its customer connections; but there is no evidence to indicate that there is any significant degree of “customer loyalty” in the business, as opposed to customers making choices based on other considerations such as cost, availability and the like. So are there any incidents where a non-compete can actually be valid? Yes, and these are considered “exceptional” cases, meaning that the situation meets certain circumstances. Michael Carabash has a great blog series discussing the above mentioned cases as well as the difference between a non-compete and non-solicit agreement. He talks about the exceptional criteria: In summary, the authorities reveal that the following circumstances will generally be relevant in determining whether a case is an “exceptional” one so that a general non-competition clause will be found to be reasonable: - The length of service with the employer. - The amount of personal service to clients. - Whether the employee dealt with clients exclusively, or on a sustained or     recurring basis. - Whether the knowledge about the client which the employee gained was of a   confidential nature, or involved an intimate knowledge of the client’s   particular needs, preferences or idiosyncrasies. - Whether the nature of the employee’s work meant that the employee had   influence over clients in the sense that the clients relied upon the employee’s   advice, or trusted the employee. - If competition by the employee has already occurred, whether there is   evidence that clients have switched their custom to him, especially without   direct solicitation. - The nature of the business with respect to whether personal knowledge of   the clients’ confidential matters is required. - The nature of the business with respect to the strength of customer loyalty,   how clients are “won” and kept, and whether the clientele is a recurring one. - The community involved and whether there were clientele yet to be exploited   by anyone. I close this blog post with a final quote, one from Zvulony & Co’s blog post on this subject. Again, all of this is not official legal advice, but I think we can see what all these sources are pointing towards. To answer my earlier question, there’s no teeth behind the threat of the bite. In light of this list, and the decisions in Lyons and Orlan, it is reasonably certain that in most employment situations a non-competition clause will be ineffective in protecting an employer from a departing employee who wishes to compete in the same business. The Courts have been relatively consistent in their position that if a non-solicitation clause can protect an employer’s interests, then a non-competition clause is probably unreasonable. Employers (or their solicitors) should avoid the inclination to draft restrictive covenants in broad, catch-all language. Or in other words, when drafting a restrictive covenant – take only what you need! D

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• Using IIS Logs for Performance Testing with Visual Studio

  - by Tarun Arora

  In this blog post I’ll show you how you can play back the IIS Logs in Visual Studio to automatically generate the web performance tests. You can also download the sample solution I am demo-ing in the blog post. Introduction Performance testing is as important for new websites as it is for evolving websites. If you already have your website running in production you could mine the information available in IIS logs to analyse the dense zones (most used pages) and performance test those pages rather than wasting time testing & tuning the least used pages in your application. What are IIS Logs To help with server use and analysis, IIS is integrated with several types of log files. These log file formats provide information on a range of websites and specific statistics, including Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, user information and site visits as well as dates, times and queries. If you are using IIS 7 and above you will find the log files in the following directory C:\Interpub\Logs\ Walkthrough 1. Download and Install Log Parser from the Microsoft download Centre. You should see the LogParser.dll in the install folder, the default install location is C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2. LogParser.dll gives us a library to query the iis log files programmatically. By the way if you haven’t used Log Parser in the past, it is a is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. More details… 2. Create a new test project in Visual Studio. Let’s call it IISLogsToWebPerfTestDemo.   3.  Delete the UnitTest1.cs class that gets created by default. Right click the solution and add a project of type class library, name it, IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine. Delete the default class Program.cs that gets created with the project. 4. Under the IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project add a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework – c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.QualityTools.WebTestFramework.dll LogParser also called MSUtil - c:\users\tarora\documents\visual studio 2010\Projects\IisLogsToWebPerfTest\IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine\obj\Debug\Interop.MSUtil.dll 5. Right click IISLogsToWebPerfTestEngine project and add a new classes – IISLogReader.cs The IISLogReader class queries the iis logs using the log parser. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using MSUtil; using LogQuery = MSUtil.LogQueryClassClass; using IISLogInputFormat = MSUtil.COMIISW3CInputContextClassClass; using LogRecordSet = MSUtil.ILogRecordset; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using System.Diagnostics; namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine { // By making use of log parser it is possible to query the iis log using select queries public class IISLogReader { private string _iisLogPath; public IISLogReader(string iisLogPath) { _iisLogPath = iisLogPath; } public IEnumerable<WebTestRequest> GetRequests() { LogQuery logQuery = new LogQuery(); IISLogInputFormat iisInputFormat = new IISLogInputFormat(); // currently these columns give us suffient information to construct the web test requests string query = @"SELECT s-ip, s-port, cs-method, cs-uri-stem, cs-uri-query FROM " + _iisLogPath; LogRecordSet recordSet = logQuery.Execute(query, iisInputFormat); // Apply a bit of transformation while (!recordSet.atEnd()) { ILogRecord record = recordSet.getRecord(); if (record.getValueEx("cs-method").ToString() == "GET") { string server = record.getValueEx("s-ip").ToString(); string path = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-stem").ToString(); string querystring = record.getValueEx("cs-uri-query").ToString(); StringBuilder urlBuilder = new StringBuilder(); urlBuilder.Append("http://"); urlBuilder.Append(server); urlBuilder.Append(path); if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(querystring)) { urlBuilder.Append("?"); urlBuilder.Append(querystring); } // You could make substitutions by introducing parameterized web tests. WebTestRequest request = new WebTestRequest(urlBuilder.ToString()); Debug.WriteLine(request.UrlWithQueryString); yield return request; } recordSet.moveNext(); } Console.WriteLine(" That's it! Closing the reader"); recordSet.close(); } } }   6. Connect the dots by adding the project reference ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine’ to ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’. Right click the ‘IisLogsToWebPerfTest’ project and add a new class ‘WebTest1Coded.cs’ The WebTest1Coded.cs inherits from the WebTest class. By overriding the GetRequestMethod we can inject the log files to the IISLogReader class which uses Log parser to query the log file and extract the web requests to generate the web test request which is yielded back for play back when the test is run. namespace IisLogsToWebPerfTest { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting; using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.WebTesting.Rules; using IisLogsToWebPerfTestEngine; // This class is a coded web performance test implementation, that simply passes // the path of the iis logs to the IisLogReader class which does the heavy // lifting of reading the contents of the log file and converting them to tests. // You could have multiple such classes that inherit from WebTest and implement // GetRequestEnumerator Method and pass differnt log files for different tests. public class WebTest1Coded : WebTest { public WebTest1Coded() { this.PreAuthenticate = true; } public override IEnumerator<WebTestRequest> GetRequestEnumerator() { // substitute the highlighted path with the path of the iis log file IISLogReader reader = new IISLogReader(@"C:\Demo\iisLog1.log"); foreach (WebTestRequest request in reader.GetRequests()) { yield return request; } } } }   7. Its time to fire the test off and see the iis log playback as a web performance test. From the Test menu choose Test View Window you should be able to see the WebTest1Coded test show up. Highlight the test and press Run selection (you can also debug the test in case you face any failures during test execution). 8. Optionally you can create a Load Test by keeping ‘WebTest1Coded’ as the base test. Conclusion You have just helped your testing team, you now have become the coolest developer in your organization! Jokes apart, log parser and web performance test together allow you to save a lot of time by not having to worry about what to test or even worrying about how to record the test. If you haven’t already, download the solution from here. You can take this to the next level by using LogParser to extract the log files as part of an end of day batch to a database. See the usage trends by user this solution over a longer term and have your tests consume the web requests now stored in the database to generate the web performance tests. If you like the post, don’t forget to share … Keep RocKiNg!

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• Why JSF Matters (to You)

  - by reza_rahman

        "Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge."                                                                                                    – Lao Tzu You may have noticed Thoughtworks recently crowned the likes AngularJS, etc imminent successors to server-side web frameworks. They apparently also deemed it necessary to single out JSF for righteous scorn. I have to say as I was reading the analysis I couldn't help but remember they also promptly jumped on the Ruby, Rails, Clojure, etc bandwagon a good few years ago seemingly similarly crowing these dynamic languages imminent successors to Java. I remember thinking then as I do now whether the folks at Thoughtworks are really that much smarter than me or if they are simply more prone to the Hipster buzz of the day. I'll let you make the final call on that one. I also noticed mention of "J2EE" in the context of JSF and had to wonder how up-to-date or knowledgeable the person writing the analysis actually was given that the term was basically retired almost a decade ago. There's one thing that I am absolutely sure about though - as a long time pretty happy user of JSF, I had no choice but to speak up on what I believe JSF offers. If you feel the same way, I would encourage you to support the team behind JSF whose hard work you may have benefited from over the years. True to his outspoken character PrimeFaces lead Cagatay Civici certainly did not mince words making the case for the JSF ecosystem - his excellent write-up is well worth a read. He specifically pointed out the practical problems in going whole hog with bare metal JavaScript, CSS, HTML for many development teams. I'll admit I had to smile when I read his closing sentence as well as the rather cheerful comments to the post from actual current JSF/PrimeFaces users that are apparently supposed to be on a gloomy death march. In a similar vein, OmniFaces developer Arjan Tijms did a great job pointing out the fact that despite the extremely competitive server-side Java Web UI space, JSF seems to manage to always consistently come out in either the number one or number two spot over many years and many data sources - do give his well-written message in the JAX-RS user forum a careful read. I don't think it's really reasonable to expect this to be the case for so many years if JSF was not at least a capable if not outstanding technology. If fact if you've ever wondered, Oracle itself is one of the largest JSF users on the planet. As Oracle's Shay Shmeltzer explains in a recent JSF Central interview, many of Oracle's strategic products such as ADF, ADF Mobile and Fusion Applications itself is built on JSF. There are well over 3,000 active developers working on these codebases. I don't think anyone can think of a more compelling reason to make sure that a technology is as effective as possible for practical development under real world conditions. Standing on the shoulders of the above giants, I feel like I can be pretty brief in making my own case for JSF: JSF is a powerful abstraction that brings the original Smalltalk MVC pattern to web development. This means cutting down boilerplate code to the bare minimum such that you really can think of just writing your view markup and then simply wire up some properties and event handlers on a POJO. The best way to see what this really means is to compare JSF code for a pretty small case to other approaches. You should then multiply the additional work for the typical enterprise project to try to understand what the productivity trade-offs are. This is reason alone for me to personally never take any other approach seriously as my primary web UI solution unless it can match the sheer productivity of JSF. Thanks to JSF's focus on components from the ground-up JSF has an extremely strong ecosystem that includes projects like PrimeFaces, RichFaces, OmniFaces, ICEFaces and of course ADF Faces/Mobile. These component libraries taken together constitute perhaps the largest widget set ever developed and optimized for a single web UI technology. To begin to grasp what this really means, just briefly browse the excellent PrimeFaces showcase and think about the fact that you can readily use the widgets on that showcase by just using some simple markup and knowing near to nothing about AJAX, JavaScript or CSS. JSF has the fair and legitimate advantage of being an open vendor neutral standard. This means that no single company, individual or insular clique controls JSF - openness, transparency, accountability, plurality, collaboration and inclusiveness is virtually guaranteed by the standards process itself. You have the option to choose between compatible implementations, escape any form of lock-in or even create your own compatible implementation! As you might gather from the quote at the top of the post, I am not a fan of crystal ball gazing and certainly don't want to engage in it myself. Who knows? However far-fetched it may seem maybe AngularJS is the only future we all have after all. If that is the case, so be it. Unlike what you might have been told, Java EE is about choice at heart and it can certainly work extremely well as a back-end for AngularJS. Likewise, you are also most certainly not limited to just JSF for working with Java EE - you have a rich set of choices like Struts 2, Vaadin, Errai, VRaptor 4, Wicket or perhaps even the new action-oriented web framework being considered for Java EE 8 based on the work in Jersey MVC... Please note that any views expressed here are my own only and certainly does not reflect the position of Oracle as a company.

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• Content Box is a Little Off in IE9 ... How to Fix?

  - by Kelsey Nealon

  Hi there! I have a website at www.thetotempole.ca and when viewed in IE9... My websites content box (The green wooden backgrounded box with content inside) is moved slightly over to the left making a space between the actual container and the content box... Is there anyway I can fix this without harming any of the other browsers? Thanks! Screenshot: HTML: <!DOCTYPE html> <head> <title>The Totem Pole News - Movies</title> <!-- Start WOWSlider.com HEAD section --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="engine1/style.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="engine1/jquery.js"></script> <!-- End WOWSlider.com HEAD section --> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-45342007-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="description" content="A totem pole themed news website posting articles on news, music, movies, video games, and health."> <link href="thecss2.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link rel="icon" type="image/ico" href="images/favicon.ico"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="contentbox" align="Center"> <a href="index.html"><div id="banner" align="Center"> </div></a> <div id="navbar"> <p><a href="index.html"><img src="images/home.png" width="65" height="54" alt="picture of a house to relate to the home page (content)" style="position: absolute; left: 23px; top: 16px; width: 57px; height: 48px;"><span style="position: absolute; left: 24px; z-index:2; top: 71px; height: 23px;">Content</span></a> <a href="#"><img src="images/eagleicon.gif" width="73" height="39" alt="An Eagle icon for the News section of the Totem Pole" style="position: absolute; left: 111px; top: 28px;"><span style="position: absolute; z-index: 2; left: 127px; top: 72px;">News</span></a> <a href="#"><img src="images/owlicon.gif" width="81" height="61" alt="An Owl icon for the Music section of the totem pole" style="position: absolute; left: 210px; top: 11px;"><span style="position: absolute; z-index:2; left: 226px; top: 73px;"><strong>Music</strong></span></a><a href="movies.html"><img src="images/wolficon.gif" width="88" height="54" alt="A Wolf icon for the Movies section of the totem pole" style="position: absolute; left: 320px; top: 15px;"><span style="position: absolute; left: 336px; top: 72px; z-index:2;"><strong>Movies</strong></span></a> <a href="#"><img src="images/hareimage.gif" width="60" height="56" alt="A Hare icon for Video Game section of the Totem Pole" style="position: absolute; left: 441px; top: 13px;"><span style="position: absolute; z-index:2; left: 428px; top: 73px;"><strong>Video Games</strong></span></a> <a href="#"><img src="images/bearicon.gif" width="91" height="57" alt="A bear icon for the Health section of The Totem Pole" style="position: absolute; left: 551px; top: 13px;"><span style="position: absolute; left: 580px; top: 72px; z-index:2;">Health</span></a></p> </div> <!--Nav Bar 2--> <div id="navbar2"> <a href="#">About Us</a> <a href="#">Feedback</a> <a href="#">Subscribe</a> </div> <!-- Atomz HTML for Search --> <div id="searchbar"> <form method="get" action="http://search.atomz.com/search/"> <input id="searchbox" size="13" name="sp_q" value="Search..." onFocus="if (this.value == 'Search...') {this.value=''}"> <input class="css_btn_class" type="submit" value="Search"> <input type="hidden" name="sp_a" value="sp1005092e"> <input type="hidden" name="sp_p" value="all"> <input type="hidden" name="sp_f" value="UTF-8"> </form> </div> <!-- Start WOWSlider.com BODY section --> <div id="mywowslider"> <div id="wowslider-container1"> <div class="ws_images"> <ul> <li><img src="images/anchor.jpg" alt="Ron Burgundy" title="Ron Burgundy" id="wows1_0"/>Played by Will Ferrell</li> <li><img src="images/anchor2.jpg" alt="Brian Fantana" title="Brian Fantana" id="wows1_1"/>Played by Paul Rudd</li> <li><img src="images/anchor3.jpg" alt="Brick Tamland" title="Brick Tamland" id="wows1_2"/>Played by Steve Carrell</li> <li><img src="images/anchor4.jpg" alt="Champ Kind" title="Champ Kind" id="wows1_3"/>Played by David Koechner</li> </ul> </div> <div class="ws_bullets"><div> <a href="#" title="Ron Burgundy"><img src="images/anchor.jpg" alt="Ron Burgundy"/>1</a> <a href="#" title="Brian Fantana"><img src="images/anchor2.jpg" alt="Brian Fantana"/>2</a> <a href="#" title="Brick Tamland"><img src="images/anchor3.jpg" alt="Brick Tamland"/>3</a> <a href="#" title="Champ Kind"><img src="images/anchor4.jpg" alt="Champ Kind"/>4</a> </div> </div> <span class="wsl"><a href="http://wowslider.com"></a></span> <div class="ws_shadow"></div> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="engine1/wowslider.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="engine1/script.js"></script> </div> <!-- End WOWSlider.com BODY section --> <!-- AddThis Smart Layers BEGIN --> <!-- Go to http://www.addthis.com/get/smart-layers to customize --> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-5279b96309e7df24"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> addthis.layers({ 'theme' : 'transparent', 'share' : { 'position' : 'left', 'numPreferredServices' : 5 } }); </script> <!-- AddThis Smart Layers END --> <div id="sources"><p> Source(s): <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchorman_2:_The_Legend_Continues">wikipedia.com</a></p></div> <div id="infocontent"> <p align="left"><em><strong> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues</strong></em> is an upcoming American comedy film being released on December 20, 2013, also a sequel to the 2004 film <em>Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy</em>. On March 28, 2012, actor Will Ferrell officially announced the sequel dressed in character as Ron Burgundy on the late-night talk-show <em>Conan</em>. As with the original film, it is directed by Adam McKay, produced by Judd Apatow, stars Will Ferrell and is written by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. Unlike the original film, which was distributed by DreamWorks Pictures, <em>The Legend Continues</em> will be distributed by Paramount Pictures.</p> <p align="left"><em><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></em>The movie now has a website at <a href="www.anchormanmovie.com">www.anchormanmovie.com</a> where a countdown for the release of this film can be seen. By the looks of these images, I think we can expect big things when the movie comes out this December. Enjoy the poster photos and trailers all posted below, and don't forget to submit your vote in the poll!</p> </div> <div id="trailer1"><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Elczv0ghqw0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <div id="trailer2"> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/mZ-JX-7B3uM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> <div id="poll"> <form method="post" action="http://poll.pollcode.com/763294"><table style="border: black 1px solid;" border="1" width="175" bgcolor="EEEEEE" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0"><tr><td colspan="2" height="10"><font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><b>What Rating Do You Think This Will Recieve</b></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="1" id="763294answer1"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer1">10</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="2" id="763294answer2"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer2">9</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="3" id="763294answer3"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer3">8</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="4" id="763294answer4"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer4">7</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="5" id="763294answer5"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer5">6</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="6" id="763294answer6"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer6">5</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="7" id="763294answer7"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer7">4</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="8" id="763294answer8"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer8">3</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="9" id="763294answer9"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer9">2</label></font></td></tr><tr><td width="5"><input type="radio" name="answer" value="10" id="763294answer10"></td><td>&nbsp;<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="000000"><label for="763294answer10">1</label></font></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" height="10"><center><input type="submit" value=" Vote ">&nbsp;&nbsp;<input title="Clicking this will send you to a new page" type="submit" name="view" value=" View "></center></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" align="right"><font face="Verdana" height="5" size="1" color="000000"></font></td></tr></table></form></div> <span style="position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 225px; width: 1000px; border-bottom: 2px black double; height: 58px;"> <h1 style="font-weight: normal; font-size:28px"><em>Anchorman 2 Arrives Soon</em></h1></span> <div id="contentbox2"></div> <!--Footer Div --> <center><div id="footer"><a href="#">Sitemap</a> <a href="#">About Us</a> <a href="#">Feedback</a></div></center> <div id="disqus"><div id="disqus_thread"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> /* * * CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT BEFORE PASTING INTO YOUR WEBPAGE * * */ var disqus_shortname = 'thetotempoleanchorman2'; // required: replace example with your forum shortname /* * * DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE * * */ (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = '//' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); </script> <noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="http://disqus.com/?ref_noscript">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript> <a href="http://disqus.com" class="dsq-brlink">comments powered by <span class="logo-disqus">Disqus</span></a></div> <!-- This is the end of the contentbox --></div> <!-- This is the end of the container div --> </div> </body> </html> CSS: html { background: url(images/pine.jpg) no-repeat center center fixed; 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• A Taxonomy of Numerical Methods v1

  - by JoshReuben

  Numerical Analysis – When, What, (but not how) Once you understand the Math & know C++, Numerical Methods are basically blocks of iterative & conditional math code. I found the real trick was seeing the forest for the trees – knowing which method to use for which situation. Its pretty easy to get lost in the details – so I’ve tried to organize these methods in a way that I can quickly look this up. I’ve included links to detailed explanations and to C++ code examples. I’ve tried to classify Numerical methods in the following broad categories: Solving Systems of Linear Equations Solving Non-Linear Equations Iteratively Interpolation Curve Fitting Optimization Numerical Differentiation & Integration Solving ODEs Boundary Problems Solving EigenValue problems Enjoy – I did ! Solving Systems of Linear Equations Overview Solve sets of algebraic equations with x unknowns The set is commonly in matrix form Gauss-Jordan Elimination http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Jordan_elimination C++: http://www.codekeep.net/snippets/623f1923-e03c-4636-8c92-c9dc7aa0d3c0.aspx Produces solution of the equations & the coefficient matrix Efficient, stable 2 steps: · Forward Elimination – matrix decomposition: reduce set to triangular form (0s below the diagonal) or row echelon form. If degenerate, then there is no solution · Backward Elimination –write the original matrix as the product of ints inverse matrix & its reduced row-echelon matrix à reduce set to row canonical form & use back-substitution to find the solution to the set Elementary ops for matrix decomposition: · Row multiplication · Row switching · Add multiples of rows to other rows Use pivoting to ensure rows are ordered for achieving triangular form LU Decomposition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LU_decomposition C++: http://ganeshtiwaridotcomdotnp.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/c-c-code-lu-decomposition-for-solving.html Represent the matrix as a product of lower & upper triangular matrices A modified version of GJ Elimination Advantage – can easily apply forward & backward elimination to solve triangular matrices Techniques: · Doolittle Method – sets the L matrix diagonal to unity · Crout Method - sets the U matrix diagonal to unity Note: both the L & U matrices share the same unity diagonal & can be stored compactly in the same matrix Gauss-Seidel Iteration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%E2%80%93Seidel_method C++: http://www.nr.com/forum/showthread.php?t=722 Transform the linear set of equations into a single equation & then use numerical integration (as integration formulas have Sums, it is implemented iteratively). an optimization of Gauss-Jacobi: 1.5 times faster, requires 0.25 iterations to achieve the same tolerance Solving Non-Linear Equations Iteratively find roots of polynomials – there may be 0, 1 or n solutions for an n order polynomial use iterative techniques Iterative methods · used when there are no known analytical techniques · Requires set functions to be continuous & differentiable · Requires an initial seed value – choice is critical to convergence à conduct multiple runs with different starting points & then select best result · Systematic - iterate until diminishing returns, tolerance or max iteration conditions are met · bracketing techniques will always yield convergent solutions, non-bracketing methods may fail to converge Incremental method if a nonlinear function has opposite signs at 2 ends of a small interval x1 & x2, then there is likely to be a solution in their interval – solutions are detected by evaluating a function over interval steps, for a change in sign, adjusting the step size dynamically. Limitations – can miss closely spaced solutions in large intervals, cannot detect degenerate (coinciding) solutions, limited to functions that cross the x-axis, gives false positives for singularities Fixed point method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_iteration C++: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=weYj75E_t6MC&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=fixed+point+method++c%2B%2B&source=bl&ots=LQ-5P_taoC&sig=lENUUIYBK53tZtTwNfHLy5PEWDk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wezDUPW1J5DptQaMsIHQCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fixed%20point%20method%20%20c%2B%2B&f=false Algebraically rearrange a solution to isolate a variable then apply incremental method Bisection method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisection_method C++: http://numericalcomputing.wordpress.com/category/algorithms/ Bracketed - Select an initial interval, keep bisecting it ad midpoint into sub-intervals and then apply incremental method on smaller & smaller intervals – zoom in Adv: unaffected by function gradient à reliable Disadv: slow convergence False Position Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_position_method C++: http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/126100-bisection-and-false-position-methods/ Bracketed - Select an initial interval , & use the relative value of function at interval end points to select next sub-intervals (estimate how far between the end points the solution might be & subdivide based on this) Newton-Raphson method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_method C++: http://www-users.cselabs.umn.edu/classes/Summer-2012/csci1113/index.php?page=./newt3 Also known as Newton's method Convenient, efficient Not bracketed – only a single initial guess is required to start iteration – requires an analytical expression for the first derivative of the function as input. Evaluates the function & its derivative at each step. Can be extended to the Newton MutiRoot method for solving multiple roots Can be easily applied to an of n-coupled set of non-linear equations – conduct a Taylor Series expansion of a function, dropping terms of order n, rewrite as a Jacobian matrix of PDs & convert to simultaneous linear equations !!! Secant Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secant_method C++: http://forum.vcoderz.com/showthread.php?p=205230 Unlike N-R, can estimate first derivative from an initial interval (does not require root to be bracketed) instead of inputting it Since derivative is approximated, may converge slower. Is fast in practice as it does not have to evaluate the derivative at each step. Similar implementation to False Positive method Birge-Vieta Method http://mat.iitm.ac.in/home/sryedida/public_html/caimna/transcendental/polynomial%20methods/bv%20method.html C++: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=cL1boM2uyQwC&pg=SA3-PA51&lpg=SA3-PA51&dq=Birge-Vieta+Method+c%2B%2B&source=bl&ots=QZmnDTK3rC&sig=BPNcHHbpR_DKVoZXrLi4nVXD-gg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=R-_DUK2iNIjzsgbE5ID4Dg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Birge-Vieta%20Method%20c%2B%2B&f=false combines Horner's method of polynomial evaluation (transforming into lesser degree polynomials that are more computationally efficient to process) with Newton-Raphson to provide a computational speed-up Interpolation Overview Construct new data points for as close as possible fit within range of a discrete set of known points (that were obtained via sampling, experimentation) Use Taylor Series Expansion of a function f(x) around a specific value for x Linear Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_interpolation C++: http://www.hamaluik.com/?p=289 Straight line between 2 points à concatenate interpolants between each pair of data points Bilinear Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilinear_interpolation C++: http://supercomputingblog.com/graphics/coding-bilinear-interpolation/2/ Extension of the linear function for interpolating functions of 2 variables – perform linear interpolation first in 1 direction, then in another. Used in image processing – e.g. texture mapping filter. Uses 4 vertices to interpolate a value within a unit cell. Lagrange Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_polynomial C++: http://www.codecogs.com/code/maths/approximation/interpolation/lagrange.php For polynomials Requires recomputation for all terms for each distinct x value – can only be applied for small number of nodes Numerically unstable Barycentric Interpolation http://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/10.1137/S0036144502417715 C++: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/621445-barycentric-coordinates-c-code-check/ Rearrange the terms in the equation of the Legrange interpolation by defining weight functions that are independent of the interpolated value of x Newton Divided Difference Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_polynomial C++: http://jee-appy.blogspot.co.il/2011/12/newton-divided-difference-interpolation.html Hermite Divided Differences: Interpolation polynomial approximation for a given set of data points in the NR form - divided differences are used to approximately calculate the various differences. For a given set of 3 data points , fit a quadratic interpolant through the data Bracketed functions allow Newton divided differences to be calculated recursively Difference table Cubic Spline Interpolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spline_interpolation C++: https://www.marcusbannerman.co.uk/index.php/home/latestarticles/42-articles/96-cubic-spline-class.html Spline is a piecewise polynomial Provides smoothness – for interpolations with significantly varying data Use weighted coefficients to bend the function to be smooth & its 1st & 2nd derivatives are continuous through the edge points in the interval Curve Fitting A generalization of interpolating whereby given data points may contain noise à the curve does not necessarily pass through all the points Least Squares Fit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Least_squares C++: http://www.ccas.ru/mmes/educat/lab04k/02/least-squares.c Residual – difference between observed value & expected value Model function is often chosen as a linear combination of the specified functions Determines: A) The model instance in which the sum of squared residuals has the least value B) param values for which model best fits data Straight Line Fit Linear correlation between independent variable and dependent variable Linear Regression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression C++: http://www.oocities.org/david_swaim/cpp/linregc.htm Special case of statistically exact extrapolation Leverage least squares Given a basis function, the sum of the residuals is determined and the corresponding gradient equation is expressed as a set of normal linear equations in matrix form that can be solved (e.g. using LU Decomposition) Can be weighted - Drop the assumption that all errors have the same significance –-> confidence of accuracy is different for each data point. Fit the function closer to points with higher weights Polynomial Fit - use a polynomial basis function Moving Average http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average C++: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/17860/A-Simple-Moving-Average-Algorithm Used for smoothing (cancel fluctuations to highlight longer-term trends & cycles), time series data analysis, signal processing filters Replace each data point with average of neighbors. Can be simple (SMA), weighted (WMA), exponential (EMA). Lags behind latest data points – extra weight can be given to more recent data points. Weights can decrease arithmetically or exponentially according to distance from point. Parameters: smoothing factor, period, weight basis Optimization Overview Given function with multiple variables, find Min (or max by minimizing –f(x)) Iterative approach Efficient, but not necessarily reliable Conditions: noisy data, constraints, non-linear models Detection via sign of first derivative - Derivative of saddle points will be 0 Local minima Bisection method Similar method for finding a root for a non-linear equation Start with an interval that contains a minimum Golden Search method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_section_search C++: http://www.codecogs.com/code/maths/optimization/golden.php Bisect intervals according to golden ratio 0.618.. Achieves reduction by evaluating a single function instead of 2 Newton-Raphson Method Brent method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent's_method C++: http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/cpp_src/brent/brent.cpp Based on quadratic or parabolic interpolation – if the function is smooth & parabolic near to the minimum, then a parabola fitted through any 3 points should approximate the minima – fails when the 3 points are collinear , in which case the denominator is 0 Simplex Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplex_algorithm C++: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/article.php/c17505/Simplex-Optimization-Algorithm-and-Implemetation-in-C-Programming.htm Find the global minima of any multi-variable function Direct search – no derivatives required At each step it maintains a non-degenerative simplex – a convex hull of n+1 vertices. Obtains the minimum for a function with n variables by evaluating the function at n-1 points, iteratively replacing the point of worst result with the point of best result, shrinking the multidimensional simplex around the best point. Point replacement involves expanding & contracting the simplex near the worst value point to determine a better replacement point Oscillation can be avoided by choosing the 2nd worst result Restart if it gets stuck Parameters: contraction & expansion factors Simulated Annealing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing C++: http://code.google.com/p/cppsimulatedannealing/ Analogy to heating & cooling metal to strengthen its structure Stochastic method – apply random permutation search for global minima - Avoid entrapment in local minima via hill climbing Heating schedule - Annealing schedule params: temperature, iterations at each temp, temperature delta Cooling schedule – can be linear, step-wise or exponential Differential Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_evolution C++: http://www.amichel.com/de/doc/html/ More advanced stochastic methods analogous to biological processes: Genetic algorithms, evolution strategies Parallel direct search method against multiple discrete or continuous variables Initial population of variable vectors chosen randomly – if weighted difference vector of 2 vectors yields a lower objective function value then it replaces the comparison vector Many params: #parents, #variables, step size, crossover constant etc Convergence is slow – many more function evaluations than simulated annealing Numerical Differentiation Overview 2 approaches to finite difference methods: · A) approximate function via polynomial interpolation then differentiate · B) Taylor series approximation – additionally provides error estimate Finite Difference methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method C++: http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/ETD/Available/etd-051807-164436/unrestricted/EAMPADU.pdf Find differences between high order derivative values - Approximate differential equations by finite differences at evenly spaced data points Based on forward & backward Taylor series expansion of f(x) about x plus or minus multiples of delta h. Forward / backward difference - the sums of the series contains even derivatives and the difference of the series contains odd derivatives – coupled equations that can be solved. Provide an approximation of the derivative within a O(h^2) accuracy There is also central difference & extended central difference which has a O(h^4) accuracy Richardson Extrapolation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardson_extrapolation C++: http://mathscoding.blogspot.co.il/2012/02/introduction-richardson-extrapolation.html A sequence acceleration method applied to finite differences Fast convergence, high accuracy O(h^4) Derivatives via Interpolation Cannot apply Finite Difference method to discrete data points at uneven intervals – so need to approximate the derivative of f(x) using the derivative of the interpolant via 3 point Lagrange Interpolation Note: the higher the order of the derivative, the lower the approximation precision Numerical Integration Estimate finite & infinite integrals of functions More accurate procedure than numerical differentiation Use when it is not possible to obtain an integral of a function analytically or when the function is not given, only the data points are Newton Cotes Methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%E2%80%93Cotes_formulas C++: http://www.siafoo.net/snippet/324 For equally spaced data points Computationally easy – based on local interpolation of n rectangular strip areas that is piecewise fitted to a polynomial to get the sum total area Evaluate the integrand at n+1 evenly spaced points – approximate definite integral by Sum Weights are derived from Lagrange Basis polynomials Leverage Trapezoidal Rule for default 2nd formulas, Simpson 1/3 Rule for substituting 3 point formulas, Simpson 3/8 Rule for 4 point formulas. For 4 point formulas use Bodes Rule. Higher orders obtain more accurate results Trapezoidal Rule uses simple area, Simpsons Rule replaces the integrand f(x) with a quadratic polynomial p(x) that uses the same values as f(x) for its end points, but adds a midpoint Romberg Integration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romberg's_method C++: http://code.google.com/p/romberg-integration/downloads/detail?name=romberg.cpp&can=2&q= Combines trapezoidal rule with Richardson Extrapolation Evaluates the integrand at equally spaced points The integrand must have continuous derivatives Each R(n,m) extrapolation uses a higher order integrand polynomial replacement rule (zeroth starts with trapezoidal) à a lower triangular matrix set of equation coefficients where the bottom right term has the most accurate approximation. The process continues until the difference between 2 successive diagonal terms becomes sufficiently small. Gaussian Quadrature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_quadrature C++: http://www.alglib.net/integration/gaussianquadratures.php Data points are chosen to yield best possible accuracy – requires fewer evaluations Ability to handle singularities, functions that are difficult to evaluate The integrand can include a weighting function determined by a set of orthogonal polynomials. Points & weights are selected so that the integrand yields the exact integral if f(x) is a polynomial of degree <= 2n+1 Techniques (basically different weighting functions): · Gauss-Legendre Integration w(x)=1 · Gauss-Laguerre Integration w(x)=e^-x · Gauss-Hermite Integration w(x)=e^-x^2 · Gauss-Chebyshev Integration w(x)= 1 / Sqrt(1-x^2) Solving ODEs Use when high order differential equations cannot be solved analytically Evaluated under boundary conditions RK for systems – a high order differential equation can always be transformed into a coupled first order system of equations Euler method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_method C++: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Euler_method First order Runge–Kutta method. Simple recursive method – given an initial value, calculate derivative deltas. Unstable & not very accurate (O(h) error) – not used in practice A first-order method - the local error (truncation error per step) is proportional to the square of the step size, and the global error (error at a given time) is proportional to the step size In evolving solution between data points xn & xn+1, only evaluates derivatives at beginning of interval xn à asymmetric at boundaries Higher order Runge Kutta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runge%E2%80%93Kutta_methods C++: http://www.dreamincode.net/code/snippet1441.htm 2nd & 4th order RK - Introduces parameterized midpoints for more symmetric solutions à accuracy at higher computational cost Adaptive RK – RK-Fehlberg – estimate the truncation at each integration step & automatically adjust the step size to keep error within prescribed limits. At each step 2 approximations are compared – if in disagreement to a specific accuracy, the step size is reduced Boundary Value Problems Where solution of differential equations are located at 2 different values of the independent variable x à more difficult, because cannot just start at point of initial value – there may not be enough starting conditions available at the end points to produce a unique solution An n-order equation will require n boundary conditions – need to determine the missing n-1 conditions which cause the given conditions at the other boundary to be satisfied Shooting Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_method C++: http://ganeshtiwaridotcomdotnp.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/c-c-code-shooting-method-for-solving.html Iteratively guess the missing values for one end & integrate, then inspect the discrepancy with the boundary values of the other end to adjust the estimate Given the starting boundary values u1 & u2 which contain the root u, solve u given the false position method (solving the differential equation as an initial value problem via 4th order RK), then use u to solve the differential equations. Finite Difference Method For linear & non-linear systems Higher order derivatives require more computational steps – some combinations for boundary conditions may not work though Improve the accuracy by increasing the number of mesh points Solving EigenValue Problems An eigenvalue can substitute a matrix when doing matrix multiplication à convert matrix multiplication into a polynomial EigenValue For a given set of equations in matrix form, determine what are the solution eigenvalue & eigenvectors Similar Matrices - have same eigenvalues. Use orthogonal similarity transforms to reduce a matrix to diagonal form from which eigenvalue(s) & eigenvectors can be computed iteratively Jacobi method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobi_method C++: http://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/classes/acs2_2008/openmp/jacobi/jacobi.html Robust but Computationally intense – use for small matrices < 10x10 Power Iteration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_iteration For any given real symmetric matrix, generate the largest single eigenvalue & its eigenvectors Simplest method – does not compute matrix decomposition à suitable for large, sparse matrices Inverse Iteration Variation of power iteration method – generates the smallest eigenvalue from the inverse matrix Rayleigh Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh's_method_of_dimensional_analysis Variation of power iteration method Rayleigh Quotient Method Variation of inverse iteration method Matrix Tri-diagonalization Method Use householder algorithm to reduce an NxN symmetric matrix to a tridiagonal real symmetric matrix vua N-2 orthogonal transforms     Whats Next Outside of Numerical Methods there are lots of different types of algorithms that I’ve learned over the decades: Data Mining – (I covered this briefly in a previous post: http://geekswithblogs.net/JoshReuben/archive/2007/12/31/ssas-dm-algorithms.aspx ) Search & Sort Routing Problem Solving Logical Theorem Proving Planning Probabilistic Reasoning Machine Learning Solvers (eg MIP) Bioinformatics (Sequence Alignment, Protein Folding) Quant Finance (I read Wilmott’s books – interesting) Sooner or later, I’ll cover the above topics as well.

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• PTLQueue : a scalable bounded-capacity MPMC queue

  - by Dave

  Title: Fast concurrent MPMC queue -- I've used the following concurrent queue algorithm enough that it warrants a blog entry. I'll sketch out the design of a fast and scalable multiple-producer multiple-consumer (MPSC) concurrent queue called PTLQueue. The queue has bounded capacity and is implemented via a circular array. Bounded capacity can be a useful property if there's a mismatch between producer rates and consumer rates where an unbounded queue might otherwise result in excessive memory consumption by virtue of the container nodes that -- in some queue implementations -- are used to hold values. A bounded-capacity queue can provide flow control between components. Beware, however, that bounded collections can also result in resource deadlock if abused. The put() and take() operators are partial and wait for the collection to become non-full or non-empty, respectively. Put() and take() do not allocate memory, and are not vulnerable to the ABA pathologies. The PTLQueue algorithm can be implemented equally well in C/C++ and Java. Partial operators are often more convenient than total methods. In many use cases if the preconditions aren't met, there's nothing else useful the thread can do, so it may as well wait via a partial method. An exception is in the case of work-stealing queues where a thief might scan a set of queues from which it could potentially steal. Total methods return ASAP with a success-failure indication. (It's tempting to describe a queue or API as blocking or non-blocking instead of partial or total, but non-blocking is already an overloaded concurrency term. Perhaps waiting/non-waiting or patient/impatient might be better terms). It's also trivial to construct partial operators by busy-waiting via total operators, but such constructs may be less efficient than an operator explicitly and intentionally designed to wait. A PTLQueue instance contains an array of slots, where each slot has volatile Turn and MailBox fields. The array has power-of-two length allowing mod/div operations to be replaced by masking. We assume sensible padding and alignment to reduce the impact of false sharing. (On x86 I recommend 128-byte alignment and padding because of the adjacent-sector prefetch facility). Each queue also has PutCursor and TakeCursor cursor variables, each of which should be sequestered as the sole occupant of a cache line or sector. You can opt to use 64-bit integers if concerned about wrap-around aliasing in the cursor variables. Put(null) is considered illegal, but the caller or implementation can easily check for and convert null to a distinguished non-null proxy value if null happens to be a value you'd like to pass. Take() will accordingly convert the proxy value back to null. An advantage of PTLQueue is that you can use atomic fetch-and-increment for the partial methods. We initialize each slot at index I with (Turn=I, MailBox=null). Both cursors are initially 0. All shared variables are considered "volatile" and atomics such as CAS and AtomicFetchAndIncrement are presumed to have bidirectional fence semantics. Finally T is the templated type. I've sketched out a total tryTake() method below that allows the caller to poll the queue. tryPut() has an analogous construction. Zebra stripping : alternating row colors for nice-looking code listings. See also google code "prettify" : https://code.google.com/p/google-code-prettify/ Prettify is a javascript module that yields the HTML/CSS/JS equivalent of pretty-print. -- pre:nth-child(odd) { background-color:#ff0000; } pre:nth-child(even) { background-color:#0000ff; } border-left: 11px solid #ccc; margin: 1.7em 0 1.7em 0.3em; background-color:#BFB; font-size:12px; line-height:65%; " // PTLQueue : Put(v) : // producer : partial method - waits as necessary assert v != null assert Mask = 1 && (Mask & (Mask+1)) == 0 // Document invariants // doorway step // Obtain a sequence number -- ticket // As a practical concern the ticket value is temporally unique // The ticket also identifies and selects a slot auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&PutCursor, 1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // waiting phase : // wait for slot's generation to match the tkt value assigned to this put() invocation. // The "generation" is implicitly encoded as the upper bits in the cursor // above those used to specify the index : tkt div (Mask+1) // The generation serves as an epoch number to identify a cohort of threads // accessing disjoint slots while s-Turn != tkt : Pause assert s-MailBox == null s-MailBox = v // deposit and pass message Take() : // consumer : partial method - waits as necessary auto tkt = AtomicFetchIncrement (&TakeCursor,1) slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] // 2-stage waiting : // First wait for turn for our generation // Acquire exclusive "take" access to slot's MailBox field // Then wait for the slot to become occupied while s-Turn != tkt : Pause // Concurrency in this section of code is now reduced to just 1 producer thread // vs 1 consumer thread. // For a given queue and slot, there will be most one Take() operation running // in this section. // Consumer waits for producer to arrive and make slot non-empty // Extract message; clear mailbox; advance Turn indicator // We have an obvious happens-before relation : // Put(m) happens-before corresponding Take() that returns that same "m" for T v = s-MailBox if v != null : s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 // unlock slot to admit next producer and consumer return v Pause tryTake() : // total method - returns ASAP with failure indication for auto tkt = TakeCursor slot * s = &Slots[tkt & Mask] if s-Turn != tkt : return null T v = s-MailBox // presumptive return value if v == null : return null // ratify tkt and v values and commit by advancing cursor if CAS (&TakeCursor, tkt, tkt+1) != tkt : continue s-MailBox = null ST-ST barrier s-Turn = tkt + Mask + 1 return v The basic idea derives from the Partitioned Ticket Lock "PTL" (US20120240126-A1) and the MultiLane Concurrent Bag (US8689237). The latter is essentially a circular ring-buffer where the elements themselves are queues or concurrent collections. You can think of the PTLQueue as a partitioned ticket lock "PTL" augmented to pass values from lock to unlock via the slots. Alternatively, you could conceptualize of PTLQueue as a degenerate MultiLane bag where each slot or "lane" consists of a simple single-word MailBox instead of a general queue. Each lane in PTLQueue also has a private Turn field which acts like the Turn (Grant) variables found in PTL. Turn enforces strict FIFO ordering and restricts concurrency on the slot mailbox field to at most one simultaneous put() and take() operation. PTL uses a single "ticket" variable and per-slot Turn (grant) fields while MultiLane has distinct PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors and abstract per-slot sub-queues. Both PTL and MultiLane advance their cursor and ticket variables with atomic fetch-and-increment. PTLQueue borrows from both PTL and MultiLane and has distinct put and take cursors and per-slot Turn fields. Instead of a per-slot queues, PTLQueue uses a simple single-word MailBox field. PutCursor and TakeCursor act like a pair of ticket locks, conferring "put" and "take" access to a given slot. PutCursor, for instance, assigns an incoming put() request to a slot and serves as a PTL "Ticket" to acquire "put" permission to that slot's MailBox field. To better explain the operation of PTLQueue we deconstruct the operation of put() and take() as follows. Put() first increments PutCursor obtaining a new unique ticket. That ticket value also identifies a slot. Put() next waits for that slot's Turn field to match that ticket value. This is tantamount to using a PTL to acquire "put" permission on the slot's MailBox field. Finally, having obtained exclusive "put" permission on the slot, put() stores the message value into the slot's MailBox. Take() similarly advances TakeCursor, identifying a slot, and then acquires and secures "take" permission on a slot by waiting for Turn. Take() then waits for the slot's MailBox to become non-empty, extracts the message, and clears MailBox. Finally, take() advances the slot's Turn field, which releases both "put" and "take" access to the slot's MailBox. Note the asymmetry : put() acquires "put" access to the slot, but take() releases that lock. At any given time, for a given slot in a PTLQueue, at most one thread has "put" access and at most one thread has "take" access. This restricts concurrency from general MPMC to 1-vs-1. We have 2 ticket locks -- one for put() and one for take() -- each with its own "ticket" variable in the form of the corresponding cursor, but they share a single "Grant" egress variable in the form of the slot's Turn variable. Advancing the PutCursor, for instance, serves two purposes. First, we obtain a unique ticket which identifies a slot. Second, incrementing the cursor is the doorway protocol step to acquire the per-slot mutual exclusion "put" lock. The cursors and operations to increment those cursors serve double-duty : slot-selection and ticket assignment for locking the slot's MailBox field. At any given time a slot MailBox field can be in one of the following states: empty with no pending operations -- neutral state; empty with one or more waiting take() operations pending -- deficit; occupied with no pending operations; occupied with one or more waiting put() operations -- surplus; empty with a pending put() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional; or occupied with a pending take() or pending put() and take() operations -- transitional. The partial put() and take() operators can be implemented with an atomic fetch-and-increment operation, which may confer a performance advantage over a CAS-based loop. In addition we have independent PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors. Critically, a put() operation modifies PutCursor but does not access the TakeCursor and a take() operation modifies the TakeCursor cursor but does not access the PutCursor. This acts to reduce coherence traffic relative to some other queue designs. It's worth noting that slow threads or obstruction in one slot (or "lane") does not impede or obstruct operations in other slots -- this gives us some degree of obstruction isolation. PTLQueue is not lock-free, however. The implementation above is expressed with polite busy-waiting (Pause) but it's trivial to implement per-slot parking and unparking to deschedule waiting threads. It's also easy to convert the queue to a more general deque by replacing the PutCursor and TakeCursor cursors with Left/Front and Right/Back cursors that can move either direction. Specifically, to push and pop from the "left" side of the deque we would decrement and increment the Left cursor, respectively, and to push and pop from the "right" side of the deque we would increment and decrement the Right cursor, respectively. We used a variation of PTLQueue for message passing in our recent OPODIS 2013 paper. ul { list-style:none; padding-left:0; padding:0; margin:0; margin-left:0; } ul#myTagID { padding: 0px; margin: 0px; list-style:none; margin-left:0;} -- -- There's quite a bit of related literature in this area. I'll call out a few relevant references: Wilson's NYU Courant Institute UltraComputer dissertation from 1988 is classic and the canonical starting point : Operating System Data Structures for Shared-Memory MIMD Machines with Fetch-and-Add. Regarding provenance and priority, I think PTLQueue or queues effectively equivalent to PTLQueue have been independently rediscovered a number of times. See CB-Queue and BNPBV, below, for instance. But Wilson's dissertation anticipates the basic idea and seems to predate all the others. Gottlieb et al : Basic Techniques for the Efficient Coordination of Very Large Numbers of Cooperating Sequential Processors Orozco et al : CB-Queue in Toward high-throughput algorithms on many-core architectures which appeared in TACO 2012. Meneghin et al : BNPVB family in Performance evaluation of inter-thread communication mechanisms on multicore/multithreaded architecture Dmitry Vyukov : bounded MPMC queue (highly recommended) Alex Otenko : US8607249 (highly related). John Mellor-Crummey : Concurrent queues: Practical fetch-and-phi algorithms. Technical Report 229, Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester Thomasson : FIFO Distributed Bakery Algorithm (very similar to PTLQueue). Scott and Scherer : Dual Data Structures I'll propose an optimization left as an exercise for the reader. Say we wanted to reduce memory usage by eliminating inter-slot padding. Such padding is usually "dark" memory and otherwise unused and wasted. But eliminating the padding leaves us at risk of increased false sharing. Furthermore lets say it was usually the case that the PutCursor and TakeCursor were numerically close to each other. (That's true in some use cases). We might still reduce false sharing by incrementing the cursors by some value other than 1 that is not trivially small and is coprime with the number of slots. Alternatively, we might increment the cursor by one and mask as usual, resulting in a logical index. We then use that logical index value to index into a permutation table, yielding an effective index for use in the slot array. The permutation table would be constructed so that nearby logical indices would map to more distant effective indices. (Open question: what should that permutation look like? Possibly some perversion of a Gray code or De Bruijn sequence might be suitable). As an aside, say we need to busy-wait for some condition as follows : "while C == 0 : Pause". Lets say that C is usually non-zero, so we typically don't wait. But when C happens to be 0 we'll have to spin for some period, possibly brief. We can arrange for the code to be more machine-friendly with respect to the branch predictors by transforming the loop into : "if C == 0 : for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }". Critically, we want to restructure the loop so there's one branch that controls entry and another that controls loop exit. A concern is that your compiler or JIT might be clever enough to transform this back to "while C == 0 : Pause". You can sometimes avoid this by inserting a call to a some type of very cheap "opaque" method that the compiler can't elide or reorder. On Solaris, for instance, you could use :"if C == 0 : { gethrtime(); for { Pause; if C != 0 : break; }}". It's worth noting the obvious duality between locks and queues. If you have strict FIFO lock implementation with local spinning and succession by direct handoff such as MCS or CLH,then you can usually transform that lock into a queue. Hidden commentary and annotations - invisible : * And of course there's a well-known duality between queues and locks, but I'll leave that topic for another blog post. * Compare and contrast : PTLQ vs PTL and MultiLane * Equivalent : Turn; seq; sequence; pos; position; ticket * Put = Lock; Deposit Take = identify and reserve slot; wait; extract & clear; unlock * conceptualize : Distinct PutLock and TakeLock implemented as ticket lock or PTL Distinct arrival cursors but share per-slot "Turn" variable provides exclusive role-based access to slot's mailbox field put() acquires exclusive access to a slot for purposes of "deposit" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires deposit access rights/perms to that slot take() acquires exclusive access to slot for purposes of "withdrawal" assigns slot round-robin and then acquires withdrawal access rights/perms to that slot At any given time, only one thread can have withdrawal access to a slot at any given time, only one thread can have deposit access to a slot Permissible for T1 to have deposit access and T2 to simultaneously have withdrawal access * round-robin for the purposes of; role-based; access mode; access role mailslot; mailbox; allocate/assign/identify slot rights; permission; license; access permission; * PTL/Ticket hybrid Asymmetric usage ; owner oblivious lock-unlock pairing K-exclusion add Grant cursor pass message m from lock to unlock via Slots[] array Cursor performs 2 functions : + PTL ticket + Assigns request to slot in round-robin fashion Deconstruct protocol : explication put() : allocate slot in round-robin fashion acquire PTL for "put" access store message into slot associated with PTL index take() : Acquire PTL for "take" access // doorway step seq = fetchAdd (&Grant, 1) s = &Slots[seq & Mask] // waiting phase while s-Turn != seq : pause Extract : wait for s-mailbox to be full v = s-mailbox s-mailbox = null Release PTL for both "put" and "take" access s-Turn = seq + Mask + 1 * Slot round-robin assignment and lock "doorway" protocol leverage the same cursor and FetchAdd operation on that cursor FetchAdd (&Cursor,1) + round-robin slot assignment and dispersal + PTL/ticket lock "doorway" step waiting phase is via "Turn" field in slot * PTLQueue uses 2 cursors -- put and take. Acquire "put" access to slot via PTL-like lock Acquire "take" access to slot via PTL-like lock 2 locks : put and take -- at most one thread can access slot's mailbox Both locks use same "turn" field Like multilane : 2 cursors : put and take slot is simple 1-capacity mailbox instead of queue Borrow per-slot turn/grant from PTL Provides strict FIFO Lock slot : put-vs-put take-vs-take at most one put accesses slot at any one time at most one put accesses take at any one time reduction to 1-vs-1 instead of N-vs-M concurrency Per slot locks for put/take Release put/take by advancing turn * is instrumental in ... * P-V Semaphore vs lock vs K-exclusion * See also : FastQueues-excerpt.java dice-etc/queue-mpmc-bounded-blocking-circular-xadd/ * PTLQueue is the same as PTLQB - identical * Expedient return; ASAP; prompt; immediately * Lamport's Bakery algorithm : doorway step then waiting phase Threads arriving at doorway obtain a unique ticket number Threads enter in ticket order * In the terminology of Reed and Kanodia a ticket lock corresponds to the busy-wait implementation of a semaphore using an eventcount and a sequencer It can also be thought of as an optimization of Lamport's bakery lock was designed for fault-tolerance rather than performance Instead of spinning on the release counter, processors using a bakery lock repeatedly examine the tickets of their peers --

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• Linux e1000e (Intel networking driver) problems galore, where do I start?

  - by Evan Carroll

  I'm currently having a major problem with e1000e (not working at all) in Ubuntu Maverick (1.0.2-k4), after resume I'm getting a lot of stuff in dmesg: [ 9085.820197] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A disabled [ 9089.907756] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.0.2-k4 [ 9089.907762] e1000e: Copyright (c) 1999 - 2009 Intel Corporation. [ 9089.907797] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L1 [ 9089.907827] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 9089.907857] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 9089.908529] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9089.908922] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L0s [ 9089.908954] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: (unregistered net_device): PHY reset is blocked due to SOL/IDER session. [ 9090.024625] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: (PCI Express:2.5GB/s:Width x1) 00:0a:e4:3e:ce:74 [ 9090.024630] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 9090.024712] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: MAC: 2, PHY: 2, PBA No: 005302-003 [ 9090.109492] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9090.164219] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X and, a bunch of [ 2128.005447] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Detected Hardware Unit Hang: [ 2128.005452] TDH <89> [ 2128.005454] TDT <27> [ 2128.005456] next_to_use <27> [ 2128.005458] next_to_clean <88> [ 2128.005460] buffer_info[next_to_clean]: [ 2128.005463] time_stamp <6e608> [ 2128.005465] next_to_watch <8a> [ 2128.005467] jiffies <6f929> [ 2128.005469] next_to_watch.status <0> [ 2128.005471] MAC Status <80080703> [ 2128.005473] PHY Status <796d> [ 2128.005475] PHY 1000BASE-T Status <4000> [ 2128.005477] PHY Extended Status <3000> [ 2128.005480] PCI Status <10> I decided to compile the latest stable e1000e to 1.2.17, now I'm getting: [ 9895.678050] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.2.17-NAPI [ 9895.678055] e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999 - 2010 Intel Corporation. [ 9895.678098] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L1 [ 9895.678129] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 9895.678162] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 9895.679136] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9895.679160] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L0s [ 9895.679192] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: (unregistered net_device): PHY reset is blocked due to SOL/IDER session. [ 9895.791758] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: (PCI Express:2.5GB/s:Width x1) 00:0a:e4:3e:ce:74 [ 9895.791766] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 9895.791850] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: MAC: 3, PHY: 2, PBA No: 005302-003 [ 9895.892464] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9895.948175] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 44 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9895.949111] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 9895.954694] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 10 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: RX/TX [ 9895.954703] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO [ 9895.955157] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 9906.832056] eth0: no IPv6 routers present With 1.2.20 I get: [ 9711.525465] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 1.2.20-NAPI [ 9711.525472] e1000e: Copyright(c) 1999 - 2010 Intel Corporation. [ 9711.525521] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L1 [ 9711.525554] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 9711.525586] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 9711.526460] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9711.526487] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: Disabling ASPM L0s [ 9711.526523] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: (unregistered net_device): PHY reset is blocked due to SOL/IDER session. [ 9711.639763] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: (PCI Express:2.5GB/s:Width x1) 00:0a:e4:3e:ce:74 [ 9711.639771] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection [ 9711.639854] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: MAC: 3, PHY: 2, PBA No: 005302-003 [ 9712.060770] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9712.116195] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: irq 45 for MSI/MSI-X [ 9712.117098] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready [ 9712.122684] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: RX/TX [ 9712.122693] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO [ 9712.123142] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready [ 9722.920014] eth0: no IPv6 routers present But, I'm still getting these [ 9982.992851] PCI Status <10> [ 9984.993602] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Detected Hardware Unit Hang: [ 9984.993606] TDH <5d> [ 9984.993608] TDT <6b> [ 9984.993611] next_to_use <6b> [ 9984.993613] next_to_clean <5b> [ 9984.993615] buffer_info[next_to_clean]: [ 9984.993617] time_stamp <24da80> [ 9984.993619] next_to_watch <5d> [ 9984.993621] jiffies <24f200> [ 9984.993624] next_to_watch.status <0> [ 9984.993626] MAC Status <80080703> [ 9984.993628] PHY Status <796d> [ 9984.993630] PHY 1000BASE-T Status <4000> [ 9984.993632] PHY Extended Status <3000> [ 9984.993635] PCI Status <10> [ 9986.001047] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Reset adapter [ 9986.176202] e1000e: eth0 NIC Link is Up 10 Mbps Full Duplex, Flow Control: RX/TX [ 9986.176211] e1000e 0000:02:00.0: eth0: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO I'm not sure where to start troubleshooting this. Any ideas? Here is the result of ethtool -d eth0 MAC Registers ------------- 0x00000: CTRL (Device control register) 0x18100248 Endian mode (buffers): little Link reset: reset Set link up: 1 Invert Loss-Of-Signal: no Receive flow control: enabled Transmit flow control: enabled VLAN mode: disabled Auto speed detect: disabled Speed select: 1000Mb/s Force speed: no Force duplex: no 0x00008: STATUS (Device status register) 0x80080703 Duplex: full Link up: link config TBI mode: disabled Link speed: 10Mb/s Bus type: PCI Express Port number: 0 0x00100: RCTL (Receive control register) 0x04048002 Receiver: enabled Store bad packets: disabled Unicast promiscuous: disabled Multicast promiscuous: disabled Long packet: disabled Descriptor minimum threshold size: 1/2 Broadcast accept mode: accept VLAN filter: enabled Canonical form indicator: disabled Discard pause frames: filtered Pass MAC control frames: don't pass Receive buffer size: 2048 0x02808: RDLEN (Receive desc length) 0x00001000 0x02810: RDH (Receive desc head) 0x00000001 0x02818: RDT (Receive desc tail) 0x000000F0 0x02820: RDTR (Receive delay timer) 0x00000000 0x00400: TCTL (Transmit ctrl register) 0x3103F0FA Transmitter: enabled Pad short packets: enabled Software XOFF Transmission: disabled Re-transmit on late collision: enabled 0x03808: TDLEN (Transmit desc length) 0x00001000 0x03810: TDH (Transmit desc head) 0x00000000 0x03818: TDT (Transmit desc tail) 0x00000000 0x03820: TIDV (Transmit delay timer) 0x00000008 PHY type: IGP2 and ethtool -c eth0 Coalesce parameters for eth0: Adaptive RX: off TX: off stats-block-usecs: 0 sample-interval: 0 pkt-rate-low: 0 pkt-rate-high: 0 rx-usecs: 3 rx-frames: 0 rx-usecs-irq: 0 rx-frames-irq: 0 tx-usecs: 0 tx-frames: 0 tx-usecs-irq: 0 tx-frames-irq: 0 rx-usecs-low: 0 rx-frame-low: 0 tx-usecs-low: 0 tx-frame-low: 0 rx-usecs-high: 0 rx-frame-high: 0 tx-usecs-high: 0 tx-frame-high: 0 Here is also the lspci -vvv for this controller 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller Subsystem: Lenovo ThinkPad X60s Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 45 Region 0: Memory at ee000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K] Region 2: I/O ports at 2000 [size=32] Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 2 Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+) Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME- Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Address: 00000000fee0300c Data: 415a Capabilities: [e0] Express (v1) Endpoint, MSI 00 DevCap: MaxPayload 256 bytes, PhantFunc 0, Latency L0s <512ns, L1 <64us ExtTag- AttnBtn- AttnInd- PwrInd- RBE- FLReset- DevCtl: Report errors: Correctable+ Non-Fatal+ Fatal+ Unsupported+ RlxdOrd+ ExtTag- PhantFunc- AuxPwr- NoSnoop+ MaxPayload 128 bytes, MaxReadReq 512 bytes DevSta: CorrErr- UncorrErr- FatalErr- UnsuppReq- AuxPwr+ TransPend- LnkCap: Port #0, Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s L1, Latency L0 <128ns, L1 <64us ClockPM+ Surprise- LLActRep- BwNot- LnkCtl: ASPM Disabled; RCB 64 bytes Disabled- Retrain- CommClk+ ExtSynch- ClockPM+ AutWidDis- BWInt- AutBWInt- LnkSta: Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x1, TrErr- Train- SlotClk+ DLActive- BWMgmt- ABWMgmt- Capabilities: [100 v1] Advanced Error Reporting UESta: DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq+ ACSViol- UEMsk: DLP- SDES- TLP- FCP- CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF- MalfTLP- ECRC- UnsupReq- ACSViol- UESvrt: DLP+ SDES- TLP- FCP+ CmpltTO- CmpltAbrt- UnxCmplt- RxOF+ MalfTLP+ ECRC- UnsupReq- ACSViol- CESta: RxErr- BadTLP- BadDLLP- Rollover- Timeout- NonFatalErr- CEMsk: RxErr- BadTLP- BadDLLP- Rollover- Timeout- NonFatalErr- AERCap: First Error Pointer: 14, GenCap- CGenEn- ChkCap- ChkEn- Capabilities: [140 v1] Device Serial Number 00-0a-e4-ff-ff-3e-ce-74 Kernel driver in use: e1000e Kernel modules: e1000e I filed a bug on this upstream, still no idea how to get more useful information. Here is a the result of the running that script EEPROM FIX UPDATE $ sudo bash fixeep-82573-dspd.sh eth0 eth0: is a "82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller" This fixup is applicable to your hardware Your eeprom is up to date, no changes were made Do I still need to do anything? Also here is my EEPROM dump $ sudo ethtool -e eth0 Offset Values ------ ------ 0x0000 00 0a e4 3e ce 74 30 0b b2 ff 51 00 ff ff ff ff 0x0010 53 00 03 02 6b 02 7e 20 aa 17 9a 10 86 80 df 80 0x0020 00 00 00 20 54 7e 00 00 14 00 da 00 04 00 00 27 0x0030 c9 6c 50 31 3e 07 0b 04 8b 29 00 00 00 f0 02 0f 0x0040 08 10 00 00 04 0f ff 7f 01 4d ff ff ff ff ff ff 0x0050 14 00 1d 00 14 00 1d 00 af aa 1e 00 00 00 1d 00 0x0060 00 01 00 40 1f 12 07 40 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 0x0070 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 4a e0 I'd also like to note that I used eth0 every day for years and until recently never had an issue.

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• Debian apt dependency mismatch (libc6)

  - by Sean Gordon

  Earlier, I tried to install package via apt-get (cython), but it failed with the Errors were encountered while processing: message, and since then, apt is refusing to install anything. apt-get check output below: root@dix:~# apt-get check Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these. The following packages have unmet dependencies: libc6 : Depends: libc-bin (= 2.11.3-2) but 2.11.3-4 is installed libc6-dev : Depends: libc6 (= 2.11.3-4) but 2.11.3-2 is installed libc6-i386 : Depends: libc6 (= 2.11.3-4) but 2.11.3-2 is installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f. Apt/aptitude don't seem to be able to fix this dependency issue, and I don't know what to do. Edit: Running apt-get -f install results in no change, and my sources are all squeeze. Running apt-get update then apt-get dist-upgrade show no change either. Edit 2: I went back to try this again in a new terminal and apt-get -f install gives this error: dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.11.3-4_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script killed by signal (Aborted) configured to not write apport reports Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.11.3-4_amd64.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) Edit 3: Using apt-get clean first, then the previous commands, results in the first error again. Using apt-get -f dist-upgrade gives the below. Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages will be upgraded: apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common at automake base-files bind9 bind9-doc bind9-host bind9utils debian-archive-keyring dnsutils dpkg-dev file host initscripts isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common krb5-multidev libapr1 libbind9-60 libc6 libdns69 libdpkg-perl libexpat1 libexpat1-dev libgc1c2 libgssapi-krb5-2 libgssrpc4 libisc62 libisccc60 libisccfg62 libk5crypto3 libkadm5clnt-mit7 libkadm5srv-mit7 libkdb5-4 libkrb5-3 libkrb5-dev libkrb5support0 liblwres60 libmagic1 libmysqlclient16 libnss3-1d libssl-dev libssl0.9.8 libtiff4 libtiff4-dev libtiffxx0c2 libxi6 libxml2 linux-libc-dev lwresd mysql-client-5.1 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1 openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib openssh-client openssh-server openssl procps python python-crypto python-minimal sudo sysv-rc sysvinit sysvinit-utils tzdata tzdata-java 75 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 5 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0 B/79.9 MB of archives. After this operation, 1,411 kB of additional disk space will be used. (Reading database ... 52241 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace libc6 2.11.3-2 (using .../libc6_2.11.3-4_amd64.deb) ... *** stack smashing detected ***: /usr/bin/perl terminated ======= Backtrace: ========= /lib/libc.so.6(__fortify_fail+0x37)[0x7fdaad9b9f87] /lib/libc.so.6(__fortify_fail+0x0)[0x7fdaad9b9f50] /usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_yylex+0x5896)[0x7fdaae343346] [0x8e83a0] ======= Memory map: ======== 00400000-00402000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 525338 /usr/bin/perl 00601000-00602000 rw-p 00001000 08:01 525338 /usr/bin/perl 00602000-0091f000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [heap] 7fdaaca54000-7fdaaca6a000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393818 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 7fdaaca6a000-7fdaacc69000 ---p 00016000 08:01 393818 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 7fdaacc69000-7fdaacc6a000 rw-p 00015000 08:01 393818 /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 7fdaacc6a000-7fdaacc6f000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 524949 /usr/lib/perl5/auto/Locale/gettext/gettext.so 7fdaacc6f000-7fdaace6e000 ---p 00005000 08:01 524949 /usr/lib/perl5/auto/Locale/gettext/gettext.so 7fdaace6e000-7fdaace6f000 rw-p 00004000 08:01 524949 /usr/lib/perl5/auto/Locale/gettext/gettext.so 7fdaace6f000-7fdaace79000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 532753 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Encode/Encode.so 7fdaace79000-7fdaad078000 ---p 0000a000 08:01 532753 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Encode/Encode.so 7fdaad078000-7fdaad079000 rw-p 00009000 08:01 532753 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Encode/Encode.so 7fdaad079000-7fdaad07e000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 525444 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so 7fdaad07e000-7fdaad27d000 ---p 00005000 08:01 525444 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so 7fdaad27d000-7fdaad27e000 rw-p 00004000 08:01 525444 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so 7fdaad27e000-7fdaad299000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 525450 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so 7fdaad299000-7fdaad498000 ---p 0001b000 08:01 525450 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so 7fdaad498000-7fdaad49b000 rw-p 0001a000 08:01 525450 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so 7fdaad49b000-7fdaad49e000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 525436 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so 7fdaad49e000-7fdaad69e000 ---p 00003000 08:01 525436 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so 7fdaad69e000-7fdaad69f000 rw-p 00003000 08:01 525436 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so 7fdaad69f000-7fdaad6a7000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393824 /lib/libcrypt-2.11.3.so 7fdaad6a7000-7fdaad8a6000 ---p 00008000 08:01 393824 /lib/libcrypt-2.11.3.so 7fdaad8a6000-7fdaad8a7000 r--p 00007000 08:01 393824 /lib/libcrypt-2.11.3.so 7fdaad8a7000-7fdaad8a8000 rw-p 00008000 08:01 393824 /lib/libcrypt-2.11.3.so 7fdaad8a8000-7fdaad8d6000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fdaad8d6000-7fdaada2f000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393822 /lib/libc-2.11.3.so 7fdaada2f000-7fdaadc2e000 ---p 00159000 08:01 393822 /lib/libc-2.11.3.so 7fdaadc2e000-7fdaadc32000 r--p 00158000 08:01 393822 /lib/libc-2.11.3.so 7fdaadc32000-7fdaadc33000 rw-p 0015c000 08:01 393822 /lib/libc-2.11.3.so 7fdaadc33000-7fdaadc38000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fdaadc38000-7fdaadc4f000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393248 /lib/libpthread-2.11.3.so 7fdaadc4f000-7fdaade4e000 ---p 00017000 08:01 393248 /lib/libpthread-2.11.3.so 7fdaade4e000-7fdaade4f000 r--p 00016000 08:01 393248 /lib/libpthread-2.11.3.so 7fdaade4f000-7fdaade50000 rw-p 00017000 08:01 393248 /lib/libpthread-2.11.3.so 7fdaade50000-7fdaade54000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fdaade54000-7fdaaded4000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393826 /lib/libm-2.11.3.so 7fdaaded4000-7fdaae0d4000 ---p 00080000 08:01 393826 /lib/libm-2.11.3.so 7fdaae0d4000-7fdaae0d5000 r--p 00080000 08:01 393826 /lib/libm-2.11.3.so 7fdaae0d5000-7fdaae0d6000 rw-p 00081000 08:01 393826 /lib/libm-2.11.3.so 7fdaae0d6000-7fdaae0d8000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393825 /lib/libdl-2.11.3.so 7fdaae0d8000-7fdaae2d8000 ---p 00002000 08:01 393825 /lib/libdl-2.11.3.so 7fdaae2d8000-7fdaae2d9000 r--p 00002000 08:01 393825 /lib/libdl-2.11.3.so 7fdaae2d9000-7fdaae2da000 rw-p 00003000 08:01 393825 /lib/libdl-2.11.3.so 7fdaae2da000-7fdaae43f000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 525387 /usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10.1 7fdaae43f000-7fdaae63e000 ---p 00165000 08:01 525387 /usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10.1 7fdaae63e000-7fdaae647000 rw-p 00164000 08:01 525387 /usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10.1 7fdaae647000-7fdaae665000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 393819 /lib/ld-2.11.3.so 7fdaae854000-7fdaae859000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fdaae862000-7fdaae864000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fdaae864000-7fdaae865000 r--p 0001d000 08:01 393819 /lib/ld-2.11.3.so 7fdaae865000-7fdaae866000 rw-p 0001e000 08:01 393819 /lib/ld-2.11.3.so 7fdaae866000-7fdaae867000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 7fff9616d000-7fff9618e000 rw-p 00000000 00:00 0 [stack] 7fff961ff000-7fff96200000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0 [vdso] ffffffffff600000-ffffffffff601000 r--p 00000000 00:00 0 [vsyscall] dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.11.3-4_amd64.deb (--unpack): subprocess new pre-installation script killed by signal (Aborted) Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.11.3-4_amd64.deb

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