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• Where Facebook Stands Heading Into 2013

  - by Mike Stiles

  In our last blog, we looked at how Twitter is positioned heading into 2013. Now it’s time to take a similar look at Facebook. 2012, for a time at least, seemed to be the era of Facebook-bashing. Between a far-from-smooth IPO, subsequent stock price declines, and anxiety over privacy, the top social network became a target for comedians, politicians, business journalists, and of course those who were prone to Facebook-bash even in the best of times. But amidst the “this is the end of Facebook” headlines, the company kept experimenting, kept testing, kept innovating, and pressing forward, committed as always to the user experience, while concurrently addressing monetization with greater urgency. Facebook enters 2013 with over 1 billion users around the world. Usage grew 41% in Brazil, Russia, Japan, South Korea and India in 2012. In the Middle East and North Africa, an average 21 new signups happen per minute. Engagement and time spent on the site would impress the harshest of critics. Facebook, while not bulletproof, has become such an integrated daily force in users’ lives, it’s getting hard to imagine any future mass rejection. You want to see a company recognizing weaknesses and shoring them up. Mobile was a weakness in 2012 as Facebook was one of many caught by surprise at the speed of user migration to mobile. But new mobile interfaces, better mobile ads, speed upgrades, standalone Messenger and Pages mobile apps, and the big dollar acquisition of Instagram, were a few indicators Facebook won’t play catch-up any more than it has to. As a user, the cool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The uncool thing about Facebook is, it knows you. The company’s walking a delicate line between the public’s competing desires for customized experiences and privacy. While the company’s working to make privacy options clearer and easier, Facebook’s Paul Adams says data aggregation can move from acting on what a user is engaging with at the moment to a more holistic view of what they’re likely to want at any given time. To help learn about you, there’s Open Graph. Embedded through diverse partnerships, the idea is to surface what you’re doing and what you care about, and help you discover things via your friends’ activities. Facebook’s Director of Engineering, Mike Vernal, says building mobile social apps connected to Facebook in such ways is the next wave of big innovation. Expect to see that fostered in 2013. The Facebook site experience is always evolving. Some users like that about Facebook, others can’t wait to complain about it…on Facebook. The Facebook focal point, the News Feed, is not sacred and is seeing plenty of experimentation with the insertion of modules. From upcoming concerts, events, suggested Pages you might like, to aggregated “most shared” content from social reader apps, plenty could start popping up between those pictures of what your friends had for lunch.  As for which friends’ lunches you see, that’s a function of the mythic EdgeRank…which is also tinkered with. When Facebook changed it in September, Page admins saw reach go down and the high anxiety set in quickly. Engagement, however, held steady. The adjustment was about relevancy over reach. (And oh yeah, reach was something that could be charged for). Facebook wants users to see what they’re most likely to like, based on past usage and interactions. Adding to the “cream must rise to the top” philosophy, they’re now even trying out ordering post comments based on the engagement the comments get. Boy, it’s getting competitive out there for a social engager. Facebook has to make $$$. To do that, they must offer attractive vehicles to marketers. There are a myriad of ad units. But a key Facebook marketing concept is the Sponsored Story. It’s key because it encourages content that’s good, relevant, and performs well organically. If it is, marketing dollars can amplify it and extend its reach. Brands can expect the rollout of a search product and an ad network. That’s a big deal. It takes, as Open Graph does, the power of Facebook’s user data and carries it beyond the Facebook environment into the digital world at large. No one could target like Facebook can, and some analysts think it could double their roughly $5 billion revenue stream. As every potential revenue nook and cranny is explored, there are the users themselves. In addition to Gifts, Facebook thinks users might pay a few bucks to promote their own posts so more of their friends will see them. There’s also word classifieds could be purchased in News Feeds, though they won’t be called classifieds. And that’s where Facebook stands; a wildly popular destination, a part of our culture, with ever increasing functionalities, the biggest of big data, revenue strategies that appeal to marketers without souring the user experience, new challenges as a now public company, ongoing privacy concerns, and innovations that carry Facebook far beyond its own borders. Anyone care to write a “this is the end of Facebook” headline? @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• Say What? Podcasting As Part of Your Content Marketing

  - by Mike Stiles

  What do you usually do in your car on the way to work?  Sing along to radio? Stream Pandora or iHeartRadio? Talk on the phone? Sit in total silence? Whatever it is you do, you could be using that time to make yourself an expert in any range of topics…using podcasts. We invite you to follow or subscribe to the daily Oracle Social Spotlight podcast, a quick roundup of the day’s top stories around social marketing and the social networks. After podcasts arrived in 2004, growth was steady but slow. The concept was strong: anyone with a passion for any subject could make a show for anyone who cared to listen. Enter the smartphone, iTunes, new podcasting platforms, and social, and podcasting became easier than ever and made more sense for both podcasters and listeners. Stats show 1 in 5 smartphone owners are podcast consumers and 29% of Americans have listened to a podcast. The potential audience is also larger than ever. “Baked in” podcast apps on over 200 million devices expose users to volumes of audio content with just a tap. 97 million Americans are driving to work every day by themselves. And 38% of Americans listen to audio on a digital device each week, a number that’s projected to double by 2015. Does that mean your brand should be podcasting? That’s part of a larger discussion about your overall content strategy, provided you have one. But if you do and podcasting is a component of it, here are some things to keep in mind: Don’t podcast just to do it. Podcast because you thought of a show customers and prospects will like that they can’t get anywhere else. Sound quality matters. Good microphones are not expensive. Bad sound is annoying, makes your brand feel cheap, and will turn today’s sophisticated ears off. The host matters. Many think they belong on the radio. Few actually do. Your brand’s host should be comfortable & likeable. A top advantage of a podcast is people can bond with a real person. It’s a trust opportunity, so don’t take it lightly. The content matters. “All killer, no filler” means don’t allow babbling just to fill enough time for an episode. Value the listeners’ time, because that time is hard to get. Put time, effort and creativity into it. Sure you’re a business, but you’re competing with content from professional media and showbiz producers. If you can include music, sound effects, and things that amuse the ears, do it. If you start, be consistent. The #1 flaw in podcasting is when listeners can’t count on another episode or don’t know when it’s coming. Don’t skip doing shows just because you can. Get committed. Get your cover art right. Podcasting is about audio, but people shop for podcasts by glancing through graphics. Yours has to be professional, cool, and informative to get listeners interested. Cross-promote your podcast on all your channels. The competition for listeners is fierce, so if you have existing audiences you can leverage to launch your show, use them. Optimize it for mobile. Assume that’s where most listening will take place. If you’re using one of the podcast platform apps, you should be in good shape. Frankly, the percentage of brands that are podcasting is quite low, and that’s okay. Once you move beyond blogging and start connecting with real voices, poor execution can do damage. But more (32%) marketers want to learn how to use podcasting, and more (23%) were increasing their podcasting throughout this year. Bottom line, you want to share your brand’s message and stories wherever your audience might be and in whatever way they prefer to take in content. Many prefer to do that while driving or working out, using the eyes and hands-free medium of audio. @mikestilesPhoto: stock.xchng

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• Create a Smoother Period Close

  - by Get Proactive Customer Adoption Team

  Untitled Document Do You Use Oracle E-Business Suite Products Involved in Accounting Period Closes? We understand that closing the periods in your system at the end of an accounting period enables your company to make the right business decisions. We also know this requires prior preparation, good procedures, and quality data. To help you meet that need, Oracle E-Business Suite’s proactive support team developed the Period Close Advisor to help your organization conduct a smooth period close for its Oracle E-Business Suite 12 products. The Period Close Advisor is composed of logical steps you can follow, aligned by the business requirement flow. It will help with an orderly close of the product sub-ledgers before posting to the General Ledger. It combines recommendations and industry best practices with tips from subject matter experts for troubleshooting. You will find patches needed and references to assist you during each phase. Get to know the E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor does more than help the users of Oracle E-Business Suite products close their period. You can use it before and throughout the period to stay on track. Proactively it assists you as you set up your company’s period close process. During the period, it helps evaluate your system’s readiness for initiating the period close procedures and prepare the system for a smooth period close experience. The Period Close Advisor gets you to answers when you have questions and gives you the latest news from us on Oracle E-Business Suite’s period close. The Period Close Advisor is the right place to start. How to Use the E-Business Suite Period Close The Period Close Advisor graphically guides you through your period close. The tabs show you the products (also called applications or sub-ledgers) covered, and the product order required for the processing to handle any dependencies between the products. Users of all the products it covers can benefit from the information it contains. Structure of the Period Close Advisor Clicking on a tab gives you the details for that particular step in the process. This includes an overview, showing how the products fit into the overall period close process, and step-by-step information on each phase needed to complete the period close for the tab. You will also find multimedia training and related resources you can access if you need more information. Once you click on any of the phases, you see guidance for that phase. This can include: Tips from the subject-matter experts—here are examples from a Cash Management specialist: “For organizations with high transaction volumes bank statements should be loaded and reconciled on a daily basis.” “The automatic reconciliation process can be set up to create miscellaneous transactions automatically.” References to useful Knowledge Base documents: Information Centers for the products and features FAQs on functionality Known Issues and patches with both the errors and their solutions How-to documents that explain in detail how to use a feature or complete a process White papers that give overview of a feature, list setup required to use the feature, etc. Links to diagnosticsthat help debug issues you may find in a process Additional information and alerts about a process or reports that can help you prevent issues from surfacing This excerpt from the “Process Transaction” phase for the Receivables product lists documents you’ll find helpful. How to Get Started with the Period Close Advisor The Period Close Advisor is a great resource that can be used both as a proactive tool (while setting up your period end procedures) and as the first document to refer to when you encounter an issue during the period close procedures! As mentioned earlier, the order of the product tabs in the Period Close Advisor gives you the recommended order of closing. The first thing to do is to ensure that you are following the prescribed order for closing the period, if you are using more than one sub-ledger. Next, review the information shared in the Evaluate and Prepare and Process Transactions phases. Make sure that you are following the recommended best practices; you have applied the recommended patches, etc. The Reconcile phase gives you the recommended steps to follow for reconciling a sub-ledger with the General Ledger. Ensure that your reconciliation procedure aligns with those steps. At any stage during the period close processing, if you encounter an issue, you can revisit the Period Close Advisor. Choose the product you have an issue with and then select the phase you are in. You will be able to review information that can help you find a solution to the issue you are facing. Stay Informed Oracle updates the Period Close Advisor as we learn of new issues and information. Bookmark the Oracle E-Business Suite Period Close Advisor [ID 335.1] and keep coming back to it for the latest information on period close

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• Agile Development Requires Agile Support

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile developmentAgile development has become the standard methodology for application development. The days of long term planning with giant Gantt waterfall charts and detailed requirements is fading away. For years the product planning process frustrated product owners and businesses because no matter the plan, nothing ever went to plan. Agile development throws the detailed planning out the window and instead focuses on giving developers some basic requirements and pointing them in the right direction. Constant collaboration via quick iterations with the end users, product owners, and the development team helps ensure the project is done correctly.  The various agile development methodologies have helped greatly with creating products faster, but not without causing new problems. Complicated application deployments now occur weekly or monthly. Most of the products are web-based and deployed as a software service model. System performance and availability of these apps becomes mission critical. This is all much different from the old process of mailing new releases of client-server apps on CD once per quarter or year.The steady stream of new products and product enhancements puts a lot of pressure on IT operations to keep up with the software deployments and adding infrastructure capacity. The problem is most operations teams still move slowly thanks to change orders, documentation, procedures, testing and other processes. Operations can slow the process down and push back on the development team in some organizations. The DevOps movement is trying to solve some of these problems by integrating the development and operations teams more together. Rapid change introduces new problemsThe rapid product change ultimately creates some application problems along the way. Higher rates of change increase the likelihood of new application defects. Delivering applications as a software service also means that scalability of applications is critical. Development teams struggle to keep up with application defects and scalability concerns in their applications. Fixing application problems is a never ending job for agile development teams. Fixing problems before your customers do and fixing them quickly is critical. Most companies really struggle with this due to the divide between the development and operations groups. Fixing application problems typically requires querying databases, looking at log files, reviewing config files, reviewing error logs and other similar tasks. It becomes difficult to work on new features when your lead developers are working on defects from the last product version. Developers need more visibilityThe problem is most developers are not given access to see server and application information in the production environments. The operations team doesn’t trust giving all the developers the keys to the kingdom to log in to production and poke around the servers. The challenge is either give them no access, or potentially too much access. Those with access can still waste time figuring out the location of the application and how to connect to it over VPN. In addition, reproducing problems in test environments takes too much time and isn't always possible. System administrators spend a lot of time helping developers track down server information. Most companies give key developers access to all of the production resources so they can help resolve application defects. The problem is only those key people have access and they become a bottleneck. They end up spending 25-50% of their time on a daily basis trying to solve application issues because they are the only ones with access. These key employees’ time is best spent on strategic new projects, not addressing application defects. This job should fall to entry level developers, provided they have access to all the information they need to troubleshoot the problems.The solution to agile application support is giving all the developers limited access to the production environment and all the server information they need to see. Some companies create their own solutions internally to collect log files, centralize errors or other things to address the problem. Some developers even have access to server monitoring or other tools. But they key is giving them access to everything they need so they can see the full picture and giving access to the whole team. Giving access to everyone scales up the application support team and creates collaboration around providing improved application support.Stackify enables agile application supportStackify has created a solution that can give all developers a secure and read only view of the entire production server environment without console or remote desktop access.They provide a web application that provides real time visibility to the important information that developers need to see. An application centric view enables them to see all of their apps across multiple datacenters and environments. They don’t need to know where the application is deployed, just the name of the application to find it and dig in to see more. All your developers can see server health, application health, log files, config files, windows event viewer, deployment history, application notes, and much more. They can receive email and text alerts when problems arise and even safely query your production databases.Stackify enables companies that do agile development to scale up their application support team by getting more team members involved. The lead developers can spend more time on new projects. Application issues can be fixed quicker than ever. Operations can spend less time helping developers collect server information. Agile application support starts with Stackify. Visit Stackify.com to learn more.

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• Sun Ray Hardware Last Order Dates & Extension of Premier Support for Desktop Virtualization Software

  - by Adam Hawley

  In light of the recent announcement  to end new feature development for Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software (VDI), Oracle Sun Ray Software (SRS), Oracle Virtual Desktop Client (OVDC) Software, and Oracle Sun Ray Client hardware (3, 3i, and 3 Plus), there have been questions and concerns regarding what this means in terms of customers with new or existing deployments.  The following updates clarify some of these commonly asked questions. Extension of Premier Support for Software Though there will be no new feature additions to these products, customers will have access to maintenance update releases for Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Sun Ray Software, including Oracle Virtual Desktop Client and Sun Ray Operating Software (SROS) until Premier Support Ends.  To ensure that customer investments for these products are protected, Oracle  Premier Support for these products has been extended by 3 years to following dates: Sun Ray Software - November 2017 Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - March 2017 Note that OVDC support is also extended to the above dates since OVDC is licensed by default as part the SRS and VDI products.   As a reminder, this only affects the products listed above.  Oracle Secure Global Desktop and Oracle VM VirtualBox will continue to be enhanced with new features from time-to-time and, as a result, they are not affected by the changes detailed in this message. The extension of support means that customers under a support contract will still be able to file service requests through Oracle Support, and Oracle will continue to provide the utmost level of support to our customers as expected,  until the published Premier Support end date.  Following the end of Premier Support, Sustaining Support remains an 'indefinite' period of time.   Sun Ray 3 Series Clients - Last Order Dates For Sun Ray Client hardware, customers can continue to purchase Sun Ray Client devices until the following last order dates: Product Marketing Part Number Last Order Date Last Ship Date Sun Ray 3 Plus TC3-P0Z-00, TC3-PTZ-00 (TAA) September 13, 2013 February 28, 2014 Sun Ray 3 Client TC3-00Z-00 February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Sun Ray 3i Client TC3-I0Z-00 February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Payflex Smart Cards X1403A-N, X1404A-N February 28, 2014 August 31, 2014 Note the difference in the Last Order Date for the Sun Ray 3 Plus (September 13, 2013) compared to the other products that have a Last Order Date of February 28, 2014. The rapidly approaching date for Sun Ray 3 Plus is due to a supplier phasing-out production of a key component of the 3 Plus.   Given September 13 is unfortunately quite soon, we strongly encourage you to place your last time buy as soon as possible to maximize Oracle's ability fulfill your order. Keep in mind you can schedule shipments to be delivered as late as the end of February 2014, but the last day to order is September 13, 2013. Customers wishing to purchase other models - Sun Ray 3 Clients and/or Sun Ray 3i Clients - have additional time (until February 28, 2014) to assess their needs and to allow fulfillment of last time orders.  Please note that availability of supply cannot be absolutely guaranteed up to the last order dates and we strongly recommend placing last time buys as early as possible.  Warranty replacements for Sun Ray Client hardware for customers covered by Oracle Hardware Systems Support contracts will be available beyond last order dates, per Oracle's policy found on Oracle.com here.  Per that policy, Oracle intends to provide replacement hardware for up to 5 years beyond the last ship date, but hardware may not be available beyond the 5 year period after the last ship date for reasons beyond Oracle's control. In any case, by design, Sun Ray Clients have an extremely long lifespan  and mean time between failures (MTBF) - much longer than PCs, and over the years we have continued to see first- and second generations of Sun Rays still in daily use.  This is no different for the Sun Ray 3, 3i, and 3 Plus.   Because of this, and in addition to Oracle's continued support for SRS, VDI, and SROS, Sun Ray and Oracle VDI deployments can continue to expand and exist as a viable solution for some time in the future. Continued Availability of Product Licenses and Support Oracle will continue to offer all existing software licenses, and software and hardware support including: Product licenses and Premier Support for Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Premier Support for Operating Systems (for Sun Ray Operating Software maintenance upgrades/support)  Premier Support for Systems (for Sun Ray Operating Software maintenance upgrades/support and hardware warranty) Support renewals For More Information For more information, please refer to the following documents for specific dates and policies associated with the support of these products: Document 1478170.1 - Oracle Desktop Virtualization Software and Hardware Lifetime Support Schedule Document 1450710.1 - Sun Ray Client Hardware Lifetime schedule Document 1568808.1 - Document Support Policies for Discontinued Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray Software and Hardware and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client Development For Sales Orders and Questions Please contact your Oracle Sales Representative or Saurabh Vijay ([email protected])

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• How to tell whether your programmers are under-performing?

  - by A Team Lead

  I am a team lead with 5+ developers. I have a developer (let's call him A) who is a good programmer, who writes good clean, easy to understand code. However he is somewhat difficult to manage, and sometimes I wonder whether he is really under-performing or not. Our company requires the developers to indicate the work progress in the bug tracker we use, not so much as to monitor the programmers but to let the stackholders know the progress. The thing is, A only updates a task progress when it is done ( maybe 3 weeks after it is first worked on) and this leaves everyone wondering what is going on in the middle of the development week. He wouldn't change his habit despite repeated probing. ( It's OK, developers hate paperwork, I do, too) Recent 2-3 months he on leave quite often due to various events-- either he is sick, or have to attend a lot of personal events etc. ( It's OK, bad things happen in a string. It's just a coincidence) We define sprints, or roadmaps for each month. And in the beginning of the sprint, we will discuss the amount of work each of the developers have to do in a sprint and the developers get to set the amount of time they need for each task. He usually won't be able to complete all of them. (It's OK, the developers are regularly missing deadlines not due to their fault). If only one or two of the above events happen, I won't feel that A is under-performing, but they all happen together. So I have the feeling that A is under-performing and maybe-- God forbid--- slacking off. This is just a feeling based on my years of experience as programmer. But I could be wrong. It is notoriously hard to measure the work of a programmer, given that not all two tasks are alike, and there lacks a standard objective to measure the commitment of a programmer to your company. It is downright impossible to tell whether the programmer is doing his job or slacking off. All you can do, is to trust them-- yeah, trusting and giving them autonomy is the best way for programmers to work, I know that, so don't start a lecture on why you need to trust your programmers, thank you every much-- but if they abuse your trust, can you know? My question is, how can you tell whether your programmers are under-performing? Surely there are experience team leads who know better than me on this? Outcome: I've a straight talk with him regarding my perception on his performance. He was indignant when I suggested that I had the feeling that he wasn't performing at his best level. He felt that this was a completely unfair feeling. I then replied that this was my feeling and I didn't know whether my feeling was right or not. He would have none of this and ended the discussion immediately. Before he left he said that he "would try to give more to the company" in a very cold tone. I was taken aback by his reaction. I am sure that I offended him in some ways. Not too sure whether that was the right thing to do for me to be so frank with him, though. Extra notes: I hate micromanaging. So all that we have for our software process is Sprint ( where tasks get prioritized and assigned, and at the end of the month, a review of the amount of work done). Developers would require to update the tasks as they go along everyday. There is no standup meeting, or anything of the sort. Mainly because we have the freedom to work from home and everyone cherishes this freedom. Although I am the one who sets the deadline, but the developers will provide the estimate for each tasks and I will decide-- based on the estimate-- the tasks that go into a particular sprint. If they can't finish the tasks at the end of the sprint, I will push them to the next. So theoretically one can just do only 1 or 2 tasks during the whole sprint and then push the remaining 99 tasks to the next sprint and still he will be fine as long as justifies this-- in the form of daily work progress updates

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• career advice for PhD scientist seeking to program?

  - by C SD

  I'm largely a self-taught programmer. In fact, I first started programming about half way through biophysics grad school, and even though I think I've done some pretty nice work, I've never worked as part of a 'serious' development team that had more than one or two other developers (and I wouldn't hesitate to call them equally inexperienced in software development as a profession). After finishing my PhD I applied to Google, on a lark, since I had some confidence in my abilities, if not necessarily my experience, and I was hoping to maybe slip in and absorb all the experience and talent I'd be surrounded with and become productive enough, quickly enough, that they wouldn't immediately regret their decision. I was excited to actually get invited to interview up at Mountain View (this was ~ mid 2008). Overall, my memory of the interview was very positive, but after close to a three month wait (is that normal?) they ended up turning me down. I wasn't too surprised or disappointed (aside from the uncomfortably long wait) given my unusual background and admitted lack of experience. I decided to continue as a postdoc, but focus on improving my skills rather than doing research. I've done about three years of that, and my honest assessment is that I've learned a ton more, but I really need more of a peer group to maintain or accelerate my growth. Google invited me to interview again about eight months ago, and the interview process went even better than the first time around (I thought), though they again declined to give me an offer. I have to admit this second rejection was much more discouraging. They had insisted I interview even after I mentioned to them that a move on my part was unlikely given that I had bought a house, gotten married, etc. since the first interview. I guess I was hoping they'd at least give me an offer that I could parlay into a more conventional, but still interesting, programming position close to home. So here I am, going on my third year out of grad school, a glorified postdoc and I'm starting to get pretty discouraged. Even though I could technically get 'back-on-track' for a career in science, I have been focusing the vast majority of this time on gaining programming experience rather than on research and publications. The problem is, whenever I look, most job listings have requirements that seem impossibly grandiose and I hesitate to apply. That, or the job/project seems incredibly dull. Ironically, applying to Google struck me as less intimidating. I suspect that either most people are just a lot less realistic than I am when it comes to assessing how long it will take for them to get up to speed, or they don't care; my fear is that I'm just woefully unqualified for any interesting, well paying work. IE: I'm confident I could switch fully back into C++ mode with a couple weeks work (I mostly use C,Python,C# daily) but I don't list myself as being 'proficient' in C++ on my CV, or applying for jobs that 'require' such knowledge. The few applications for which I did feel I was a legitimately good match have not elicited a response. I suspect the following things are potential problems with my application/CV and I would like feedback on: I don't have a CS degree. My BS was in biochemistry and molecular biology, my PhD in biophysics. I took a undergrad and grad level CS course at UCSD and completely killed them, but I don't know how to translate that to my CV effectively. I have a PhD, but it's not in CS... I've been debating if I should remove it from my CV, and wether or not it would then be misleading to list at least some of those years as some kind of 'programming' job (in many respects it was). I think there are sometimes strong stigmas associated with 'self-taught' programmers. I am certainly one of those. I even recognize that some of those stigmas hold a hint of truth, but I really do want to be an asset to a team. How do I communicate that even though I have been largely self-directing for ~8 years I can still take marching orders when needed? Do I just say so outright? Should I just become a lot less scrupulous about the whole process? anecdote: I have a friend who applied for positions where he completely fudged his qualifications to get past the first culling. He was much more honest and forthcoming about his actual qualifications when contacted and he still managed to get invited to a couple of interviews and even got some offers. His balls are larger than mine though.

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• Unable to remove limit on memory usage for PHP script.

  - by Jess Telford

  The Situation I am having an issue with a PHP script getting the following error message: Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 359923712) (tried to allocate 72 bytes) in /path/to/piwik/core/DataTable.php on line 969 The script I'm running is: /path/to/piwik/misc/cron/archive.sh I am assuming the numbers are Bytes, which means that total is approximately 360MB. For all intents and purposes, I have increased the memory limits on the server well above 360MB, yet this is the number (give or take a byte) it consistently errors out at. Please note: This question is not about fixing a memory leak in the script, nor about why the script itself is using so much memory. The script is part of the Piwik archiving process, so I cannot just fix any memory leaks, etc. For more info on this script and why I am increasing the memory limit, see "How to setup auto archiving" The question Given that the script is attempting to use over 360MB of memory, which I cannot change, why does it not seem possible for me to increase the amount of memory available to php on my server? What I've tried Increasing PHP's memory_limit Given the php.ini file: php -i | grep php.ini Configuration File (php.ini) Path => /usr/local/lib Loaded Configuration File => /usr/local/lib/php.ini I have edited that file, so the memory_limit directive reads; memory_limit = -1 Restart Apache, and check the new value has stuck; $ php -i | grep memory_limit memory_limit => -1 => -1 Run the script, and get the same error. I've also tried 1G, 768M, etc, all to the same result (ie; no change). Update 22nd June: Based on Vangel's help, I have attempted to set post_max_size to 20M in combination with setting memory_limit. Again, this has no effect. Removing the memory limit on child processes of Apache I have found and edited the httpd.conf file to make sure there is no RLimitMEM directive. I then used WHM's Apache Configuration Memory Usage Restrictions to generate a restriction, which it claimed was at 1000M (and confirmed by checking httpd.conf). Both of these resulted in no change to the script erroring at 360MB. Increasing the per process memory limits of Linux The current limits set on the system: $ ulimit -m 524288 $ ulimit -v 524288 I have attempted to set both of these to unlimited: $ ulimit -m unlimited $ ulimit -v unlimited $ ulimit -m unlimited $ ulimit -v unlimited Once again, this has resulted in absolutely no improvement in my problem. My setup $ cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 5.5 (Final) $ uname -a Linux example.com 2.6.18-164.15.1.el5 #1 SMP Wed Mar 17 11:30:06 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux $ php -i | grep "PHP Version" PHP Version => 5.2.9 $ httpd -V Server version: Apache/2.0.63 Server built: Feb 2 2011 01:25:12 Cpanel::Easy::Apache v3.2.0 rev5291 Server's Module Magic Number: 20020903:13 Server loaded: APR 0.9.17, APR-UTIL 0.9.15 Compiled using: APR 0.9.17, APR-UTIL 0.9.15 Architecture: 64-bit Server compiled with.... -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork" -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE -D APR_HAS_MMAP -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled) -D APR_USE_SYSVSEM_SERIALIZE -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS -D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr/local/apache" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/local/apache/bin/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="logs/httpd.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="logs/accept.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log" -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="conf/mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf" Output of $ php -i: http://pastebin.com/EiRut6Nm

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• Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

  - by user12244672

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

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• Ubuntu server loses exactly 5 minutes once in a while

  - by Harold Smith

  I noticed that my server, an Ubuntu server 12.04, was losing time. I figured the hardware clock was off or maybe dying due to a faulty CMOS battery. I installed NTP to ensure the drift would be corrected, but to no avail. During a day it would lose 20 minutes or so. To debug, I created a small cron job to check against a remote servers time, which I knew to be correct. The script calculates the difference in seconds between local and remote time. The result was interesting. It seems to be losing exactly 5 minutes several times during the day. Look at this log (difference from remote server noted in seconds): Tue Oct 23 03:30:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 03:35:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 03:40:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:45:02 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:50:02 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 03:55:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 04:00:02 CEST 2012: 284 Tue Oct 23 04:05:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 04:10:01 CEST 2012: 285 Tue Oct 23 04:15:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:35:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:40:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:45:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 04:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 04:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:05:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:10:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:15:02 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:35:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:40:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 05:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 05:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:05:03 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:15:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 06:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:30:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:45:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 06:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 06:55:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 07:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:30:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 07:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 07:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:00:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 08:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:30:01 CEST 2012: 585 Tue Oct 23 08:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 08:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:00:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:05:03 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:10:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:20:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:25:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:30:01 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:35:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:40:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:45:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:50:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 09:55:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:00:01 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:05:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:10:07 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:15:02 CEST 2012: 584 Tue Oct 23 10:20:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:25:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:30:02 CEST 2012: 883 Tue Oct 23 10:35:01 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:40:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:45:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:50:02 CEST 2012: 884 Tue Oct 23 10:55:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:00:02 CEST 2012: 1183 Tue Oct 23 11:05:01 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:10:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:15:02 CEST 2012: 1184 Tue Oct 23 11:20:02 CEST 2012: 1184 This does not seem to be faulty CMOS battery in my opinion. But what do you think?

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• Remote Workers...We're Not That Bad!

  - by user12601034

  I work from home a lot – my team is located in different cities and countries, my manager is in a different city, and most of our work is done via conference calls, email and collaboration through Oracle Social Network. We’ve figured out how to be effective and involve team members, regardless of where we are all located. When I mention that I work from home, a lot of my friends will laugh, roll their eyes or use their fingers to make quotation marks around “work from home.” Their belief is that I’m sitting at home, eating bon-bons and watching television. The attempts at humor only multiply when they know that my husband also mostly works from home. So, it was with great joy that I read the Lifehacker article Why Remote Workers Are More (Yes, More) Engaged. I’m not going to re-write the article for you, but four highlights from the article include: Proximity breeds complacency –because communicating with employees sitting next to you is so easy, you may not do it well. Absence makes people try harder to connect – because you have to make an effort to connect to your team, you tend to pay better attention when you do connect Leaders of virtual team make better use of tools – when working remotely, you will use technology (many different forms of it) to connect with your team. This daily use of the tools makes you more proficient with those tools Leaders of far-flung teams maximize the time spent together – getting together takes effort, time and money, so leaders tend to filter out distractions when teams do get together. These points made me happy because I’ve seen the same things play out in my team located around the world. And I’m not saying that a virtual team is more effective than a co-located team – but my virtual team doesn’t have the option of filing into a conference room for a face-to-face meeting whenever we want. Instead, we have to figure out how to work effectively without meeting face-to-face. Am I more engaged as a remote worker? I’d like to think that I am. I’ve been on calls with colleagues at 3am – this would never happen if my only option was to be in the office. I can leave my “office” to pick up my kids from school…and I’m willingly back online after kids are in bed to finish up anything I need to. Oracle Social Network lets me use my iPad to engage with my teammates when I’m waiting at music lessons, the doctor’s office or any place else with a network connection. I feel like I’m more connected with my team, and I feel like I’m more connected with my family life. So yes, I am a remote worker, and I am engaged. If you lead a virtual team, I challenge you to increase the ways that you communicate to effectively engage your team. If you are on a virtual team, I challenge you to think about how you might interact with team members to keep both them and yourself engaged in your work. And if you have some great ideas on how to make virtual teams (and workers) effective and engaged, please share those ideas in the comments! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a bon-bon...   :) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Gamification = -10#/3mo

  - by erikanollwebb

  One of the purposes of gamification of anything is to see if you can modify the behavior of the user. In the enterprise, that might mean getting sales people to enter more information into a CRM system, encouraging employees to update their HR records, motivating people to participate in forums and discussions, or process invoices more quickly.  Wikipedia defines behavior modification as "the traditional term for the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to increase or decrease the frequency of behaviors, such as altering an individual's behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of behavior through its extinction, punishment and/or satiation."  Gamification is just a way to modify someone's behavior using game mechanics. And the magic question is always whether it works. So I thought I would present my own little experiment from the last few months.  This spring, I upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy 4.  It's a pretty sweet phone in many ways, but one of the little extras I discovered was a built in app called S Health. S Health is an app that you can use to track calories, weight, exercise and it has a built in pedometer. I looked at it when I got the phone, but assumed you had to turn it on to use it so I didn't look at it much.  But sometime in July, I realized that in fact, it just ran in the background and was quietly tracking my steps, with a goal of 10,000 per day.  10,000 steps per day is this magic number recommended by the Surgeon General and the American Heart Association.  Dr. Oz pushes it as the goal for daily exercise.  It's about 5 miles of walking. I'm generally not the kind of person who always has my phone with me.  I leave it in my purse and pull it out when I need it.  But then I realized that meant I wasn't getting a good measure of my steps.  I decided to do a little experiment, and carry it with me as much as possible for a week.  That's when I discovered the gamification that changed my life over the last 3 months.  When I hit 10,000 steps, the app jingled out a little "success!" tune and I got a badge.  I was hooked.  I started carrying my phone.  I started making sure I had shoes I could walk in with me.  I started walking at lunch time, because I realized how often I sat at my desk for 8-10 hours every day without moving.  I started pestering my husband to walk with me after work because I hadn't hit my 10,000 yet, leading him at one point to say "I'm not as much a slave to that badge as you are!"  I started looking at parking lots differently.  Can't get a space up close?  No worries, just that many steps toward my 10,000.  I even tried to see if there was a second power user level at 15,000 or 20,000 (*sadly, no).  If I was close at the end of the day, I have done laps around my house until I got my badge.  I have walked around the block one more time to get my badge.  I have mentally chastised myself when I forgot to put my phone in my pocket because I don't know how many steps I got.  The badge below I got when my boss and I were in New York City and we walked around the block of our hotel just to watch the badge pop up. There are a bunch of tools out on the market now that have similar ideas for helping you to track your exercise, make it social.  There are apps (my favorite is still Zombies, Run!).  You could buy a FitBit or UP by Jawbone.   Interactive fitness makes the Expresso stationary bike with built in video games.  All designed to help you be more aware of your activity and keep you engaged and motivated.  And the idea is to help you change your behavior. I know someone who would spend extra time and work hard on the Expresso because he had built up strategies for how to kill the most dragons while he was riding to get more points.  When the machine broke down, he didn't ride a different bike because it just wasn't that interesting. But for me, just the simple jingle and badge have been all I needed.  I admit, I still giggle gleefully when I hear the tune sing out from my pocket. After a few weeks, I noticed I had dropped a few pounds.  Not a lot, just 2-3.  But then I was really hooked.  I started making a point both to eat a little less and hit 10,000 steps as much as I could.  I bemoaned that during the floods in Boulder, I wasn't hitting my 10,000 steps.  And now, a few months later, I'm almost 10 lbs lighter. All for 1 badge a day. So yes, simple gamification can increase motivation and engagement.  And that can lead to changes in behavior.  Now the job is to apply that to the enterprise space in a meaningful and engaging way. 

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• BYOD-The Tablet Difference

  - by Samantha.Y. Ma

  By Allison Kutz, Lindsay Richardson, and Jennifer Rossbach, Sales Consultants Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Less than three years ago, Apple introduced a new concept to the world: The Tablet. It’s hard to believe that in only 32 months, the iPad induced an entire new way to do business. Because of their mobility and ease-of-use, tablets have grown in popularity to keep up with the increasing “on the go” lifestyle, and their popularity isn’t expected to decrease any time soon. In fact, global tablet sales are expected to increase drastically within the next five years, from 56 million tablets to 375 million by 2016. Tablets have been utilized for every function imaginable in today’s world. With over 730,000 active applications available for the iPad, these tablets are educational devices, portable book collections, gateways into social media, entertainment for children when Mom and Dad need a minute on their own, and so much more. It’s no wonder that 74% of those who own a tablet use it daily, 60% use it several times a day, and an average of 13.9 hours per week are spent tapping away. Tablets have become a critical part of a user’s personal life; but why stop there? Businesses today are taking major strides in implementing these devices, with the hopes of benefiting from efficiency and productivity gains. Limo and taxi drivers use tablets as payment devices instead of traditional cash transactions. Retail outlets use tablets to find the exact merchandise customers are looking for. Professors use tablets to teach their classes, and business professionals demonstrate solutions and review reports from tablets. Since an overwhelming majority of tablet users have started to use their personal iPads, PlayBooks, Galaxys, etc. in the workforce, organizations have had to make a change. In many cases, companies are willing to make that change. In fact, 79% of companies are making new investments in mobility this year. Gartner reported that 90% of organizations are expected to support corporate applications on personal devices by 2014. It’s not just companies that are changing. Business professionals have become accustomed to tablets making their personal lives easier, and want that same effect in the workplace. Professionals no longer want to waste time manually entering data in their computer, or worse yet in a notebook, especially when the data has to be later transcribed to an online system. The response: the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon. According to Gartner, BOYD is “an alternative strategy allowing employees, business partners and other users to utilize a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data.” Employees whose companies embrace this trend are more efficient because they get to use devices they are already accustomed to. Tablets change the game when it comes to how sales professionals perform their jobs. Sales reps can easily store and access customer information and analytics using tablet applications, such as Oracle Fusion Tap. This method is much more enticing for sales reps than spending time logging interactions on their (what seem to be outdated) computers. Forrester & IDC reported that on average sales reps spend 65% of their time on activities other than selling, so having a tablet application to use on the go is extremely powerful. In February, Information Week released a list of “9 Powerful Business Uses for Tablet Computers,” ranging from “enhancing the customer experience” to “improving data accuracy” to “eco-friendly motivations”. Tablets compliment the lifestyle of professionals who strive to be effective and efficient, both in the office and on the road. Three Things Businesses Need to do to Embrace BYOD Make customer-facing websites tablet-friendly for consistent user experiences Develop tablet applications to continue to enhance the customer experience Embrace and use the technology that comes with tablets Almost 55 million people in the U.S. own tablets because they are convenient, easy, and powerful. These are qualities that companies strive to achieve with any piece of technology. The inherent power of the devices coupled with the growing number of business applications ensures that tablets will transform the way that companies and employees perform.

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• Using BizTalk to bridge SQL Job and Human Intervention (Requesting Permission)

  - by Kevin Shyr

  I start off the process with either a BizTalk Scheduler (http://biztalkscheduledtask.codeplex.com/releases/view/50363) or a manual file drop of the XML message.  The manual file drop is to allow the SQL  Job to call a "File Copy" SSIS step to copy the trigger file for the next process and allows SQL  Job to be linked back into BizTalk processing. The Process Trigger XML looks like the following.  It is basically the configuration hub of the business process <ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive xmlns:ns0="urn:com:something something">   <ns0:IsProcessAsync>YES</ns0:IsProcessAsync>   <ns0:IsPermissionRequired>YES</ns0:IsPermissionRequired>   <ns0:BusinessProcessName>Data Push</ns0:BusinessProcessName>   <ns0:EmailFrom>[email protected]</ns0:EmailFrom>   <ns0:EmailRecipientToList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientToList>   <ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>[email protected]</ns0:EmailRecipientCCList>   <ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>This message was sent to request permission to start the Data Push process.  The SQL Job to be run is WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest>   <ns0:SQLJobName>WeeklyProcessing_DataPush</ns0:SQLJobName>   <ns0:SQLJobStepName>Push_To_Production</ns0:SQLJobStepName>   <ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>1</ns0:SQLJobMinToWait>   <ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\TriggerCreatedByBizTalk\</ns0:PermissionRequestTriggerPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\Approved\</ns0:PermissionRequestApprovedPath>   <ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath>\\server\ETL-BizTalk\Automation\NotApproved\</ns0:PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath> </ns0:MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive>   Every node of this schema was promoted to a distinguished field so that the values can be used for decision making in the orchestration.  The first decision made is on the "IsPermissionRequired" field.     If permission is required (IsPermissionRequired=="YES"), BizTalk will use the configuration info in the XML trigger to format the email message.  Here is the snippet of how the email message is constructed. SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody     = new Eai.OrchestrationHelpers.XlangCustomFormatters.RawString(         MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailMessageBodyForPermissionRequest +         "<br><br>" +         "By moving the file, you are either giving permission to the process, or disapprove of the process." +         "<br>" +         "This is the file to move: \"" + PermissionTriggerToBeGenereatedHere +         "\"<br>" +         "(You may find it easier to open the destination folder first, then navigate to the sibling folder to get to this file)" +         "<br><br>" +         "To approve, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "To disapprove, move(NOT copy) the file here: " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.PermissionRequestNotApprovedPath +         "<br><br>" +         "The file will be IMMEDIATELY picked up by the automated process.  This is normal.  You should receive a message soon that the file is processed." +         "<br>" +         "Thank you!"     ); SQLJobSendNotification(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) = "mailto:" + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientToList; SQLJobEmailMessage.EmailBody(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.ContentType) = "text/html"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.Subject) = "Requesting Permission to Start the " + MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.BusinessProcessName; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.From) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailFrom; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.CC) = MsgSchedulerTriggerSQLJobReceive.EmailRecipientCCList; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.EmailBodyFileCharset) = "UTF-8"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.SMTPHost) = "localhost"; SQLJobEmailMessage(SMTP.MessagePartsAttachments) = 2;   After the Permission request email is sent, the next step is to generate the actual Permission Trigger file.  A correlation set is used here on SQLJobName and a newly generated GUID field. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger xmlns:ns0="somethingsomething"><SQLJobName>Data Push</SQLJobName><CorrelationGuid>9f7c6b46-0e62-46a7-b3a0-b5327ab03753</CorrelationGuid></ns0:SQLJobAuthorizationTrigger> The end user (the human intervention piece) will either grant permission for this process, or deny it, by moving the Permission Trigger file to either the "Approved" folder or the "NotApproved" folder.  A parallel Listen shape is waiting for either response.   The next set of steps decide how the SQL Job is to be called, or whether it is called at all.  If permission denied, it simply sends out a notification.  If permission is granted, then the flag (IsProcessAsync) in the original Process Trigger is used.  The synchonous part is not really synchronous, but a loop timer to check the status within the calling stored procedure (for more information, check out my previous post:  http://geekswithblogs.net/LifeLongTechie/archive/2010/11/01/execute-sql-job-synchronously-for-biztalk-via-a-stored-procedure.aspx)  If it's async, then the sp starts the job and BizTalk sends out an email.   And of course, some error notification:   Footnote: The next version of this orchestration will have an additional parallel line near the Listen shape with a Delay built in and a Loop to send out a daily reminder if no response has been received from the end user.  The synchronous part is used to gather results and execute a data clean up process so that the SQL Job can be re-tried.  There are manu possibilities here.

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• Is your dream an international experience?

  - by Maria Sandu

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Studying in Poland, having two summer jobs in England, doing one internship in India, working in Thailand for half a year and now working in Prague. Does it seem an adventure? Well it is and I will tell you how I came to have this international experience. Dzien Dobry! My name is Wojciech Jurojc, I am Polish and I am currently a Business Development Consultant within Oracle, based in Prague. I joined Oracle on the 1st of August 2011. I graduated in 2010 and obtained 2 Masters Degrees in Political Science and Economics. I would like to tell you more about my past and how I joined Oracle. In 2005 I began studying at the Faculty of Political Sciences Gdansk University. In 2008, I obtained a Bachelors Degree. During these three years I had the opportunity to go to England twice, where I worked as a Bartender, first in Blackpool and then in Manchester. This allowed me to improve my language skills and become more confident. In the meantime, I joined the International Student Organization-AIESEC, where I was organized conferences and conducted student projects. Also I met a mass of interesting people from around the world. After graduation in 2008, I was able to get an Internship within a big company in Poland. I worked there as an Intern in the Purchase Department. That was my first adventure within a corporate environment. I learnt a lot about purchasing processes and negotiations. In September 2008, I started studying two Masters Faculties: Political Science and Economics. It was very difficult, but it was not impossible. Over the next two years of studying I was able to go on a three month internship to India where I worked as a Marketing Assistant in an NGO. I was travelling around northern India and did presentations to the academic community about green energy and environmental projects. I had the opportunity to visit Nepal and walked in the Himalayas. That was a huge experience as well as a cultural shock. It taught me how to deal with many problems and to appreciate what I have. At the end of 2009 I was working as a Marketing Assistant for a Leasing company, where I learnt useful sales knowledge and improved my objection handling skills. In July 2010, I graduated with a double Masters and found a job in Thailand as Sales Representative in an IT company. I worked in Thailand until the end of January 2011. Besides that, I was working in an International company with interesting people and I had the opportunity to travel around Thailand and visit Cambodia. After this adventure I started looking for jobs in Europe where I could further develop my sales skills. I found Oracle and I don’t regret this decision which I made. I am currently working in Prague in an international Hardware team and I know that is not the end of my adventures. At this moment, I am working in a team of 12 members. Ten of them are based in Prague and 2 others are based in Russia. We come from different countries such as: Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Slovakia and Kazakhstan. I am working on the Polish market, cooperating with our Hardware customers and partners. What do I enjoy the most about my job? I enjoy every challenge that I face in my daily activities as there are always new experiences for me and new things that I learn. As part of Oracle, I gain international exposure and therefore more career opportunities to explore. I have planned my next step for the career path I dream of and I am currently working on it. I recommend you check our Career Page if you’re looking for an international career. If you want to find out more about our job opportunities, follow us on https://campus.oracle.com .

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• Azure Task Scheduling Options

  - by charlie.mott

  Currently, the Azure PaaS does not offer a distributed\resilient task scheduling service.  If you do want to host a task scheduling product\solution off-premise (and ideally use Azure), what are your options? PaaS Option 1: Worker Roles Use a worker role to schedule and execute actions at specific time periods.  There are a few frameworks available to assist with this: http://azuretoolkit.codeplex.com https://github.com/Lokad/lokad-cloud/wiki/TaskScheduler http://blog.smarx.com/posts/building-a-task-scheduler-in-windows-azure - This addresses a slightly different set of requirements. It’s a more dynamic approach for queuing up tasks, but not repeatable tasks (e.g. daily). I found the Azure Toolkit option the most simple to implement.  Step 1 : Create a domain entity implementing IJob for each job to schedule.  In this sample, I asynchronously call a WCF service method. 1: namespace Acme.WorkerRole.Jobs 2: { 3: using AzureToolkit; 4: using ScheduledTasksService; 5: 6: public class UploadEmployeesJob : IJob 7: { 8: public void Run() 9: { 10: // Call Tasks Service 11: var client = new ScheduledTasksServiceClient("BasicHttpBinding_IScheduledTasksService"); 12: client.UploadEmployees(); 13: client.Close(); 14: } 15: } 16: } Step 2 : In the worker role run method, add the jobs to the toolkit engine. 1: namespace Acme.WorkerRole 2: { 3: using AzureToolkit.Engine; 4: using Jobs; 5:   6: public class WorkerRole : WorkerRoleEntryPoint 7: { 8: public override void Run() 9: { 10: var engine = new CloudEngine(); 11:   12: // Add Scheduled Jobs (using CronJob syntax - see http://www.adminschoice.com/crontab-quick-reference). 13:   14: // 1. Upload Employee job - 8.00 PM every weekday (Mon-Fri) 15: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<UploadEmployeesJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "0 20 * * 1-5"; }); 16: // 2. Purge Data job - 10 AM every Saturday 17: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<PurgeDataJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "0 10 * * 6"; }); 18: // 3. Process Exceptions job - Every 5 minutes 19: engine.WithJobScheduler().ScheduleJob<ProcessExceptionsJob>(c => { c.CronSchedule = "*/5 * * * *"; }); 20:   21: engine.Run(); 22: base.Run(); 23: } 24: } 25: } Pros Cons Azure Toolkit option is simple to implement. For the AzureToolkit option, you are limited to a single worker role.  Otherwise, the jobs will be executed multiple times, once for each worker role instance.   Paying for a continuously running worker role, even if it just processes a single job once a week.  If you only have a few scheduled tasks to run calling asynchronous services hosted in different web roles, an extra small worker role likely to be sufficient.  However, for an extra small worker role this still costs $14.40/month (03/09/2012). Option 2: Use Scheduled Task on Azure Web Role calling a console app Setup a Windows Scheduled Task on the Azure Web Role. This calls a console application that calls the WCF service methods that run the task actions. This design is described here: http://www.ronaldwidha.net/2011/02/23/cron-job-on-azure-using-scheduled-task-on-a-web-role-to-replace-azure-worker-role-for-background-job/ http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/index.php/2011/07/windows-azure-task-scheduler/ http://devlicio.us/blogs/vinull/archive/2011/10/23/moving-to-azure-worker-roles-for-nothing-and-tasks-for-free.aspx Pros Cons Fairly easy to implement. Supportability - I RDC’ed onto the Azure server and stopped the scheduled task. I then rebooted the machine and the task was re-started. I also tried deleting the task and rebooting, the same thing occurred. The only way to permanently guarantee that a task is disabled is to do a fresh deployment. I think this is a major supportability concern.   Saleability - multiple instances would trigger multiple tasks. You can only have one instance for the scheduled task web role. The guidance implements setup of the scheduled task as part of a web role instance. But if you have more than one instance in a web role, the task will be triggered multiple times for each scheduled action (once per machine). Workaround: If we wanted to use scheduled tasks for another client with a saleable WCF service, then we could include the console & tasks scripts in a separate web role (e.g. a empty WCF service with no real purpose to it). SaaS Option 3: Azure Marketplace I thought that someone might be offering this type of service via the Azure marketplace. At the point of writing this blog post, I did not find anyone doing so. https://datamarket.azure.com/ Pros Cons   Nobody currently offers this on the Azure Marketplace. Option 4: Online Job Scheduling Service Provider There are plenty of online providers that offer this type of service on a pay-as-you-go approach.  Some of these are free for small usage.   Many of these providers are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webcron Pros Cons No bespoke development for scheduler. Reliance on third party. IaaS Option 5: Setup Scheduling Software on Azure IaaS VM’s One of job scheduling software offerings could be installed and configured on Azure VM’s.  A list of software options is listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_job_scheduler_software Pros Cons Enterprise distributed\resilient task scheduling service VM Setup and maintenance   Software Licence Costs Option 6: VM Gallery A the time of writing this blog post, I did not spot a VM in the gallery that included pre-installation of any of the above software options. Pros Cons   No current VM template. Summary For my current project that had a small handful of tasks to schedule with a limited project budget I chose option 1 (a worker role using the Azure Toolkit to schedule tasks).  If I was building an enterprise scale solution for the future, options 4 and 5 are currently worthy of consideration. Hopefully, Microsoft will include tasks scheduling in the future as part of their PaaS offerings.

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• Thinking differently about BI delivery

  - by jamiet

  My day job involves implementing Business Intelligence (BI) solutions which, as I have said before, is simply about giving people the information they need to do their jobs. I’m always interested in learning about new ways of achieving that aim and that is my motivation for writing blog entries that are not concerned with SQL or SQL Server per se. Implementing BI systems usually involves hacking together a bunch third party products with some in-house “glue” and delivering information using some shiny, expensive web-based front-end tool; the list of vendors that supply such tools is big and ever-growing. No doubt these tools have their place and of late I have started to wonder whether they can be supplemented with different ways of delivering information. The problem I have with these separate web-based tools is exactly that – they are separate web-based tools. What’s the problem with that you might ask? I’ll explain! They force the information worker to go somewhere unfamiliar in order to get the information they need to do their jobs. Would it not be better if we could deliver information into the tools that those information workers are already using and not force them to go somewhere else? I look at the rise of blogging over recent years and I realise that what made them popular is that people can subscribe to RSS feeds and have information pushed to them in their tool of choice rather than them having to go and find the information for themselves in a tool that has been foisted upon them. Would it not be a good idea to adopt the principle of subscription for the benefit of delivering BI information as well? I think it would and in the rest of this blog entry I’ll outline such a scenario where the power of subscription could be used to enhance the delivery of information to information workers. Typical questions that information workers ask might be: What are my year-on-year sales figures? What was my footfall yesterday? How many widgets have I sold so far today? Each of those questions includes a time element and that shouldn’t surprise us, any BI system that I have worked on includes the dimension of time. Now, what do people use to view and organise their time-oriented information? Its not a trick question, they use a calendar and in the enterprise space more often than not that calendar is managed using Outlook. Given then that information workers are already looking at their calendar in Outlook anyway would it not make sense then to deliver information into that same calendar? Of course it would. Calendars are a great way of visualising information such as sales figures. Observe: Just in this single screenshot I have managed to convey a multitude of information. The information worker can see, at a glance, information about hourly/daily/weekly/monthly sales and, moreover, he/she is viewing that information right inside the tool that they use every day. There is no effort on the part of him/her, the information just appears hour after hour, day after day. Taking the idea further, each one of those calendar items could be a mini-dashboard in its own right. Double-clicking on an item could show a plethora of other information about that time slot such as breaking the sales down per region or year-over-year comparisons. Perhaps the title could employ a sparkline? Loads of possibilities. The point is that calendars are a completely natural way to visualise information; we should make more use of them! The real beauty of delivering information using calendars for us BI developers is that it should be so easy. In the case of Outlook we don’t need to write complicated VBA code that can go and manipulate a person’s calendar, simply publishing data in a format that Outlook can understand is sufficient and happily such formats already exist; iCalendar is the accepted format and the even more flexible xCalendar is hopefully on its way as well.   I’d like to make one last point and this one is with my SQL Server hat on. Reporting Services 2008 R2 introduced the ability to publish data as subscribable Atom feeds so it seems logical that it could also be a vehicle for delivering calendar feeds too. If you think this would be a good idea go and vote for it at Publish data as iCalendar feeds and please please please add some comments (especially if you vote it down). Work smarter, not harder! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• World Backup Day

  - by red(at)work

  Here at Red Gate Towers, the SQL Backup development team have been hunkered down in their shed for the last few months, with the toolbox, blowtorch and chamois leather out, upgrading SQL Backup. When we started, autumn leaves were falling. Now we're about to finish, spring flowers are budding. If not quite a gleaming new machine, at the very least a familiar, reliable engine with some shiny new bits on it will trundle magnificently out of the workshop. One of the interesting things I've noticed about working on software development teams is that the team is together for so long 'implementing' stuff - designing, coding, testing, fixing bugs and so on - that you occasionally forget why you're doing what you're doing. Doubt creeps in. It feels like a long time since we launched this project in a fanfare of optimism and enthusiasm, and all that clarity of purpose and mission "yee-haw" has dissipated with the daily pressures of development. Every now and again, we look up from our bunker and notice all those thousands of users out there, with their different configurations and working practices and each with their own set of problems and requirements, and we ask ourselves "does anyone care about what we're doing?" Has the world moved on while we've been busy? Could we have been doing something more useful with the time and talent of all these excellent people we've assembled? In truth, you can research and test and validate all you like, but you never really know if you've done the right thing (or at least, something valuable for some users) until you release. All projects suffer this insecurity. If they don't, maybe you're not worrying enough about what you're building. The two enemies of software development are certainty and complacency. Oh, and of course, rival teams with Nerf guns. The goal of SQL Backup 7 is to make it so easy to schedule regular restores of your backups that you have no excuse not to. Why schedule a restore? Because your data is not as good as your last backup. It's only as good as your last successful restore. If you're not checking your backups by restoring them and running an integrity check on the database, you're only doing half the job. It seems that most DBAs know that this is best practice, but it can be tricky and time-consuming to set up, so it's one of those tasks that can get forgotten in the midst all the other demands on their time. Sometimes, they're just too busy firefighting. But if it was simple to do? That was our inspiration for SQL Backup 7. So it was heartening to read Brent Ozar's blog post the other day about World Backup Day. To be honest, I'd never heard of World Backup Day (Talk Like a Pirate Day, yes, but not this one); however, its emphasis on not just backing up your data but checking the validity of those backups was exactly the same message we had in mind when building SQL Backup 7. It's printed on a piece of A3 above our planning board - "Make backup verification so easy to do that no DBA has an excuse for not doing it" It's the missing piece that completes the puzzle. Simple idea, great concept, useful feature, but, as it turned out, far from straightforward to implement. The problem is the future. As Marty McFly discovered over the course of three movies, the future is uncertain and hard to predict - so when you are scheduling a restore to take place an hour, day, week or month after the backup, there are all kinds of questions that you wouldn't normally have to consider. Where will this backup live? Will it even exist at the time? Will it be split into multiple files? What will the file names be? Will it be encrypted? What files should it be restored to? SQL Backup needs to know what to expect at the time the restore job is actually run. Of course, a DBA will know the answer to all these questions, but to deliver the whole point of version 7, we wanted to make it easy for them to input that information into SQL Backup. We think we've done that. When you create your scheduled backup job, there is now an option to create a "reminder" to follow it up with a scheduled restore to verify the resulting backups. Actually, it's much more than a reminder, as it stores all the relevant data so you can click it and pre-populate the wizard with all the right settings to set up your verification restores. Simple. But, what do you think? We'd love you to try it. Post by Brian Harris

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• Windows 8/Surface Lunch Event Summary

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today was a big day for Microsoft with two separate launch event.  The first for Windows 8 and all of it’s hardware partners.  The second was specifically to introduce the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet.  Below are some of the take-aways I got from the webcasts. Windows 8 Launch The three general area that Microsoft focused on were the release of the OS itself, the public unveiling of the Windows Store and the new devices available from its hardware partners. The release of the OS focused on the fact that it will be available at mid-night tonight for both new PCs and for upgrades.  I can’t say that this interested me that much since it was already known to most people.  I think what they did show well was how easy the OS really is to use. The Windows Store is also not a new feature to those of us who have been running the pre-release versions of Windows 8 or have owned Windows Phone 7 for the past 2 years.  What was interesting is that the Windows Store launches with more apps available than any other platforms store at their respective launch.  I think this says a lot about how Microsoft focuses on the ability of developers to create software and make it available.  The of course were sure to emphasize that the Windows Store has better monetary terms for developers than its competitors. The also showed off the fact that XBox Music streaming is available for to all Windows 8 user for free.  Couple this with the Bing suite of apps that give you news, weather, sports and finance right out of the box and I think most people will find the environment a joy to use. I think the hardware demo, while quick and furious, really show where Windows shine: CHOICE!  They made a statement that over 1000 devices have been certified for Windows 8.  They showed tablets, laptops, desktops, all-in-ones and convertibles.  Since these devices have industry standard connectors they give a much wider variety of accessories and devices that you can use with them. Steve Balmer then came on stage and tried to see how many times he could use the “magical”.  He focused on how the Windows 8 OS is designed to integrate with SkyDrive, Skype and Outlook.com.  He also enforced that they think Windows 8 is the best choice for the Enterprise when it comes to protecting data and integrating across devices including Windows Phone 8. With that we were left to wait for the second event of the day. Surface Launch The second event of the day started with kids with magnets.  Ok, they were adults, but who doesn’t like playing with magnets.  Steven Sinofsky detached and reattached the Surface keyboard repeatedly, clearly enjoying himself.  It turns out that there are 4 magnets in the cover, 2 for alignment and 2 as connectors. They then went to giving us the details on the display.  The 10.6” display is optically bonded to the case and is optimized to reduce glare.  I think this came through very well in the demonstrations. The properties of the case were also a great selling point.  The VaporMg allowed them to drop the device on stage, on purpose, and continue working.  Of course they had to bring out the skate boards made from Surface devices. “It just has to feel right” was the reason they gave for many of their design decisions from the weight and size of the device to the way the kickstand and camera work together.  While this gave you the feeling that the whole process was trial and error you could tell that a lot of science went into the specs.  This included making sure that the magnets were strong enough to hold the cover on and still have a 3 year old remove the cover without effort. I am glad that they also decided the a USB port would be part of the spec since it give so many options.  They made the point that this allows Surface to leverage over 420 million existing devices.  That works for me. The last feature that I really thought was important was the microSD port.  Begin stuck with the onboard memory has been an aggravation of mine with many of the devices in the market today. I think they did job of really getting the audience to understand why you want this platform and this particular device.  Using personal examples like creating a video of a birthday party and being in it or the fact that the device was being used to live blog the event and control the lights and presentation.  They showed very well that it was not only fun but very capable of getting real work done.  Handing out tablets to the crowd didn’t hurt either.  In the end I really wanted a Surface even though I really have no need for one on a daily basis.  Great job Microsoft! del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,Win8,Windows 8 Luanch

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• Log transport and aggregation at scale

  - by markdrayton

  How're you analysing log files from UNIX/Linux machines? We run several hundred servers which all generate their own log files, either directly or through syslog. I'm looking for a decent solution to aggregate these and pick out important events. This problem breaks down into 3 components: 1) Message transport The classic way is to use syslog to log messages to a remote host. This works fine for applications that log into syslog but less useful for apps that write to a local file. Solutions for this might include having the application log into a FIFO connected to a program to send the message using syslog, or by writing something that will grep the local files and send the output to the central syslog host. However, if we go to the trouble of writing tools to get messages into syslog would we be better replacing the whole lot with something like Facebook's Scribe which offers more flexibility and reliability than syslog? 2) Message aggregation Log entries seem to fall into one of two types: per-host and per-service. Per-host messages are those which occur on one machine; think disk failures or suspicious logins. Per-service messages occur on most or all of the hosts running a service. For instance, we want to know when Apache finds an SSI error but we don't want the same error from 100 machines. In all cases we only want to see one of each type of message: we don't want 10 messages saying the same disk has failed, and we don't want a message each time a broken SSI is hit. One approach to solving this is to aggregate multiple messages of the same type into one on each host, send the messages to a central server and then aggregate messages of the same kind into one overall event. SER can do this but it's awkward to use. Even after a couple of days of fiddling I had only rudimentary aggregations working and had to constantly look up the logic SER uses to correlate events. It's powerful but tricky stuff: I need something which my colleagues can pick up and use in the shortest possible time. SER rules don't meet that requirement. 3) Generating alerts How do we tell our admins when something interesting happens? Mail the group inbox? Inject into Nagios? So, how're you solving this problem? I don't expect an answer on a plate; I can work out the details myself but some high-level discussion on what is surely a common problem would be great. At the moment we're using a mishmash of cron jobs, syslog and who knows what else to find events. This isn't extensible, maintainable or flexible and as such we miss a lot of stuff we shouldn't. Updated: we're already using Nagios for monitoring which is great for detected down hosts/testing services/etc but less useful for scraping log files. I know there are log plugins for Nagios but I'm interested in something more scalable and hierarchical than per-host alerts.

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• SQLiteDataAdapter Fill exception

  - by Lirik

  I'm trying to use the OleDb CSV parser to load some data from a CSV file and insert it into a SQLite database, but I get an exception with the OleDbAdapter.Fill method and it's frustrating: An unhandled exception of type 'System.Data.ConstraintException' occurred in System.Data.dll Additional information: Failed to enable constraints. One or more rows contain values violating non-null, unique, or foreign-key constraints. Here is the source code: public void InsertData(String csvFileName, String tableName) { String dir = Path.GetDirectoryName(csvFileName); String name = Path.GetFileName(csvFileName); using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + dir + @";Extended Properties=""Text;HDR=No;FMT=Delimited""")) { conn.Open(); using (OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM " + name, conn)) { QuoteDataSet ds = new QuoteDataSet(); adapter.Fill(ds, tableName); // <-- Exception here InsertData(ds, tableName); // <-- Inserts the data into the my SQLite db } } } class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { SQLiteDatabase target = new SQLiteDatabase(); string csvFileName = "D:\\Innovations\\Finch\\dev\\DataFeed\\YahooTagsInfo.csv"; string tableName = "Tags"; target.InsertData(csvFileName, tableName); Console.ReadKey(); } } The "YahooTagsInfo.csv" file looks like this: tagId,tagName,description,colName,dataType,realTime 1,s,Symbol,symbol,VARCHAR,FALSE 2,c8,After Hours Change,afterhours,DOUBLE,TRUE 3,g3,Annualized Gain,annualizedGain,DOUBLE,FALSE 4,a,Ask,ask,DOUBLE,FALSE 5,a5,Ask Size,askSize,DOUBLE,FALSE 6,a2,Average Daily Volume,avgDailyVolume,DOUBLE,FALSE 7,b,Bid,bid,DOUBLE,FALSE 8,b6,Bid Size,bidSize,DOUBLE,FALSE 9,b4,Book Value,bookValue,DOUBLE,FALSE I've tried the following: Removing the first line in the CSV file so it doesn't confuse it for real data. Changing the TRUE/FALSE realTime flag to 1/0. I've tried 1 and 2 together (i.e. removed the first line and changed the flag). None of these things helped... One constraint is that the tagId is supposed to be unique. Here is what the table look like in design view: Can anybody help me figure out what is the problem here? Update: I changed the HDR property from HDR=No to HDR=Yes and now it doesn't give me an exception: OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" + dir + @";Extended Properties=""Text;HDR=Yes;FMT=Delimited"""); I assumed that if HDR=No and I removed the header (i.e. first line), then it should work... strangely it didn't work. In any case, now I'm no longer getting the exception. The new problem is here: public void InsertData(QuoteDataSet data, String tableName) { using (SQLiteConnection conn = new SQLiteConnection(_connectionString)) { conn.Open(); using (SQLiteDataAdapter sqliteAdapter = new SQLiteDataAdapter("SELECT * FROM " + tableName, conn)) { Console.WriteLine("Num rows updated is " + sqliteAdapter.Update(data, tableName)); } } } Now the Num rows updated is 0... any hints?

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• In Email, Image (img) Source (src) Tags are rewritten as relative links. How to fix?

  - by Noah Goodrich

  I'm working on sending out an html based email, and every time it sends the image src tags and some of the anchor href tags are modified to be relative url's. Update 2: This is happening between when the body of the email is generated and sent and when it arrives in my inbox. Update: I am using Postfix on a LAMPP server. In addition, I am using Zend_Mail to send the emails out. For example, I have a link: src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" And it gets rewritten as: src="../../../../images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" What can cause this to occur and how is it corrected? Email headers: Return-Path: <[email protected]> X-Original-To: [email protected] Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by mail.example.com (Postfix, from userid 0) id 6BF012252; Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 (MDT) To: Gabriel <[email protected]> Subject: Free Map to Sales Success From: Somebody <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:15:20 -0600 Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: multipart/related Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <[email protected]> Original content to be sent out: <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img moz-do-not-send="true" alt="The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More." src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" border="0" height="123" width="600"> </a> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"><img alt="Visit us at High Point to receive your free training poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="150" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><big><b>See you at Market</b></big><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><br> </small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Visit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeople with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center located in the Plaza. <br> <br> Don&#8217;t miss Mark Lacy&#8217;s entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&#8217;t Sell Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&#8217;ll reveal powerful secrets for turning sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Saturday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail Resource Center in the Plaza. <br> <br> Stop by our space to learn how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use, guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report increased sales. <br> <br> Plan to see us at High Point. </font></small> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><br> <br> <br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></big></font><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small> </small></big></big></big></font></small> <a href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/map"><img alt="Find out more" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" border="0" height="67" width="326"></a><br> <br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"> <img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="28" width="28"><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="Roadmap to Sales Success poster" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="267" width="186"><br> <font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#000000" size="1"><big><big><big><small><b>Road Map to Sales Success<br> </b><br> </small></big></big></big></font>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and visiting with us at High Point. <span class="moz-txt-slash">Our space is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the Plaza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="30" width="30"><br> <br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true" height="25" width="600"><br> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"><br> <font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#666666" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attending the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <u><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompany.com</a></u>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company representative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping outside of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada may call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success per company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<br> <br> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></font> <font color="#666666"><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd rather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training Company, please <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">click here to unsubscribe</a>.<br> <br> </small></small></big></big></big></font></small><small><font originaltag="yes" style="font-size: 9px; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1"><big><big><big><small><small>&copy;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br> 1770 North Research Park Way, <br> North Logan, UT 84341. <br> All Rights Reserved.</small></small></big></big></big></font></small></font><br> </td> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_right.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"> <tbody> <tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="top"><img alt="" src="http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" moz-do-not-send="true"> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <br> <br> Content that gets sent: <table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" al= ign=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top"><a href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com"> <img src=3D"http://www.fur= nituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/header.jpg" bor= der=3D"0" alt=3D"The Furniture Training Company - Know More. Sell More."= width=3D"600" height=3D"123" /> </a></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D= =0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0"= width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign= =3D"top"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/emai= l/highpoint_2009_04/hero.jpg" alt=3D"Visit us at High Point to receive y= our free training poster" width=3D"600" height=3D"150" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacin= g=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>= =0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http:= //www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer= _content_left.jpg" alt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /></td>=0D= =0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><span style=3D"font-size: xx-s= mall; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;">= <big><big><big><big><small><big><strong>See you at Market</strong></big>= <br /> </small></big></big></big></big></span> <span style=3D"font-size:= xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #0000= 00;"><big><big><big><big><small><br /> </small></big></big></big></big><= /span><small><span style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">Vi= sit our space to get your free Map to Sales Success poster! This unique= 24 X 36 color poster is your guide to developing high volume salespeopl= e with larger tickets. Find us in the new NHFA Retailer Resource Center= located in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Don&rsquo;t miss Mark Lacy&rsquo;s= entertaining seminar "Help Wanted! My Sales Associates Can&rsquo;t Sell= Water to a Thirsty Camel." He&rsquo;ll reveal powerful secrets for turn= ing sales associates into furniture experts that will sell. See him Satu= rday, April 25th at 11:30 AM in the seminar room of the new NHFA Retail= Resource Center in the Plaza. <br /> <br /> Stop by our space to learn= how our ingenious internet-delivered training courses are easy to use,= guaranteed to work, and cheaper than the daily donuts. Over 95% report= increased sales. <br /> <br /> Plan to see us at High Point. </span></s= mall> <span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Hel= vetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><b= r /> <br /> <br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></big></big></span= ><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,H= elvetica,sans-serif; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small> </small></b= ig></big></big></span></small> <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingco= mpany.com/map"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/image= s/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_left.jpg" border=3D"0" alt=3D"Fi= nd out more" width=3D"326" height=3D"67" /></a><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A<= td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretr= ainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_middle.j= pg" alt=3D"" width=3D"28" height=3D"28" /><br /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D= "top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/image_content_right.jpg" alt=3D"Roa= dmap to Sales Success poster" width=3D"186" height=3D"267" /><br /> <spa= n style=3D"font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"><small><span style= =3D"font-size: xx-small; color: #000000;"><big><big><big><small><strong>= Road Map to Sales Success<br /> </strong><br /> </small></big></big></bi= g></span>This beautiful poster is yours free for simply stopping by and= visiting with us at High Point. <span class=3D"moz-txt-slash">Our space= is located inside the </span>new NHFA Retailer Resource Center in the P= laza Suites, 222 South Main St, 1st Floor. We will be at market from Sat= April 25th until Thur April 30th. </small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A<td v= align=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretraini= ngcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_content_right.jpg" a= lt=3D"" width=3D"30" height=3D"30" /><br /> <br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A= </tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpa= dding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/disclaimer_divider.jpg= " alt=3D"" width=3D"600" height=3D"25" /><br /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</t= body>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<table border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpaddi= ng=3D"0" width=3D"600" align=3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td= valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrai= ningcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_left.jp= g" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_= 04/spacer_disclaimer_middle.jpg" alt=3D"" /><br /> <span style=3D"font-s= ize: xx-small; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; color: #= 666666;"><big><big><big><big><small><small><small>If you are not attendi= ng the High Point market in April but would still like to receive a free= Road Map to Sales Success poster visit us on the web at <span style=3D"= text-decoration: underline;"><a class=3D"moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href= =3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com">www.furnituretrainingcompan= y.com</a></span>, or to speak with a Furniture Training Company represen= tative, call toll free (866) 755-5996. We do not offer free shipping out= side of the U.S. and Canada. Retailers outside of the U.S. and Canada ma= y call for more information. Limit one free Road Map to Sales Success pe= r company. Other copies of the poster may be purchased on our web site.<= br /> <br /> </small></small></small></big></big></big></big></span> <sp= an style=3D"color: #666666;"><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small;= font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small= ><small>We hope you found this message to be useful. However, if you'd r= ather not receive future emails of this sort from The Furniture Training= Company, please <a href=3D"http://www.furnituretraining.com/contact">cl= ick here to unsubscribe</a>.<br /> <br /> </small></small></big></big></= big></span></small><small><span style=3D"font-size: xx-small; font-famil= y: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><big><big><small><small>&co= py;Copyright 2009 The Furniture Training Company.<br /> 1770 North Resea= rch Park Way, <br /> North Logan, UT 84341. <br /> All Rights Reserved.<= /small></small></big></big></big></span></small></span><br /></td>=0D=0A= <td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituret= rainingcompany.com/images/email/highpoint_2009_04/spacer_disclaimer_righ= t.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>=0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<tab= le border=3D"0" cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" width=3D"600" align= =3D"center">=0D=0A<tbody>=0D=0A<tr>=0D=0A<td valign=3D"top" bgcolor=3D"#= ffffff"><img src=3D"http://www.furnituretrainingcompany.com/images/email= /highpoint_2009_04/footer.jpg" alt=3D"" /></td>=0D=0A</tr>=0D=0A</tbody>= =0D=0A</table>=0D=0A<p><br /></p><br><hr><a href=3D'http://localhost/ftc= /app/unsubscribe.php?action=3DoptOut&pid=3D6121&cid=3D19&email=3Dmarkl@f= urnituretrainingcompany.com'>Click to Unsubscribe</a>

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• Why is code quality not popular?

  - by Peter Kofler

  I like my code being in order, i.e. properly formatted, readable, designed, tested, checked for bugs, etc. In fact I am fanatic about it. (Maybe even more than fanatic...) But in my experience actions helping code quality are hardly implemented. (By code quality I mean the quality of the code you produce day to day. The whole topic of software quality with development processes and such is much broader and not the scope of this question.) Code quality does not seem popular. Some examples from my experience include Probably every Java developer knows JUnit, almost all languages implement xUnit frameworks, but in all companies I know, only very few proper unit tests existed (if at all). I know that it's not always possible to write unit tests due to technical limitations or pressing deadlines, but in the cases I saw, unit testing would have been an option. If a developer wanted to write some tests for his/her new code, he/she could do so. My conclusion is that developers do not want to write tests. Static code analysis is often played around in small projects, but not really used to enforce coding conventions or find possible errors in enterprise projects. Usually even compiler warnings like potential null pointer access are ignored. Conference speakers and magazines would talk a lot about EJB3.1, OSGI, Cloud and other new technologies, but hardly about new testing technologies or tools, new static code analysis approaches (e.g. SAT solving), development processes helping to maintain higher quality, how some nasty beast of legacy code was brought under test, ... (I did not attend many conferences and it propably looks different for conferences on agile topics, as unit testing and CI and such has a higer value there.) So why is code quality so unpopular/considered boring? EDIT: Thank your for your answers. Most of them concern unit testing (and has been discussed in a related question). But there are lots of other things that can be used to keep code quality high (see related question). Even if you are not able to use unit tests, you could use a daily build, add some static code analysis to your IDE or development process, try pair programming or enforce reviews of critical code.

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• C# Monte Carlo Incremental Risk Calculation optimisation, random numbers, parallel execution

  - by m3ntat

  My current task is to optimise a Monte Carlo Simulation that calculates Capital Adequacy figures by region for a set of Obligors. It is running about 10 x too slow for where it will need to be in production and number or daily runs required. Additionally the granularity of the result figures will need to be improved down to desk possibly book level at some stage, the code I've been given is basically a prototype which is used by business units in a semi production capacity. The application is currently single threaded so I'll need to make it multi-threaded, may look at System.Threading.ThreadPool or the Microsoft Parallel Extensions library but I'm constrained to .NET 2 on the server at this bank so I may have to consider this guy's port, http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/aforge_parallel.aspx. I am trying my best to get them to upgrade to .NET 3.5 SP1 but it's a major exercise in an organisation of this size and might not be possible in my contract time frames. I've profiled the application using the trial of dotTrace (http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler). What other good profilers exist? Free ones? A lot of the execution time is spent generating uniform random numbers and then translating this to a normally distributed random number. They are using a C# Mersenne twister implementation. I am not sure where they got it or if it's the best way to go about this (or best implementation) to generate the uniform random numbers. Then this is translated to a normally distributed version for use in the calculation (I haven't delved into the translation code yet). Also what is the experience using the following? http://quantlib.org http://www.qlnet.org (C# port of quantlib) or http://www.boost.org Any alternatives you know of? I'm a C# developer so would prefer C#, but a wrapper to C++ shouldn't be a problem, should it? Maybe even faster leveraging the C++ implementations. I am thinking some of these libraries will have the fastest method to directly generate normally distributed random numbers, without the translation step. Also they may have some other functions that will be helpful in the subsequent calculations. Also the computer this is on is a quad core Opteron 275, 8 GB memory but Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 32 bit. Should I advise them to upgrade to a 64 bit OS? Any links to articles supporting this decision would really be appreciated. Anyway, any advice and help you may have is really appreciated.

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• How to best design a date/geographic proximity query on GAE?

  - by Dane

  Hi all, I'm building a directory for finding athletic tournaments on GAE with web2py and a Flex front end. The user selects a location, a radius, and a maximum date from a set of choices. I have a basic version of this query implemented, but it's inefficient and slow. One way I know I can improve it is by condensing the many individual queries I'm using to assemble the objects into bulk queries. I just learned that was possible. But I'm also thinking about a more extensive redesign that utilizes memcache. The main problem is that I can't query the datastore by location because GAE won't allow multiple numerical comparison statements (<,<=,=,) in one query. I'm already using one for date, and I'd need TWO to check both latitude and longitude, so it's a no go. Currently, my algorithm looks like this: 1.) Query by date and select 2.) Use destination function from geopy's distance module to find the max and min latitude and longitudes for supplied distance 3.) Loop through results and remove all with lat/lng outside max/min 4.) Loop through again and use distance function to check exact distance, because step 2 will include some areas outside the radius. Remove results outside supplied distance (is this 2/3/4 combination inefficent?) 5.) Assemble many-to-many lists and attach to objects (this is where I need to switch to bulk operations) 6.) Return to client Here's my plan for using memcache.. let me know if I'm way out in left field on this as I have no prior experience with memcache or server caching in general. -Keep a list in the cache filled with "geo objects" that represent all my data. These have five properties: latitude, longitude, event_id, event_type (in anticipation of expanding beyond tournaments), and start_date. This list will be sorted by date. -Also keep a dict of pointers in the cache which represent the start and end indices in the cache for all the date ranges my app uses (next week, 2 weeks, month, 3 months, 6 months, year, 2 years). -Have a scheduled task that updates the pointers daily at 12am. -Add new inserts to the cache as well as the datastore; update pointers. Using this design, the algorithm would now look like: 1.) Use pointers to slice off appropriate chunk of list based on supplied date. 2-4.) Same as above algorithm, except with geo objects 5.) Use bulk operation to select full tournaments using remaining geo objects' event_ids 6.) Assemble many-to-manys 7.) Return to client Thoughts on this approach? Many thanks for reading and any advice you can give. -Dane

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