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• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• MapRedux - PowerShell and Big Data

  - by Dittenhafer Solutions

  MapRedux – #PowerShell and #Big Data Have you been hearing about “big data”, “map reduce” and other large scale computing terms over the past couple of years and been curious to dig into more detail? Have you read some of the Apache Hadoop online documentation and unfortunately concluded that it wasn't feasible to setup a “test” hadoop environment on your machine? More recently, I have read about some of Microsoft’s work to enable Hadoop on the Azure cloud. Being a "Microsoft"-leaning technologist, I am more inclinded to be successful with experimentation when on the Windows platform. Of course, it is not that I am "religious" about one set of technologies other another, but rather more experienced. Anyway, within the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about PowerShell a bit more as the 2012 PowerShell Scripting Games approach and it occured to me that PowerShell's support for Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and some other inherent features of PowerShell might lend themselves particularly well to a simple implementation of the MapReduce framework. I fired up my PowerShell ISE and started writing just to see where it would take me. Quite simply, the ScriptBlock feature combined with the ability of Invoke-Command to create remote jobs on networked servers provides much of the plumbing of a distributed computing environment. There are some limiting factors of course. Microsoft provided some default settings which prevent PowerShell from taking over a network without administrative approval first. But even with just one adjustment, a given Windows-based machine can become a node in a MapReduce-style distributed computing environment. Ok, so enough introduction. Let's talk about the code. First, any machine that will participate as a remote "node" will need WinRM enabled for remote access, as shown below. This is not exactly practical for hundreds of intended nodes, but for one (or five) machines in a test environment it does just fine. C:> winrm quickconfig WinRM is not set up to receive requests on this machine. The following changes must be made: Set the WinRM service type to auto start. Start the WinRM service. Make these changes [y/n]? y Alternatively, you could take the approach described in the Remotely enable PSRemoting post from the TechNet forum and use PowerShell to create remote scheduled tasks that will call Enable-PSRemoting on each intended node. Invoke-MapRedux Moving on, now that you have one or more remote "nodes" enabled, you can consider the actual Map and Reduce algorithms. Consider the following snippet: $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose Invoke-MapRedux takes an instance of a MapReduceItem which references the Map and Reduce scriptblocks, an array of computer names which are the remote nodes, and the initial data set to be processed. As simple as that, you can start working with concepts of big data and the MapReduce paradigm. Now, how did we get there? I have published the initial version of my PsMapRedux PowerShell Module on GitHub. The PsMapRedux module provides the Invoke-MapRedux function described above. Feel free to browse the underlying code and even contribute to the project! In a later post, I plan to show some of the inner workings of the module, but for now let's move on to how the Map and Reduce functions are defined. Map Both the Map and Reduce functions need to follow a prescribed prototype. The prototype for a Map function in the MapRedux module is as follows. A simple scriptblock that takes one PsObject parameter and returns a hashtable. It is important to note that the PsObject $dataset parameter is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property which offers an array of data to be processed by the Map function. $aMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) # Indicate the job is running on the remote node. Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); # The hashtable to return $list = @{}; # ... Perform the mapping work and prepare the $list hashtable result with your custom PSObject... # ... The $dataset has a single 'Data' property which contains an array of data rows # which is a subset of the originally submitted data set. # Return the hashtable (Key, PSObject) Write-Output $list; } Reduce Likewise, with the Reduce function a simple prototype must be followed which takes a $key and a result $dataset from the MapRedux's partitioning function (which joins the Map results by key). Again, the $dataset is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property as described in the Map section. $aReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) # The hashtable to return $redux = @{}; # Return Write-Output $redux; } All Together Now When everything is put together in a short example script, you implement your Map and Reduce functions, query for some starting data, build the MapReduxItem via New-MapReduxItem and call Invoke-MapRedux to get the process started: # Import the MapRedux and SQL Server providers Import-Module "MapRedux" Import-Module “sqlps” -DisableNameChecking # Query the database for a dataset Set-Location SQLSERVER:\sql\dbserver1\default\databases\myDb $query = "SELECT MyKey, Date, Value1 FROM BigData ORDER BY MyKey"; Write-Host "Query: $query" $dataset = Invoke-SqlCmd -query $query # Build the Map function $MyMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); $list = @{}; foreach($row in $dataset.Data) { # Write-Host ("Key: " + $row.MyKey.ToString()); if($list.ContainsKey($row.MyKey) -eq $true) { $s = $list.Item($row.MyKey); $s.Sum += $row.Value1; $s.Count++; } else { $s = New-Object PSObject; $s | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name MyKey -Value $row.MyKey; $s | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name Sum -Value $row.Value1; $list.Add($row.MyKey, $s); } } Write-Output $list; } $MyReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) $redux = @{}; $count = 0; foreach($s in $dataset.Data) { $sum += $s.Sum; $count += 1; } # Reduce $redux.Add($s.MyKey, $sum / $count); # Return Write-Output $redux; } # Create the item data $Mr = New-MapReduxItem "My Test MapReduce Job" $MyMap $MyReduce # Array of processing nodes... $MyNodes = ("node1", "node2", "node3", "node4", "localhost") # Run the Map Reduce routine... $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose # Show the results Set-Location C:\ $MyMrResults | Out-GridView Conclusion I hope you have seen through this article that PowerShell has a significant infrastructure available for distributed computing. While it does take some code to expose a MapReduce-style framework, much of the work is already done and PowerShell could prove to be the the easiest platform to develop and run big data jobs in your corporate data center, potentially in the Azure cloud, or certainly as an academic excerise at home or school. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on the continuing progress of my Powershell MapRedux module, and thanks for reading! Daniel

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• Best Practices - which domain types should be used to run applications

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains) One question that frequently comes up is "which types of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer in most cases: "only run applications in guest domains", but enhancements to T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the advent of SPARC SuperCluster have made this question more interesting and worth qualifying differently. This article reviews the relevant concepts and provides suggestions on where to deploy applications in a logical domains environment. Review: division of labor and types of domain Oracle VM Server for SPARC offloads many functions from the hypervisor to domains (also called virtual machines). This is a modern alternative to using a "thick" hypervisor that provides all virtualization functions, as in traditional VM designs, This permits a simpler hypervisor design, which enhances reliability, and security. It also reduces single points of failure by assigning responsibilities to multiple system components, which further improves reliability and security. In this architecture, management and I/O functionality are provided within domains. Oracle VM Server for SPARC does this by defining the following types of domain, each with their own roles: Control domain - management control point for the server, used to configure domains and manage resources. It is the first domain to boot on a power-up, is an I/O domain, and is usually a service domain as well. I/O domain - has been assigned physical I/O devices: a PCIe root complex, a PCI device, or a SR-IOV (single-root I/O Virtualization) function. It has native performance and functionality for the devices it owns, unmediated by any virtualization layer. Service domain - provides virtual network and disk devices to guest domains. Guest domain - a domain whose devices are all virtual rather than physical: virtual network and disk devices provided by one or more service domains. In common practice, this is where applications are run. Typical deployment A service domain is generally also an I/O domain: otherwise it wouldn't have access to physical device "backends" to offer to its clients. Similarly, an I/O domain is also typically a service domain in order to leverage the available PCI busses. Control domains must be I/O domains, because they boot up first on the server and require physical I/O. It's typical for the control domain to also be a service domain too so it doesn't "waste" the I/O resources it uses. A simple configuration consists of a control domain, which is also the one I/O and service domain, and some number of guest domains using virtual I/O. In production, customers typically use multiple domains with I/O and service roles to eliminate single points of failure: guest domains have virtual disk and virtual devices provisioned from more than one service domain, so failure of a service domain or I/O path or device doesn't result in an application outage. This is also used for "rolling upgrades" in which service domains are upgraded one at a time while their guests continue to operate without disruption. (It should be noted that resiliency to I/O device failures can also be provided by the single control domain, using multi-path I/O) In this type of deployment, control, I/O, and service domains are used for virtualization infrastructure, while applications run in guest domains. Changing application deployment patterns The above model has been widely and successfully used, but more configuration options are available now. Servers got bigger than the original T2000 class machines with 2 I/O busses, so there is more I/O capacity that can be used for applications. Increased T-series server capacity made it attractive to run more vertical applications, such as databases, with higher resource requirements than the "light" applications originally seen. This made it attractive to run applications in I/O domains so they could get bare-metal native I/O performance. This is leveraged by the SPARC SuperCluster engineered system, announced a year ago at Oracle OpenWorld. In SPARC SuperCluster, I/O domains are used for high performance applications, with native I/O performance for disk and network and optimized access to the Infiniband fabric. Another technical enhancement is the introduction of Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which make it possible to give domains direct connections and native I/O performance for selected I/O devices. A domain with either a DIO or SR-IOV device is an I/O domain. In summary: not all I/O domains own PCI complexes, and there are increasingly more I/O domains that are not service domains. They use their I/O connectivity for performance for their own applications. However, there are some limitations and considerations: at this time, a domain using physical I/O cannot be live-migrated to another server. There is also a need to plan for security and introducing unneeded dependencies: if an I/O domain is also a service domain providing virtual I/O go guests, it has the ability to affect the correct operation of its client guest domains. This is even more relevant for the control domain. where the ldm has to be protected from unauthorized (or even mistaken) use that would affect other domains. As a general rule, running applications in the service domain or the control domain should be avoided. To recap: Guest domains with virtual I/O still provide the greatest operational flexibility, including features like live migration. I/O domains can be used for applications with high performance requirements. This is used to great effect in SPARC SuperCluster and in general T4 deployments. Direct I/O (DIO) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) make this more attractive by giving direct I/O access to more domains. Service domains should in general not be used for applications, because compromised security in the domain, or an outage, can affect other domains that depend on it. This concern can be mitigated by providing guests' their virtual I/O from more than one service domain, so an interruption of service in the service domain does not cause an application outage. The control domain should in general not be used to run applications, for the same reason. SPARC SuperCluster use the control domain for applications, but it is an exception: it's not a general purpose environment; it's an engineered system with specifically configured applications and optimization for optimal performance. These are recommended "best practices" based on conversations with a number of Oracle architects. Keep in mind that "one size does not fit all", so you should evaluate these practices in the context of your own requirements. Summary Higher capacity T-series servers have made it more attractive to use them for applications with high resource requirements. New deployment models permit native I/O performance for demanding applications by running them in I/O domains with direct access to their devices. This is leveraged in SPARC SuperCluster, and can be leveraged in T-series servers to provision high-performance applications running in domains. Carefully planned, this can be used to provide higher performance for critical applications.

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• Alcatel-Lucent: Enterprise 2.0: The Top 5 Things I would Do Over

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  Happy Monday! Does anyone else feel as if the weekend went entirely too quickly? At least for those of us in the United States, we have the 4th of July Holiday next week to look forward to This week on the blog, we are going to focus on "WebCenter by Example" and highlight best practices from customers and partners. I recently came across this article and I think this is a great example of how we can learn from one another when it comes to social collaboration adoption. Do you agree with Jem? What things or best practices have you learned in your organizations?  By Jem Janik, Enterprise community manager, Alcatel-Lucent  Not so long ago, Engage, the Alcatel-Lucent employee social network and collaboration platform, celebrated its third birthday. With more than 25,000 members actively interacting each month, Engage has been a big enough success that it’s been the subject of external articles, and often those of us who helped launch it will go out and speak about what aspects contributed to that success. Hindsight is still 20/20 and what it takes to successfully launch an enterprise 2.0 community is fairly well-known now.  Today I want to tell you what I suspect you really want to know about.  As the enterprise community manager for Engage, after three years in, what are the top 5 things I wish we (and I mostly mean me) could do over? #5 Define your analytics solution from the start There is so much to do when you launch a community and initially growing it without complete chaos is quite a task.  It doesn’t take too long to get to a point where you want to focus your continued efforts in growing company collaboration.  Do people truly talk across regional boundaries or have we shifted siloed conversations to a new platform.  Is there one organization that doesn’t interact with another? If you are lucky you’ll have someone in your community team well versed in the world of databases and SQL queries, but it takes time to figure out what backend analytics data actually means. Professional support can be expensive and it may be hard to justify later as it typically has the community manager as the only main customer.  Figure out what you think you’ll want to know and how to get it early on. The sooner the better even if it doesn’t seem that critical at the time. #4 Lobbies guide you to the right places One piece of feedback that comes up more and more as we keep growing Engage is it’s hard to find stuff, or new people are not sure where to start. Something we’re doing now is defining some general topic areas of interest to be like “lobbies” into the platform and some common hashtags to go with them. I liken this to walking into a large medical or professional building for the first time.  There are hundreds of offices, and you look to a sign in the lobby to get guided to the right place for you.  We’re building that sign for members now, but again we missed the boat as the majority of the company has had their initial Engage experience. #3 Clean up, clean up, clean up Knowledge work and folksonomies are messy! The day we opened the doors to Engage I would have said we should keep everything ever created in Engage with an argument that it was a window into our collective knowledge so nothing should go.  Well, 6000+ groups and 200,000+ pieces of content later, I’ve changed my mind.  As previously mentioned, with too much “stuff” the system can be overwhelming to new members and it makes it harder to get what you’re looking for.   Do we need that help document about a tool we no longer have? NO!  Do we need that group that had 1 document and 2 discussions in the last two years? NO! Should we only have one group about a given topic instead of 4?  YES! Last fall, Engage defined a cleanup process for groups not used for a long time.  We also formed a volunteer cleaning army who are extra eyes on the hunt for “stuff” that should be updated, merged, or deleted.  It’s better late than never, but in line with what’s becoming a theme I wish these efforts had started earlier. #2 Communications & local community management One of the most important aspects of my job is to make sure people who should be talking to each other are actually doing it.  Connecting people to the other people they should know, the groups they should join, a piece of content that shouldn’t be missed.   I have worked both inside and outside of communications teams, and they are the best informed people in your company.  They know when something big is coming, how it impacts employees, how it fits with strategy, who else knows more, etc.  Having communications professionals who are power users can help scale up community management because they are already so well connected.  They also need to have the platform skills to pay attention without suffering email overload, how to grab someone’s attention, etc.  I wish I’d had figured this out much earlier.  If I had I would have groomed more communications colleagues into advocates and power members right at the start. #1 Grooming advocates vs. natural advocates I’ve just alluded to this above already. The very best advocates are those who naturally embrace your platform and automatically start to see new ways to work within it.  Those advocates seem to come out of the woodwork naturally since some of them are early adopters.  Not surprisingly, our best advocates today are those same people who were willing to come kick the tires when the community was completely empty.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get a global spread of those natural advocates.  I did ask around when we first launched for other people who might be good candidates, but didn’t push too hard as there were so many other things to get ready.  That was a mistake.  If I could get a redo I would have formally asked for people to be assigned where there were gaps and groomed them into an advocate.  Today as we find new advocates to fill the gaps, people are hesitant as the initial set has three years of practice are ahead of the curve power members; it definitely would have been easier earlier on. As fairly early adopters to corporate scale enterprise collaboration, there hasn’t been a roadmap to follow as we’ve grown Engage, which is part of the fun! It’s clear a lot of issues are more easily tackled the earlier you identify and begin to correct them, and I’ve identified the main five I wish I could redo.  In the spirit of collaboration, I hope someone else learns from my mistakes! View the original article by Jem here. 

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• BI Applications overview

  - by sv744

  Welcome to Oracle BI applications blog! This blog will talk about various features, general roadmap, description of functionality and implementation steps related to Oracle BI applications. In the first post we start with an overview of the BI apps and will delve deeper into some of the topics below in the upcoming weeks and months. If there are other topics you would like us to talk about, pl feel free to provide feedback on that. The Oracle BI applications are a set of pre-built applications that enable pervasive BI by providing role-based insight for each functional area, including sales, service, marketing, contact center, finance, supplier/supply chain, HR/workforce, and executive management. For example, Sales Analytics includes role-based applications for sales executives, sales management, as well as front-line sales reps, each of whom have different needs. The applications integrate and transform data from a range of enterprise sources—including Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and others—into actionable intelligence for each business function and user role. This blog  starts with the key benefits and characteristics of Oracle BI applications. In a series of subsequent blogs, each of these points will be explained in detail. Why BI apps? Demonstrate the value of BI to a business user, show reports / dashboards / model that can answer their business questions as part of the sales cycle. Demonstrate technical feasibility of BI project and significantly lower risk and improve success Build Vs Buy benefit Don’t have to start with a blank sheet of paper. Help consolidate disparate systems Data integration in M&A situations Insulate BI consumers from changes in the OLTP Present OLTP data and highlight issues of poor data / missing data – and improve data quality and accuracy Prebuilt Integrations BI apps support prebuilt integrations against leading ERP sources: Fusion Applications, E- Business Suite, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, SAP Co-developed with inputs from functional experts in BI and Applications teams. Out of the box dimensional model to source model mappings Multi source and Multi Instance support Rich Data Model    BI apps have a very rich dimensionsal data model built over 10 years that incorporates best practises from BI modeling perspective as well as reflect the source system complexities  Thanks for reading a long post, and be on the lookout for future posts.  We will look forward to your valuable feedback on these topics as well as suggestions on what other topics would you like us to cover. I Conformed dimensional model across all business subject areas allows cross functional reporting, e.g. customer / supplier 360 Over 360 fact tables across 7 product areas CRM – 145, SCM – 47, Financials – 28, Procurement – 20, HCM – 27, Projects – 18, Campus Solutions – 21, PLM - 56 Supported by 300 physical dimensions Support for extensive calendars; Gregorian, enterprise and ledger based Conformed data model and metrics for real time vs warehouse based reporting  Multi-tenant enabled Extensive BI related transformations BI apps ETL and data integration support various transformations required for dimensional models and reporting requirements. All these have been distilled into common patterns and abstracted logic which can be readily reused across different modules Slowly Changing Dimension support Hierarchy flattening support Row / Column Hybrid Hierarchy Flattening As Is vs. As Was hierarchy support Currency Conversion :-  Support for 3 corporate, CRM, ledger and transaction currencies UOM conversion Internationalization / Localization Dynamic Data translations Code standardization (Domains) Historical Snapshots Cycle and process lifecycle computations Balance Facts Equalization of GL accounting chartfields/segments Standardized values for categorizing GL accounts Reconciliation between GL and subledgers to track accounted/transferred/posted transactions to GL Materialization of data only available through costly and complex APIs e.g. Fusion Payroll, EBS / Fusion Accruals Complex event Interpretation of source data – E.g. o    What constitutes a transfer o    Deriving supervisors via position hierarchy o    Deriving primary assignment in PSFT o    Categorizing and transposition to measures of Payroll Balances to specific metrics to support side by side comparison of measures of for example Fixed Salary, Variable Salary, Tax, Bonus, Overtime Payments. o    Counting of Events – E.g. converting events to fact counters so that for example the number of hires can easily be added up and compared alongside the total transfers and terminations. Multi pass processing of multiple sources e.g. headcount, salary, promotion, performance to allow side to side comparison. Adding value to data to aid analysis through banding, additional domain classifications and groupings to allow higher level analytical reporting and data discovery Calculation of complex measures examples: o    COGs, DSO, DPO, Inventory turns  etc o    Transfers within a Hierarchy or out of / into a hierarchy relative to view point in hierarchy. Configurability and Extensibility support  BI apps offer support for extensibility for various entities as automated extensibility or part of extension methodology Key Flex fields and Descriptive Flex support  Extensible attribute support (JDE)  Conformed Domains ETL Architecture BI apps offer a modular adapter architecture which allows support of multiple product lines into a single conformed model Multi Source Multi Technology Orchestration – creates load plan taking into account task dependencies and customers deployment to generate a plan based on a customers of multiple complex etl tasks Plan optimization allowing parallel ETL tasks Oracle: Bit map indexes and partition management High availability support    Follow the sun support. TCO BI apps support several utilities / capabilities that help with overall total cost of ownership and ensure a rapid implementation Improved cost of ownership – lower cost to deploy On-going support for new versions of the source application Task based setups flows Data Lineage Functional setup performed in Web UI by Functional person Configuration Test to Production support Security BI apps support both data and object security enabling implementations to quickly configure the application as per the reporting security needs Fine grain object security at report / dashboard and presentation catalog level Data Security integration with source systems  Extensible to support external data security rules Extensive Set of KPIs Over 7000 base and derived metrics across all modules Time series calculations (YoY, % growth etc) Common Currency and UOM reporting Cross subject area KPIs (analyzing HR vs GL data, drill from GL to AP/AR, etc) Prebuilt reports and dashboards 3000+ prebuilt reports supporting a large number of industries Hundreds of role based dashboards Dynamic currency conversion at dashboard level Highly tuned Performance The BI apps have been tuned over the years for both a very performant ETL and dashboard performance. The applications use best practises and advanced database features to enable the best possible performance. Optimized data model for BI and analytic queries Prebuilt aggregates& the ability for customers to create their own aggregates easily on warehouse facts allows for scalable end user performance Incremental extracts and loads Incremental Aggregate build Automatic table index and statistics management Parallel ETL loads Source system deletes handling Low latency extract with Golden Gate Micro ETL support Bitmap Indexes Partitioning support Modularized deployment, start small and add other subject areas seamlessly Source Specfic Staging and Real Time Schema Support for source specific operational reporting schema for EBS, PSFT, Siebel and JDE Application Integrations The BI apps also allow for integration with source systems as well as other applications that provide value add through BI and enable BI consumption during operational decision making Embedded dashboards for Fusion, EBS and Siebel applications Action Link support Marketing Segmentation Sales Predictor Dashboard Territory Management External Integrations The BI apps data integration choices include support for loading extenral data External data enrichment choices : UNSPSC, Item class etc. Extensible Spend Classification Broad Deployment Choices Exalytics support Databases :  Oracle, Exadata, Teradata, DB2, MSSQL ETL tool of choice : ODI (coming), Informatica Extensible and Customizable Extensible architecture and Methodology to add custom and external content Upgradable across releases

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• Metrics - A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (or 'Why you're not clever enough to interpret metrics data')

  - by Jason Crease

  At RedGate Software, I work on a .NET obfuscator  called SmartAssembly.  Various features of it use a database to store various things (exception reports, name-mappings, etc.) The user is given the option of using either a SQL-Server database (which requires them to have Microsoft SQL Server), or a Microsoft Access MDB file (which requires nothing). MDB is the default option, but power-users soon switch to using a SQL Server database because it offers better performance and data-sharing. In the fashionable spirit of optimization and metrics, an obvious product-management question is 'Which is the most popular? SQL Server or MDB?' We've collected data about this fact, using our 'Feature-Usage-Reporting' technology (available as part of SmartAssembly) and more recently our 'Application Metrics' technology: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 28 19.0 8115 8115 MDB 114 77.6 1449 1449 (As a disclaimer, please note than SmartAssembly has far more than 132 users . This data is just a selection of one build) So, it would appear that SQL-Server is used by fewer users, but more often. Great. But here's why these numbers are useless to me: Only the original developers understand the data What does a single 'usage' of 'MDB' mean? Does this happen once per run? Once per option change? On clicking the 'Obfuscate Now' button? When running the command-line version or just from the UI version? Each question could skew the data 10-fold either way, and the answers only known by the developer that instrumented the application in the first place. In other words, only the original developer can interpret the data - product-managers cannot interpret the data unaided. Most of the data is from uninterested users About half of people who download and run a free-trial from the internet quit it almost immediately. Only a small fraction use it sufficiently to make informed choices. Since the MDB option is the default one, we don't know how many of those 114 were people CHOOSING to use the MDB, or how many were JUST HAPPENING to use this MDB default for their 20-second trial. This is a problem we see across all our metrics: Are people are using X because it's the default or are they using X because they want to use X? We need to segment the data further - asking what percentage of each percentage meet our criteria for an 'established user' or 'informed user'. You end up spending hours writing sophisticated and dubious SQL queries to segment the data further. Not fun. You can't find out why they used this feature Metrics can answer the when and what, but not the why. Why did people use feature X? If you're anything like me, you often click on random buttons in unfamiliar applications just to explore the feature-set. If we listened uncritically to metrics at RedGate, we would eliminate the most-important and more-complex features which people actually buy the software for, leaving just big buttons on the main page and the About-Box. "Ah, that's interesting!" rather than "Ah, that's actionable!" People do love data. Did you know you eat 1201 chickens in a lifetime? But just 4 cows? Interesting, but useless. Often metrics give you a nice number: '5.8% of users have 3 or more monitors' . But unless the statistic is both SUPRISING and ACTIONABLE, it's useless. Most metrics are collected, reviewed with lots of cooing. and then forgotten. Unless a piece-of-data could change things, it's useless collecting it. People get obsessed with significance levels The first things that lots of people do with this data is do a t-test to get a significance level ("Hey! We know with 99.64% confidence that people prefer SQL Server to MDBs!") Believe me: other causes of error/misinterpretation in your data are FAR more significant than your t-test could ever comprehend. Confirmation bias prevents objectivity If the data appears to match our instinct, we feel satisfied and move on. If it doesn't, we suspect the data and dig deeper, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of segmentation and filtering until we give-up and move-on. Data is only useful if it can change our preconceptions. Do you trust this dodgy data more than your own understanding, knowledge and intelligence?  I don't. There's always multiple plausible ways to interpret/action any data Let's say we segment the above data, and get this data: Post-trial users (i.e. those using a paid version after the 14-day free-trial is over): Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 13 9.0 1115 1115 MDB 5 4.2 449 449 Trial users: Parameter Number of users % of total users Number of sessions Number of usages SQL Server 15 10.0 7000 7000 MDB 114 77.6 1000 1000 How do you interpret this data? It's one of: Mostly SQL Server users buy our software. People who can't afford SQL Server tend to be unable to afford or unwilling to buy our software. Therefore, ditch MDB-support. Our MDB support is so poor and buggy that our massive MDB user-base doesn't buy it.  Therefore, spend loads of money improving it, and think about ditching SQL-Server support. People 'graduate' naturally from MDB to SQL Server as they use the software more. Things are fine the way they are. We're marketing the tool wrong. The large number of MDB users represent uninformed downloaders. Tell marketing to aggressively target SQL Server users. To choose an interpretation you need to segment again. And again. And again, and again. Opting-out is correlated with feature-usage Metrics tends to be opt-in. This skews the data even further. Between 5% and 30% of people choose to opt-in to metrics (often called 'customer improvement program' or something like that). Casual trial-users who are uninterested in your product or company are less likely to opt-in. This group is probably also likely to be MDB users. How much does this skew your data by? Who knows? It's not all doom and gloom. There are some things metrics can answer well. Environment facts. How many people have 3 monitors? Have Windows 7? Have .NET 4 installed? Have Japanese Windows? Minor optimizations.  Is the text-box big enough for average user-input? Performance data. How long does our app take to start? How many databases does the average user have on their server? As you can see, questions about who-the-user-is rather than what-the-user-does are easier to answer and action. Conclusion Use SmartAssembly. If not for the metrics (called 'Feature-Usage-Reporting'), then at least for the obfuscation/error-reporting. Data raises more questions than it answers. Questions about environment are the easiest to answer.

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• Blogging locally and globally–my experience

  - by DigiMortal

  In Baltic MVP Summit 2011 there was discussion about having two blogs - one for local and another for global audience – and how to publish once written information in these blogs. There are many ways how to optimize your blogging activities if you have more than one audience and here you can find my experiences, best practices and advices about this topic. My two blogs I have to working blogs: this one here technology and programming blog for local market My local blog is almost five years old and it makes it one of the oldest company blogs in Estonia. It is still active and I write there as much as I have time for it. This blog here is active since September 2007, so it is about 3.5 years old right now. Both of these blogs are  my major hits in my MVP carrier and they have very good web statistics too. My local blog My local blog is about programming, web and technology. It has way wider target audience then this blog here has. By example, in my local blog I blog also about local events, cool new concept phones, different webs providing some interesting services etc. But local guys can find there also my postings about how to solve one or another programming problem and postings about Microsoft technologies I am playing with. This far my local blog has a lot of readers for such a small country that Estonia is. This blog has made me a lot of cool contacts and I have had there a lot of interesting discussions about different technical topics. Why I started this blog? Living in small country is different than living in big country. In small country you have less people and therefore smaller audience so you have to target more than one technical topic to find enough readers. In a same time you are still interested in your main topics and you want to reach to more people who are sharing same interests with you. Practically one day y will grow out from local market and you go global. This is how this blog was born. Was it worth to create, promote and mess with it? Every second I have put on my time to this blog has been worth of it. Thanks to this blog I have found new good friends and without them I think it is more boring to work on different problems and solutions. Defining target audiences One thing you should always do when having more than one blog is defining target audiences. If you are just technomaniac interested in sharing your stuff and make some new friends and have something to write to your MVP nomination form then you don’t have to go through complex targeting process. You can do it simple way and same effectively. Here is how I defined target audiences to my blogs: local blog – reader of my local blog is IT professional, software developer, technology innovator or just some guy who is interested in technology,   this blog – reader of this blog is experienced professional software developer who works on Microsoft technologies or software developer who is open minded and open to new technologies and interesting solutions to development problems. You can see how local blog – due to small market with less people – has wider definition for audience while this blog is heavily targeted to Microsoft technologies and specially to software development. On practical side these decisions are also made well I think because it is very hard to build up popular common IT blog. On global level it is better to target some specific niche and find readers who are professionals on your favorite topics. Thanks to this blog I have found new friends who are professional developers and I am very happy about all the discussions I have had with them. Publishing content to different blogs My local blog and this blog have some overlapping topics like .NET, databases and SEO. Due to this overlapping there is question: when I write posting to my local blog then should I have to publish same thing in my global blog? And if I write something to my global blog then should I publish same thing also in my local blog? Well, it really depends on the definition of your target audiences. If they match then of course it is good idea to translate you post and publish it also to another blog. But if you have different audiences then you may need to modify your posting before publishing it. The questions you have to answer are: is target audience interested in this topic? is target audience expecting more specific and deeper handling of this topic or are they expecting more general handling of topic? is the problem you are discussing actual for target audience or not? You have to answer these questions and after that make your decision. If you need to modify your original posting then take some time and do it. Provide quality to all your readers because they will respect you if you respect them. Cross-posting and referencing It is tempting to save time that preparing some blog post takes and if you have are done with posting in one blog it may seem like good idea to make short posting to another blog and add reference to first one where topic is discussed longer. Well, don’t do it – all your readers expect good quality content from you and jumping from one blog post to another is disturbing for them. Of course, there is problem with differences between target audiences. You may have wider target audience and some people may be interested in more specific handling of topic. In this case feel free to refer your blog you are writing in english. This is not working very well in opposite direction because almost all my global blog readers understand english but not estonian. By example, estonian language is complex one and online translating tools make very poor translations from estonian language. This is why I don’t even plan to publish postings here that refer to my local blog for more information. I am keeping these two blogs as two different worlds and if there is posting that fits well to both blogs I will write my posting to one blog and then answer previous three questions before posting same thing to another blog. Conclusion Growing out of your local market is not anything mysterious if you are living in small country. As it is harder to find people there who are interested in same topics with you then sooner or later you will start finding these new contacts from global audience. Global audience is bigger and to be visible there you must provide high quality content to your audience. It is something you will learn over time and you will learn every day something new when you are posting to your global blog. You may ask: if global blog is much more complex thing to do then is it worth to do at all? My answer is: yes, do it for sure. It is not easy thing to do when you start but if you work on your global blog and improve it over time you will get over all obstacles pretty soon. Just don’t forget one thing – content is king and your readers expect high quality from you.

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• Let your Signature Experience drive IT-decision making

  - by Tania Le Voi

  Today’s CIO job description:  ‘’Align IT infrastructure and solutions with business goals and objectives ; AND while doing so reduce costs; BUT ALSO, be innovative, ensure the architectures are adaptable and agile as we need to act today on the changes that we may request tomorrow.”   Sound like an unachievable request? The fact is, reality dictates that CIO’s are put under this type of pressure to deliver more with less. In a past career phase I spent a few years as an IT Relationship Manager for a large Insurance company. This is a role that we see all too infrequently in many of our customers, and it’s a shame.  The purpose of this role was to build a bridge, a relationship between IT and the business. Key to achieving that goal was to ensure the same language was being spoken and more importantly that objectives were commonly understood - hence service and projects were delivered to time, to budget and actually solved the business problems. In reality IT and the business are already married, but the relationship is most often defined as ‘supplier’ of IT rather than a ‘trusted partner’. To deliver business value they need to understand how to work together effectively to attain this next level of partnership. The Business cannot compete if they do not get a new product to market ahead of the competition, or for example act in a timely manner to address a new industry problem such as a legislative change. An even better example is when the Application or Service fails and the Business takes a hit by bad publicity, being trending topics on social media and losing direct revenue from online channels. For this reason alone Business and IT need the alignment of their priorities and deliverables now more than ever! Take a look at Forrester’s recent study that found ‘many IT respondents considering themselves to be trusted partners of the business but their efforts are impaired by the inadequacy of tools and organizations’.  IT Meet the Business; Business Meet IT So what is going on? We talk about aligning the business with IT but the reality is it’s difficult to do. Like any relationship each side has different goals and needs and language can be a barrier; business vs. technology jargon! What if we could translate the needs of both sides into actionable information, backed by data both sides understand, presented in a meaningful way?  Well now we can with the Business-Driven Application Management capabilities in Oracle Enterprise Manager 12cR2! Enterprise Manager’s Business-Driven Application Management capabilities provide the information that IT needs to understand the impact of its decisions on business criteria.  No longer does IT need to be focused solely on speeds and feeds, performance and throughput – now IT can understand IT’s impact on business KPIs like inventory turns, order-to-cash cycle, pipeline-to-forecast, and similar.  Similarly, now the line of business can understand which IT services are most critical for the KPIs they care about. There are a good deal of resources on Oracle Technology Network that describe the functionality of these products, so I won’t’ rehash them here.  What I want to talk about is what you do with these products. What’s next after we meet? Where do you start? Step 1:  Identify the Signature Experience. This is THE business process (or set of processes) that is core to the business, the one that drives the economic engine, the process that a customer recognises the company brand for, reputation, the customer experience, the process that a CEO would state as his number one priority. The crème de la crème of your business! Once you have nailed this it gets easy as Enterprise Manager 12c makes it easy. Step 2:  Map the Signature Experience to underlying IT.  Taking the signature experience, map out the touch points of the components that play a part in ensuring this business transaction is successful end to end, think of it like mapping out a critical path; the applications, middleware, databases and hardware. Use the wealth of Enterprise Manager features such as Systems, Services, Business Application Targets and Business Transaction Management (BTM) to assist you. Adding Real User Experience Insight (RUEI) into the mix will make the end to end customer satisfaction story transparent. Work with the business and define meaningful key performance indicators (KPI’s) and thresholds to enable you to report and action upon. Step 3:  Observe the data over time.  You now have meaningful insight into every step enabling your signature experience and you understand the implication of that experience on your underlying IT.  Watch if for a few months, see what happens and reconvene with your business stakeholders and set clear and measurable targets which can re-define service levels.  Step 4:  Change the information about which you and the business communicate.  It’s amazing what happens when you and the business speak the same language.  You’ll be able to make more informed business and IT decisions. From here IT can identify where/how budget is spent whether on the level of support, performance, capacity, HA, DR, certification etc. IT SLA’s no longer need be focused on metrics such as %availability but structured around business process requirements. The power of this way of thinking doesn’t end here. IT staff get to see and understand how their own role contributes to the business making them accountable for the business service. Take a step further and appraise your staff on the business competencies that are linked to the service availability. For the business, the language barrier is removed by producing targeted reports on the signature experience core to the business and therefore key to the CEO. Chargeback or show back becomes easier to justify as the ‘cost of day per outage’ can be more easily calculated; the business will be able to translate the cost to the business to the cost/value of the underlying IT that supports it. Used this way, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c is a key enabler to a harmonious relationship between the end customer the business and IT to deliver ultimate service and satisfaction. Just engage with the business upfront, make the signature experience visible and let Enterprise Manager 12c do the rest. In the next blog entry we will cover some of the Enterprise Manager features mentioned to enable you to implement this new way of working.  

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• Entity Framework 6: Alpha2 Now Available

  - by ScottGu

  The Entity Framework team recently announced the 2nd alpha release of EF6.   The alpha 2 package is available for download from NuGet. Since this is a pre-release package make sure to select “Include Prereleases” in the NuGet package manager, or execute the following from the package manager console to install it: PM> Install-Package EntityFramework -Pre This week’s alpha release includes a bunch of great improvements in the following areas: Async language support is now available for queries and updates when running on .NET 4.5. Custom conventions now provide the ability to override the default conventions that Code First uses for mapping types, properties, etc. to your database. Multi-tenant migrations allow the same database to be used by multiple contexts with full Code First Migrations support for independently evolving the model backing each context. Using Enumerable.Contains in a LINQ query is now handled much more efficiently by EF and the SQL Server provider resulting greatly improved performance. All features of EF6 (except async) are available on both .NET 4 and .NET 4.5. This includes support for enums and spatial types and the performance improvements that were previously only available when using .NET 4.5. Start-up time for many large models has been dramatically improved thanks to improved view generation performance. Below are some additional details about a few of the improvements above: Async Support .NET 4.5 introduced the Task-Based Asynchronous Pattern that uses the async and await keywords to help make writing asynchronous code easier. EF 6 now supports this pattern. This is great for ASP.NET applications as database calls made through EF can now be processed asynchronously – avoiding any blocking of worker threads. This can increase scalability on the server by allowing more requests to be processed while waiting for the database to respond. The following code shows an MVC controller that is querying a database for a list of location entities:     public class HomeController : Controller     {         LocationContext db = new LocationContext();           public async Task<ActionResult> Index()         {             var locations = await db.Locations.ToListAsync();               return View(locations);         }     } Notice above the call to the new ToListAsync method with the await keyword. When the web server reaches this code it initiates the database request, but rather than blocking while waiting for the results to come back, the thread that is processing the request returns to the thread pool, allowing ASP.NET to process another incoming request with the same thread. In other words, a thread is only consumed when there is actual processing work to do, allowing the web server to handle more concurrent requests with the same resources. A more detailed walkthrough covering async in EF is available with additional information and examples. Also a walkthrough is available showing how to use async in an ASP.NET MVC application. Custom Conventions When working with EF Code First, the default behavior is to map .NET classes to tables using a set of conventions baked into EF. For example, Code First will detect properties that end with “ID” and configure them automatically as primary keys. However, sometimes you cannot or do not want to follow those conventions and would rather provide your own. For example, maybe your primary key properties all end in “Key” instead of “Id”. Custom conventions allow the default conventions to be overridden or new conventions to be added so that Code First can map by convention using whatever rules make sense for your project. The following code demonstrates using custom conventions to set the precision of all decimals to 5. As with other Code First configuration, this code is placed in the OnModelCreating method which is overridden on your derived DbContext class:         protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)         {             modelBuilder.Properties<decimal>()                 .Configure(x => x.HasPrecision(5));           } But what if there are a couple of places where a decimal property should have a different precision? Just as with all the existing Code First conventions, this new convention can be overridden for a particular property simply by explicitly configuring that property using either the fluent API or a data annotation. A more detailed description of custom code first conventions is available here. Community Involvement I blogged a while ago about EF being released under an open source license.  Since then a number of community members have made contributions and these are included in EF6 alpha 2. Two examples of community contributions are: AlirezaHaghshenas contributed a change that increases the startup performance of EF for larger models by improving the performance of view generation. The change means that it is less often necessary to use of pre-generated views. UnaiZorrilla contributed the first community feature to EF: the ability to load all Code First configuration classes in an assembly with a single method call like the following: protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder) {        modelBuilder.Configurations            .AddFromAssembly(typeof(LocationContext).Assembly); } This code will find and load all the classes that inherit from EntityTypeConfiguration<T> or ComplexTypeConfiguration<T> in the assembly where LocationContext is defined. This reduces the amount of coupling between the context and Code First configuration classes, and is also a very convenient shortcut for large models. Other upcoming features coming in EF 6 Lots of information about the development of EF6 can be found on the EF CodePlex site, including a roadmap showing the other features that are planned for EF6. One of of the nice upcoming features is connection resiliency, which will automate the process of retying database operations on transient failures common in cloud environments and with databases such as the Windows Azure SQL Database. Another often requested feature that will be included in EF6 is the ability to map stored procedures to query and update operations on entities when using Code First. Summary EF6 is the first open source release of Entity Framework being developed in CodePlex. The alpha 2 preview release of EF6 is now available on NuGet, and contains some really great features for you to try. The EF team are always looking for feedback from developers - especially on the new features such as custom Code First conventions and async support. To provide feedback you can post a comment on the EF6 alpha 2 announcement post, start a discussion or file a bug on the CodePlex site. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• SSIS - Range lookups

  - by Repieter

    When developing an ETL solution in SSIS we sometimes need to do range lookups in SSIS. Several solutions for this can be found on the internet, but now we have built another solution which I would like to share, since it's pretty easy to implement and the performance is fast.   You can download the sample package to see how it works. Make sure you have the AdventureWorks2008R2 and AdventureWorksDW2008R2 databases installed. (Apologies for the layout of this blog, I don't do this too often :))   To give a little bit more information about the example, this is basically what is does: we load a facttable and do an SCD type 2 lookup operation of the Product dimension. This is done with a script component.   First we query the Data warehouse to create the lookup dataset. The query that is used for that is:   SELECT     [ProductKey]     ,[ProductAlternateKey]     ,[StartDate]     ,ISNULL([EndDate], '9999-01-01') AS EndDate FROM [DimProduct]     The output of this query is stored in a DataTable:     string lookupQuery = @"                         SELECT                             [ProductKey]                             ,[ProductAlternateKey]                             ,[StartDate]                             ,ISNULL([EndDate], '9999-01-01') AS EndDate                         FROM [DimProduct]";           OleDbCommand oleDbCommand = new OleDbCommand(lookupQuery, _oleDbConnection);         OleDbDataAdapter adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter(oleDbCommand);           _dataTable = new DataTable();         adapter.Fill(_dataTable);     Now that the dimension data is stored in the DataTable we use the following method to do the actual lookup:   public int RangeLookup(string businessKey, DateTime lookupDate)     {         // set default return value (Unknown)         int result = -1;           DataRow[] filteredRows;         filteredRows = _dataTable.Select(string.Format("ProductAlternateKey = '{0}'", businessKey));           for (int i = 0; i < filteredRows.Length; i++)         {             // check if the lookupdate is found between the startdate and enddate of any of the records             if (lookupDate >= (DateTime)filteredRows[i][2] && lookupDate < (DateTime)filteredRows[i][3])             {                 result = (filteredRows[i][0] == null) ? -1 : (int)filteredRows[i][0];                 break;             }         }           filteredRows = null;           return result;     }       This method is executed for every row that passes the script component. This is implemented in the ProcessInputRow method   public override void Input0_ProcessInputRow(Input0Buffer Row)     {         // Perform the lookup operation on the current row and put the value in the Surrogate Key Attribute         Row.ProductKey = RangeLookup(Row.ProductNumber, Row.OrderDate);     }   Now what actually happens?!   1. Every record passes the business key and the orderdate to the RangeLookup method. 2. The DataTable is then filtered on the business key of the current record. The output is stored in a DataRow [] object. 3. We loop over the DataRow[] object to see where the orderdate meets the following expression: (lookupDate >= (DateTime)filteredRows[i][2] && lookupDate < (DateTime)filteredRows[i][3]) 4. When the expression returns true (so where the data is between the Startdate and the EndDate), the surrogate key of the dimension record is returned   We have done some testing with this solution and it works great for us. Hope others can use this example to do their range lookups.

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• Setting up Rails to work with sqlserver

  - by FortunateDuke

  Ok I followed the steps for setting up ruby and rails on my Vista machine and I am having a problem connecting to the database. Contents of database.yml development: adapter: sqlserver database: APPS_SETUP Host: WindowsVT06\SQLEXPRESS Username: se Password: paswd Run rake db:migrate from myapp directory ---------- rake aborted! no such file to load -- deprecated ADO I have dbi 0.4.0 installed and have created the ADO folder in C:\Ruby\lib\ruby\site_ruby\1.8\DBD\ADO I got the ado.rb from the dbi 0.2.2 What else should I be looking at to fix the issue connecting to the database? Please don't tell me to use MySql or Sqlite or Postgres. *UPDATE* I have installed the activerecord-sqlserver-adapter gem from --source=http://gems.rubyonrails.org Still not working. I have verified that I can connect to the database by logging into SQL Management Studio with the credentials. rake db:migrate --trace PS C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myapp> rake db:migrate --trace (in C:/Inetpub/wwwroot/myapp) ** Invoke db:migrate (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute db:migrate rake aborted! no such file to load -- deprecated C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:510:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:355:in `new_constants_in' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:510:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/dbi.rb:48 C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:510:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:355:in `new_constants_in' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:510:in `require' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/requires.rb:7:in `require_library_ or_gem' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/reporting.rb:11:in `silence_warnin gs' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.1.1/lib/active_support/core_ext/kernel/requires.rb:5:in `require_library_ or_gem' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter-1.0.0.9250/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlserver _adapter.rb:29:in `sqlserver_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specificatio n.rb:292:in `send' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specificatio n.rb:292:in `connection=' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specificatio n.rb:260:in `retrieve_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specificatio n.rb:78:in `connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/migration.rb:408:in `initialize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/migration.rb:373:in `new' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/migration.rb:373:in `up' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.1.1/lib/active_record/migration.rb:356:in `migrate' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.1.1/lib/tasks/databases.rake:99 C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:621:in `call' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:621:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:616:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:616:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:582:in `invoke_with_call_chain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:575:in `invoke_with_call_chain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:568:in `invoke' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2031:in `invoke_task' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2009:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2009:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2009:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2048:in `standard_exception_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2003:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:1982:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:2048:in `standard_exception_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/lib/rake.rb:1979:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.2/bin/rake:31 C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19:in `load' C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19 PS C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myapp>

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• Uninitialized constant Encoding with sqlite3-ruby on windows

  - by Ben Scheirman

  On a new machine, installed ruby with the 1-click installer for windows. Installed rails 2.3.2 and all associated gems, then I installed the sqlite3 binaries (into the c:\ruby\bin folder). Lastly I did gem install sqlite3-ruby -v=1.2.3 (which is apparently the latest version that works with windows) This error happens when I run rake db:migrate or when any ActiveRecord object is touched at runtime. The error looks like this: ** Invoke db:migrate (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute db:migrate rake aborted! **uninitialized constant Encoding** <---- Any help resolving this error would be greatly appreciated! Trace: C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:443:in `load_missing_constant' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:80:in `const_missing' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:92:in `const_missing' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-0.0.3/lib/sqlite3/encoding.rb:9:in `find' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-0.0.3/lib/sqlite3/database.rb:69:in `initialize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite3_adapter.rb:13:in `new' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/sqlite3_adapter.rb:13:in `sqlite3_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:in `send' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:in `new_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:245:in `checkout_new_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:188:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:in `loop' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:183:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:98:in `connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:326:in `retrieve_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:123:in `retrieve_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:115:in `connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/migration.rb:435:in `initialize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/migration.rb:400:in `new' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/migration.rb:400:in `up' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.2/lib/active_record/migration.rb:383:in `migrate' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.2/lib/tasks/databases.rake:116 C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:in `call' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:597:in `invoke_with_call_chain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:590:in `invoke_with_call_chain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:583:in `invoke' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2051:in `invoke_task' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exception_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2023:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2001:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exception_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:1998:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/bin/rake:31 C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19:in `load' C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19

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• Android custom ListView unable to click on items

  - by MattC

  So I have a custom ListView object. The list items have two textviews stacked on top of each other, plus a horizontal progress bar that I want to remain hidden until I actually do something. To the far right is a checkbox that I only want to display when the user needs to download updates to their database(s). When I disable the checkbox by setting the visibility to Visibility.GONE, I am able to click on the list items. When the checkbox is visible, I am unable to click on anything in the list except the checkboxes. I've done some searching but haven't found anything relevant to my current situation. I found this question but I'm using an overridden ArrayAdapter since I'm using ArrayLists to contain the list of databases internally. Do I just need to get the LinearLayout view and add an onClickListener like Tom did? I'm not sure. Here's the listview row layout XML: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="?android:attr/listPreferredItemHeight" android:padding="6dip"> <LinearLayout android:orientation="vertical" android:layout_width="0dip" android:layout_weight="1" android:layout_height="fill_parent"> <TextView android:id="@+id/UpdateNameText" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="0dip" android:layout_weight="1" android:textSize="18sp" android:gravity="center_vertical" /> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="0dip" android:layout_weight="1" android:id="@+id/UpdateStatusText" android:singleLine="true" android:ellipsize="marquee" /> <ProgressBar android:id="@+id/UpdateProgress" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:indeterminateOnly="false" android:progressDrawable="@android:drawable/progress_horizontal" android:indeterminateDrawable="@android:drawable/progress_indeterminate_horizontal" android:minHeight="10dip" android:maxHeight="10dip" /> </LinearLayout> <CheckBox android:text="" android:id="@+id/UpdateCheckBox" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> </LinearLayout> And here's the class that extends the ListActivity. Obviously it's still in development so forgive the things that are missing or might be left laying around: import java.util.List; import android.app.ListActivity; import android.content.Context; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.LayoutInflater; import android.view.View; import android.view.ViewGroup; import android.widget.ArrayAdapter; import android.widget.Button; import android.widget.CheckBox; import android.widget.ListView; import android.widget.ProgressBar; import android.widget.TextView; import com.xxxx.android.R; import com.xxxx.android.DAO.AccountManager; import com.xxxx.android.model.UpdateItem; public class UpdateActivity extends ListActivity { AccountManager lookupDb; boolean allSelected; UpdateListAdapter list; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); lookupDb = new AccountManager(this); lookupDb.loadUpdates(); setContentView(R.layout.update); allSelected = false; list = new UpdateListAdapter(this, R.layout.update_row, lookupDb.getUpdateItems()); setListAdapter(list);

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• Rails Rake Error with XAMPP mysql database

  - by edu222

  I have installed XAAMP on my win7 machine and I have the apache server/mysql running on there. I set up rails to work with XAmpp as described here: XAMPP and RAILS This tutorial advises you to add this code to the XAMPP httpd.connf : Listen 3000 LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so ################################# # RUBY SETUP ################################# <virtualHost *:3000> ServerName rails DocumentRoot "c:/xampp/htdocs/FirstProject/public" <Directory "c:/xampp/htdocs/FirstProject/public/"> Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks AllowOverride all Allow from all Order allow,deny AddHandler cgi-script .cgi AddHandler fastcgi-script .fcgi </Directory> </VirtualHost> ################################# # RUBY SETUP ################################# Xampp runs on the default localhost and mysql remains unchanged without a pw. I created a rails app with a mysql database like this: rails -d mysql C:/xampp/htdocs/FirstProject Then I started the ruby script/server from within the FirstProject location The localhost:3000/ shows the classic rails welcome I then ran a basic scaffold command: ruby script/generate scaffold FirstProject name:string email:string <br/> When I run the rake db:migrate command I get the following error: C:\xampp\htdocs\FirstProject>rake db:migrate --trace (in C:/xampp/htdocs/FirstProject) ** Invoke db:migrate (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute db:migrate rake aborted! undefined method `init' for Mysql:Class C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/mysql_adapter.rb:70:in `mysql_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:in `send' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:in `new_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:245:in `checkout_new_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:188:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:in `loop' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:183:in `checkout' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:98:in `connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:326:in `retrieve_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:123:in `retrieve_connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_a dapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:115:in `connection' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb :435:in `initialize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb :400:in `new' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb :400:in `up' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb :383:in `migrate' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/tasks/databases.rake:116 C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:in `call' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:in `execute' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:597:in `invoke_with_call_c hain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:590:in `invoke_with_call_c hain' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:583:in `invoke' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2051:in `invoke_task' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `each' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exceptio n_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2023:in `top_level' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2001:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exceptio n_handling' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:1998:in `run' C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/bin/rake:31 C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19:in `load' C:/Ruby/bin/rake:19 Any idea on how to fix this? Thanks in advance

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• migrating simple rails database to mysql

  - by joseph-misiti

  i am interested in creating a rails app with a mysql database. i am new to rails and am just trying to start creating something simple: rails -d mysql MyMoviesSQL cd MyMoviesSQL script/generate scaffold Movies title:string rating:integer rake db:migrate i am seeing the following error: rake aborted! NoMethodError: undefined method `ord' for 0:Fixnum: SET NAMES 'utf8' if i do a trace: ** Invoke db:migrate (first_time) ** Invoke environment (first_time) ** Execute environment ** Execute db:migrate rake aborted! NoMethodError: undefined method ord' for 0:Fixnum: SET NAMES 'utf8' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:219:inlog' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:323:in execute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:599:inconfigure_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:594:in connect' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:203:ininitialize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:75:in new' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql_adapter.rb:75:inmysql_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:in send' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:223:innew_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:245:in checkout_new_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:188:incheckout' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:in loop' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:184:incheckout' /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:in synchronize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:183:incheckout' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:98:in connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:326:inretrieve_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:123:in retrieve_connection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_specification.rb:115:inconnection' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb:435:in initialize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb:400:innew' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb:400:in up' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-2.3.5/lib/active_record/migration.rb:383:inmigrate' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/tasks/databases.rake:116 /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:in call' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:636:inexecute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:in each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:631:inexecute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:597:in invoke_with_call_chain' /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/monitor.rb:242:insynchronize' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:590:in invoke_with_call_chain' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:583:ininvoke' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2051:in invoke_task' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:intop_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:in each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2029:intop_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in standard_exception_handling' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2023:intop_level' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2001:in run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:instandard_exception_handling' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:1998:in run' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/bin/rake:31 /usr/bin/rake:19:inload' /usr/bin/rake:19 here are my versions: rails - 2.3.5 ruby - 1.8.6 gem list * LOCAL GEMS * actionmailer (2.3.5, 1.3.6) actionpack (2.3.5, 1.13.6) actionwebservice (1.2.6) activerecord (2.3.5, 1.15.6) activeresource (2.3.5) activesupport (2.3.5, 1.4.4) acts_as_ferret (0.4.1) capistrano (2.0.0) cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0) daemons (1.0.9) dbi (0.4.3) deprecated (2.0.1) dnssd (0.6.0) fastthread (1.0.1) fcgi (0.8.7) ferret (0.11.4) gem_plugin (0.2.3) highline (1.2.9) hpricot (0.6) libxml-ruby (0.9.5, 0.3.8.4) mongrel (1.1.4) needle (1.3.0) net-sftp (1.1.0) net-ssh (1.1.2) rack (1.0.1) rails (2.3.5) rake (0.8.7, 0.7.3) RedCloth (3.0.4) ruby-openid (1.1.4) ruby-yadis (0.3.4) rubygems-update (1.3.6) rubynode (0.1.3) sqlite3-ruby (1.2.1) termios (0.9.4) also, if i need to add a patch to FixNum, can someone please tell which file to add the patch to. thanks for your help

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• android database leak found IllegalStateException

  - by saravanan

  04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): Leak found 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): java.lang.IllegalStateException: mPrograms size 1 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.finalize(SQLiteDatabase.java:1668) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.run(Native Method) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: /data/data/com.example.search/databases/rlite.db SQLiteDatabase created and never closed 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.(SQLiteDatabase.java:1694) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:738) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:760) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteDatabase.openOrCreateDatabase(SQLiteDatabase.java:753) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.app.ApplicationContext.openOrCreateDatabase(ApplicationContext.java:473) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.content.ContextWrapper.openOrCreateDatabase(ContextWrapper.java:193) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.database.sqlite.SQLiteOpenHelper.getWritableDatabase(SQLiteOpenHelper.java:98) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.example.search.Database.(Database.java:33) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.example.search.JobDetails.applyJob(JobDetails.java:120) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.example.search.JobDetails.jobdetailsAction(JobDetails.java:98) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.View$1.onClick(View.java:2026) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.View.performClick(View.java:2364) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.View.onTouchEvent(View.java:4179) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.widget.TextView.onTouchEvent(TextView.java:6540) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.View.dispatchTouchEvent(View.java:3709) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:884) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:884) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:884) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:884) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchTouchEvent(ViewGroup.java:884) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.superDispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1659) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow.superDispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1107) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.app.Activity.dispatchTouchEvent(Activity.java:2061) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.dispatchTouchEvent(PhoneWindow.java:1643) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:1691) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:123) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4363) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:860) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:618) 04-20 16:53:39.010: ERROR/Database(419): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) when i read the database show error like this. please do reply me

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• Accessing Oracle DB through SQL Server using OPENROWSET

  - by Ken Paul

  I'm trying to access a large Oracle database through SQL Server using OPENROWSET in client-side Javascript, and not having much luck. Here are the particulars: A SQL Server view that accesses the Oracle database using OPENROWSET works perfectly, so I know I have valid connection string parameters. However, the new requirement is for extremely dynamic Oracle queries that depend on client-side selections, and I haven't been able to get dynamic (or even parameterized) Oracle queries to work from SQL Server views or stored procedures. Client-side access to the SQL Server database works perfectly with dynamic and parameterized queries. I cannot count on clients having any Oracle client software. Therefore, access to the Oracle database has to be through the SQL Server database, using views, stored procedures, or dynamic queries using OPENROWSET. Because the SQL Server database is on a shared server, I'm not allowed to use globally-linked databases. My idea was to define a function that would take my own version of a parameterized Oracle query, make the parameter substitutions, wrap the query in an OPENROWSET, and execute it in SQL Server, returning the resulting recordset. Here's sample code: // db is a global variable containing an ADODB.Connection opened to the SQL Server DB // rs is a global variable containing an ADODB.Recordset . . . ss = "SELECT myfield FROM mytable WHERE {param0} ORDER BY myfield;"; OracleQuery(ss,["somefield='" + somevalue + "'"]); . . . function OracleQuery(sql,params) { var s = sql; var i; for (i = 0; i < params.length; i++) s = s.replace("{param" + i + "}",params[i]); var e = "SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET('MSDAORA','(connect-string-values)';" + "'user';'pass','" + s.split("'").join("''") + "') q"; try { rs.Open("EXEC ('" + e.split("'").join("''") + "')",db); } catch (eobj) { alert("SQL ERROR: " + eobj.description + "\nSQL: " + e); } } The SQL error that I'm getting is Ad hoc access to OLE DB provider 'MSDAORA' has been denied. You must access this provider through a linked server. which makes no sense to me. The Microsoft explanation for this error relates to a registry setting (DisallowAdhocAccess). This is set correctly on my PC, but surely this relates to the DB server and not the client PC, and I would expect that the setting there is correct since the view mentioned above works. One alternative that I've tried is to eliminate the enclosing EXEC in the Open statement: rs.Open(e,db); but this generates the same error. I also tried putting the OPENROWSET in a stored procedure. This works perfectly when executed from within SQL Server Management Studio, but fails with the same error message when the stored procedure is called from Javascript. Is what I'm trying to do possible? If so, can you recommend how to fix my code? Or is a completely different approach necessary? Any hints or related information will be welcome. Thanks in advance.

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• Token replacement

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  Hey, I currently have a system on my website whereby I can put something like "[cfe]" anywhere in the site and, when the page is rendered, it will replace it with the root to the customer front end (same for "[afe]" and admin front end - so in the admin front end I can put "[cfe]/Default.aspx" to link to the homepage on the customer front end. This is in place as I have a development version of the site, then a test and a live version too. All 3 may have different roots to each section (for example the way the website is set up, the root to the admin front end in test is "/test/Administration/", but in live and development it is just "/Administration/"). Which version it is depends on the URL - all my development sites are in a folder called "development", whereas test is in a folder called "test" and any live urls do not contain either of these. There are also 3 different databases - one for each. All 3, obviously, require a different connection string. I also have a string replacement function in place which can change, for example, "[Product:Cards]" to point to the Cards catalogue page. Problem is that for this I go through all the products and do a replacement on "[Product:" & Product.Name() & "]". However I would like to take this further. I would like to pick up these custom strings when the page is rendered so it picks up "[Product:Cards]" and then goes off to find product "Cards" and replaces the string with a link to the Cards page, rather than looping through all the products and doing a replace just on the off chance that there are any replacements to make. One use for this, which I may start using in the future if I can figure out how to do this, is like on Wikipedia where you put the title of the page you want to point to, then a divider (think its a pipe from memory) then the link text. I would like to apply this to the above situation. This way broken links can also be picked up, and reported to admin (a major advantage as they can then locate them and remove the link or add the product / page that it refers to). I would like to take this to the stage where content of entire pages can be rearranged (kinda like web parts, but not as advanced as that). I mean like so you can put [layout type="3columnImageTopRight" image="imageurl"]Content here[/layout]. This will display, as specified, an image in the top right (with padding at the left and bottom) and 3 columns - maybe with the image spanning one or two columns). The imageurl can be specified as another token: maybe like [Image:imagename.gif] or something. This replaces it with the root to the image folder and then the specified filename. I have not really looked into how I am going to split the content into 3 columns yet, but this would be something to look at for my dissertation and then implement after my project deadline at least. Does anyone have any ideas or pointers which could help me with this? Also if this is not strictly token replacement then please point me to what it is, so I can further develop this. Thanks in advance, Regards, Richard Clarke

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• Cyrus on CentOS with sasl / pam / ldap

  - by Oscar

  SASL/PAM/LDAP is driving me crazy... that's what I read a lot when googling for problems in this area, and what I experience myself :-S I'm trying to get Cyrus imap working for virtual hosting on CentOS with this authorisation backend and really don't know what's happening. In saslauthd I configured the LDAP search filter to use, but it looks like pam completely ignores it. Here's what I do for testing (done more tests but all with similar results): [root@testserv ~]# imtest -u [email protected] -a [email protected] WARNING: no hostname supplied, assuming localhost S: * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID STARTTLS] testserv. Cyrus IMAP4 v2.3.7-Invoca-RPM-2.3.7-7.el5_6.4 server ready C: C01 CAPABILITY S: * CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID STARTTLS ACL RIGHTS=kxte QUOTA MAILBOX-REFERRALS NAMESPACE UIDPLUS NO_ATOMIC_RENAME UNSELECT CHILDREN MULTIAPPEND BINARY SORT SORT=MODSEQ THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES ANNOTATEMORE CATENATE CONDSTORE IDLE LISTEXT LIST-SUBSCRIBED X-NETSCAPE URLAUTH S: C01 OK Completed Please enter your password: C: L01 LOGIN [email protected] {6} S: + go ahead C: <omitted> S: L01 NO Login failed: authentication failure Authentication failed. generic failure Security strength factor: 0 C: Q01 LOGOUT * BYE LOGOUT received Q01 OK Completed Connection closed. The LDAP entry does exist (and so does the mailbox in Cyrus): [root@testserv ~]# ldapsearch -WxD cn=Manager,o=mydomain,c=com [email protected] Enter LDAP Password: # extended LDIF # # LDAPv3 # base <> with scope subtree # filter: [email protected] # requesting: ALL # # myuser, accounts, testserv.mydomain.com, mydomain, com dn: uid=myuser,ou=accounts,dc=testserv.mydomain.com,o=mydomain,c=com objectClass: top objectClass: person objectClass: organizationalPerson objectClass: inetOrgPerson objectClass: posixAccount objectClass: shadowAccount uidNumber: 16 uid: myuser gidNumber: 5 givenName: My sn: Name mail: [email protected] cn: My Name userPassword:: dYN5ebB0fXhNRn1pZllhRnJX7Uk= shadowLastChange: 15176 homeDirectory: /dev/null # search result search: 2 result: 0 Success # numResponses: 2 # numEntries: 1 This is what I get in /var/log/messages Aug 2 04:00:11 testserv cyrus/imap[12514]: auxpropfunc error invalid parameter supplied Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv saslauthd[5926]: do_auth : auth failure: [[email protected]] [service=imap] [realm=testserv.mydomain.com] [mech=pam] [reason=PAM auth error] ... /var/adm/auth.log Aug 2 04:00:11 testserv cyrus/imap[12514]: auxpropfunc error invalid parameter supplied Aug 2 04:00:11 testserv cyrus/imap[12514]: _sasl_plugin_load failed on sasl_auxprop_plug_init for plugin: ldapdb Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv saslauthd[5926]: DEBUG: auth_pam: pam_authenticate failed: User not known to the underlying authentication module Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv saslauthd[5926]: do_auth : auth failure: [[email protected]] [service=imap] [realm=testserv.mydomain.com] [mech=pam] [reason=PAM auth error] (AFAIK I can ignore the auxprop msg) ... and /var/log/slapd.log: Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 fd=27 ACCEPT from IP=127.0.0.1:51403 (IP=0.0.0.0:389) Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 op=0 BIND dn="" method=128 Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 op=0 RESULT tag=97 err=0 text= Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 op=1 SRCH base="o=mydomain,c=com" scope=2 deref=0 filter="([email protected])" Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 op=1 SEARCH RESULT tag=101 err=0 nentries=0 text= Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 op=2 UNBIND Aug 2 04:00:19 testserv slapd[5968]: conn=61 fd=27 closed These are the settings in In /etc/imapd.conf: sasl_mech_list: PLAIN LOGIN sasl_pwcheck_method: saslauthd ## sasl_auxprop_plugin: sasldb sasl_auto_transition: no and my sasl config: [root@testserv ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/saslauthd # Directory in which to place saslauthd's listening socket, pid file, and so # on. This directory must already exist. SOCKETDIR=/var/run/saslauthd # Mechanism to use when checking passwords. Run "saslauthd -v" to get a list # of which mechanism your installation was compiled with the ablity to use. MECH=pam # Additional flags to pass to saslauthd on the command line. See saslauthd(8) # for the list of accepted flags. FLAGS="-c -r -O /etc/saslauthd.conf" [root@testserv ~]# cat /etc/saslauthd.conf ldap_servers: ldap://127.0.0.1/ ldap_search_base: dc=%d,o=mydomain,c=com ldap_auth_method: bind #ldap_filter: (|(uid=%u)((&(mail=%u@%d)(accountStatus=active))) ldap_filter: (&(mail=%u@%d)(accountStatus=active)) ldap_debug: 1 ldap_version: 3 The accountStatus=active is not in ldap yet, but that doesn't make a difference since I don't see it in the filter... that's not the reason for the failure. The weird thing is, I do get an error when I rename or remove /etc/saslauthd.conf, but when the file exists it seems happily ignored... The filter in slapd.log seems to be taken from /etc/ldap.conf. Apart from some timers, that only contains: host 127.0.0.1 base o=mydomain,c=com pam_login_attribute mail Outcommenting the pam_login_attribute results in this filter in slapd.log: filter="([email protected])" Pam-imap looks like this: [root@testserv ~]# cat /etc/pam.d/imap auth required pam_ldap.so debug account required pam_ldap.so debug #auth sufficient pam_unix.so likeauth nullok #auth sufficient pam_ldap.so use_first_pass #auth required pam_deny.so #account sufficient pam_unix.so #account sufficient pam_ldap.so The outcommented stuff is because I don't have the cyrus admin user in Ldap; that's a Linux user. That works fine when uncommented, but I still need to play around with that a little and first I wanna get imap working. Finally nsswitch: [root@testserv ~]# cat /etc/nsswitch.conf # # /etc/nsswitch.conf # # An example Name Service Switch config file. This file should be # sorted with the most-used services at the beginning. # # The entry '[NOTFOUND=return]' means that the search for an # entry should stop if the search in the previous entry turned # up nothing. Note that if the search failed due to some other reason # (like no NIS server responding) then the search continues with the # next entry. # # Legal entries are: # # nisplus or nis+ Use NIS+ (NIS version 3) # nis or yp Use NIS (NIS version 2), also called YP # dns Use DNS (Domain Name Service) # files Use the local files # db Use the local database (.db) files # compat Use NIS on compat mode # hesiod Use Hesiod for user lookups # [NOTFOUND=return] Stop searching if not found so far # # To use db, put the "db" in front of "files" for entries you want to be # looked up first in the databases # # Example: #passwd: db files nisplus nis #shadow: db files nisplus nis #group: db files nisplus nis passwd: compat ldap group: compat ldap shadow: compat ldap hosts: files dns bootparams: nisplus [NOTFOUND=return] files ethers: files netmasks: files networks: files protocols: files rpc: files services: files netgroup: nisplus publickey: nisplus automount: files nisplus aliases: files nisplus Any info where to start looking will be greatly appreciated! Thnx in advance

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• Getting an Access 2007 table (.accdb extension) in ArcMap programmatically

  - by Adrian

  I have recently found a script from ArcScripts on how to get an Access table in ArcGIS programmatically and it works well. But this is for Access 2003 (.mdb extension) and earlier. The code is posted below, and I want to know how to modify it for using Access 2007 (.accdb extension) and later databases. Attribute VB_Name = "Access_connect" Sub Open_Access_Connect() 'V. Guissard Jan. 2007 On Error GoTo EH Dim data_source As String Dim pTable As ITable Dim TableName As String Dim pFeatWorkspace As IFeatureWorkspace Dim pMap As IMap Dim mxDoc As IMxDocument Dim pPropset As IPropertySet Dim pStTab As IStandaloneTable Dim pStTabColl As IStandaloneTableCollection Dim pWorkspace As IWorkspace Dim pWorkspaceFact As IWorkspaceFactory Set pPropset = New PropertySet ' Get MDB file name data_source = GetFolder("mdb") ' Connect to the MDB database pPropset.SetProperty "CONNECTSTRING", "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" _ & "Data source=" & data_source & ";User ID=Admin;Password=" Set pWorkspaceFact = New OLEDBWorkspaceFactory Set pWorkspace = pWorkspaceFact.Open(pPropset, 0) Set pFeatWorkspace = pWorkspace ' Get table name TableName = SelectDataSet(pFeatWorkspace, "Table") ' Open the table Set pTable = pFeatWorkspace.OpenTable(TableName) 'Create Table collection and add the table to ArcMap Set mxDoc = ThisDocument Set pMap = mxDoc.FocusMap Set pStTab = New StandaloneTable Set pStTab.Table = pTable Set pStTabColl = pMap pStTabColl.AddStandaloneTable pStTab ' Update ArcMap Source TOC mxDoc.UpdateContents Exit Sub EH: MsgBox "Access connect: " & Err.Number & " " & Err.Description End Sub Public Function GetFolder(Optional aFilter As String) As String ' Open a GUI to let the user select a Folder path name (by default) or : ' Set aFilter = "shp" to get a shapefile name ' Set aFilter = "mdb" to get an MS Access file name ' Return the Folder Path or phath & file name As String ' V. Guissard Jan. 2007 Dim pGxDialog As IGxDialog Dim pFilterCol As IGxObjectFilterCollection Dim pCurrentFilter As IGxObjectFilter Dim pEnumGx As IEnumGxObject Select Case aFilter Case "shp" Set pCurrentFilter = New GxFilterShapefiles aTitle = "Select Shapefile" Case "mdb" Set pCurrentFilter = New GxFilterContainers aTitle = "Select MS Access database" Case Else Set pCurrentFilter = New GxFilterBasicTypes aTitle = "Select Folder" End Select Set pGxDialog = New GxDialog Set pFilterCol = pGxDialog With pFilterCol .AddFilter pCurrentFilter, True End With With pGxDialog .Title = aTitle .ButtonCaption = "Select" End With If Not pGxDialog.DoModalOpen(0, pEnumGx) Then Smp = MsgBox("No selection : Exit", vbCritical) End 'Exit Function 'Exit if user press Cancel End If GetFolder = pEnumGx.Next.FullName End Function Public Function SelectDataSet(pWorkspace As IWorkspace, Optional theDataType As String) As String ' Open a GUI to let the user select a DataSet into a Workspace ' (Table or Request into an MS Access Database or a Geodatabase File) ' Set pWorkspace to the DataSet IWorkspace ' Set theDataType = "Table" to select a Table name of the DataSet ' Return the selected Table or Request Table name As String ' V. Guissard Jan. 2007 Dim aDataset As Boolean Dim boolOK As Boolean Dim DataSetList As New Collection Dim datasetType As Integer Dim n As Integer Dim pDataSetName As IDatasetName Dim pListDlg As IListDialog Dim pEnumDatasetName As IEnumDatasetName ' Set the Dataset Type Select Case theDataType Case "Table" datasetType = 10 Case Else Answ = MsgBox("Need a Dataset Type : Exit", vbCritical, "SelectDataset") End End Select ' Get the Dataset Names included in the workspace Set pEnumDatasetName = pWorkspace.DatasetNames(datasetType) ' Create the Dataset Names List Dialog aDataset = False Set pListDlg = New ListDialog pEnumDatasetName.Reset Set pDataSetName = pEnumDatasetName.Next Do While Not pDataSetName Is Nothing pListDlg.AddString pDataSetName.name DataSetList.Add (pDataSetName.name) Set pDataSetName = pEnumDatasetName.Next aDataset = True Loop ' Open a GUI for the user to select a dataset If aDataset Then boolOK = pListDlg.DoModal("Select a " & theDataType, 0, Application.hwnd) n = pListDlg.choice If (n <> -1) Then SelectDataSet = DataSetList(n + 1) Else Sup = MsgBox("No DataSet selected : EXIT", vbCritical, "SelectDataset") End End If End If End Function Here is the link to the ArcScript: http://arcscripts.esri.com/Data/AS14882.bas PS I know this code is written in VBA and I don't know if a modified version is in VB.NET or whatever else language. Thanks, Adrian

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• Layout does not show up after Activity launch

  - by Peter

  I have an activity which invokes an onItemClick and launches another activity. This activity has a static layout(for testing purposes), but only thing I see is black(I even set the text color to white to check it out). My listener list.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() { public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> arg0, View arg1, int arg2,long arg3) { //create new intent Intent item = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), Item.class); // Close all views before launching logged //item.putExtra("name", ((TextView)arg1).getText()); //item.putExtra("uid", user_id); item.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP); startActivity(item); // Close Login Screen onPause(); } }); My activity is here(not much to do it just launches the layout) public class Item extends Activity{ protected SQLiteDatabase myDB=null; protected String name; protected int uid; TextView yeart,year,itemname,comment,commentt,value,valuet,curr,currt; protected void onStart(Bundle savedInstanceState){ super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.herp); /*name=getIntent().getStringExtra("name"); uid=Integer.parseInt(getIntent().getStringExtra("uid")); itemname=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.itemName);//itemname.setText(name); year=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.itemYear); yeart=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.year); comment=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.itemComments); commentt=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.comments); curr=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.itemcurrent); currt=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.current); value=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.itemValue); valuet=(TextView) findViewById(R.id.value);*/ Database openHelper = new Database(this); myDB = openHelper.getReadableDatabase(); myDB=SQLiteDatabase.openDatabase("data/data/com.example.login2/databases/aeglea", null, SQLiteDatabase.OPEN_READONLY); }} And finally my XML layout <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <TextView android:id="@+id/itemName" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="asdasd" android:gravity="center" android:layout_marginBottom="10px" android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" android:textColor="#fff" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/current" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Current" android:textSize="20dp" android:textStyle="bold" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/itemcurrent" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="asdasd" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/year" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Year" android:textSize="20dp" android:textStyle="bold" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/itemYear" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="asdasd" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/value" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Value" android:textSize="20dp" android:textStyle="bold" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/itemValue" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="TextView" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/comments" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Comments" android:textSize="20dp" android:textStyle="bold" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/itemComments" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="TextView" /> </LinearLayout>

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• My VARCHAR(MAX) field is capping itself at 4000; what gives?

  - by eidylon

  Hello all... I have a table in one of my databases which is a queue of emails. Emails to certain addresses get accumulated into one email, which is done by a sproc. In the sproc, I have a table variable which I use to build the accumulated bodies of the emails, and then loop through to send each email. In my table var I have my body column defined as VARCHAR(MAX), seeing as there could be any number of emails currently accumulated for a given email address. It seems though that even though my column is defined as VARCHAR(MAX) it is behaving as if it were VARCHAR(4000) and is truncating the data going into it, although it does NOT throw any exceptions, it just silently stops concatenating any more data after 4000 characters. The MERGE statement is where it is building the accumulated email body into @EMAILS.BODY, which is the field that is truncating itself at 4000 characters. Below is the code of my sproc... ALTER PROCEDURE [system].[SendAccumulatedEmails] AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON; DECLARE @SENTS BIGINT = 0; DECLARE @ROWS TABLE ( ROWID ROWID, DATED DATETIME, ADDRESS NAME, SUBJECT VARCHAR(1000), BODY VARCHAR(MAX) ) INSERT INTO @ROWS SELECT ROWID, DATED, ADDRESS, SUBJECT, BODY FROM system.EMAILQUEUE WHERE ACCUMULATE = 1 AND SENT IS NULL ORDER BY ADDRESS, DATED DECLARE @EMAILS TABLE ( ADDRESS NAME, ALLIDS VARCHAR(1000), BODY VARCHAR(MAX) ) DECLARE @PRVRID ROWID = NULL, @CURRID ROWID = NULL SELECT @CURRID = MIN(ROWID) FROM @ROWS WHILE @CURRID IS NOT NULL BEGIN MERGE @EMAILS AS DST USING (SELECT * FROM @ROWS WHERE ROWID = @CURRID) AS SRC ON SRC.ADDRESS = DST.ADDRESS WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET DST.ALLIDS = DST.ALLIDS + ', ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,ROWID), DST.BODY = DST.BODY + '<i>'+CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.DATED,101)+' ' +CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.DATED,8) +':</i> <b>'+SRC.SUBJECT+'</b>'+CHAR(13)+SRC.BODY +' (Message ID '+CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.ROWID)+')' +CHAR(13)+CHAR(13) WHEN NOT MATCHED BY TARGET THEN INSERT (ADDRESS, ALLIDS, BODY) VALUES ( SRC.ADDRESS, CONVERT(VARCHAR,ROWID), '<i>'+CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.DATED,101)+' ' +CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.DATED,8)+':</i> <b>' +SRC.SUBJECT+'</b>'+CHAR(13)+SRC.BODY +' (Message ID '+CONVERT(VARCHAR,SRC.ROWID)+')' +CHAR(13)+CHAR(13)); SELECT @PRVRID = @CURRID, @CURRID = NULL SELECT @CURRID = MIN(ROWID) FROM @ROWS WHERE ROWID > @PRVRID END DECLARE @MAILFROM VARCHAR(100) = system.getOption('MAILFROM'), DECLARE @SMTPHST VARCHAR(100) = system.getOption('SMTPSERVER'), DECLARE @SMTPUSR VARCHAR(100) = system.getOption('SMTPUSER'), DECLARE @SMTPPWD VARCHAR(100) = system.getOption('SMTPPASS') DECLARE @ADDRESS NAME, @BODY VARCHAR(MAX), @ADDL VARCHAR(MAX) DECLARE @SUBJECT VARCHAR(1000) = 'Accumulated Emails from LIJSL' DECLARE @PRVID NAME = NULL, @CURID NAME = NULL SELECT @CURID = MIN(ADDRESS) FROM @EMAILS WHILE @CURID IS NOT NULL BEGIN SELECT @ADDRESS = ADDRESS, @BODY = BODY FROM @EMAILS WHERE ADDRESS = @CURID SELECT @BODY = @BODY + 'This is an automated message sent from an unmonitored mailbox.'+CHAR(13)+'Do not reply to this message; your message will not be read.' SELECT @BODY = '<style type="text/css"> * {font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Verdana;} p {margin-top: 10px; padding-top: 10px; border-top: single 1px dimgray;} p:first-child {margin-top: 10px; padding-top: 0px; border-top: none 0px transparent;} </style>' + @BODY exec system.LogIt @SUBJECT, @BODY BEGIN TRY exec system.SendMail @SMTPHST, @SMTPUSR, @SMTPPWD, @MAILFROM, @ADDRESS, NULL, NULL, @SUBJECT, @BODY, 1 END TRY BEGIN CATCH DECLARE @EMSG NVARCHAR(2048) = 'system.EMAILQUEUE.AI:'+ERROR_MESSAGE() SELECT @ADDL = 'TO:'+@ADDRESS+CHAR(13)+'SUBJECT:'+@SUBJECT+CHAR(13)+'BODY:'+@BODY exec system.LogIt @EMSG,@ADDL END CATCH SELECT @PRVID = @CURID, @CURID = NULL SELECT @CURID = MIN(ADDRESS) FROM @EMAILS WHERE ADDRESS > @PRVID END UPDATE system.EMAILQUEUE SET SENT = getdate() FROM system.EMAILQUEUE E, @ROWS R WHERE E.ROWID = R.ROWID END

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• MySQL 5.1.49 freezing every two days

  - by maximus

  Hi all, our mysql system is "freezing" every two days. By "freezing" i mean the following: it doesn't respond to ping we can't login with SSH we don't get any answer from MySQL there is no entry in the error logs! neither from linux neither from MySQL. we have already changed to a completely new hardware, we have the same problem, so it's definitely not a hardware problem. we do not have any other software installed except a firewall (iptables rule) we can restart the server from another server using rsyslog (www.rsyslog.com)(software reset) Could someone help me, by giving me some pointers what could i do to figure out the problem? I have included every detail about our settings. Thank you in advance for your help. Max. Our system parameters and settings: System-Memory: 12GB Processor: Intel 7-920 Quadcore Operating system: Debian 5 (lenny) 64bit MySQL 5.1.49 Databases: (a) a small phpbb forum (b) a 6GB database 3 tables with about 15 million rows my.cnf # # The MySQL database server configuration file. # # You can copy this to one of: # - "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" to set global options, # - "~/.my.cnf" to set user-specific options. # # One can use all long options that the program supports. # Run program with --help to get a list of available options and with # --print-defaults to see which it would actually understand and use. # # For explanations see # http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/server-system-variables.html # This will be passed to all mysql clients # It has been reported that passwords should be enclosed with ticks/quotes # escpecially if they contain "#" chars... # Remember to edit /etc/mysql/debian.cnf when changing the socket location. [client] port = 3306 socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock # Here is entries for some specific programs # The following values assume you have at least 32M ram # This was formally known as [safe_mysqld]. Both versions are currently parsed. [mysqld_safe] socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock nice = 0 [mysqld] # # * Basic Settings # user = mysql pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock port = 3306 basedir = /usr datadir = /var/lib/mysql tmpdir = /tmp language = /usr/share/mysql/english skip-external-locking # # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. bind-address = our-ip-address # # * Fine Tuning # key_buffer = 16M max_allowed_packet = 16M thread_stack = 256K thread_cache_size = 32 max_connections = 300 table_cache = 2048 #thread_concurrency = 4 # Used for InnoDB tables recommended to 50%-80% available memory innodb_buffer_pool_size = 6G # 20MB sometimes larger innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 20M # 8M-16M is good for most situations innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M # Disable XA support because we do not use it innodb-support-xa = 0 # 1 is default wich is 100% secure but 2 offers better performance innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 innodb_flush_method = O_DIRECT #innodb_thread_concurency = 8 # Recommended 64M - 512M depending on server size innodb_log_file_size = 512M # One file per table innodb_file_per_table # # * Query Cache Configuration # query_cache_limit = 1M query_cache_size = 16M #query_cache_type = 1 #query_cache_min_res_unit= 2K #join_buffer_size = 1M # # * Logging and Replication # # Both location gets rotated by the cronjob. # Be aware that this log type is a performance killer. # As of 5.1 you can enable the log at runtime! #general_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log #general_log = 1 # # Error logging goes to syslog. This is a Debian improvement :) # # Here you can see queries with especially long duration log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log long_query_time = 2 log-queries-not-using-indexes # # The following can be used as easy to replay backup logs or for replication. #server-id = 1 log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log # WARNING: Using expire_logs_days without bin_log crashes the server! See README.Debian! expire_logs_days = 10 max_binlog_size = 100M #binlog_do_db = include_database_name #binlog_ignore_db = include_database_name # # InnoDB is enabled by default with a 10MB datafile in /var/lib/mysql/. # Read the manual for more InnoDB related options. There are many! # * InnoDB plugin # As of MySQL 5.1.38, the InnoDB plugin from Oracle is included in the MySQL source code. # It has many improvements and better performances than the built-in InnoDB storage engine. # Please read http://www.innodb.com/products/innodb_plugin/ for more information. # Uncommenting the two following lines to use the InnoDB plugin. ignore_builtin_innodb plugin-load=innodb=ha_innodb_plugin.so # # * Security Features # # Read the manual, too, if you want chroot! # chroot = /var/lib/mysql/ # # For generating SSL certificates I recommend the OpenSSL GUI "tinyca". # # ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/cacert.pem # ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem # ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem [mysqldump] quick quote-names max_allowed_packet = 16M [mysql] #no-auto-rehash # faster start of mysql but no tab completition [isamchk] key_buffer = 16M # # * NDB Cluster # # See /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-*/README.Debian for more information. # # The following configuration is read by the NDB Data Nodes (ndbd processes) # not from the NDB Management Nodes (ndb_mgmd processes). # # [MYSQL_CLUSTER] # ndb-connectstring=127.0.0.1 # # * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file! # !includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/ UPDATE After installing sysstat and configuring it to collect data after every minute i have the following datas. I used sar to generate the following output: The log-file is too big so coudn't enter it here but uploaded to box.net. The link is http://www.box.net/shared/xc6rh7qqob SECOND UPDATE We started a ping command in the background, and that solved the problem. Now the server does work since more then a week. We still don't know what's the problem.

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