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• Register now! Exadata Partner Community Forum in Lisbon, Apr. 13-14

  - by javier.puerta(at)oracle.com

    Oracle PartnerNetwork | Account | Feedback INVITATION ORACLE EMEA EXADATA PARTNER COMMUNITY FORUM 13-14 APRIL 2011, SHERATON HOTEL, LISBON, PORTUGAL THE BEST PLACE TO BE IN 2011 FOR ORACLE EXADATA PARTNERS! Venue & Hotel Accomodation: Sheraton Lisboa Hotel & SpaAddress: Rua Latino Coelho, 1City: LisbonCountry: Portugal Dear Exadata partner, I am delighted to invite you to the first Exadata Partner Community Forum for EMEA partners which will take place in Lisbon, Portugal on 13-14 April, 2011. This event will provide you with the great opportunity to listen to our Oracle Executives, our specialist's keynotes on future sales & product strategy, and also to share sales and implementation experiences with other partners as a key part of the agenda. Do not miss this tremendous learning experience with a complete event starting from the initial phases of the sales cycle to the project implementation, including the following highlights: Update on Oracle's strategy and road map for Exadata Market drivers and business opportunities Selling Exadata: Discovery and qualification process. Accessing Oracle and partners' Proof-of-Concept infrastructure Case studies from partners who have successfully sold and implemented projects and developed a service business around Exadata Exadata OPN enablement and specialization And there's more... On the evening of April 13th you will be treated to a pleasant dinner at the Sheraton Hotel where you will also have another networking opportunity in a relaxing atmosphere, with a beautiful panoramic view of the city of Lisbon. Please view the agenda for more details. Registration: The EMEA Exadata Community Forum is not to be missed so to reserve your place please register here before March 1st. ** There is no registration fee for Oracle partners. Accommodation: The Sheraton Hotel has created a customized hotel registration portal for this event. Please click here for immediate hotel booking & rates. Details are also provided on Registration Event portal. Further information or assistance on venue logistics, please contact Angela Cadran. For other questions, please contact Javier Puerta. Javier Puerta, Core Technology Partner Programs, Oracle EMEA Copyright © 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.All rights reserved. Contact Us | Legal Notices and Terms of Use | Privacy Statement

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• Silverlight Cream for April 08, 2010 -- #834

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, Phil Middlemiss, Yochay Kiriaty, Giorgetti Alessandro, Mike Snow, John Papa, SilverLaw, smartyP, and Pete Brown. Shoutouts: Steve Wortham sent me a link to his RegEx tool that is written in Silverlight... definitely worth a look: Introducing Code Hinting for Regular Expressions Joshua Blake posted his MIX10 materials: MIX10 NUI session sample code From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight MVVM: An (Overly) Simplified Explanation Michael Washington has a tutorial up for getting your arms (and head) around MVVM and Silverlight, and Blend too. A Chrome and Glass Theme - Part 3 Phil Middlemiss has part 3 up of his tutorial series on building an awesome theme for Silverlight... he's styling the textbox and checkbox this time around, and improving the button too Automatic Rotation Support or Automatic Multi-Orientation Layout Support for Windows Phone Yochay Kiriaty is giving up some WP7 goodness with his post on Multi-Orientation Layout Support ... yeah I had to say it twice myself :) good links and all the code in addition to the good blog post Silverlight Navigation Framework: resolve the pages using an IoC container Giorgetti Alessandro has some pretty cool code up as a proof of concept of using an IoC container with the Navigation Framework of Silverlight 4. Silverlight Tip of the Day No. 109 – Attach to Process Debugging Mike Snow is back doing Tips of the Day... and number 109 is showing how to attach the debugger to a running Silverlight app. Silverlight TV 20: Community Driven Development with WCF RIA Services In his latest Silverlight TV episode, John Papa talks with Jeff Handley about RIA Services, and how feedback from the community helped shape the product. ChildWindowMouseScrollResizeBehavior - Silverlight 3 SilverLaw has a new Behavior up at the Expression Gallery that gives you resizing on a ChildWindow using the Mouse Wheel. Creating a Windows Phone 7 Metro Style Pivot Application [Part 3] smartyP has the 3rd and final episode for his WP7 Pivot up, and this one includes not only the source but a video tutorial. Layout Rounding Pete Brown talks about Layout Rounding and it has nothing to do with rounding corners... it has to do with rounding off where your objects get placed pixel-wise ... I've blogged about this seemingly-anti-aliasing more than once... Pete has the real answer Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• IDC Analyst Report Touts Oracle–Accenture Strategic Initiative

  - by kristin.jellison

  Hi there, partners! Oracle Engineered Systems have been getting some love lately, and we want to share it with you! The market intelligence and advisory firm IDC recently released a report lauding Oracle and Accenture’s strategic initiative to route the performance and flexibility of Oracle Engineered Systems to clients. The report, "Oracle and Accenture Strategic Alliance Places Big Bet on Engineered Systems,” by Steve White, reflects a largely positive analysis of the relationship. White notes that the alliance is “one of the largest in the industry.” Under the relationship, Accenture has incorporated Oracle Engineered Systems—including Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle SuperCluster, and Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine—into its leading datacenter transformation consulting services. Together, the two companies have also created bespoke platforms, such as the Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle, which helps clients accelerate deployments on Oracle Fusion Middleware, running Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Oracle Engineered Systems deliver a single, engineered platform—including server to storage and networking. This makes it easier and cheaper for Accenture clients around the world to prepare their datacenters for managing, processing and analyzing the massive amounts of data they (rightly) anticipate seeing in the next decade. The new solutions can help reduce the effort and cost to migrate any vendor database to an Oracle Engineered Systems platform, which can lower the cost of ownership by up to 50 percent. For its part, Accenture has built a team of 300 consultants to implement and increase the flexibility and stability of client datacenters. This move further expands one of the fastest-growing full-service Oracle Enterprise solutions. Over 52,000 Accenture consultants are qualified to implement, upgrade and outsource the Oracle product suite. Accenture is a Diamond-level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN). For Oracle Partners, this update should give you at least two things to walk away with. First, this initiative is showing signs of success. As Marty Cole, group chief executive for Accenture’s Technology growth platform, put it, “We are seeing an increasing number of clients recognizing the value of consolidating their databases and taking advantage of the cost and performance benefits delivered by these solutions.” The pipeline is there—and not just for Accenture. Use this example to show your clients that investments in Oracle Engineered Systems are on the rise. Second, recognize that Oracle Engineered Systems represent one of the biggest platforms for growth that Oracle has to offer partners. As part of the agreement, Accenture is able to provide: Platform Readiness Assessments Platform Implementation App Rationalization Database Rationalization Managed Services These are all enablement opportunities you can offer customers under Oracle’s partner programs —to continue building the value of their investments, and the value of your relationship with Oracle. Take a read through the IDC report. To learn more about the partnership, see this press release. Happy selling! The OPN Communications Team

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• Infinite detail inside Perlin noise procedural mapping

  - by Dave Jellison

  I am very new to game development but I was able to scour the internet to figure out Perlin noise enough to implement a very simple 2D tile infinite procedural world. Here's the question and it's more conceptual than code-based in answer, I think. I understand the concept of "I plug in (x, y) and get back from Perlin noise p" (I'll call it p). P will always be the same value for the same (x, y) (as long as the Perlin algorithm parameters haven't changed, like altering number of octaves, et cetera). What I want to do is be able to zoom into a square and be able to generate smaller squares inside of the already generated overhead tile of terrain. Let's say I have a jungle tile for overhead terrain but I want to zoom in and maybe see a small river tile that would only be a creek and not large enough to be a full "big tile" of water in the overhead. Of course, I want the same net effect as a Perlin equation inside a Perlin equation if that makes sense? (aka. I want two people playing the game with the same settings to get the same terrain and details every time). I can conceptually wrap my head around the large tile being based on an "zoomed out" coordinate leaving enough room to drill into but this approach doesn't make sense in my head (maybe I'm wrong). I'm guessing with this approach my overhead terrain would lose all of the cohesiveness delivered by the Perlin. Imagine I calculate (0, 0) as overhead tile 1 and then to the east of that I plug in (50, 0). OK, great, I now have 49 pixels of detail I could then "drill down" into. The issue I have in my head with this approach (without attempting it) is that there's no guarantee from my Perlin noise that (0,0) would be a good neighbor to (50,0) as they could have wildly different "elevations" or p/resultant values returning from the Perlin equation when I generate the overhead map. I think I can conceive of using the Perlin noise for the overhead tile to then reuse the p value as a seed for the "detail" level of noise once I zoom in. That would ensure my detail Perlin is always the same configuration for (0,0), (1,0), etc. ad nauseam but I'm not sure if there are better approaches out there or if this is a sound approach at all.

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• Entity Framework 4.0: Optimal and horrible SQL

  - by DigiMortal

  Lately I had Entity Framework 4.0 session where I introduced new features of Entity Framework. During session I found out with audience how Entity Framework 4.0 can generate optimized SQL. After session I also showed guys one horrible example about how awful SQL can be generated by Entity Framework. In this posting I will cover both examples. Optimal SQL Before going to code take a look at following model. There is class called Event and I will use this class in my query. Here is the LINQ To Entities query that uses small anonymous type. var query = from e in _context.Events             select new { Id = e.Id, Title = e.Title }; Debug.WriteLine(((ObjectQuery)query).ToTraceString()); Running this code gives us the following SQL. SELECT      [Extent1].[event_id] AS [event_id],      [Extent1].[title] AS [title]  FROM [dbo].[events] AS [Extent1] This is really small – no additional fields in SELECT clause. Nice, isn’t it? Horrible SQL Ayende Rahien blog shows us darker side of Entiry Framework 4.0 queries. You can find comparison betwenn NHibernate, LINQ To SQL and LINQ To Entities from posting What happens behind the scenes: NHibernate, Linq to SQL, Entity Framework scenario analysis. In this posting I will show you the resulting query and let you think how much better it can be done. Well, it is not something we want to see running in our servers. I hope that EF team improves generated SQL to acceptable level before Visual Studio 2010 is released. There is also morale of this example: you should always check out the queries that O/R-mapper generates. Behind the curtains it may silently generate queries that perform badly and in this case you need to optimize you data querying strategy. Conclusion Entity Framework 4.0 is new product with a lot of new features and it is clear that not everything is 100% super in its first release. But it still great step forward and I hope that on 12.04.2010 we have new promising O/R-mapper available to use in our projects. If you want to read more about Entity Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 then please feel free to follow this link to list of my Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 postings.

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• NYC Silverlight FireStarter - June 5th 2010 at the NYC Microsoft Office

  - by Sam Abraham

  On Saturday June 5th, 2010, I spent my Saturday morning at the NYC Silverlight FireStarter. Presenting was Peter Laudati from Microsoft and Jason Beres, Matt Van Horn and Todd Snyder from Infragistics. I watched the Simulcast for the morning sessions as I was tied up with some work, but ended up finally making it to the Microsoft Office and had the opportunity to attend the last hour of the event in person.   For me, the quality of the Simulcast was as good as in-person attendance so far as sound/video quality and the interaction with speakers. In the background was a screen with tweets from remote attendees asking questions or commenting on the presentations. Presenters did periodically stop to answer the tweeted questions as well as questions from attendees. Only thing I missed was getting my hands on some of that swag that was (literally) flying in the air at the event floor.   Upon my arrival at the Microsoft Office Location in NYC, I spoke with Rachel Appel and Peter Laudati asking for permission to take a few photos to record the outstanding effort that took place in putting this event together. Both agreed and I started with putting my photography skills to work.   You can always gauge the quality of an event with the number of its attendees who opt to stay till the last minute as well as the level of interaction of the audience with the speaker. With most of the FireStarter attendees remaining till the very end of the talk, and with the many questions that were asked, one can simply judge the event as a success as per my aforementioned criteria.   Evaluation forms were passed around and Peter strongly encouraged the audience to openly speak their mind as they record their comments. I didn't get to submit my evaluation as I was busy recording the event in photos, so here it goes: I believe that lots of hard work was put into making this event a reality. Quality of speakers, topics and level of Geekiness at the event was outstanding.  Overall, aside from a minor issue with Lunch delivery time, this event was of high quality and I am very sure everyone's evaluation will be in line with my analysis of it being a great success. Below are a few photos of the event.   --Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group www.Fladotnet.com     NYC Silverlight FireStarter Speakers - From Left to right: Peter Laudati, Todd Snyder, Matt Van Horn & Jason Beres   As jason wasn't quiet visible in the above photo, a closeup was taken (It was Jason's birthday and he had to leave a bit early, so the Infagisticts team thought outside the box...)     Full Room - That was at the last hour of the event   Another view of full room   Discussions during the break   End-of-event Raffle

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• Brendan Gregg's "Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud"

  - by user12608550

  Long ago, the prerequisite UNIX performance book was Adrian Cockcroft's 1994 classic, Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris, later updated in 1998 as Java and the Internet. As Solaris evolved to include the invaluable DTrace observability features, new essential performance references have been published, such as Solaris Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (2006)  by McDougal, Mauro, and Gregg, and DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD (2011), also by Mauro and Gregg. Much has occurred in Solaris Land since those books appeared, notably Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and the demise of the OpenSolaris community. But operating system technologies have continued to improve markedly in recent years, driven by stunning advances in multicore processor architecture, virtualization, and the massive scalability requirements of cloud computing. A new performance reference was needed, and I eagerly waited for something that thoroughly covered modern, distributed computing performance issues from the ground up. Well, there's a new classic now, authored yet again by Brendan Gregg, former Solaris kernel engineer at Sun and now Lead Performance Engineer at Joyent. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is a modern, very comprehensive guide to general system performance principles and practices, as well as a highly detailed reference for specific UNIX and Linux observability tools used to examine and diagnose operating system behaviour.  It provides thorough definitions of terms, explains performance diagnostic Best Practices and "Worst Practices" (called "anti-methods"), and covers key observability tools including DTrace, SystemTap, and all the traditional UNIX utilities like vmstat, ps, iostat, and many others. The book focuses on operating system performance principles and expands on these with respect to Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS are cited), and to Solaris and its derivatives [1]; it is not directed at any one OS so it is extremely useful as a broad performance reference. The author goes beyond the intricacies of performance analysis and shows how to interpret and visualize statistical information gathered from the observability tools.  It's often difficult to extract understanding from voluminous rows of text output, and techniques are provided to assist with summarizing, visualizing, and interpreting the performance data. Gregg includes myriad useful references from the system performance literature, including a "Who's Who" of contributors to this great body of diagnostic tools and methods. This outstanding book should be required reading for UNIX and Linux system administrators as well as anyone charged with diagnosing OS performance issues.  Moreover, the book can easily serve as a textbook for a graduate level course in operating systems [2]. [1] Solaris 11, of course, and Joyent's SmartOS (developed from OpenSolaris) [2] Gregg has taught system performance seminars for many years; I have also taught such courses...this book would be perfect for the OS component of an advanced CS curriculum.

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• Transparent Technology from Amazon

  - by David Dorf

  Amazon has been making some interesting moves again, this time in the augmented humanity area.  Augmented humanity is about helping humans overcome their shortcomings using technology.  Putting a powerful smartphone in your pocket helps you in many ways like navigating streets, communicating with far off friends, and accessing information.  But the interface for smartphones is somewhat limiting and unnatural, so companies have been looking for ways to make the technology more transparent and therefore easier to use. When Apple helped us drop the stylus, we took a giant leap forward in simplicity.  Using touchscreens with intuitive gestures was part of the iPhone's original appeal.  People don't want to know that technology is there -- they just want the benefits.  So what's the next leap beyond the touchscreen to make smartphones even easier to use? Two natural ways we interact with the world around us is by using sight and voice.  Google and Apple have been using both in their mobile platforms for limited uses cases.  Nobody actually wants to type a text message, so why not just speak it?  Any if you want more information about a book, why not just snap a picture of the cover?  That's much more accurate than trying to key the title and/or author. So what's Amazon been doing?  First, Amazon released a new iPhone app called Flow that allows iPhone users to see information about products in context.  Yes, its an augmented reality app that uses the phone's camera to view products, and overlays data about the products on the screen.  For the most part it requires the barcode to be visible to correctly identify the product, but I believe it can also recognize certain logos as well.  Download the app and try it out but don't expect perfection.  Its good enough to demonstrate the concept, but its far from accurate enough.  (MobileBeat did a pretty good review.)  Extrapolate to the future and we might just have a heads-up display in our eyeglasses. The second interesting area is voice response, for which Siri is getting lots of attention.  Amazon may have purchased a voice recognition company called Yap, although the deal is not confirmed.  But it would make perfect sense, especially with the Kindle Fire in Amazon's lineup. I believe over the next 3-5 years the way in which we interact with smartphones will mature, and they will become more transparent yet more important to our daily lives.  This will, of course, impact the way we shop, making information more readily accessible than it already is.  Amazon seems to be positioning itself to be at the forefront of this trend, so we should be watching them carefully.

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• Case Management Patterns with Oracle Unified Business Process Management Suite

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Contributed by Heidi Buelow, Oracle Product Management Case Management was a hot topic all week at Oracle OpenWorld so I was excited to share our current features and upcoming plans at the session Thursday morning on Case Management Patterns with Oracle Unified Business Process Management Suite.  My colleague, Ravi Rangaswamy, the Case Management Development Manager, and I, Heidi Buelow, the Case Management Product Manager, discussed case management use case patterns with an interested audience.  We also talked about the current BPM Suite offering for Case Managment and showed a demo of our upcoming release where Case Management becomes a first class component in a BPM composite application. Case Management use case patterns cover a wide range of horizontal applications such as Accounts Payable, Dispute Resolution, Call Center, Employee OnBoarding, and many vertical applications in domains and industries such as Public Sector services, Insurance claims, and Healthcare.  Really, it is any use case where the resolution of a request may require a knowledge worker making decisions using experienced judgement in the current situation.  This allows for expidited care and customer satisfaction, both being highly valued for consumer loyalty, regulatory compliance, and efficient resolution. Today, BPM Suite provides the tools for creating Case Management applications using BPMN 2.0, Business Rules, and rich BAM and Case Analytics.  The Process Composer provides the agility to change rules and processes by the business users.  The case manager and case workers have the flexibilty they need.  With integrated content management and the concept of a BPM Process Spaces instance (case) space, the current release enables case management use case applications. In the next release, Case Management becomes a first class component. By this, we mean, Case is a separate component in the composite.  We are adding case attributes such as milestones, case events, case stakeholders, and more, providing a rich toolset for the use cases that require a flexible Case Management approach.  Activites become available according to the conditions that you specify and information can be protected by permissions indicated.  In BPM Studio, you design a Case and associate all of the attributes and activities that are needed, yet, at runtime you have the flexibility to add and change these as needed. We enjoyed sharing Case Management and it was well received by the audience.  The presentation is available online and we have viewlets of the demo that will be available at release time.

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• UDK game Prisoners/Guards

  - by RR_1990

  For school I need to make a little game with UDK, the concept of the game is: The player is the headguard, he will have some other guard (bots) who will follow him. Between the other guards and the player are some prisoners who need to evade the other guards. It needs to look like this My idea was to let the guard bots follow the player at a certain distance and let the prisoners bots in the middle try to evade the guard bots. Now is the problem i'm new to Unreal Script and the school doesn't support me that well. Untill now I have only was able to make the guard bots follow me. I hope you guys can help me or make me something that will make this game work. Here is the class i'm using to let te bots follow me: class ChaseControllerAI extends AIController; var Pawn player; var float minimalDistance; var float speed; var float distanceToPlayer; var vector selfToPlayer; auto state Idle { function BeginState(Name PreviousStateName) { Super.BeginState(PreviousStateName); } event SeePlayer(Pawn p) { player = p; GotoState('Chase'); } Begin: player = none; self.Pawn.Velocity.x = 0.0; self.Pawn.Velocity.Y = 0.0; self.Pawn.Velocity.Z = 0.0; } state Chase { function BeginState(Name PreviousStateName) { Super.BeginState(PreviousStateName); } event PlayerOutOfReach() { `Log("ChaseControllerAI CHASE Player out of reach."); GotoState('Idle'); } // class ChaseController extends AIController; CONTINUED // State Chase (continued) event Tick(float deltaTime) { `Log("ChaseControllerAI in Event Tick."); selfToPlayer = self.player.Location - self.Pawn.Location; distanceToPlayer = Abs(VSize(selfToPlayer)); if (distanceToPlayer > minimalDistance) { PlayerOutOfReach(); } else { self.Pawn.Velocity = Normal(selfToPlayer) * speed; //self.Pawn.Acceleration = Normal(selfToPlayer) * speed; self.Pawn.SetRotation(rotator(selfToPlayer)); self.Pawn.Move(self.Pawn.Velocity*0.001); // or *deltaTime } } Begin: `Log("Current state Chase:Begin: " @GetStateName()@""); } defaultproperties { bAdjustFromWalls=true; bIsPlayer= true; minimalDistance = 1024; //org 1024 speed = 500; }

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• ETPM Environment Health Monitoring Tools

  - by Paula Speranza-Hadley

  This post is to provide some useful information about the tools typically used by Oracle ETPM implementations for performance tuning and analysis.   This includes tools to monitor and gather performance information and statistics on the Database, Application Server, and Client (browser).  Enterprise Monitoring Tools Oracle Enterprise Manager - OEM Grid Control comes with a comprehensive set of performance and health metrics that allow monitoring of key components in your environment such as applications, application servers, databases, as well as the back-end components on which they rely, such as hosts, operating systems and storage. Tools for the Database Oracle Diagnostics Pack Automatic Workload Repository (AWR)  - this tool gets statistics from memory abut the Time Model or DB Time, Wait Events, Active Session History and High Load SWL queries Automatic Database Diagnostic Monitor (ADDM) - This self-diagnostic software is built into the database.  It examines and analyzes data captured in AWR to dertermine possible performance issues.  It locates the root cause of the issue, provides recommendations for correcting the issues and qualifies the expected benefit. Oracle Database Tuning Pack SQL Tuning Advisor - This enables you to submit one or more SQL statements as input and receive output in the form of specific advice or recommendations on how to tune statements.  The recommendation relates to collection of statistics on objects, creation on new indexes and restructuring of SQL statements. SQL Access Advisor - This enables you to optimize data access paths of SQL queries by recommending a proper set of materialized views, indexes and partitions for a given SQL workload. Tools for the Application Server Weblogic Console - is a web-based, user interface used to configure and control a set of WebLogic servers or clusters (i.e. a "domain").  In any logical group of WebLogic servers there must exist one admin server, which hosts the WebLogic Admin console application and manages the associated configuratoin files. WebLogic Administrators will use the Administration Console for a number of tasks, including: Starting and stopping WebLogic servers or entire clusters. Configuring server parameters, security, database connections and deployed applications. Viewing server status, health and metrics. Yourkit for Profiling - helps analyze synchronization issues, including: Which threads were calling wait(), and for how long Which threads were blocked on attempt to acquire a monitor held by another thread (synchronized methods/blocks), and for how long Tools for the Client Fiddler - allows you to inspect traffic logs, debug and set breakpoints. Firebug – allows you to inspect and edit HTML, monitor network activity and debug JavaScript

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• What Is Nuclear Meltdown?

  - by Gopinath

  Japan was first hit by a massive earth quake, then a ruthless tsunami washed away thousands of homes and now they fear the worst – meltdown of nuclear power stations in the quake hit year. Nuclear meltdowns are horrifying – remember the Chernobyl incident in Russia? The Chernobyl reactor meltdown released 400 times more radio active material than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The effects of nuclear meltdowns are beyond imagination of a common man, thousands of people loose their lives and many more lakhs of people suffer with radiation related diseases for many years. Nuclear Meltdowns are dangerous, but how do they happen? What causes a nuclear meltdown? In simple terms – Nuclear meltdown is an accident that happens due to severe overheating of a nuclear reactor and results in release of nuclear radiation into the environment.  How A Nuclear Meltdown Happens? According to Wikipedia A meltdown occurs when a severe failure of a nuclear power plant system prevents proper cooling of the reactor core, to the extent that the nuclear fuel assemblies overheat and melt. A meltdown is considered very serious because of the potential that radioactive materials could be released into the environment. The fuel assemblies in a reactor core can melt if heat is not removed. A nuclear reactor does not have to remain critical for a core damage incident to occur, because decay heat continues to heat the reactor fuel assemblies after the reactor has shut down, though this heat decreases with time. A core damage accident is caused by the loss of sufficient cooling for the nuclear fuel within the reactor core. The reason may be one of several factors, including a loss of pressure control accident, a loss of coolant accident (LOCA), an uncontrolled power excursion or, in some types, a fire within the reactor core. Failures in control systems may cause a series of events resulting in loss of cooling. Contemporary safety principles of defense in depth, ensure that multiple layers of safety systems are always present to make such accidents unlikely. Video – What Causes Nuclear Meltdown AlJazeera news has a good analysis on feared nuclear meltdown of Japan’s nuclear plants and also an animation on what causes Nuclear Meltdown. cc image credit: flickr/jtjdt This article titled,What Is Nuclear Meltdown?, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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• AJAX event, prevents other page actions

  - by cobaltduck

  Here's a fairly average scenario, using JSF as an example, but this same concept I have observed in ASP.NET, Apache Wicket, and other frameworks with ajax capabilities. <h:inputText id="text1" value="#{myBacker.myBean.myStringVar}" styleClass="goodCSS"> <f:ajax event="change" listener="#{myBacker.text1ChangeEventMethod}" update="someOtherField" /> </h:inputText> <h:selectBooleanCheckbox id="check1" value="#{myBacker.myBean.myBoolVar}" /> Let's suppose that the 'text1ChangeEventListener' is essential to 'someOtherField' and perhaps toggles its disabled attribute, or changes its available options, based on the value of 'myStringVar.' The particulars aren't important, let's just accept that for some reason we need an ajax call when the 'text1' value is changed. So Jane User is working her way down the form. She arrives at the 'text1' field and types some value. The cursor focus is still in the text field, as she moves her mouse to the 'check1' box and clicks. It appears to her that nothing has happened. She clicks again, and this time the checkbox highlights and the icon indicating a selection appears in the box. Jane has to do several entries in the form today, and sees this happen every time, and it becomes very frustrating for her. Likewise, Jeff Admin is also perusing this form, and begins to type in 'text1.' He then realizes he doesn't really want to enter this data, and so moves his mouse to the "cancel" button elsewhere on the page, and clicks. Nothing seems to happen. Jeff clicks again, and after confirming he really does want to cancel, is returned to the home page. Jeff scratches his head. The problem is simply that the first thing the system does after 'text1' looses focus is run the listener and perform the ajax operation. It may only take a fraction of a second, but still, you can click other buttons all you want, but until that ajax has finished, everything else is ignored. I've spent the morning searching and reading, and it seems no one else has even noticed this. I could find not one article, blog, past question here or at SO, or anyting that addresses this obvious and glaring deficiency in ajax. So first of all, am I truly alone in thinking this is a big problem? Second, does anyone have a solution?

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• Don Knuth and MMIXAL vs. Chuck Moore and Forth -- Algorithms and Ideal Machines -- was there cross-pollination / influence in their ideas / work?

  - by AKE

  Question: To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms? I'm interested in citations, interviews, articles, links, or any other sort of evidence. It could also be evidence of the form of A and B here suggest that Moore might have borrowed or influenced C and D from Knuth here, or vice versa. (Opinions are of course welcome, but references / links would be better!) Context: Until fairly recently, I have been primarily familiar with Knuth's work on algorithms and computing models, mostly through TAOCP but also through his interviews and other writings. However, the more I have been using Forth, the more I am struck by both the power of a stack-based machine model, and the way in which the spareness of the model makes fundamental algorithmic improvements more readily apparent. A lot of what Knuth has done in fundamental analysis of algorithms has, it seems to me, a very similar flavour, and I can easily imagine that in a parallel universe, Knuth might perhaps have chosen Forth as his computing model. That's the software / algorithms / programming side of things. When it comes to "ideal computing machines", Knuth in the 70s came up with the MIX computer model, and then, collaborating with designers of state-of-the-art RISC chips through the 90s, updated this with the modern MMIX model and its attendant assembly language MMIXAL. Meanwhile, Moore, having been using and refining Forth as a language, but using it on top of whatever processor happened to be in the computer he was programming, began to imagine a world in which the efficiency and value of stack-based programming were reflected in hardware. So he went on in the 80s to develop his own stack-based hardware chips, defining the term MISC (Minimal Instruction Set Computers) along the way, and ending up eventually with the first Forth chip, the MuP21. Both are brilliant men with keen insight into the art of programming and algorithms, and both work at the intersection between algorithms, programs, and bare metal hardware (i.e. hardware without the clutter of operating systems). Which leads me to the headlined question... Question:To what extent is it known (or believed) that Chuck Moore and Don Knuth had influence on each other's thoughts on ideal machines, or their work on algorithms?

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• Windows Azure Recipe: High Performance Computing

  - by Clint Edmonson

  One of the most attractive ways to use a cloud platform is for parallel processing. Commonly known as high-performance computing (HPC), this approach relies on executing code on many machines at the same time. On Windows Azure, this means running many role instances simultaneously, all working in parallel to solve some problem. Doing this requires some way to schedule applications, which means distributing their work across these instances. To allow this, Windows Azure provides the HPC Scheduler. This service can work with HPC applications built to use the industry-standard Message Passing Interface (MPI). Software that does finite element analysis, such as car crash simulations, is one example of this type of application, and there are many others. The HPC Scheduler can also be used with so-called embarrassingly parallel applications, such as Monte Carlo simulations. Whatever problem is addressed, the value this component provides is the same: It handles the complex problem of scheduling parallel computing work across many Windows Azure worker role instances. Drivers Elastic compute and storage resources Cost avoidance Solution Here’s a sketch of a solution using our Windows Azure HPC SDK: Ingredients Web Role – this hosts a HPC scheduler web portal to allow web based job submission and management. It also exposes an HTTP web service API to allow other tools (including Visual Studio) to post jobs as well. Worker Role – typically multiple worker roles are enlisted, including at least one head node that schedules jobs to be run among the remaining compute nodes. Database – stores state information about the job queue and resource configuration for the solution. Blobs, Tables, Queues, Caching (optional) – many parallel algorithms persist intermediate and/or permanent data as a result of their processing. These fast, highly reliable, parallelizable storage options are all available to all the jobs being processed. Training Here is a link to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure HPC Scheduler (3 labs)  The Windows Azure HPC Scheduler includes modules and features that enable you to launch and manage high-performance computing (HPC) applications and other parallel workloads within a Windows Azure service. The scheduler supports parallel computational tasks such as parametric sweeps, Message Passing Interface (MPI) processes, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) requests across your computing resources in Windows Azure. With the Windows Azure HPC Scheduler SDK, developers can create Windows Azure deployments that support scalable, compute-intensive, parallel applications. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• Programming and Ubiquitous Language (DDD) in a non-English domain

  - by Sandor Drieënhuizen

  I know there are some questions already here that are closely related to this subject but none of them take Ubiquitous Language as the starting point so I think that justifies this question. For those who don't know: Ubiquitous Language is the concept of defining a (both spoken and written) language that is equally used across developers and domain experts to avoid inconsistencies and miscommunication due to translation problems and misunderstanding. You will see the same terminology show up in code, conversations between any team member, functional specs and whatnot. So, what I was wondering about is how to deal with Ubiquitous Language in non-English domains. Personally, I strongly favor writing programming code in English completely, including comments but ofcourse excluding constants and resources. However, in a non-English domain, I'm forced to make a decision either to: Write code reflecting the Ubiquitous Language in the natural language of the domain. Translate the Ubiquitous Language to English and stop communicating in the natural language of the domain. Define a table that defines how the Ubiquitous Language translates to English. Here are some of my thoughts based on these options: 1) I have a strong aversion against mixed-language code, that is coding using type/member/variable names etc. that are non-English. Most programming languages 'breathe' English to a large extent and most of the technical literature, design pattern names etc. are in English as well. Therefore, in most cases there's just no way of writing code entirely in a non-English language so you end up with mixed languages anyway. 2) This will force the domain experts to start thinking and talking in the English equivalent of the UL, something that will probably not come naturally to them and therefore hinders communication significantly. 3) In this case, the developers communicate with the domain experts in their native language while the developers communicate with each other in English and most importantly, they write code using the English translation of the UL. I'm sure I don't want to go for the first option and I think option 3 is much better than option 2. What do you think? Am I missing other options? UPDATE Today, about year later, having dealt with this issue on a daily basis, I have to say that option 3 has worked out pretty well for me. It wasn't as tedious as I initially feared and translating in real time while talking to the client wasn't a problem either. I also found the following advantages to be true, based on my experience. Translating the UL makes you pay more attention to defining the UL and even the domain itself, especially when you don't know how to translate a term and you have to start looking through dictionaries etc. This has even caused me to reconsider domain modeling decisions a few times. It helps you make your knowledge of the English language more profound. Obviously, your code is much more pleasant to look at instead of being a mind boggling obscenity.

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• Suggestions for connecting .NET WPF GUI with Java SE Server

  - by Sam Goldberg

  BACKGROUND We are building a Java (SE) trading application which will be monitoring market data and sending trade messages based on the market data, and also on user defined configuration parameters. We are planning to provide the user with a thin client, built in .NET (WPF) for managing the parameters, controlling the server behavior, and viewing the current state of the trading. The client doesn't need real-time updates; it will instead update the view once every few seconds (or whatever interval is configured by the user). The client has about 6 different operations it needs to perform with the server, for example: CRUD with configuration parameters query subset of the data receive updates of current positions from server It is possible that most of the different operations (except for receiving data) are just different flavors of managing the configuration parameters, but it's too early in our analysis for us to be sure. To connect the client with the server, we have been considering using: SOAP Web Service RESTful service building a custom TCP/IP based API (text or xml) (least preferred - but we use this approach with other applications we have) As best as I understand, pros and cons of the different web service flavors are: SOAP pro: totally automated in .NET (and Java), modifying server side interface require no code changes in communication layer, just running refresh on Web Service reference to regenerate the classes. con: more overhead in the communication layer sending more text, etc. We're not using J2EE container so maybe doesn't work so well with J2SE REST pro: lighter weight, less data. Has good .NET and Java support. (I don't have any real experience with this, so don't know what other benefits it has.) con: client will not be automatically aware if there are any new operations or properties added (?), so communication layer needs to be updated by developer if server interface changes. con: (both approaches) Server cannot really push updates to the client at regular intervals (?) (However, we won't mind if client polls the server to get updates.) QUESTION What are your opinions on the above options or suggestions for other ways to connect the 2 parts? (Ideally, we don't want to put much work into the communication layer, because it's not the significant part of the application so the more off-the-shelf and automated the better.)

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• Windows Azure Recipe: Big Data

  - by Clint Edmonson

  As the name implies, what we’re talking about here is the explosion of electronic data that comes from huge volumes of transactions, devices, and sensors being captured by businesses today. This data often comes in unstructured formats and/or too fast for us to effectively process in real time. Collectively, we call these the 4 big data V’s: Volume, Velocity, Variety, and Variability. These qualities make this type of data best managed by NoSQL systems like Hadoop, rather than by conventional Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). We know that there are patterns hidden inside this data that might provide competitive insight into market trends.  The key is knowing when and how to leverage these “No SQL” tools combined with traditional business such as SQL-based relational databases and warehouses and other business intelligence tools. Drivers Petabyte scale data collection and storage Business intelligence and insight Solution The sketch below shows one of many big data solutions using Hadoop’s unique highly scalable storage and parallel processing capabilities combined with Microsoft Office’s Business Intelligence Components to access the data in the cluster. Ingredients Hadoop – this big data industry heavyweight provides both large scale data storage infrastructure and a highly parallelized map-reduce processing engine to crunch through the data efficiently. Here are the key pieces of the environment: Pig - a platform for analyzing large data sets that consists of a high-level language for expressing data analysis programs, coupled with infrastructure for evaluating these programs. Mahout - a machine learning library with algorithms for clustering, classification and batch based collaborative filtering that are implemented on top of Apache Hadoop using the map/reduce paradigm. Hive - data warehouse software built on top of Apache Hadoop that facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage. Directly accessible to Microsoft Office and other consumers via add-ins and the Hive ODBC data driver. Pegasus - a Peta-scale graph mining system that runs in parallel, distributed manner on top of Hadoop and that provides algorithms for important graph mining tasks such as Degree, PageRank, Random Walk with Restart (RWR), Radius, and Connected Components. Sqoop - a tool designed for efficiently transferring bulk data between Apache Hadoop and structured data stores such as relational databases. Flume - a distributed, reliable, and available service for efficiently collecting, aggregating, and moving large log data amounts to HDFS. Database – directly accessible to Hadoop via the Sqoop based Microsoft SQL Server Connector for Apache Hadoop, data can be efficiently transferred to traditional relational data stores for replication, reporting, or other needs. Reporting – provides easily consumable reporting when combined with a database being fed from the Hadoop environment. Training These links point to online Windows Azure training labs where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. Hadoop Learning Resources (20+ tutorials and labs) Huge collection of resources for learning about all aspects of Apache Hadoop-based development on Windows Azure and the Hadoop and Windows Azure Ecosystems SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

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• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for December 6, 2012

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Above and Beyond with the A-Team Maybe it's the coffee… If you follow this blog you've probably noticed that I regularly feature posts from members of the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architecture team, otherwise known as the A-Team. One of those bloggers, someone identified only as "fip" who writes on the A-Team SOA blog, went above and beyond on Dec 4, publishing a total of four substantial technical posts in a single day, each one worth a look: Retrieve Performance Data from SOA Infrastructure Database Configure Oracle SOA JMSAdatper to Work with WLS JMS Topics How to Achieve OC4J RMI Load Balancing Using BPEL Performance Statistics to Diagnose Performance Bottlenecks Web Service Example - Part 3: Asynchronous | The Oracle ADF Mobile Blog Part 3 in this series from the Oracle ADF Mobile blog looks at "firing the web service asynchronously and then filling in the UI when it completes." Denis says, "This can be useful when you have data on the device in a local store and want to show that to the user while the application uses lazy loading from a web service to load more data." ADF Mobile - Implementing Reusable Mobile Architecture | Andrejus Baranovskis "Reusability was always a strong part of ADF," says Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis. "The same high reusability level is supported now in ADF Mobile." The objective of this post is "to prove technically that [the] reusable architecture concept works for ADF Mobile." Basic is Best | Eric Stephens "The world we live in and enterprises we strive to transform with enterprise architecture are complicated organisms, much like the human body," says Oracle Enterprise Architect Eric Stephens. "But sometimes a simple solution is the best approach...Whatever level of abstraction you are working at, less is more." Selling Federal Enterprise Architecture | Ted McLaughlan "EA must be 'sold' directly to the communities that matter from a coordinated, proactive messaging perspective that takes BOTH the Program-level value drivers AND the broader Agency mission and IT maturity context into consideration, " explains Ted McLaughlan. And that's true for any organization. Avoiding the "I'm Spartacus" Scenario in SOA | Ben Wilcock "This ‘SOA Spartacus’ scenario usually occurs quite soon after SOA is articulated as the primary strategic direction of the programme," says Ben Wilcock, "but before the organisation’s SOA capability is mature enough to understand what is meant by SOA, and how it should be designed and delivered." In such cases, perhaps the "A" in SOA is missing, no? Thought for the Day "It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do." — Charles Eames (1907–1978) Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

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• Oracle Joins XBRL US To Help Drive Adoption

  - by Theresa Hickman

  Recently, Oracle joined XBRL US, the national consortium for XML business reporting standards to stay ahead of the technology and help increase XBRL adoption by U.S. companies by 2011. Large accelerated filers were mandated to use XBRL starting in 2009; other large filers started in 2010 and all other public companies must comply in June 2011. Here is a list of other organizations that recently joined XBRL US: Oracle Citi Federal Filings LLC Edgar Agents LLC XSP For those of you who have been living under a rock, XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. Simply put, it's reporting electronically. Just like PDFs or spreadsheets are a type of output, XBRL is another output option in electronic form. Right now, the transition to XBRL means extra work for publicly traded companies because they need to file their financial statements in both EDGAR and XBRL formats. Once the SEC phases out the EDGAR system, XBRL will be the primary way to deliver financial information with footnotes and supporting schedules to multiple audiences without having to re-key or reformat the information. A single XBRL document can be converted to printed output, published via the Web, fed into an SEC database (e.g. EDGAR) or forwarded to a creditor for analysis. Question: How does Oracle support XBRL reporting? Answer: The latest XBRL 2.1 specifications are supported by Oracle Hyperion Disclosure Management, which is part of Oracle's Hyperion Financial Close Suite along with Hyperion Financial Management, Hyperion Financial Data Quality Management and Hyperion Financial Close Management. Hyperion Disclosure Management supports the authoring of financial filings in Microsoft Office, with "hot links" to reports and data stored in Hyperion Financial Management or Oracle Essbase. It supports the XBRL tagging of financial statements as well as the disclosures and footnotes within your 10K and 10Q filings. Because many of our customers use Hyperion Financial Management (HFM) for their consolidation needs, they simply generate XBRL statements from their consolidated financial results. Question: What if you don't use Hyperion Financial Management, and you only use E-Business Suite General Ledger or PeopleSoft General Ledger? Answer: No problem, all you need is Hyperion Disclosure Management to generate XBRL from your general ledger. Here are the steps: Upload the XBRL taxonomy from the SEC or XBRL website into Hyperion Disclosure Management. Publish your financial statements out of general ledger to Excel. Perform the XBRL tag mapping from the Excel output to Hyperion Disclosure Management. For more information and some interesting background on XBRL, I recommend reading What You Need To Know About XBRL written by our EPM expert, John O'Rourke.

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• Drawing multiple Textures as tilemap

  - by DocJones

  I am trying to draw a 2d game map and the objects on the map in a single pass. Here is my OpenGL initialization code // Turn off unnecessary operations glDisable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glDisable(GL_LIGHTING); glDisable(GL_CULL_FACE); glDisable(GL_STENCIL_TEST); glDisable(GL_DITHER); glEnable(GL_BLEND); glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D); // activate pointer to vertex & texture array glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); My drawing code is being called by a NSTimer every 1/60 s. Here is the drawing code of my world object: - (void) draw:(NSRect)rect withTimedDelta:(double)d { GLint *t; glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, [_textureManager textureByName:@"blocks"]); glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_REPLACE); for (int x=0; x<[_map getWidth] ; x++) { for (int y=0; y<[_map getHeight] ; y++) { GLint v[] = { 16*x ,16*y, 16*x+16,16*y, 16*x+16,16*y+16, 16*x ,16*y+16 }; t=[_textureManager getBlockWithNumber:[_map getBlockAtX:x andY:y]]; glVertexPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, v); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, t); glDrawArrays(GL_QUADS, 0, 4); } } } (_textureManager is a Singelton only loading a texture once!) The object drawing codes is identical (except the nested loops) in terms of OpenGL calls: - (void) drawWithTimedDelta:(double)d { GLint *t; GLint v[] = { 16*xpos ,16*ypos, 16*xpos+16,16*ypos, 16*xpos+16,16*ypos+16, 16*xpos ,16*ypos+16 }; glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, [_textureManager textureByName:_textureName]); t=[_textureManager getBlockWithNumber:12]; glVertexPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, v); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_INT, 0, t); glDrawArrays(GL_QUADS, 0, 4); } As soon as my central drawing routine calls the two drawing methods the second call overlays the first one. i would expect the call to world.draw to draw the map and "stamp" the objects upon it. Debugging shows me, that the first call is performed correctly (world is being drawn), but the following call to all objects ONLY draws the objects, the rest of the scene is getting black. I think i need to blend the drawn textures, but i cant seem to figure out how. Any help is appreciated. Thanks PS: Here is the github link to the project. It may not be in sync of my post here, but for some more in-depth analysis it may help.

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• Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle WebCenter 11g &ndash; Book Review

  - by juan.ruiz

  Recently I obtained a copy of the book Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle Web Center 11g from Packt Publishing, right away I noticed that one of the authors of this book is a good and long time colleague of  mine Plinio Arbizu, whom I have joined for different developer events in Latin America in the past. In this entry you will find my review of the book. Chapter 1: What's Oracle WebCenter? Provides you with basic knowledge to understand the pieces of WebCenter and the role that these pieces play in the overall Oracle Fusion Middleware strategy. Chapter 2 and 3: Will guide you through installation process and set up instructions, required to start developing Web2.0 applications. The screenshots are very helpful. Chapter 4: The chapter will guide you through a series of steps for creating a basic HelloWorld application that uses ADF/Webservices/WebCenter framework to understand the relevant pieces that are part of the architecture in large Web2.0 solutions for WebCenter. One caveat on this chapter is that the use HTML in combination with ADF Faces is not a recommended practice, because in some cases (not in this one) HTML code generated by the components can conflict with existent HTML code place on the same page... so be careful. Chapter 5: Describes the basics to understand the usage of ADF Faces Rich Client Components, with templates and ADF Business components. Chapter 6: This chapter explains how to encapsulate, deploy and consume ADF UIs as JSR 168 portlets in a declarative way Chapter 7: Explains some of the WebCenter services and the different ways that these services can be integrated within WebCenter applications. Chapter 8: Goes over how to include a series of  WebCenter services provided out-of-the-box within applications. This chapter presents a simple and clear way of how to include RSS feeds, search capabilities, tagging and discussions using practical samples that are easy to follow. Chapter 9: Presents an important component of Oracle WebCenter - the composer. Through the composer and Oracle Metadata Services the composer adds all the functionality to perform end-user personalizations, which is a very common user case when working with portals. The concept is self-explanatory when running over the practice developed in this chapter. Chapter 10: Provides an introduction to WebCenter spaces, explaining common concepts about installation, administration (role creation, group creation, etc) and through a sample, the readers can put everything in practice on their own environments. Summary: This book would provide the reader with a fast start to work with Oracle WebCenter 11g  and its different components. In my opinion the book targets the developer audience, rather than the Portal type of audience, or content generator. For the readers of this book I recommend that to better understand the concepts discussed, first you need to understand the basics on Oracle Application Development Framework. Believe me you can thank me later!

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• Removing hard-coded values and defensive design vs YAGNI

  - by Ben Scott

  First a bit of background. I'm coding a lookup from Age - Rate. There are 7 age brackets so the lookup table is 3 columns (From|To|Rate) with 7 rows. The values rarely change - they are legislated rates (first and third columns) that have stayed the same for 3 years. I figured that the easiest way to store this table without hard-coding it is in the database in a global configuration table, as a single text value containing a CSV (so "65,69,0.05,70,74,0.06" is how the 65-69 and 70-74 tiers would be stored). Relatively easy to parse then use. Then I realised that to implement this I would have to create a new table, a repository to wrap around it, data layer tests for the repo, unit tests around the code that unflattens the CSV into the table, and tests around the lookup itself. The only benefit of all this work is avoiding hard-coding the lookup table. When talking to the users (who currently use the lookup table directly - by looking at a hard copy) the opinion is pretty much that "the rates never change." Obviously that isn't actually correct - the rates were only created three years ago and in the past things that "never change" have had a habit of changing - so for me to defensively program this I definitely shouldn't store the lookup table in the application. Except when I think YAGNI. The feature I am implementing doesn't specify that the rates will change. If the rates do change, they will still change so rarely that maintenance isn't even a consideration, and the feature isn't actually critical enough that anything would be affected if there was a delay between the rate change and the updated application. I've pretty much decided that nothing of value will be lost if I hard-code the lookup, and I'm not too concerned about my approach to this particular feature. My question is, as a professional have I properly justified that decision? Hard-coding values is bad design, but going to the trouble of removing the values from the application seems to violate the YAGNI principle. EDIT To clarify the question, I'm not concerned about the actual implementation. I'm concerned that I can either do a quick, bad thing, and justify it by saying YAGNI, or I can take a more defensive, high-effort approach, that even in the best case ultimately has low benefits. As a professional programmer does my decision to implement a design that I know is flawed simply come down to a cost/benefit analysis?

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• Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

  - by David Dorf

  For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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• Where would my different development rhythm be suitable for the work?

  - by DarenW

  Over the years I have worked on many projects, with some successful and a great benefit to the company, and some total failures with me getting fired or otherwise leaving. What is the difference? Naturally I prefer the former and wish to avoid the latter, so I'm pondering this issue. The key seems to be that my personal approach differs from the norm. I write code first, letting it be all spaghetti and chaos, using whatever tools "fit my hand" that I'm fluent in. I try to organize it, then give up and start over with a better design. I go through cycles, from thinking-design to coding-testing. This may seem to be the same as any other development process, Agile or whatever, cycling between design and coding, but there does seem to be a subtle difference: The methods (ideally) followed by most teams goes design, code; design, code; ... while I'm going code, design; code, design; (if that makes any sense.) Music analogy: some types of music have a strong downbeat while others have prominent syncopation. In practice, I just can't think in terms of UML, specifications and so on, but grok things only by attempting to code and debug and refactor ad-hoc. I need the grounding provided by coding in order to think constructively, then to offer any opinions, advice or solutions to the team and get real work done. In positions where I can initially hack up cowboy code without constraints of tool or language choices, I easily gain a "feel" for the data, requirements etc and eventually do good work. In formalized positions where paperwork and pure "design" comes first and only later any coding (even for small proof-of-concept projects), I am lost at sea and drown. Therefore, I'd like to know how to either 1) change my rhythm to match the more formalized methodology-oriented team ways of doing things, or 2) find positions at organizations where my sense of development rhythm is perfect for the work. It's probably unrealistic for a person to change their fundamental approach to things. So option 2) is preferred. So where I can I find such positions? How common is my approach and where is it seen as viable but different, and not dismissed as undisciplined or cowboy coder ways?

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