Search Results

Search found 4493 results on 180 pages for 'price comparison'.

Page 146/180 | < Previous Page | 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153  | Next Page >

• New Management Console in Java SE Advanced 8u20

  - by Erik Costlow-Oracle

  Java SE 8 update 20 is a new feature release designed to provide desktop administrators with better control of their managed systems. The release notes for 8u20 are available from the public JDK release notes page. This release is not a Critical Patch Update (CPU). I would like to call attention to two noteworthy features of Oracle Java SE Advanced, the commercially supported version of Java SE for enterprises that require both support and specialized tools. The new Advanced Management Console provides a way to monitor and understand client systems at scale. It allows organizations to track usage and more easily create and manage client configuration like Deployment Rule Sets (DRS). DRS can control execution of tracked applications as well as specify compatibility of which application should use which Java SE installation. The new MSI Installer integrates into various desktop management tools, making it easier to customize and roll out different Java SE versions. Advanced Management Console The Advanced Management Console is part of Java SE Advanced designed for desktop administrators, whose users need to run many different Java applications. It provides usage tracking for those Applet & Web Start applications to help identify them for guided DRS creation. DRS can then be verified against the tracked data, to ensure that end-users can run their application against the appropriate Java version with no prompts. Usage tracking also has a different definition for Java SE than it does for most software applications. Unlike most applications where usage can be determined by a simple run-count, Java is a platform used for launching other applications. This means that usage tracking must answer both "how often is this Java SE version used" and "what applications are launched by it." Usage Tracking One piece of Java SE Advanced is a centralized usage tracker. Simply placing a properties file on the client informs systems to report information to this usage tracker, so that the desktop administrator can better understand usage. Information is sent via UDP to prevent any delay on the client. The usage tracking server resides at a central location on the intranet to collect information from those clients. The information is stored in a normalized database for performance, meaning that a single usage tracker can handle a large number of clients. Guided Deployment Rule Sets Deployment Rule Sets were introduced in Java 7 update 40 (September 2013) in order to help administrators control security prompts and guide compatibility. A previous post, Deployment Rule Sets by Example, explains how to configure a rule set so that most applications run against the most secure version but a specific applet may run against the Java version that was current several years ago. There are a different set of questions that can be asked by a desktop administrator in a large or distributed firm: Where are the Java RIAs that our users need? Which RIA needs which Java version? Which users need which Java versions? How do I verify these answers once I have them? The guided deployment rule set creation uses usage tracker data to identify applications both by certificate hash and location. After creating the rules, a comparison tool exists to verify them against the tracked data: If you intend to run an RIA, is it green? If something specific should be blocked, is it red? This makes user-testing easier. MSI Installer The Windows Installer format (MSI) provides a number of benefits for desktop administrators that customize or manage software at scale. Unlike the basic installer that most users obtain from Java.com or OTN, this installer is built around customization and integration with various desktop management products like SCCM. Desktop administrators using the MSI installer can use every feature provided by the format, such as silent installs/upgrades, low-privileged installations, or self-repair capabilities Customers looking for Java SE Advanced can download the MSI installer through their My Oracle Support (MOS) account. Java SE Advanced The new features in Java SE Advanced make it easier for desktop administrators to identify and control client installations at scale. Administrators at organizations that want either the tools or associated commercial support should consider Java SE Advanced.

  Read the article

• Building a Media Center PC with Comcast Cable...?

  - by Rob

  Alright - so this might be a stupid question but I've never been all that much into TV. I currently have Comcast cable. I've just got the 'basic' 2-60 package or whatever; I've just always plugged the cable into the back of my TV. I've never had a cable box. Recently, Comcast has been pulling channels off of my line-up. Most recently, the stole the TV Guide channel from me. I'm told this is part of a push to get customers to switch to their digital line-up. But, I'm also told it requires some sort of digital receiver for each TV you've got. I don't want to buy a bunch of these digital receivers and I don't want to pay the monthly rental fee...but I have heard of how awesome media center PCs are and some really cool things they can do. And, I've got loads of PC parts sitting around. So, can someone guide me through this a bit? Are there computer video cards or TV tuners that are going to work with Comcast's digital cable? What kind of price range are we looking at?

  Read the article

• The best LCD monitors for reading text?

  - by Xeoncross

  I have been using an 19" Acer AL1916A B for several years now. While possibly failing in other areas - the text was incredibly sharp. Which is very important for someone like me that spends all day writing code. My eyes are very finely tuned and I can see refresh rates and even the smallest pixel overflows from anti-aliasing. Unfortunately it finally died. I then tried a 19" widescreen Acer X193w+ and found that the text was much less sharp. I also tried a 19" widescreen Samsung 920nw and was also disappointed. (by the way, widescreen is a great invention for companies - the same price for less screen!). I am looking for a couple of options of LCD's that hands-down render text ultra sharp and clear. This isn't subjective - an LCD either has sharp text or it doesn't. Anyone with delicate eyes can see the difference and knows what I'm talking about. Please also bare in mind that you're vision can adjust to a given screen; rendering your judgment biased if you do not constantly use other monitors also. If you use windows with ClearType enabled please do not reply.

  Read the article

• Drobo FS vs Lime Technology unRAID vs FreeNAS

  - by elluca

  I already decided to by a drobo fs until I just found these two tests: http://www.digitalversus.com/data-robotics-drobo-fs-p889_9543_487.html http://www.digitalversus.com/lime-technology-unraid-p889_8992_473.html The two cons agains drobo for me: loudness price What disadvantages has the unraid stuff against the drobo fs? Has it also got that ease of use like swapping drives on the go, simply extend capacity by plugging in new drives, notify me of drive errors, disk failure protection, dynamic space of "partitions", better/worse effective capacity, etc. Which is more secure? Am I able to simply replace a bad drive with a new one on unraid? What happens if my pc fails? Lets say the cpu overheats. Since I have a complete pc which is going to be replaced, I only have to pay the software to use unraid. I am going to use my nas for: music library (how well does it integrate with iTunes? ) picture library movie library development (i need to be able to be to use time machine) I am going to use this nas with a MacBook pro. My current disks: 2x 500Gb 1x 1.5Tb 1x 2Tb On a drobo fs I would have 2.26 Tb of space. What would it be on unraid? Is FreeNAS also an alternative?

  Read the article

• Will Intel be releasing anymore 6-core processors soon?

  - by jasondavis

  I am about to start buying parts every week for as long as it takes me to build the best PC I can build. I am looking at the Intel i7-920 processor right now because it is about 250$ and it is a quad-core processor based on the x58 chipset I believe. From what I have read so far, intel is coming out with some 6-core processors soon that will also use the x58 chipset and will allow me to use the same motherboard and memory/ram to upgrade to a 6-core. This sounds really good to me right now. I just read that the new 6-core processor. The Core i7-980X (extreme edition) was just released which is the first 6-core processor but it is supposed to be around $1,000 so I will probably just get the i7-920 for now and then upgrade to the 6-core version when the price goes down. The motherboard I am looking at getting the GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 which is around $280 at newegg.com So that is my basic plan SO far. I have not purchased any parts yet. I am just wanting to ask if this sounds like a good idea or if I should wait longer if I am wanting to eventually have a 6-core processor. Does anyone know if Intel is planning on releasing any other 6-core processor in addition to the Core i7-980X in the near future? I just want to make sure I am buying the best setup for my money if I am going all out on it, thanks for any tips/advice.

  Read the article

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

  - by Pinal Dave

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

  Read the article

• SQL analytical mash-ups deliver real-time WOW! for big data

  - by KLaker

  One of the overlooked capabilities of SQL as an analysis engine, because we all just take it for granted, is that you can mix and match analytical features to create some amazing mash-ups. As we move into the exciting world of big data these mash-ups can really deliver those "wow, I never knew that" moments. While Java is an incredibly flexible and powerful framework for managing big data there are some significant challenges in using Java and MapReduce to drive your analysis to create these "wow" discoveries. One of these "wow" moments was demonstrated at this year's OpenWorld during Andy Mendelsohn's general keynote session.  Here is the scenario - we are looking for fraudulent activities in our big data stream and in this case we identifying potentially fraudulent activities by looking for specific patterns. We using geospatial tagging of each transaction so we can create a real-time fraud-map for our business users. Where we start to move towards a "wow" moment is to extend this basic use of spatial and pattern matching, as shown in the above dashboard screen, to incorporate spatial analytics within the SQL pattern matching clause. This will allow us to compute the distance between transactions. Apologies for the quality of this screenshot….hopefully below you see where we have extended our SQL pattern matching clause to use location of each transaction and to calculate the distance between each transaction: This allows us to compare the time of the last transaction with the time of the current transaction and see if the distance between the two points is possible given the time frame. Obviously if I buy something in Florida from my favourite bike store (may be a new carbon saddle for my Trek) and then 5 minutes later the system sees my credit card details being used in Arizona there is high probability that this transaction in Arizona is actually fraudulent (I am fast on my Trek but not that fast!) and we can flag this up in real-time on our dashboard: In this post I have used the term "real-time" a couple of times and this is an important point and one of the key reasons why SQL really is the only language to use if you want to analyse  big data. One of the most important questions that comes up in every big data project is: how do we do analysis? Many enlightened customers are now realising that using Java-MapReduce to deliver analysis does not result in "wow" moments. These "wow" moments only come with SQL because it is offers a much richer environment, it is simpler to use and it is faster - which makes it possible to deliver real-time "Wow!". Below is a slide from Andy's session showing the results of a comparison of Java-MapReduce vs. SQL pattern matching to deliver our "wow" moment during our live demo.  You can watch our analytical mash-up "Wow" demo that compares the power of 12c SQL pattern matching + spatial analytics vs. Java-MapReduce  here: You can get more information about SQL Pattern Matching on our SQL Analytics home page on OTN, see here http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/bi-datawarehousing/sql-analytics-index-1984365.html.  You can get more information about our spatial analytics here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database-options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html If you would like to watch the full Database 12c OOW presentation see here: http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/2686974264001

  Read the article

• AMD 700, 800 series chipset. I'm lost.

  - by Shiki

  I've been an Intel / NVidia user ever since I started using computers. Intel really gone up with the prices, and they won't get cheaper. So I decided to get an AMD. But WHICH one? I mean.. not shopping question but.. what are the differences? Like: 880GMA comes only with a single PCI ex and it looks like a chinese replica (no offense). While 890FX comes with 5PCI-ex for QuadCrossfire. Also.. what's the deal with 7xx series? I mean.. its the same price. Yet its older? Or why is it 7xx? Isn't there a single chipset between? Not chinese YET it's durable/fine for long-term usage? What it should know (desktop stuff): NVidia GPU (Zalman AMP2 GTX 260^2 (one card)) Phenom 1090T cpu A somewhat good audio. Any ideas which is the chipset I'm searching for? If this sounds too much of a shopping question, feel free to edit. I just want some clarification on these chipsets.

  Read the article

• Recovering a damaged microSDHC

  - by djechelon

  I just bought from eBay a Kingston 32GB microSDHC that was advertised as defective. The seller said that there could be formatting problems or with transfer of large files. Unfortunately, when I got it, it was a total mess. My Nikon camera doesn't read it at all (OK, maybe it doesn't support 32GB) My Linux laptop doesn't mount it: can't read superblock The same laptop refuses to mkfs.msdos because it failed whilst writing reserved sector The same laptop, under Windows, doesn't read nor format the card HTC HD2 mounts the MMC, allows me to write via USB, but is unable to open the just written files OK, folks, now you would say I would have to go through Paypal complaint... that's not that easy. I consciously bought a half-price card that was known to show some defects, and Paypal complaints take time. Obviously, I can't accept somebody sold me a completely use-less computer decoration. So I'll keep it as last option. My question is Do you know a way, under either Linux or Windows, to thoroughly scan, test and possibly repair memory cards, even if I have to lose some percentage of space because of bad sectors? If I can keep at least half of the card intact it would certainly be fine. I used to do broken sector marking with hard disks in the past. I almost forgot: MONSTR:/home/djechelon # fsck /dev/mmcblk0p1 fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2 dosfsck 3.0.9, 31 Jan 2010, FAT32, LFN Read 512 bytes at 0:Input/output error

  Read the article

• Somewhat powerful server needed for computationally expensive stuff

  - by Dane Larsen

  So here's my problem. My Dad runs a company that does some rather computationally expensive stuff. This is not supercomputer level stuff, but it does take several hours to run the average job on his Core i7 desktop. He asked me to look into a way to have his customers use the code on an hourly basis, namely via a server. Ideally he'd be able to buy a box for about $1000, and hook it right up to our home connection. Unfortunately, the data that needs to be both sent and received is on the order of several hundred megs. We live in a rural area, and the fastest connection offered is 1.5Mbit/s. Download. It's like .3Mbit/s upload. Not workable. What are the options for this kind of thing? Ideally, we'd have about 2GB of ram, 300-500GB of storage, and a nice dual core, and it has to run some flavor of Linux. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance EDIT: Also, ideally the monthly price would be < $100 per month.

  Read the article

• When to use Aspect Oriented Architecture (AOA/AOD)

  When is it appropriate to use aspect oriented architecture? I think the only honest answer to this question is that it depends on the context for which the question is being asked. There really are no hard and fast rules regarding the selection of an architectural model(s) for a project because each model provides good and bad benefits. Every system is built with a unique requirements and constraints. This context will dictate when to use one type of architecture over another or in conjunction with others. To me aspect oriented architecture models should be a sub-phase in the architectural modeling and design process especially when creating enterprise level models. Personally, I like to use this approach to create a base architectural model that is defined by non-functional requirements and system quality attributes.   This general model can then be used as a starting point for additional models because it is targets all of the business key quality attributes required by the system.Aspect oriented architecture is a method for modeling non-functional requirements and quality attributes of a system known as aspects. These models do not deal directly with specific functionality. They do categorize functionality of the system. This approach allows a system to be created with a strong emphasis on separating system concerns into individual components. These cross cutting components enables a systems to create with compartmentalization in regards to non-functional requirements or quality attributes.  This allows for the reduction in code because an each component maintains an aspect of a system that can be called by other aspects. This approach also allows for a much cleaner and smaller code base during the implementation and support of a system. Additionally, enabling developers to develop systems based on aspect-oriented design projects will be completed faster and will be more reliable because existing components can be shared across a system; thus, the time needed to create and test the functionality is reduced.   Example of an effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureIn my experiences, aspect oriented architecture can be very effective with large or more complex systems. Typically, these types of systems have a large number of concerns so the act of defining them is very beneficial for reducing the system’s complexity because components can be developed to address each concern while exposing functionality to the other system components. The benefits to using the aspect oriented approach as the starting point for a system is that it promotes communication between IT and the business due to the fact that the aspect oriented models are quality attributes focused so not much technical understanding is needed to understand the model.An example of this can be in developing a new intranet website. Common Intranet Concerns: Error Handling Security Logging Notifications Database connectivity Example of a not as effective use of Aspect Oriented ArchitectureAgain in my experiences, aspect oriented architecture is not as effective with small or less complex systems in comparison.  There is no need to model concerns for a system that has a limited amount of them because the added overhead would not be justified for the actual benefits of creating the aspect oriented architecture model.  Furthermore, these types of projects typically have a reduced time schedule and a limited budget.  The creation of the Aspect oriented models would increase the overhead of a project and thus increase the time needed to implement the system. An example of this is seen by creating a small application to poll a network share for new files and then FTP them to a new location.  The two primary concerns for this project is to monitor a network drive and FTP files to a new location.  There is no need to create an aspect model for this system because there will never be a need to share functionality amongst either of these concerns.  To add to my point, this system is so small that it could be created with just a few classes so the added layer of componentizing the concerns would be complete overkill for this situation. References:Brichau, Johan; D'Hondt, Theo. (2006) Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) - An Introduction. Retreived from: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~jbrichau/courses/introductionToAOSD.pdf

  Read the article

• Application for time and projet management

  - by user10826

  I want to improve the way I organize my projects/tasks/schedule What I do now is: keep an excel sheet with the name of the most important tasks/projects, I look at it at the beginning of each day and decide the ones I will focus on on iCal I write down events for each day, or for a concrete time (13 to 14 hours). I set up each day the tasks I want to accomlish, and allocate them hours I use Things (culture code) to keep info about tasks and projects not very important and which are not time allocated yet (GTD name = someday) I use Mail on Mac and create folders for the mails I want to process with the name of the different projects I save the main info for each project on freemind maps My system works well at the moment but it is pretty complicated to use. I want to make it better and I am looking for something with these requirements: must be 100% offline accessable it should use as less programs/resources as possible, ideally just one program should be able to manage all my info I can use the GTD methodology mixed with priorities and I can allocate each task converted to event on my calendar I can have different daily/weekly, etc views on a calendar to see the "big picture" must run on mac os x leopard price does not matter, I will pay for this So, according to your experience, can you recommend me something like this? Thanks

  Read the article

• Two Candidates + One Job = Two Different Outcomes

  - by david.talamelli

  Recruiters have always headhunted (sidenote: I do not like this word, in general I think the type of people who use the phrase “headhunting” are the ones who are trying to sound more important than what they likely are). Any serious Recruiter engages in direct recruiting activity, it is part and parcel of the business it is not something unique. With the uptake in Social Media the past 4-5 years, we have seen an increase in the number of Recruiters proactively reaching out to people about job opportunities. We have also seen this activity increase across all levels of hire, from help desk roles to C-Level Executives. While getting approached about a role can be a nice boost to a person’s ego, do not let it give you an inflated sense of entitlement. It is The way that people handle themselves during these calls and subsequent interviews will have a large impact on their potential to land that job. Last week I spoke to two very different candidates, both about the same position and both with very different outcomes. On paper, Candidate #1 looked fantastic; they ticked many of the boxes that we were looking for. The person is working at global IT company and working in a similar role as the one we were hiring for but not in as senior as the role we had. This role would have been the perfect step to getting involved in more complex work for the person. Candidate #2 had less polished IT experience, ticked some of the boxes we were looking for and on paper in comparison to Candidate #1 was not as close a fit as Candidate #1 was. It seemed like I was comparing apples and oranges. After speaking to both candidates it turns out I was comparing apples and oranges except the person better suited for our role was not the one I was expecting it would be. The first candidate on paper looked great – they had the experience we were looking for and appeared to be just right for the role, but after talking to them, they gave me the impression that they thought the world owed them. The impression I was left with was that they did not equate success with hard work, they seemed more interested in “what is in it for me”. Rather than having a proper conversation with me, I was often cut off and asked to hurry it up when explaining our business, what we are doing, etc... . This person seemed more interested in the job title and money than how rather than think about ways to make the role successful. Candidate #2 who had limited experience, made up for any perceived lack of experience and them some with a demonstrated motivation to succeed and do the things needed to make that happen. Candidate #2 made a great first impression, they did not seem afraid of hard work and demonstrated a “team player” attitude. In talking to them they kept me engaged, listened and asked thoughtful questions that made me think this is the type of person who creates their own luck and who would thrive in a place like Oracle. Skills, capabilities, experience and a good resume can certainly get your foot in the door, but the wrong attitude or approach to work can close those opportunities just as easily. On the other hand, hard work, effort and a genuine work ethic may help open those doors that would otherwise closed for you. A resume with all the credentials gets you in the front door but that is just the beginning of the process. It is not how we start the race that is important, it’s how things end that matter most.

  Read the article

• Building a PC, advice on SSD/Hybrid Hard Drives

  - by Jamie Hartnoll

  I am looking at building a new PC, it's mainly for office (graphics heavy) use and programming. Looking for good performance with opening and closing programs and files as well as a fast boot. I plan to have 3 primary hard drives Windows 7 Programs (photoshop etc) Current Files (There'll also be a large storage capacity back up drive, but this will be the Seagate drive I already have.) So, my question is, looking at standard "old fashioned" hard drives and SSD drives, obviously there's a massive price difference. I have been looking at drives like this: http://www.ebuyer.com/268693-corsair-120gb-force-3-ssd-cssd-f120gb3-bk-cssd-f120gb3-bk and this: http://www.ebuyer.com/321969-momentus-xt-750gb-sata-2-5in-7200rpm-hybrid-8gb-ssd-in-st750lx003 Having no experience of using either I don't know what's the most efficient thing to go for. Clearly the SSD will have better performance, but: If, for example, I had an SSD for Windows (say about 100gB), that would clearly give me the boot speed I want, then I guess my real questions are: If I were to buy one more SSD, would it give the greatest improvement on standard performance if used to store programs, or currently used files? Given that the OS is on an SSD, should I not bother with the 3 drives and instead, partition that Hybrid drive to store programs and currently used files on it? Obviously, option two is cheaper and option one could cause me storage issues, but that's when I can dump files I am not currently using onto another drive. Any, I am open to suggestions... so what do you suggest?!

  Read the article

• Cloud Backup: Getting the Users' Backs Up

  - by Tony Davis

  On Wednesday last week, Microsoft announced that as of July 1, all data transfers into its Microsoft Azure cloud will be free (though you have to pay for transferring data out). On Thursday last week, SQL Azure in Western Europe went down. It was a relatively short outage, but since SQL Azure currently provides no easy way to take a standard backup of a database and store it locally, many people had no recourse but to wait patiently for their cloud-based app to resume. It seems that Microsoft are very keen encourage developers to move their data onto their cloud, but are developers ready to do it, given that such basic backup capabilities are lacking? Recently on Simple-Talk, Mike Mooney described a perfect use case for the Microsoft Cloud. They had a simple web-based application with a SQL Server backend; they could move the application to Windows Azure, and the data into SQL Azure and in the process free themselves from much of the hassle surrounding management and scaling of the hardware, network and so on. It was a great fit and yet it nearly didn't happen; lack of support for the BACKUP command almost proved a show-stopper. Of course, backups of Azure databases are always and have always been taken automatically, for disaster recovery purposes, but these are strictly on-cloud copies and as of now it is not possible to use them to them to restore a database to a particular point in time. It seems that none of those clever Microsoft people managed to predict the need to perform basic backups of Azure databases so that copies could be stored locally, outside the Azure universe. At the very least, as Mike points out, performing a local backup before a new deployment is more or less mandatory. Microsoft did at least note the sound of gnashing teeth and, as a stop-gap measure, offered SQL Azure Database Copy which basically allows you to create an online clone of your database, but this doesn't allow for storing local archives of the data. To that end MS has provided SQL Azure Import/Export, to package up and export a database and its data, using BACPACs. These BACPACs do not guarantee transactional consistency; for example, if a child table is modified after the parent is copied, then the copied database will be in inconsistent state (meaning, to add to the fun, BACPACs need to be created from a database copy). In any event, widespread problems with BACPAC's evil cousin, the DACPAC have been well-documented, and it seems likely that many will also give BACPAC the bum's rush. Finally, in a TechEd 2011 presentation tagged "SQL Azure Advanced Administration", it was announced that "backup and restore" were coming in the next SQL Azure CTP. And yet this still doesn't mean that we'll get simple backups as DBAs know and love them. What it does mean, at least, is the ability to restore any given database to a point in time within a 2-week window. For the time being, if you want a local copy of your data and don't want to brave the BACPAC, one is left with SSIS or BCP, creative use of schema and data comparison tools, or use of SQL Azure Backup (currently in beta) in order to perform this simple but vital task. Cheers, Tony.

  Read the article

• How to schedule automatic (daily) snapshots of AWS EC2 Windows Instance?

  - by Stanley

  I have some Windows servers hosted on Amazon EC2. Some run Windows Server 2003 and other run Windows Server 2008. These are EBS-backed instances. Most of the instances also have some additional EBS-volumes attached. We want to schedule a daily snapshot of the windows machines (and also the attached EBS-volumes) to S3 so that we have daily backups available. One would think that this is a very common requirement and would be made available via the AWS Management Console, but alas, it is not. What approaches are available? How do I schedule daily snapshots on our Windows Servers? There are several scripting examples available online for Linux, but not so much for windows. I have had a look at http://sehmer.blogspot.com/2011/04/amazon-ec2-daily-snapshot-script-for.html as well as https://github.com/ronmichael/aws-snapshot-scheduler. Has anyone used one of these approaches and does it work? I have also considered a service like Skeddly which seems inexpensive at first glance but when you look at using it for several servers the price soon escalates to such a point where it seems a better option to create your own solution as you can then apply it to new servers in the future. With Skeddly we'll pay for each server. How do we schedule daily snapshots of our windows instances?

  Read the article

• Ask the Readers: Would You Be Willing to Give Windows Up and Use a Different O.S.?

  - by Asian Angel

  When it comes to computers, Windows definitely rules the desktop in comparison to other operating systems. What we would like to know this week is if you would actually be willing to give up using Windows altogether and move to a different operating system on your computers. Note: This week’s Ask the Readers post is posing a hypothetical situation, so please refrain from starting arguments or a flame war in the comments. Good reasoned discussion is always welcome. There is no doubt that Windows is the dominant operating system in use today. Everywhere you go or look it is easy to find computers with Windows installed such as at work, home, the library, government offices, and more. For many people it is the operating system that they know and are comfortable with, which makes changing to a different operating system less appealing. Adding to the preference for Windows (or dependency based on your view) is the custom software that many businesses use on a daily basis. Throw in the high volume of people who depend on and use Microsoft Office as a standard for their business documents and it is little wonder that Windows is so dominant. So what would you use if you did decide to take a break from or permanently move away from Windows? If your choice is Linux then you have a large and wonderful variety of distributions to choose from based on what you want out of your system. Want a distribution that is easy to work with? You could choose Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or others that are engineered to be ready to go “out of the box”. Like a challenge? Perhaps Arch Linux is more your style. One of the most attractive features of all about Linux is the price…it is very hard to beat free! Maybe Mac OS X sounds like the perfect choice. It has a certain mystique and elegance associated with it and many OS X fans refuse to use anything else if given a choice. Then there is the soon to be released Chrome OS with its’ emphasis on cloud computing. This is a system that is definitely focused on being as low-maintenance and hassle-free as possible. Quick on, quick off, minimalist, and made to be portable. All of the system’s updates will occur automatically leaving you free to work and play in the cloud. But it does have its’ limitations…no installing all of those custom apps that you love using on Windows or other systems…it is literally all about the browsing window and web apps. So there you have it. If the opportunity presented itself would you, could you give Windows up and use a different operating system? Would it be easy or hard for you to do? Perhaps it would not really matter so long as you could do what you needed or wanted to do on a computer. And maybe this is the perfect time to try something new and find out…that new favorite operating system could be just an install disc away. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! How-To Geek Polls require Javascript. Please Click Here to View the Poll. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials The 50 Best Registry Hacks that Make Windows Better The How-To Geek Holiday Gift Guide (Geeky Stuff We Like) LCD? LED? Plasma? The How-To Geek Guide to HDTV Technology The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 8: Filters Improve Digital Photography by Calibrating Your Monitor The Brothers Mario – Epic Gangland Style Mario Brothers Movie Trailer [Video] Score Awesome Games on the Cheap with the Humble Indie Bundle Add a Colorful Christmas Theme to Your Windows 7 Desktop This Windows Hack Changes the Blue Screen of Death to Red Edit Images Quickly in Firefox with Pixlr Grabber Zoho Writer, Sheet, and Show Now Available in Chrome Web Store

  Read the article

• ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-06-29

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Backward-compatible vs. forward-compatible: a tale of two clouds | William Vambenepe "There is the Cloud that provides value by requiring as few changes as possible. And there is the Cloud that provides value by raising the abstraction and operation level," says William Vambenepe. "The backward-compatible Cloud versus the forward-compatible Cloud." Vambenepe was a panelist on the recent ArchBeat podcast Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds. Andrejus Baranovskis's Blog: ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) Oracle ACE Director Andrejus Baranovskis investigates "how you can customize a standard BPM Task Flow through MDS Seeded customization." Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Music Festival If, after a day spent in sessions at Oracle Openworld, you want nothing more than to head back to your hotel for a quiet evening spent responding to email, please ignore the rest of this message. Because every night from Sept 30 to Oct 4 the streets of San Francisco will pulsate with music from a vast array of bands representing more musical styles than a single human brain an comprehend. It's the first ever Oracle Music Festival, baby, 7:00pm to 1:00am every night. Are those emails that important...? Resource Kit: Oracle Exadata - includes demos, videos, product datasheets, and technical white papers. This free resource kit includes several customer case study videos, two 3D product demos, several product datasheets, and three technical architecture white papers. Registration is required for the who don't already have a free Oracle.com membership account. Some execs contemplate making 'Bring Your Own Device' mandatory | ZDNet "Companies and agencies are recognizing that individual employees are doing a better job of handling and managing their devices than their harried and overworked IT departments – who need to focus on bigger priorities, such as analytics and cloud," says ZDNet SOA blogger Joe McKendrick. Podcast Show Notes: Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds All three parts of this discussion are now available. Featuring a panel of leading Oracle cloud computing experts, including Dr. James Baty, Mark T. Nelson, Ajay Srivastava, and William Vambenepe, the discussion covers an overview of the various flavors of cloud computing, the importance of standards, Why cloud computing is a paradigm shift—and why it isn't, and advice on what architects need to know to take advantage of the cloud. And for those who prefer reading to listening, a complete transcript is also available. Amazon AMIs and Oracle VM templates (Cloud Migrations) Cloud migration expert Tom Laszewski shares an objective comparison of these two resources. IOUC : Blogs : Read the latest news on the global user group community - June 2012! The June 2012 edition of "Are You a Member Yet?"—the quarterly newsletter about Oracle user group communities around the world. Webcast: Introducing Identity Management 11g R2 - July 19 Date: Thursday, July 19, 2012 Time: 10am PT / 1pm ET Please join Oracle and customer executives for the launch of Oracle Identity Management 11g R2, the breakthrough technology that dramatically expands the reach of identity management to cloud and mobile environments. Thought for the Day "The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build." — Bjarne Stroustrup Source: SoftwareQuotes.com

  Read the article

• Clever memory usage through the years

  - by Ben Emmett

  A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

  Read the article

• Disneyland Inside Out on iPhone and Android

  - by Ryan Cain

  It's hard to believe October was the last time I was over here on my blog.  Ironically after getter the developer phone from Microsoft I have been knee deep in iPhone programming and for the past few weeks Android programming again.  This time I've spent all my non-working hours programming a fun project for my "other" website, Disneyland Inside Out.  Disneyland Inside Out, a vacation planning site for Disneyland in California, has been around in various forms since June 1996.  It has always been a place for me to explore new technologies and learn about some of the new trends on the web.  I recently migrated the site over to DotNetNuke and have been building out custom modules for DNN.  I've also been hacking things together w/ the URLRewrite module in IIS 7.5 to provide strong SEO optimized URLs.  I can't say all that has really stuck within the DNN model of doing things, but it has worked pretty well. As part of my learning process, I spent most of the Fall bringing Disneyland Inside Out to the iPhone.  I will post more details on my development experiences later.  But this project gave me a really great opportunity to get a good feel for Objective-C development.  After 3 months I actually feel somewhat competent in the language and iPhone SDK, instead of just floundering around getting things to work.  The project also gave me a chance to play with some new frameworks on the iPhone and really dig into the Facebook SDK.  I also dug into some of the Gowalla REST api's as well.  We've been live with the app in iTunes for just about 10 days now, and have been sitting in the top 200 of free travel apps for the past few days.  You can get more info and the direct iTunes download link on our site: Disneyland Inside Out for iPhone Since launching the iPhone version I have gotten back into Android development, porting the Disneyland Inside Out app over to Android.  As I said in my first review of iPhone vs. Android, coming from a managed code background, Android is much easier to get going with.  I just about 3 weeks total I will have about 85 - 90% of the functionality up and running in the Android app, that took probably 1.5 - 2x's that time for iPhone.  That isn't a totally fair comparison as I am much more comfortable w/ Xcode and Objective-C today and can get some of the basic stuff done much faster than I could in the fall.  Though I'd say some of the hardest code to debug is still the null pointer issues on objects that were dealloc'd too early in Objective-C.  This isn't too bad with the NSZoombies enabled for synchronous code, but when you have a lot of async, which my app does, it can be hairy at times to track exactly what was causing the issue.   I will post more details later, as I am trying to wrap up a beta of the Android app today.  But in the meantime, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad head on over to the site and take a look at my app.

  Read the article

• Using a Level 2 switch as a core switch

  - by imtech

  I have a small user base of about 20 people on at a time and spiking up to about 80 people during peak times. Most people (80+%) are connected over our Aruba managed wireless system. We have a Windows Domain. We have 3 24-Port switches all connecting back to a central 48-port switch where additional access ports, firewall, servers, and wireless controller all centrally connect back to. It's a flat network with dumb switches. I'm in the process of upgrading our infrastructure. Cisco pricing for switches is pretty high for us so I've been looking at HP Procurves which seem to be within our budget range. I want to eventually make use of 802.1x, SNMP, QoS for possible VOIP upgrades, VLAN to separate guest VLAN from authenticated users, and other more advanced features. PoE would be nice but that's probably too expensive for us. I was thinking of having our core switch be a Procurve 2610 and the rest of our switches that centrally connect to it be Procurve 2510s. A true and full blown level 3 switch is way out of our price range but a 2610 seems to be good enough for us. The 2610 does static routing which ought to be good enough for us but I'm in unfamiliar territory so I'm looking for any gotchas. Also, should all the switches be 2610s or just the core switch? Do I even need the 2610, can I just go with all 2510s? I'm new to VLANs as well so I'm not sure what it is I need but I would like an affordable infrastructure that won't need replacing 2-3 years down the line because I choose a product that was lacking.

  Read the article

• Design pattern for logging changes in parent/child objects saved to database

  - by andrew

  I’ve got a 2 database tables in parent/child relationship as one-many. I’ve got three classes representing the data in these two tables: Parent Class { Public int ID {get; set;} .. other properties } Child Class { Public int ID {get;set;} Public int ParentID {get; set;} .. other properties } TogetherClass { Public Parent Parent; Public List<Child> ChildList; } Lastly I’ve got a client and server application – I’m in control of both ends so can make changes to both programs as I need to. Client makes a request for ParentID and receives a Together Class for the matching parent, and all of the child records. The client app may make changes to the children – add new children, remove or modify existing ones. Client app then sends the Together Class back to the server app. Server app needs to update the parent and child records in the database. In addition I would like to be able to log the changes – I’m doing this by having 2 separate tables one for Parent, one for child; each containing the same columns as the original plus date time modified, by whom and a list of the changes. I’m unsure as to the best approach to detect the changes in records – new records, records to be deleted, records with no fields changed, records with some fields changed. I figure I need to read the parent & children records and compare those to the ones in the Together Class. Strategy A: If Together class’s child record has an ID of say 0, that indicates a new record; insert. Any deleted child records are no longer in the Together Class; see if any of the comparison child records are not found in the Together class and delete if not found (Compare using ID). Check each child record for changes and if changed log. Strategy B: Make a new Updated TogetherClass UpdatedClass { Public Parent Parent {get; set} Public List<Child> ListNewChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> DeletedChild {get;set;} Public List<Child> ExistingChild {get;set;} // used for no changes and modified rows } And then process as per the list. The reason why I’m asking for ideas is that both of these solutions don’t seem optimal to me and I suspect this problem has been solved already – some kind of design pattern ? I am aware of one potential problem in this general approach – that where Client App A requests a record; App B requests same record; A then saves changes; B then saves changes which may overwrite changes A made. This is a separate locking issue which I’ll raise a separate question for if I’ve got trouble implementing. The actual implementation is c#, SQL Server and WCF between client and server - sharing a library containing the class implementations. Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I tried searching various terms without finding a match though.

  Read the article

• Looking for "bitmap-vector" image editor

  - by Borek

  I used to use PhotoImpact which is no longer developed so I'm looking for a replacement. What made PhotoImpact great to me was the ability to work in both bitmap and vector modes. What I mean by that: I could have an image or screenshot and easily add arrows, text captions or shapes to it. These shapes were vector objects so I could come back to them later and amend their properties easily. Software I know of: Paint.NET is purely bitmap so please don't recommend it - layers are not enough for my needs Drawing tools in MS Office work pretty much the way I'd like - you can paste an image and then add vector objects on top of it. It just doesn't feel right to have the full-fidelity original images stored as .docx or .pptx (I don't fully trust Word/Powerpoint that they don't compress the image) I'm not sure about GIMP but if it's just "better Paint.NET" (i.e., layers but no vector objects) I'm not interested Photoshop is out of question purely because of its price tag Corel killed PhotoImpact because they already had a competing product (Paint Shop Pro) but AFAIK it lacks vector features. Any tips for PhotoImpact alternatives would be very welcome.

  Read the article

• Netgear FVS336G: appropriate solution for today's small businesses?

  - by bwerks

  Hey all, I've been looking into a routers to facilitate a vpn solution for a small business. While the Netgear FVS336G looks good on paper, it appears to have some fairly crippling setbacks that drag down what appears to be some great hardware. First off, the unit has been around for a couple years now, perhaps before 64-bit operating systems were as common as they are now, and complaints are everywhere that claim that SSL or IPsec (or both) VPN connections will not work with 64-bit operating systems. However, most of these claims mention only Vista, which makes me think that these problems could have potentially been solved since then. Unfortunately though, Netgear's support forums seem to be incredibly private, and policed by some troll named jmizuguchi who just closes down public posts in order to marshal them into the private ones. Danger, will robinson. Apparently their firmware upgrade process is a nightmare too, but that's beside the point. My question is this: has anyone configured one a Netgear FVS336G to operate in a server 2008 (or R2)/windows 7 64-bit network? If so, is it possible to use the microsoft vpn client or are third party clients still required? If this thing has just failed the test of time, is there a feature-comparable unit that I've missed, at anywhere near the same price range? Thanks!

  Read the article

• HP Proliant DL380 G4 - Can this server still perform in 2011?

  - by BSchriver

  Can the HP Proliant DL380 G4 series server still perform at high a quality in the 2011 IT world? This may sound like a weird question but we are a very small company whose primary business is NOT IT related. So my IT dollars have to stretch a long way. I am in need of a good web and database server. The load and demand for a while will be fairly low so I am not looking nor do I have the money to buy a brand new HP Dl380 G7 series box for $6K. While searching around today I found a company in ATL that buys servers off business leases and then stripes them down to parts. They clean, check and test each part and then custom "rebuild" the server based on whatever specs you request. The interesting thing is they also provide a 3-year warranty on all their servers they sell. I am contemplating buying two of the following: HP Proliant DL380 G4 Dual (2) Intel Xeon 3.6 GHz 800Mhz 1MB Cache processors 8GB PC3200R ECC Memory 6 x 73GB U320 15K rpm SCSI drives Smart Array 6i Card Dual Power Supplies Plus the usual cdrom, dual nic, etc... All this for $750 each or $1500 for two pretty nicely equipped servers. The price then jumps up on the next model up which is the G5 series. It goes from $750 to like $2000 for a comparable server. I just do not have $4000 to buy two servers right now. So back to my original question, if I load Windows 2008 R2 Server and IIS 7 on one of the machines and Windows 2008 R2 server and MS SQL 2008 R2 Server on another machine, what kind of performance might I expect to see from these machines? The facts is this series is now 3 versions behind the G7's and this series of server was built when Windows 200 Server was the dominant OS and Windows 2003 Server was just coming out. If you are running Windows 2008 R2 Server on a G4 with similar or less specs I would love to hear what your performance is like.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153  | Next Page >