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• StreamInsight 1.0 Released

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  One piece in the set of products offered in SQL Server 2008 R2 that has generated a lot of buzz and interest during its CTP phase is StreamInsight, Microsoft’s platform for Complex Event Processing. Microsoft’s information platform vision provides enterprises with a “complete approach” to managing information assets, enabling all businesses to gain strategic value from information from the desktop to the datacenter to the cloud. And StreamInsight V1 is one essential piece in this spectrum. After more than a year of blood, sweat, tears, and insane amounts of coffee we are proud to release the first version of our Complex Event Processing Framework.   Those of you who have been following our Community Technology Previews (CTPs) throughout last year have already had the possibility to familiarize themselves with the product. Early feedback was not only incredibly positive, but also very constructive and strongly influenced the final feature set. Four notable increments over our last public CTP are: Count windows Non-occurrence detection (Anti-Join) Dynamic query composition at runtime Synchronize time across input streams Additionally, many smaller issues and bugs were addressed. A few APIs slightly changed with respect to the November CTP, but porting your application to RTM should not require a lot of effort.   Here are the (english) bits - choosing the evaluation license during setup lets you already play with this version. Before you install, make sure to uninstall any previous CTP version:   StreamInsight X86StreamInsight X64   Within a few days, we will update our product page and add download links and instructions there as well.   The StreamInsight documentation is provided through a help file as part of the installation as well as through Books Online on MSDN. We also invite you to visit the StreamInsight Blog and the StreamInsight Forum, which is a great place to discuss questions and issues with the community and the development team.   Regards,Roman Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Games at Work Part 2: Gamification and Enterprise Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Gamification and Enterprise Applications In part 1 of this article, we explored why people are motivated to play games so much. Now, let's think about what that means for Oracle applications user experience. (Even the coffee is gamified. Acknowledgement @noelruane. Check out the Guardian article Dublin's Frothing with Tech Fever. Game development is big business in Ireland too.) Applying game dynamics (gamification) effectively in the enterprise applications space to reflect business objectives is now a hot user experience topic. Consider, for example, how such dynamics could solve applications users’ problems such as: Becoming familiar or expert with an application or process Building loyalty, customer satisfaction, and branding relationships Collaborating effectively and populating content in the community Completing tasks or solving problems on time Encouraging teamwork to achieve goals Improving data accuracy and completeness of entry Locating and managing the correct resources or information Managing changes and exceptions Setting and reaching targets, quotas, or objectives Games’ Incentives, Motivation, and Behavior I asked Julian Orr, Senior Usability Engineer, in the Oracle Fusion Applications CRM User Experience (UX) team for his thoughts on what potential gamification might offer Oracle Fusion Applications. Julian pointed to the powerful incentives offered by games as the starting place: “The biggest potential for gamification in enterprise apps is as an intrinsic motivator. Mechanisms include fun, social interaction, teamwork, primal wiring, adrenaline, financial, closed-loop feedback, locus of control, flow state, and so on. But we need to know what works best for a given work situation.” For example, in CRM service applications, we might look at the motivations of typical service applications users (see figure 1) and then determine how we can 'gamify' these motivations with techniques to optimize the desired work behavior for the role (see figure 2). Description of Figure 1 Description of Figure 2 Involving Our Users Online game players are skilled collaborators as well as problem solvers. Erika Webb (@erikanollwebb), Oracle Fusion Applications UX Manager, has run gamification events for Oracle, including one on collaboration and gamification in Oracle online communities that involved Oracle customers and partners. Read more... However, let’s be clear: gamifying a user interface that’s poorly designed is merely putting the lipstick of gamification on the pig of work. Gamification cannot replace good design and killer content based on understanding how applications users really work and what motivates them. So, Let the Games Begin! Gamification has tremendous potential for the enterprise application user experience. The Oracle Fusion Applications UX team is innovating fast and hard in this area, researching with our users how gamification can make work more satisfying and enterprises more productive. If you’re interested in knowing more about our gamification research, sign up for more information or check out how your company can get involved through the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Your thoughts? Find those comments.

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• Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011

  - by David Dorf

  After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here.  These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future.  They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating.  It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds.  The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords:  deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over.  Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections.  Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores.  Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices.  I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful.  They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero.  For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever.  Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce.  They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality.  Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long.  By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.

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• Various issues linked to my CD drive, when it has a disc in it

  - by Voyagerfan5761

  When I go to the Desktop and click on a media icon (for my flash drive, a CD, whatever it is), the following problems occur, in this approximate sequence: Nautilus will close if it's open. the desktop icons disappear my Window List shows a button that says "Starting File Manager" the icons reappear the button in Window List disappears Because of this problem, I can no longer drag and drop media, nor can I right-click to perform actions such as "Eject" and "Safely Remove Drive". The same symptoms occur if I click a media icon (that is also present on the desktop) in Nautilus' Computer view, though notably not if I click in the places list on the left. I have confirmed that this problem happens only if there is a CD in the drive (Matshita UJDA360). Also, inserting a disc into the CD drive appears to kill all running programs and restart Nautilus (or X; I'm not sure). Applications like Brasero and Rhythmbox will not start while there is a disc in the drive. Removing the disc doesn't result in the list of media updating; it must be forced to update by clicking on one of the desktop icons and going through one of the above-described cycles. It doesn't seem to matter what type of disc is in the drive. This has happened with CD-RWs I burned years ago using Roxio on Windows XP, the Ubuntu disc I installed from (burned with InfraRecorder Portable under Windows XP), and the retail game disc for Star Trek Armada II. The first indication of a problem was Brasero dying when I tried to insert a disc for erasure and rewriting. Since then, I've drafted several different questions on various issues, finally combining them into this one when I realized that having a CD in the drive was the common link. Could this be a simple driver issue? If Ubuntu is dynamically detecting my hardware on boot, can I specify drivers for devices that I know will be a problem if the default files are used? I'm beginning to think that my laptop, an old Dell Inspiron 2650, is just too old or proprietary-driver-hungry (or something, maybe RAM-starved) for Ubuntu and Windows XP to play nicely alongside each other. Or maybe I just need to carefully take my wall-wart machine to a coffee shop for an afternoon so I can download updates and such from the Internet, as I lack a home connection.

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• Games at Work Part 1: Introduction to Gamification and Applications

  - by ultan o'broin

  Games Are Everywhere How many of you (will admit to) remember playing Pong? OK then, do you play Angry Birds on your phone during work hours? Thought about why we keep playing online, video, and mobile games and what this "gamification" business we're hearing about means for the enterprise applications user experience? In Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, Jane McGonigal says that playing computer and online games now provides more rewards for people than their real lives do. Games offer intrinsic rewards and happiness to the players as they pursue more satisfying work and the success, social connection, and meaning that goes with it. Yep, Gran Turismo, Dungeons & Dragons, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Boxing, and the rest are all forms of work it seems. Games are, in fact, work taken so seriously that governments now move to limit the impact of virtual gaming currencies on the real financial system. Anyone who spends hours harvesting crops on FarmVille realizes it’s hard work too. Yet games evoke a positive emotion in players who voluntarily stay engaged with games for hours, day after day. Some 183 million active gamers in the United States play on average 13 hours per week. Weekly, 5 million of those gamers play for longer than a working week (45 hours). So why not harness the work put into games to solve real-world problems? Or, in the case of our applications users, real-world work problems? What’s a Game? Jane explains that all games have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. We need to look at what motivational ideas behind the dynamics of the game—what we call gamification—are appropriate for our users. Typically, these motivators are achievement, altruism, competition, reward, self-expression, and status). Common game techniques for leveraging these motivations include: Badging and avatars Points and awards Leader boards Progress charts Virtual currencies or goods Gifting and giving Challenges and quests Some technology commentators argue for a game layer on top of everything, but this layer is already part of our daily lives in many instances. We see gamification working around us already: the badging and kudos offered on My Oracle Support or other Oracle community forums, becoming a Dragon Slayer implementor of Atlassian applications, being made duke of your favorite coffee shop on Yelp, sharing your workout details with Nike+, or donating to Japanese earthquake relief through FarmVille, for example. And what does all this mean for the applications that you use in your work? Read on in part two...

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• SOA &amp; Application Grid Specialization step 3 of 6 &ndash; Education Competence Center

  - by Jürgen Kress

  SOA & Application Grid Specialization step 3 of 6 – education competence center Dear Team In our fist step to become SOA Specialized & Application Grid Specialized we highlighted our OMM system to register your opportunities. In our second step we featured our marketing activities to create your reference cases and run joint marketing campaigns. In the third step we will focus on the education criteria: SOA Sales assessment & SOA Pre-Sales assessment & Support assessment. Steps: Login to Oracle Partner Network (support for login contact Partner Business Centers) Go to the OPN Competence Center Select the Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture 11g Sales Specialist (3 persons required) Click the play button to run the assessment Select the Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture 11g PreSales Specialist (3 persons required) Click the play button to run the assessment Select the Oracle Technology Support Specialist (1 person required) Click the play button to run the assessment Tips: · You can run the assessments as often as you like. After each try you will see your current score and correct answers to the questions. · During your next team meeting reserve an hour to become specialized jointly. · For the fist 5 partners who contact us we will order a pizza service to ensure the success of your team meeting! · We want your feedback to improve the assessments. If you find an ambiguous question or one with wrong context or even wrong answers, send us your feedback. The first 5 partners who will send us feedback will get a free competence center coffee cup! If you need to get an Oracle Partner Network Account please contact our Partner Business Centers.   For more information on Specialization please visit our OPN Specialized Webcast Series And become a member in our SOA Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/ema/soa Jürgen Kress, SOA Partner Adoption EMEA Thanks for your efforts to become Specialized! SOA Specialized Application Grid Specialized Proof 2 transactions with OMM Proof 2 transactions with OMM Create your 2 references Create your 2 references SOA Sales assessment 3, Application Grid Sales Specialist 3 SOA Pre-Sales assessment 3 Application Grid PreSales Specialist 3 Support assessment 1 Support assessment 2 SOA Implementation assessment 4 Application Grid Implementation assessment 4 Technorati Tags: soa specialization Oracle Partner Network SOA Partner Community

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• Is OOP hard because it is not natural?

  - by zvrba

  One can often hear that OOP naturally corresponds to the way people think about the world. But I would strongly disagree with this statement: We (or at least I) conceptualize the world in terms of relationships between things we encounter, but the focus of OOP is designing individual classes and their hierarchies. Note that, in everyday life, relationships and actions exist mostly between objects that would have been instances of unrelated classes in OOP. Examples of such relationships are: "my screen is on top of the table"; "I (a human being) am sitting on a chair"; "a car is on the road"; "I am typing on the keyboard"; "the coffee machine boils water", "the text is shown in the terminal window." We think in terms of bivalent (sometimes trivalent, as, for example in, "I gave you flowers") verbs where the verb is the action (relation) that operates on two objects to produce some result/action. The focus is on action, and the two (or three) [grammatical] objects have equal importance. Contrast that with OOP where you first have to find one object (noun) and tell it to perform some action on another object. The way of thinking is shifted from actions/verbs operating on nouns to nouns operating on nouns -- it is as if everything is being said in passive or reflexive voice, e.g., "the text is being shown by the terminal window". Or maybe "the text draws itself on the terminal window". Not only is the focus shifted to nouns, but one of the nouns (let's call it grammatical subject) is given higher "importance" than the other (grammatical object). Thus one must decide whether one will say terminalWindow.show(someText) or someText.show(terminalWindow). But why burden people with such trivial decisions with no operational consequences when one really means show(terminalWindow, someText)? [Consequences are operationally insignificant -- in both cases the text is shown on the terminal window -- but can be very serious in the design of class hierarchies and a "wrong" choice can lead to convoluted and hard to maintain code.] I would therefore argue that the mainstream way of doing OOP (class-based, single-dispatch) is hard because it IS UNNATURAL and does not correspond to how humans think about the world. Generic methods from CLOS are closer to my way of thinking, but, alas, this is not widespread approach. Given these problems, how/why did it happen that the currently mainstream way of doing OOP became so popular? And what, if anything, can be done to dethrone it?

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• Fusion Middleware Newsletter - October Edition is Now Out

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} From the latest Oracle Fusion Middleware product releases to the Oracle AppAdvantage use case on Cloud and On-Premise Integration to the very latest in Developer corner and more, the October edition of Oracle Fusion Middleware is chock full of information. Catch the latest edition to learn about the highlights in the latest releases for Oracle GoldenGate 12c and Oracle Data Integrator 12c; and Oracle WebCenter. While there, don’t miss the latest news and upcoming events for Oracle Fusion Middleware and Developers. Find out who we have in the Team Spotlight this edition and watch the latest customer success stories across the portfolio. Did we miss anything? Would you like to hear more about a particular topic? Let us know. Simply drop us a comment and we’d be sure to discuss that in our next editorial meeting. In the meantime, grab a coffee and enjoy the October edition of the newsletter.

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• Mac Management and Security

  - by Bart Silverstrim

  I was going through some literature on managing OS X laptops and asked someone some questions about usage scenarios when using the MacBooks. I asked someone more knowledgeable than I about whether it was possible for my Mac to be taken over if I were visiting another site for a conference or if I went on a wifi network at a local coffee house with policies from an OS X Server with workgroup manager (either legit for the site or someone running a version of OS X Server on hardware they have hidden somewhere on the network), which apparently could be set up to do things like limit my access to Finder or impose other neat whiz-bang management features. He said that it is indeed possible for it to happen as it would be assigned via the DHCP server and the OS X server would assume my Mac is a guest and could hand out restrictions and apparently my Mac will happily accept them without notifying me or giving me an option, unlike Windows which I believe would need to be joined to a domain before it becomes "managed" by Active Directory. So my question is as network admins and sysadmins with users traveling with MacBooks, is there a way to reasonably protect your users from having their machines hijacked without resorting to just turning off networking all the time? Or isn't this much of a security hazard? What threat does this pose to the road warriors in your businesses?

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• Mac Management Without Permission and Security

  - by Bart Silverstrim

  I was going through some literature on managing OS X laptops and asked someone some questions about usage scenarios when using the MacBooks. I asked someone more knowledgeable than I about whether it was possible for my Mac to be taken over if I were visiting another site for a conference or if I went on a wifi network at a local coffee house with policies from an OS X Server with workgroup manager (either legit for the site or someone running a version of OS X Server on hardware they have hidden somewhere on the network), which apparently could be set up to do things like limit my access to Finder or impose other neat whiz-bang management features. He said that it is indeed possible for it to happen as it would be assigned via the DHCP server and the OS X server would assume my Mac is a guest and could hand out restrictions and apparently my Mac will happily accept them without notifying me or giving me an option, unlike Windows which I believe would need to be joined to a domain before it becomes "managed" by Active Directory. So my question is as network admins and sysadmins with users traveling with MacBooks, is there a way to reasonably protect your users from having their machines hijacked without resorting to just turning off networking all the time? Or isn't this much of a security hazard? What threat does this pose to the road warriors in your businesses?

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• Why have trackballs almost disappeared? [closed]

  - by Gary M. Mugford

  One of the movement sensors in my Microsoft Trackball Explorer has failed and right now I am using a mouse. Ugggh! I'll got steal one of the various Logitech trackballs spread around the house, but they all have issues. The Trackman has a horrible placement for the scroll wheel. Others have marbles for the thumb rather than a big ball for the fingers and at least one trackball is working around here without having a scroll wheel at all! (The one at the dinner table, for when I dine alone). My question is, why have trackballs fallen into disfavour? Seems to me that trackballs are great for crowded desktops (you know, the one with keyboards, notes, pens and coffee cups), and for laptops with those hated overly-sensitive touchpads. But right now, it seems to be a choice between that Logitech Trackman and some Kensington models that lack scroll wheels. All I want is a nice big ball to manipulate with the fingers and two buttons on the thumb side with the scroil wheel between them. Placement of other buttons is completely optional. Is that asking too much?

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• Virtual Lan on the Cloud -- Help Confirm my understanding?

  - by marfarma

  [Note: Tried to post this over at ServerFault, but I don't have enough 'points' for more than one link. Powers that be, move this question over there.] Please give this a quick read and let me know if I'm missing something before I start trying to make this work. I'm not a systems admin professional, and I'd hate to end up banging my head into the wall if I can avoid it. Goals: Create a 'road-warrior' capable star shaped virtual LAN for consultants who spend the majority of their time on client sites, and who's firm has no physical network or servers. Enable CIFS access to a cloud-server based installation of Alfresco Allow Eventual implementation of some form of single-sign-on ( OpenLDAP server ) access to Alfresco and other server applications implemented in the future Given: All Servers will live in the public internet cloud (Rackspace Cloud Servers) OpenVPN Server will be a Linux disto, probably Ubuntu 9.x, installed on same server as Alfresco (at least to start) Staff will access server applications and resources from client sites, hotels, trains, planes, coffee shops or their homes over various ISP, using their company laptops or personal home desktops. Based on my Research thus far, to accomplish this, I'll need: OpenVPN with Bridging Enabled to create a star shaped "virtual" LAN http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/miscellaneous/76-ethernet-bridging.html A Road Warrior Network Configuration, as described in this Shorewall article (lower down the page) http://www.shorewall.net/OPENVPN.html Configure bridge addressesing (probably DHCP) http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/faq.html#bridge-addressing Configure CIFS / Samba to accept VPN IP address http://serverfault.com/questions/137933/howto-access-samba-share-over-vpn-tunnel Set up Client software, with keys configured for access (potentially through a OpenVPN-Sa client portal) http://www.openvpn.net/index.php/access-server/download-openvpn-as/221-installation-overview.html

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• Use Mac OS X Server As Development Environment

  - by macinjosh

  I've installed Mac OS X Server 10.6.3 on my laptop to use as my normal OS. I do a lot of web development and thought it would be handy to run OS X Server so I could more easily manage my local development environment (Apache Virtual Hosts, Hostnames for each local site, etc). I'm really enjoying the new setup except for one problem. DNS. My ideal situation would be to add a site (some-site.local) in the Web Service and then go to the DNS Service and add a primary record for the new site. I actually got this working at one point but after a reboot it stopped working! The records look the same as they did before the reboot but the site doesn't come up in Safari. Here is a list of my needs: Need to be able to add new domains at a whim Domains always map to a site on the same box's Web Service Local & External IPs often change It would nice if it worked on any network (i.e. WiFi at the airport or coffee shop) Sites only need to be accessible locally Configuration should stay put even after rebooting I've done some googling and used this as a bit of guide. In the past I've used MAMP and then just a local Apache/PHP/MySQL install with a manually managed hosts file. I'd rather not go back.

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• installing lots of perl modules

  - by Colin Pickard

  Hi, I've been landed with the job of documenting how to install a very complicated application onto a clean server. Part of the application requires a lot of perl scripts, each of which seem to require lots of different perl modules. I don't know much about perl, and I only know one way to install the required modules. This means my documentation now looks this: Type each of these commands and accept all the defaults: sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install JSON' sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Date::Simple' sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Log::Log4perl' sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'install Email::Simple' (.... continues for 2 more pages... ) Is there any way I can do all this one line like I can with aptitude i.e. Type the following command and go get a coffee: sudo aptitude install openssh-server libapache2-mod-perl2 build-essential ... Thank you (on behalf of the long suffering people who will be reading my document) EDIT: The best way to do this is to use the packaged versions. For the modules which were not packaged for Ubuntu 10.10 I ended up with a little perl script which I found here ) #!/usr/bin/perl -w use CPANPLUS; use strict; CPANPLUS::Backend->new( conf => { prereqs => 1 } )->install( modules => [ qw( Date::Simple File::Slurp LWP::Simple MIME::Base64 MIME::Parser MIME::QuotedPrint ) ] ); This means I can put a nice one liner in my document: sudo perl installmodules.pl

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• Starting airplay from command line, to send output of 'Say' Mac OS X command to airplay

  - by Fabien

  Ok, Sunday question :) Trying to make a little joke... 1) if you open a terminal, and type "say -a ?", Mac OS X will give you the list of devices it can send spoken words to. On mine, it says: 39 AirPlay 47 Built-in Output 2) I have a Denon airplay-ready received in my living room and I'm trying to send spoken words to my wife downstairs... I can send music without any problem using iTunes so, from an infrastructure standpoint, I'm all set. 3) I want my computer to say (out of the blue) "Honey, why don't you bring me a cup of coffee". I can make it say that locally on my internal laptop speakers, but I can't seem to send that to device 39 successfully. I am suspecting that there are a few other things that need to be setup before it works, i.e. setting up airplay output to "denon", maybe opening a channel and reserving it. I don't know. Has anyone played with this? Is there a way to setup airplay from the command line? That would be awesome :)

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• Anyone else experiencing high rates of Linux server crashes during a leap second day?

  - by Bron Gondwana

  POSTMORTEM Anticlimax: only thing that died was my VPN (openvpn) link to the cluster, so there was an exciting few seconds while it re-established. Everything else was fine. Starting back ntp everywhere. If you look at Marco's blog at http://my.opera.com/marcomarongiu/blog/2012/06/01/an-humble-attempt-to-work-around-the-leap-second - he has a solution for phasing the time change over 24 hours using ntpd -x to avoid the 1 second skip. Give that a go if it matters to you. For the systems I run, the jump isn't a problem. Just today, Sat June 30th - starting soon after the start of the day GMT. We've had a handful of blades in different datacentres as managed by different teams all go dark - not responding to pings, screen blank. They're all running Debian Squeeze - with everything from stock kernel to custom 3.2.21 builds. Most are Dell M610 blades, but I've also just lost a Dell R510 and other departments have lost machines from other vendors too. There was also an older IBM x3550 which crashed and which I thought might be unrelated, but now I'm wondering. The one crash which I did get a screen dump from said: [3161000.864001] BUG: spinlock lockup on CPU#1, ntpd/3358 [3161000.864001] lock: ffff88083fc0d740, .magic: dead4ead, .owner: imapd/24737, .owner_cpu: 0 Unfortunately the blades all supposedly had kdump configured, but they died so hard that kdump didn't trigger - and they had console blanking turned on. I've disabled console blanking now, so fingers crossed I'll have more information after the next crash. Just want to know if it's a common thread or "just us". It's really odd that they're different units in different datacentres bought at different times and run by different admins (I run the FastMail.FM ones)... and now even different vendor hardware. Most of the machines which crashed had been up for weeks/months and were running 3.1 or 3.2 series kernels. The most recent crash was a machine which had only been up about 6 hours running 3.2.21. THE WORKAROUND Ok people, here's how I worked around it. disabled ntp: /etc/init.d/ntp stop created http://linux.brong.fastmail.fm/2012-06-30/fixtime.pl (code stolen from Marco, see blog posts in comments) ran fixtime.pl without an argument to see that there was a leap second set ran fixtime.pl with an argument to remove the leap second NOTE: depends on adjtimex. I've put a copy of the squeeze adjtimex binary at http://linux.brong.fastmail.fm/2012-06-30/adjtimex - it will run without dependencies on a squeeze 64 bit system. If you put it in the same directory as fixtime.pl, it will be used if the system one isn't present. Obviously if you don't have squeeze 64 bit... find your own. I'm going to start ntp again tomorrow. As an anonymous user suggested - an alternative to running adjtimex is to just set the time yourself, which will presumably also clear the leapsecond counter.

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• I want to use OpenVPN to access the web and email from China. How?

  - by gaoshan88

  My question: How do I use my already existing OpenVPN setup to enable secure, remote web surfing and email checking from open wireless hotspots? Some long winded details: I am running Ubuntu and have OpenVPN up and working fine as a server. My client machine connects fine as well. However, that just gets me a secure connection to my home network. What I want is to be able to access my VPN server and surf the web or check email securely from anywhere with an open wireless connection. I am frequently in China and having secure, unblocked access would be a boon (especially since I like to work from tea houses and coffee shops and I've already had a password sniffed and hacked once). I already know how to tunnel over SSH via a SOCKS proxy using something like: ssh -ND 8887 -p 22 [email protected] but since I have OpenVPN I figure why not try it? So... what are the steps involved in making it so I can connect to my VPN and the surf and check mail to my hearts content (slowly to be sure but at least it wold be secure). Thx!

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• Random "not accessible" "you might not have permission to use this network resource"

  - by Jim Fred

  A couple of computers, both Win7-64 can connect to shares on a NAS server, at least most of the time. At random intervals, these Win7-64 computers cannot access some shares but can access others on the same NAS. When access is denied, a dialog box appears saying "\\myServer\MyShare02 not accessible...you might not have permission to use this network resource..." Other shares, say \\myServer\MyShare01, ARE accessible from the affected computers and yet other computers CAN access the affected shares. Reboots of the affected computers seem to allow the affected computer to connect to the affected shares - but then, getting a cup of coffee seems to help too. When the problem appears, the network seems to be ok e.g. the affected computers can access other shares on the affected server and can ping etc. Also Other computers can access the affected shares. The NAS server is a NetGear ReadyNas Pro. The problem might be on the NAS side such as a resource limitation but since only 2 Win7-64 PCs seem to be affected the most, the problem could be on the PC side - I'm not sure yet. I of course searched for solutions and found several tips addressing initial connection problems (use correct workgroup name, use IP address instead of server name, remove security restrictions etc) but none of those remedies address the random nature of this problem.

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• Dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 across a reboot

  - by AK4749

  My Setup: I have two separate SSDs, and each contains an independently bootable OS - W8 and U12.10. From my extremely limited knowledge, this means each has a functioning EFI partition(?). My default boot order (GA-Z68XP-UD3P mobo with UEFI firmware update) boots the UEFI partition containing windows first, but if I enter the BIOS I can select the "ubuntu" entry to successfully boot ubuntu. Both drives are GPT, and are EFI boots. What I want to do: Reboot Windows 8, re-enter W8 (this is happening now due to the default boot order). What I want to change, however, is to boot into Ubuntu if i reboot from ubuntu. Essentially, I would like to work within one OS unless I consciously choose otherwise. Normally, I would not even ask to something I thought was impossible, but... Why I think this is possible: When trying EasyBCD to add ubuntu to the W8 UEFI bootloader, I noticed an "iReboot" addon or something that allows you to select which OS to boot into from within the OS. Note that I ended up not using the NeoGrub entry to chain Ubuntu off the W8 bootloader because I couldn't get much help with it. Is this possible? Have I had too much coffee and gone insane? Thank you all for your time, AK

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• extra managed+unmanaged switches @ home/office -- best (mis)usage scenario? what would you do?

  - by locuse

  up front -- definitely NOT a mission-critical kind of question. after a 'spring cleaning' of my local office, i've ended up with two 'spare' GigE switches at my home/office -- one managed, capable of VLANs, QoS, etc, and the other unmanaged. i've got more ports than i need. in fact EACH switch has more total ports than i need. but, since i can't have these just sitting around not doing SOMETHING ... ;-) i'm interested in ideas for best combined use of these switches. my local topology is simple: [ net ] -- [ adsl2 modem ] -- [linux firewall/router/DNS ] _______________| | [ some arrangement of the 2 GigE switches ] | ( ... stuff on the lan ... ) [WAP1] [voip ATA] [printer] [desktop1] [mail server] [Xen server [desktop2] ( mostly dev, [desktop3] + file server [desktop4] + media server)] the MailServer is a production mail server the XenServer serves some low vol to the 'net; the MediaServer guest serves ONLY to the LAN is there, e.g., any performance value in segmenting off any of the LAN using the managed switch (VLAN? QoS tagging? something?), feeding the rest into the connected unmanaged switch? or should i simply use one of the switches & be done with it, and use the other for a coffee-cup stand?

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• An Alphabet of Eponymous Aphorisms, Programming Paradigms, Software Sayings, Annoying Alliteration

  - by Brian Schroer

  Malcolm Anderson blogged about “Einstein’s Razor” yesterday, which reminded me of my favorite software development “law”, the name of which I can never remember. It took much Wikipedia-ing to find it (Hofstadter’s Law – see below), but along the way I compiled the following list: Amara’s Law: We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Brook’s Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Law of Demeter: Each unit should only talk to its friends; don't talk to strangers. Einstein’s Razor: “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler” is the popular paraphrase, but what he actually said was “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience”, an overly complicated quote which is an obvious violation of Einstein’s Razor. (You can tell by looking at a picture of Einstein that the dude was hardly an expert on razors or other grooming apparati.) Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives: Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment. - O'Toole's Corollary: The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. (Morris’s Corollary: “…including Common Lisp”) Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. Issawi’s Omelet Analogy: One cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs - but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelet. Jackson’s Rules of Optimization: Rule 1: Don't do it. Rule 2 (for experts only): Don't do it yet. Kaner’s Caveat: A program which perfectly meets a lousy specification is a lousy program. Liskov Substitution Principle (paraphrased): Functions that use pointers or references to base classes must be able to use objects of derived classes without knowing it Mason’s Maxim: Since human beings themselves are not fully debugged yet, there will be bugs in your code no matter what you do. Nils-Peter Nelson’s Nil I/O Rule: The fastest I/O is no I/O.    Occam's Razor: The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Quentin Tarantino’s Pie Principle: “…you want to go home have a drink and go and eat pie and talk about it.” (OK, he was talking about movies, not software, but I couldn’t find a “Q” quote about software. And wouldn’t it be cool to write a program so great that the users want to eat pie and talk about it?) Raymond’s Rule: Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.  Sowa's Law of Standards: Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X. Turing’s Tenet: We shall do a much better programming job, provided we approach the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty, provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind and approach the task as very humble programmers.  Udi Dahan’s Race Condition Rule: If you think you have a race condition, you don’t understand the domain well enough. These rules didn’t exist in the age of paper, there is no reason for them to exist in the age of computers. When you have race conditions, go back to the business and find out actual rules. Van Vleck’s Kvetching: We know about as much about software quality problems as they knew about the Black Plague in the 1600s. We've seen the victims' agonies and helped burn the corpses. We don't know what causes it; we don't really know if there is only one disease. We just suffer -- and keep pouring our sewage into our water supply. Wheeler’s Law: All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection... Except for the problem of too many layers of indirection. Wheeler also said “Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”. The Wrong Road Rule of Mr. X (anonymous): No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back. Yourdon’s Rule of Two Feet: If you think your management doesn't know what it's doing or that your organisation turns out low-quality software crap that embarrasses you, then leave. Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Zawinski is also responsible for “Some people, when confronted with a problem, think 'I know, I'll use regular expressions.' Now they have two problems.” He once commented about X Windows widget toolkits: “Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.”

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• Unit testing is… well, flawed.

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Hey someone had to say it. I clearly recall my first IT job. I was appointed Systems Co-coordinator for a leading South African retailer at store level. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an honest day’s labor and in fact I highly recommend it, however I’m obliged to refer to the designation cautiously; in reality all I had to do was monitor in-store prices and two UNIX front line controllers. If anything went wrong – I only had to phone it in… Luckily that wasn’t all I did. My duties extended to some other interesting annual occurrence – stock take. Despite a bit more curious affair, it was still a tedious process that took weeks of preparation and several nights to complete.  Then also I remember that no matter how elaborate our planning was, the entire exercise would be rendered useless if we couldn’t get the basics right – that being the act of counting. Sounds simple right? We’ll with a store which could potentially carry over tens of thousands of different items… we’ll let’s just say I believe that’s when I first became a coffee addict. In those days the act of counting stock was a very humble process. Nothing like we have today. A staff member would be assigned a bin or shelve filled with items he or she had to sort then count. Thereafter they had to record their findings on a complementary piece of paper. Every night I would manage several teams. Each team was divided into two groups - counters and auditors. Both groups had the same task, only auditors followed shortly on the heels of the counters, recounting stock levels, making sure the original count correspond to their findings. It was a simple yet hugely responsible orchestration of people and thankfully there was one fundamental and golden rule I could always abide by to ensure things run smoothly – No-one was allowed to audit their own work. Nope, not even on nights when I didn’t have enough staff available. This meant I too at times had to get up there and get counting, or have the audit stand over until the next evening. The reason for this was obvious - late at night and with so much to do we were prone to make some mistakes, then on the recount, without a fresh set of eyes, you were likely to repeat the offence. Now years later this rule or guideline still holds true as we develop software (as far removed as software development from counting stock may be). For some reason it is a fundamental guideline we’re simply ignorant of. We write our code, we write our tests and thus commit the same horrendous offence. Yes, the procedure of writing unit tests as practiced in most development houses today – is flawed. Most if not all of the tests we write today exercise application logic – our logic. They are based on the way we believe an application or method should/may/will behave or function. As we write our tests, our unit tests mirror our best understanding of the inner workings of our application code. Unfortunately these tests will therefore also include (or be unaware of) any imperfections and errors on our part. If your logic is flawed as you write your initial code, chances are, without a fresh set of eyes, you will commit the same error second time around too. Not even experience seems to be a suitable solution. It certainly helps to have deeper insight, but is that really the answer we should be looking for? Is that really failsafe? What about code review? Code review is certainly an answer. You could have one developer coding away and another (or team) making sure the logic is sound. The practice however has its obvious drawbacks. Firstly and mainly it is resource intensive and from what I’ve seen in most development houses, given heavy deadlines, this guideline is seldom adhered to. Hardly ever do we have the resources, money or time readily available. So what other options are out there? A quest to find some solution revealed a project by Microsoft Research called PEX. PEX is a framework which creates several test scenarios for each method or class you write, automatically. Think of it as your own personal auditor. Within a few clicks the framework will auto generate several unit tests for a given class or method and save them to a single project. PEX help to audit your work. It lends a fresh set of eyes to any project you’re working on and best of all; it is cost effective and fast. Check them out at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/pex/ In upcoming posts we’ll dive deeper into how it works and how it can help you.   Certainly there are more similar frameworks out there and I would love to hear from you. Please share your experiences and insights.

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you’ll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll be aware that I’ve been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a “production”-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it’s not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn’t I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn’t an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley’s “Continuous Delivery” teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you’ve been allotted. 2. It’s not just about the storage requirements, it’s also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I’m just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what’s the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I’m sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server’s point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no ‘duplicate’ storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly “release test” process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual FROM DISK=N'D:\VirtualDatabase\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the ‘virtual’ restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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