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  • T-SQL Tuesday - IO capacity planning

    - by Michael Zilberstein
    This post is my contribution to Adam Machanic's T-SQL Tuesday #004 , hosted this time by Mike Walsh . Being applicative DBA, I usually don't take part in discussions which storage to buy or how to configure it. My interaction with IO is usually via PerfMon. When somebody calls me asking why everything is suddenly so slow on database server, "disk queue length" or "average seconds per transfer" counters provide an overwhelming answer in 60-70% of such cases. Sometimes it can be...(read more)

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  • Apache on Mac Mavericks issue [migrated]

    - by Michael
    Trying to run Apache so that I can create a testing server on my mac.When I start apache it starts, but it doesn't run (no connection to local host. Ill upload the unix,you'll see that after starting there is no processes, and I did a check to show you what was running on my port 80... I don't entirely know that means. Michaels-MacBook-Pro-3:~ michaelramos$ sudo apachectl start Michaels-MacBook-Pro-3:~ michaelramos$ ps aux | grep httpd michaelramos 348 0.0 0.0 2442000 624 s000 S+ 8:51AM 0:00.00 grep httpd Michaels-MacBook-Pro-3:~ michaelramos$ sudo apachectl start org.apache.httpd: Already loaded Michaels-MacBook-Pro-3:~ michaelramos$ sudo lsof -i ':80' COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME ocspd 96 root 18u IPv4 0x8402f926599c58df 0t0 TCP dhcp-92-67.radford.edu:49267->108.162.232.196:http (ESTABLISHED) ocspd 96 root 20u IPv4 0x8402f926599c58df 0t0 TCP dhcp-92-67.radford.edu:49267->108.162.232.196:http (ESTABLISHED) ocspd 96 root 21u IPv4 0x8402f926599c50f7 0t0 TCP dhcp-92-67.radford.edu:49268->108.162.232.206:http (ESTABLISHED) ocspd 96 root 23u IPv4 0x8402f926599c50f7 0t0 TCP dhcp-92-67.radford.edu:49268->108.162.232.206:http (ESTABLISHED)

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  • Why doesn't Unity's OnCollisionEnter give me surface normals, and what's the most reliable way to get them?

    - by michael.bartnett
    Unity's on collision event gives you a Collision object that gives you some information about the collision that happened (including a list of ContactPoints with hit normals). But what you don't get is surface normals for the collider that you hit. Here's a screenshot to illustrate. The red line is from ContactPoint.normal and the blue line is from RaycastHit.normal. Is this an instance of Unity hiding information to provide a simplified API? Or do standard 3D realtime collision detection techniques just not collect this information? And for the second part of the question, what's a surefire and relatively efficient way to get a surface normal for a collision? I know that raycasting gives you surface normals, but it seems I need to do several raycasts to accomplish this for all scenarios (maybe a contact point/normal combination misses the collider on the first cast, or maybe you need to do some average of all the contact points' normals to get the best result). My current method: Back up the Collision.contacts[0].point along its hit normal Raycast down the negated hit normal for float.MaxValue, on Collision.collider If that fails, repeat steps 1 and 2 with the non-negated normal If that fails, try steps 1 to 3 with Collision.contacts[1] Repeat 4 until successful or until all contact points exhausted. Give up, return Vector3.zero. This seems to catch everything, but all those raycasts make me queasy, and I'm not sure how to test that this works for enough cases. Is there a better way?

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  • Neuberger Berman Defines CRM Strategy In Asset Management

    - by michael.seback
    Neuberger Berman Defines Front Office Strategy for the New Firm Neuberger Berman is a majority employee-owned independent asset management firm with a heritage dating back to 1939. It provides a range of investment options, wealth planning services, and advice to meet individual needs. It also offers a broad range of financial capabilities and specializes in developing innovative and customized investment solutions for institutions. ... "The Insight team's analysis was critical to helping us assess the strengths and weaknesses of our Siebel implementation. It helped us to come up with our strategic plan for using customer relationship management and business intelligence capabilities." - Roxana Feldmann, Senior Vice President Technology ...Read more.

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  • links for 2011-01-07

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Enterprise Software Development with Java: GlassFish 3 vs. JBoss 6 - Is the Web Profile ready for the Enterprise? (tags: ping.fm) Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) Jan 20 The Jan 20 meeting of the Bay Area Coherence Special Interest Group (BACSIG) features presentations by Rob Lee (Coherence 3.6 Clustering Features), Rao Bhethanabotla (Efficient Management and Update of Coherence Clusters to Reduce Down Time), and Christer Fahlgren (How To Build a Coherence Practice). (tags: oracle otn coherence sig) Michael T. Dinh: VirtualBox Command Line "I have manually configured VirtualBox Host-Only Ethernet Adapter for static IP. However, the IP can change after reboot which affects connectivity with the Guest with static IP." - Michael T. Dinh (tags: oracle virtualization virtualbox) Michel Schildmeijer: Oracle WebLogic - Configuring DyeInjection Monitor "A fairly unknown tool within WLDF (WebLogic Diagnostic Framework) is the DyeInjection Monitor. With this monitor configured one can track a  user or client address within a WebLogic system." - Michel Schildmeijer (tags: oracle weblogic) David Butler: Master Data Management Implementation Styles "Oracle MDM Solutions provide strong data federation and integration capabilities which are key to enabling the use of the Confederated Hub as a possible architectural style approach." - David Butler (tags: oracle otn softwarearchitecture) Kenneth Downs: Can You Really Create A Business Logic Layer? "Don't be afraid to use the database for what it is good for, and leave the arguments about "where everything belongs" to those with too much time on their hands." - Kenneth Downs (tags: businesslogic database softwarearchitecture) IASA Perspectives Magazine - Fall 2010 Fall 2010 edition of International Association of Software Architects (IASA) Perspectives magazine: (tags: softwarearchitecture iasi entarch) Using the DB Adapter in Oracle SOA Suite: returning status information "In this tutorial I will show you an example of how how can implement this within the Oracle SOA Suite (and because the DB Adapter can also be used within the Oracle Service Bus, the principles also apply to implementing it within the OSB)." - Henk Jan van Wijk (tags: oracle otn soa soasuite database) 4th International SOA Symposium + 3rd International Cloud Symposium by Thomas Erl - call for presentations (SOA Partner Community Blog) The International SOA and Cloud Symposium brings together lessons learned and emerging topics from SOA and Cloud projects, practitioners and experts. The two-day conference agenda will be organized into several tracks. (tags: oracle otn soa cloud)

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Generic Func Delegates

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Back in one of my three original “Little Wonders” Trilogy of posts, I had listed generic delegates as one of the Little Wonders of .NET.  Later, someone posted a comment saying said that they would love more detail on the generic delegates and their uses, since my original entry just scratched the surface of them. Last week, I began our look at some of the handy generic delegates built into .NET with a description of delegates in general, and the Action family of delegates.  For this week, I’ll launch into a look at the Func family of generic delegates and how they can be used to support generic, reusable algorithms and classes. Quick Delegate Recap Delegates are similar to function pointers in C++ in that they allow you to store a reference to a method.  They can store references to either static or instance methods, and can actually be used to chain several methods together in one delegate. Delegates are very type-safe and can be satisfied with any standard method, anonymous method, or a lambda expression.  They can also be null as well (refers to no method), so care should be taken to make sure that the delegate is not null before you invoke it. Delegates are defined using the keyword delegate, where the delegate’s type name is placed where you would typically place the method name: 1: // This delegate matches any method that takes string, returns nothing 2: public delegate void Log(string message); This delegate defines a delegate type named Log that can be used to store references to any method(s) that satisfies its signature (whether instance, static, lambda expression, etc.). Delegate instances then can be assigned zero (null) or more methods using the operator = which replaces the existing delegate chain, or by using the operator += which adds a method to the end of a delegate chain: 1: // creates a delegate instance named currentLogger defaulted to Console.WriteLine (static method) 2: Log currentLogger = Console.Out.WriteLine; 3:  4: // invokes the delegate, which writes to the console out 5: currentLogger("Hi Standard Out!"); 6:  7: // append a delegate to Console.Error.WriteLine to go to std error 8: currentLogger += Console.Error.WriteLine; 9:  10: // invokes the delegate chain and writes message to std out and std err 11: currentLogger("Hi Standard Out and Error!"); While delegates give us a lot of power, it can be cumbersome to re-create fairly standard delegate definitions repeatedly, for this purpose the generic delegates were introduced in various stages in .NET.  These support various method types with particular signatures. Note: a caveat with generic delegates is that while they can support multiple parameters, they do not match methods that contains ref or out parameters. If you want to a delegate to represent methods that takes ref or out parameters, you will need to create a custom delegate. We’ve got the Func… delegates Just like it’s cousin, the Action delegate family, the Func delegate family gives us a lot of power to use generic delegates to make classes and algorithms more generic.  Using them keeps us from having to define a new delegate type when need to make a class or algorithm generic. Remember that the point of the Action delegate family was to be able to perform an “action” on an item, with no return results.  Thus Action delegates can be used to represent most methods that take 0 to 16 arguments but return void.  You can assign a method The Func delegate family was introduced in .NET 3.5 with the advent of LINQ, and gives us the power to define a function that can be called on 0 to 16 arguments and returns a result.  Thus, the main difference between Action and Func, from a delegate perspective, is that Actions return nothing, but Funcs return a result. The Func family of delegates have signatures as follows: Func<TResult> – matches a method that takes no arguments, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T, TResult> – matches a method that takes an argument of type T, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T1, T2, TResult> – matches a method that takes arguments of type T1 and T2, and returns value of type TResult. Func<T1, T2, …, TResult> – and so on up to 16 arguments, and returns value of type TResult. These are handy because they quickly allow you to be able to specify that a method or class you design will perform a function to produce a result as long as the method you specify meets the signature. For example, let’s say you were designing a generic aggregator, and you wanted to allow the user to define how the values will be aggregated into the result (i.e. Sum, Min, Max, etc…).  To do this, we would ask the user of our class to pass in a method that would take the current total, the next value, and produce a new total.  A class like this could look like: 1: public sealed class Aggregator<TValue, TResult> 2: { 3: // holds method that takes previous result, combines with next value, creates new result 4: private Func<TResult, TValue, TResult> _aggregationMethod; 5:  6: // gets or sets the current result of aggregation 7: public TResult Result { get; private set; } 8:  9: // construct the aggregator given the method to use to aggregate values 10: public Aggregator(Func<TResult, TValue, TResult> aggregationMethod = null) 11: { 12: if (aggregationMethod == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("aggregationMethod"); 13:  14: _aggregationMethod = aggregationMethod; 15: } 16:  17: // method to add next value 18: public void Aggregate(TValue nextValue) 19: { 20: // performs the aggregation method function on the current result and next and sets to current result 21: Result = _aggregationMethod(Result, nextValue); 22: } 23: } Of course, LINQ already has an Aggregate extension method, but that works on a sequence of IEnumerable<T>, whereas this is designed to work more with aggregating single results over time (such as keeping track of a max response time for a service). We could then use this generic aggregator to find the sum of a series of values over time, or the max of a series of values over time (among other things): 1: // creates an aggregator that adds the next to the total to sum the values 2: var sumAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>((total, next) => total + next); 3:  4: // creates an aggregator (using static method) that returns the max of previous result and next 5: var maxAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>(Math.Max); So, if we were timing the response time of a web method every time it was called, we could pass that response time to both of these aggregators to get an idea of the total time spent in that web method, and the max time spent in any one call to the web method: 1: // total will be 13 and max 13 2: int responseTime = 13; 3: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 4: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 5:  6: // total will be 20 and max still 13 7: responseTime = 7; 8: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 9: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 10:  11: // total will be 40 and max now 20 12: responseTime = 20; 13: sumAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 14: maxAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); The Func delegate family is useful for making generic algorithms and classes, and in particular allows the caller of the method or user of the class to specify a function to be performed in order to generate a result. What is the result of a Func delegate chain? If you remember, we said earlier that you can assign multiple methods to a delegate by using the += operator to chain them.  So how does this affect delegates such as Func that return a value, when applied to something like the code below? 1: Func<int, int, int> combo = null; 2:  3: // What if we wanted to aggregate the sum and max together? 4: combo += (total, next) => total + next; 5: combo += Math.Max; 6:  7: // what is the result? 8: var comboAggregator = new Aggregator<int, int>(combo); Well, in .NET if you chain multiple methods in a delegate, they will all get invoked, but the result of the delegate is the result of the last method invoked in the chain.  Thus, this aggregator would always result in the Math.Max() result.  The other chained method (the sum) gets executed first, but it’s result is thrown away: 1: // result is 13 2: int responseTime = 13; 3: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 4:  5: // result is still 13 6: responseTime = 7; 7: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); 8:  9: // result is now 20 10: responseTime = 20; 11: comboAggregator.Aggregate(responseTime); So remember, you can chain multiple Func (or other delegates that return values) together, but if you do so you will only get the last executed result. Func delegates and co-variance/contra-variance in .NET 4.0 Just like the Action delegate, as of .NET 4.0, the Func delegate family is contra-variant on its arguments.  In addition, it is co-variant on its return type.  To support this, in .NET 4.0 the signatures of the Func delegates changed to: Func<out TResult> – matches a method that takes no arguments, and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Func<in T, out TResult> – matches a method that takes an argument of type T (or a less derived type), and returns value of type TResult(or a more derived type). Func<in T1, in T2, out TResult> – matches a method that takes arguments of type T1 and T2 (or less derived types), and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Func<in T1, in T2, …, out TResult> – and so on up to 16 arguments, and returns value of type TResult (or a more derived type). Notice the addition of the in and out keywords before each of the generic type placeholders.  As we saw last week, the in keyword is used to specify that a generic type can be contra-variant -- it can match the given type or a type that is less derived.  However, the out keyword, is used to specify that a generic type can be co-variant -- it can match the given type or a type that is more derived. On contra-variance, if you are saying you need an function that will accept a string, you can just as easily give it an function that accepts an object.  In other words, if you say “give me an function that will process dogs”, I could pass you a method that will process any animal, because all dogs are animals.  On the co-variance side, if you are saying you need a function that returns an object, you can just as easily pass it a function that returns a string because any string returned from the given method can be accepted by a delegate expecting an object result, since string is more derived.  Once again, in other words, if you say “give me a method that creates an animal”, I can pass you a method that will create a dog, because all dogs are animals. It really all makes sense, you can pass a more specific thing to a less specific parameter, and you can return a more specific thing as a less specific result.  In other words, pay attention to the direction the item travels (parameters go in, results come out).  Keeping that in mind, you can always pass more specific things in and return more specific things out. For example, in the code below, we have a method that takes a Func<object> to generate an object, but we can pass it a Func<string> because the return type of object can obviously accept a return value of string as well: 1: // since Func<object> is co-variant, this will access Func<string>, etc... 2: public static string Sequence(int count, Func<object> generator) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5:  6: for (int i=0; i<count; i++) 7: { 8: object value = generator(); 9: builder.Append(value); 10: } 11:  12: return builder.ToString(); 13: } Even though the method above takes a Func<object>, we can pass a Func<string> because the TResult type placeholder is co-variant and accepts types that are more derived as well: 1: // delegate that's typed to return string. 2: Func<string> stringGenerator = () => DateTime.Now.ToString(); 3:  4: // This will work in .NET 4.0, but not in previous versions 5: Sequence(100, stringGenerator); Previous versions of .NET implemented some forms of co-variance and contra-variance before, but .NET 4.0 goes one step further and allows you to pass or assign an Func<A, BResult> to a Func<Y, ZResult> as long as A is less derived (or same) as Y, and BResult is more derived (or same) as ZResult. Sidebar: The Func and the Predicate A method that takes one argument and returns a bool is generally thought of as a predicate.  Predicates are used to examine an item and determine whether that item satisfies a particular condition.  Predicates are typically unary, but you may also have binary and other predicates as well. Predicates are often used to filter results, such as in the LINQ Where() extension method: 1: var numbers = new[] { 1, 2, 4, 13, 8, 10, 27 }; 2:  3: // call Where() using a predicate which determines if the number is even 4: var evens = numbers.Where(num => num % 2 == 0); As of .NET 3.5, predicates are typically represented as Func<T, bool> where T is the type of the item to examine.  Previous to .NET 3.5, there was a Predicate<T> type that tended to be used (which we’ll discuss next week) and is still supported, but most developers recommend using Func<T, bool> now, as it prevents confusion with overloads that accept unary predicates and binary predicates, etc.: 1: // this seems more confusing as an overload set, because of Predicate vs Func 2: public static SomeMethod(Predicate<int> unaryPredicate) { } 3: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, int, bool> binaryPredicate) { } 4:  5: // this seems more consistent as an overload set, since just uses Func 6: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, bool> unaryPredicate) { } 7: public static SomeMethod(Func<int, int, bool> binaryPredicate) { } Also, even though Predicate<T> and Func<T, bool> match the same signatures, they are separate types!  Thus you cannot assign a Predicate<T> instance to a Func<T, bool> instance and vice versa: 1: // the same method, lambda expression, etc can be assigned to both 2: Predicate<int> isEven = i => (i % 2) == 0; 3: Func<int, bool> alsoIsEven = i => (i % 2) == 0; 4:  5: // but the delegate instances cannot be directly assigned, strongly typed! 6: // ERROR: cannot convert type... 7: isEven = alsoIsEven; 8:  9: // however, you can assign by wrapping in a new instance: 10: isEven = new Predicate<int>(alsoIsEven); 11: alsoIsEven = new Func<int, bool>(isEven); So, the general advice that seems to come from most developers is that Predicate<T> is still supported, but we should use Func<T, bool> for consistency in .NET 3.5 and above. Sidebar: Func as a Generator for Unit Testing One area of difficulty in unit testing can be unit testing code that is based on time of day.  We’d still want to unit test our code to make sure the logic is accurate, but we don’t want the results of our unit tests to be dependent on the time they are run. One way (of many) around this is to create an internal generator that will produce the “current” time of day.  This would default to returning result from DateTime.Now (or some other method), but we could inject specific times for our unit testing.  Generators are typically methods that return (generate) a value for use in a class/method. For example, say we are creating a CacheItem<T> class that represents an item in the cache, and we want to make sure the item shows as expired if the age is more than 30 seconds.  Such a class could look like: 1: // responsible for maintaining an item of type T in the cache 2: public sealed class CacheItem<T> 3: { 4: // helper method that returns the current time 5: private static Func<DateTime> _timeGenerator = () => DateTime.Now; 6:  7: // allows internal access to the time generator 8: internal static Func<DateTime> TimeGenerator 9: { 10: get { return _timeGenerator; } 11: set { _timeGenerator = value; } 12: } 13:  14: // time the item was cached 15: public DateTime CachedTime { get; private set; } 16:  17: // the item cached 18: public T Value { get; private set; } 19:  20: // item is expired if older than 30 seconds 21: public bool IsExpired 22: { 23: get { return _timeGenerator() - CachedTime > TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30.0); } 24: } 25:  26: // creates the new cached item, setting cached time to "current" time 27: public CacheItem(T value) 28: { 29: Value = value; 30: CachedTime = _timeGenerator(); 31: } 32: } Then, we can use this construct to unit test our CacheItem<T> without any time dependencies: 1: var baseTime = DateTime.Now; 2:  3: // start with current time stored above (so doesn't drift) 4: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime; 5:  6: var target = new CacheItem<int>(13); 7:  8: // now add 15 seconds, should still be non-expired 9: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime.AddSeconds(15); 10:  11: Assert.IsFalse(target.IsExpired); 12:  13: // now add 31 seconds, should now be expired 14: CacheItem<int>.TimeGenerator = () => baseTime.AddSeconds(31); 15:  16: Assert.IsTrue(target.IsExpired); Now we can unit test for 1 second before, 1 second after, 1 millisecond before, 1 day after, etc.  Func delegates can be a handy tool for this type of value generation to support more testable code.  Summary Generic delegates give us a lot of power to make truly generic algorithms and classes.  The Func family of delegates is a great way to be able to specify functions to calculate a result based on 0-16 arguments.  Stay tuned in the weeks that follow for other generic delegates in the .NET Framework!   Tweet Technorati Tags: .NET, C#, CSharp, Little Wonders, Generics, Func, Delegates

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  • Do MORE with WebCenter

    - by Michael Snow
    WEBCAST THURSDAY!! 03/22/12 Do you need to lower costs? Raise Productivity? Foster Innovation? Improve Online Engagement? But you’re still stuck with Documentum? Step away from the ledge – there is hope – let us help you. Top 4 Content Imperatives · Lower Costs - Reduce labor, maintenance fees, storage and electrical consumption · Raise Productivity - Automation and integration, communication, findability · Foster Innovation - Enable collaboration, expertise location · Improve Online Engagement – enable user-driven, dynamic marketing initiatives With the coming technology wave we see four content imperatives. Every organization has had to reduce costs, cost cutting has become a way of life. Everyone is working three jobs as positions are eliminated. And so we have to reduce labor, reduce maintenance, and reduce money we are wasting on things like storing content that is redundant or no longer useful. We also, to fill that gap, need to raise productivity. Knowledge workers represent the fastest growing segment of the workforce, accounting for 40%-75% of the employees at organizations in sectors like financial services, life sciences, healthcare and retail.  What’s more, their wages total 18 percent of the United States GDP. And so we can’t afford information systems that don’t let our top performers be the best they can be. We look to automate the content processes, provide ways to integrate that content into our processes, provide communication to make decisions, and to make content more findable so people can make the right decision and move the process forward. And really to get ourselves out of the current financial status, we can only cut costs so far. We have to innovate out of economic tough times – to find new products and new markets. And to enable the innovation process, we have to enable collaboration and expertise location. So much of innovation is about building on innovations that have come before. To solve problems, we have to be able to find what our organization has already created. We find that problems we need to solve have already been solved if we can find the right document, the right person. So we have to provide systems that enable us to stand on the shoulders of our organization’s accomplishments. Good content drives great marketing. Online engagement is growing as an absolute necessity for modern growing marketing organizations that require the business users be enabled for dynamic marketing content creation, updates and targeted content creation and management. Unfortunately – if you are currently stuck with Documentum, you are really lacking in your Web Experience Management capabilities. Documentum previously used FatWire for web publishing. Now FatWire is part of Oracle. Oracle provides powerful web engagement capabilities: Increase sales and loyalty by optimizing online engagement Create, manage and moderate contextually relevant, targeted and interactive online experiences Optimize customer engagement across, web, mobile and social channels Manage large scale multichannel global online presence with integration to enterprise applications Enable business users to control their content and make their own updates Publish content from native files – enable navigation of project documents, procedures, policy information Enable content display and updates from existing web applications – one click to drag and drop content management functionality So you get the ability to self-publish information and make it navigable, to move the process of publishing from IT to business users, and the ability to address a whole new area of user engagement with web experience management. So… if you are still stuck with Documentum and don’t know what to do – contact us – not only will Oracle help you step away from the ledge, but also with the MoveOff Documentum program, we are offering you a way – trade-in your Documentum licenses for a 100% credit on Oracle WebCenter. How’s that for a nice bonus? It’s time to stop maintaining Documentum, and to start innovating with Oracle WebCenter. Learn More Here! To learn more about what Oracle WebCenter can offer you today – join us for a webcast – your eyes will be opened to all that’s possible. Do More with WebCenter: Extend Beyond Content Management

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  • Humerous Word 2010 "feature"?

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Im just sitting on the train to work and had a funny experience with word 2010 that I thought id share. Im writing a document and all of a sudden like usually happens the train gets a little bit bumpy.  Word decides it doesnt like this (maybe it prefers to fly?).  Anyway to show its dissatisfaction with the journey it starts adding new rows to my table in the document all by itself. 5 pages of rows later I still cant workout how to stop itso have to kill word. Thank you autosave

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  • Permissions & File Structure w/ nginx & multiple sites

    - by Michael
    I am using nginx for the first time as a long time Apache user. I setup a Linode to test everything and to eventually port over my websites. Previously I had /home/user/www (wwwroot) I am looking at doing something similar with /srv/www/domain/www (wwwroot) Rather than using /srv/domain (wwwroot), the reason is many of the sites are WordPress and one of the things I do for security is to move the config file one level above wwwroot and can't have multiple configuration files from multiple domains in the same top level folder. Since I own all the sites, I wasn't going to create a user for each domain. My user is a member of www-data and was going to use 2770 for www and have domain/www for each new domain. www would be owned by group www-data. Is this the best way to handle this?

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Nullable static class

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. Today we’re going to look at an interesting Little Wonder that can be used to mitigate what could be considered a Little Pitfall.  The Little Wonder we’ll be examining is the System.Nullable static class.  No, not the System.Nullable<T> class, but a static helper class that has one useful method in particular that we will examine… but first, let’s look at the Little Pitfall that makes this wonder so useful. Little Pitfall: Comparing nullable value types using <, >, <=, >= Examine this piece of code, without examining it too deeply, what’s your gut reaction as to the result? 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < 100) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine("True, {0} is less than 100.", 6: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("False, {0} is NOT less than 100.", 11: x.HasValue ? x.ToString() : "null"); 12: } Your gut would be to say true right?  It would seem to make sense that a null integer is less than the integer constant 100.  But the result is actually false!  The null value is not less than 100 according to the less-than operator. It looks even more outrageous when you consider this also evaluates to false: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: if (x < int.MaxValue) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } So, are we saying that null is less than every valid int value?  If that were true, null should be less than int.MinValue, right?  Well… no: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // um... hold on here, x is NOT less than min value? 4: if (x < int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } So what’s going on here?  If we use greater than instead of less than, we see the same little dilemma: 1: int? x = null; 2:  3: // once again, null is not greater than anything either... 4: if (x > int.MinValue) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } It turns out that four of the comparison operators (<, <=, >, >=) are designed to return false anytime at least one of the arguments is null when comparing System.Nullable wrapped types that expose the comparison operators (short, int, float, double, DateTime, TimeSpan, etc.).  What’s even odder is that even though the two equality operators (== and !=) work correctly, >= and <= have the same issue as < and > and return false if both System.Nullable wrapped operator comparable types are null! 1: DateTime? x = null; 2: DateTime? y = null; 3:  4: if (x <= y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("You'd think this is true, since both are null, but it's not."); 7: } 8: else 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("It's false because <=, <, >, >= don't work on null."); 11: } To make matters even more confusing, take for example your usual check to see if something is less than, greater to, or equal: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x < y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("X is less than Y"); 7: } 8: else if (x > y) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("X is greater than Y"); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: // We fall into the "equals" assumption, but clearly null != 100! 15: Console.WriteLine("X is equal to Y"); 16: } Yes, this code outputs “X is equal to Y” because both the less-than and greater-than operators return false when a Nullable wrapped operator comparable type is null.  This violates a lot of our assumptions because we assume is something is not less than something, and it’s not greater than something, it must be equal.  So keep in mind, that the only two comparison operators that work on Nullable wrapped types where at least one is null are the equals (==) and not equals (!=) operators: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (x == y) 5: { 6: Console.WriteLine("False, x is null, y is not."); 7: } 8:  9: if (x != y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("True, x is null, y is not."); 12: } Solution: The Nullable static class So we’ve seen that <, <=, >, and >= have some interesting and perhaps unexpected behaviors that can trip up a novice developer who isn’t expecting the kinks that System.Nullable<T> types with comparison operators can throw.  How can we easily mitigate this? Well, obviously, you could do null checks before each check, but that starts to get ugly: 1: if (x.HasValue) 2: { 3: if (y.HasValue) 4: { 5: if (x < y) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (x > y) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } 17: } 18: else 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("x > y because y is null and x isn't"); 21: } 22: } 23: else if (y.HasValue) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("x < y because x is null and y isn't"); 26: } 27: else 28: { 29: Console.WriteLine("x == y because both are null"); 30: } Yes, we could probably simplify this logic a bit, but it’s still horrendous!  So what do we do if we want to consider null less than everything and be able to properly compare Nullable<T> wrapped value types? The key is the System.Nullable static class.  This class is a companion class to the System.Nullable<T> class and allows you to use a few helper methods for Nullable<T> wrapped types, including a static Compare<T>() method of the. What’s so big about the static Compare<T>() method?  It implements an IComparer compatible comparison on Nullable<T> types.  Why do we care?  Well, if you look at the MSDN description for how IComparer works, you’ll read: Comparing null with any type is allowed and does not generate an exception when using IComparable. When sorting, null is considered to be less than any other object. This is what we probably want!  We want null to be less than everything!  So now we can change our logic to use the Nullable.Compare<T>() static method: 1: int? x = null; 2: int? y = 100; 3:  4: if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) < 0) 5: { 6: // Yes! x is null, y is not, so x is less than y according to Compare(). 7: Console.WriteLine("x < y"); 8: } 9: else if (Nullable.Compare(x, y) > 0) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("x > y"); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("x == y"); 16: } Summary So, when doing math comparisons between two numeric values where one of them may be a null Nullable<T>, consider using the System.Nullable.Compare<T>() method instead of the comparison operators.  It will treat null less than any value, and will avoid logic consistency problems when relying on < returning false to indicate >= is true and so on. Tweet   Technorati Tags: C#,C-Sharp,.NET,Little Wonders,Little Pitfalls,Nulalble

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  • Reminder - Mobile World Congress - 4 Industry Workshops

    - by michael.seback
    Got 4G? Paving the Road to Profitable and Efficient LTE Network Planning and Monetization, Register by emailing your details here. Achieving Management Excellence through Enterprise Performance Management, Register by emailing your details here. Offer Deliver and Monetize: Mobile Operator Strategies Consumer and Enterprise Services featuring Telenor and Vodafone Groups, Register by emailing your details here. Is Your Head in the Cloud? How to Get it Right the First Time, Register by emailing your details here. With more than 49,000 communications industry attendees, Mobile World Congress is where the industry comes together and you won't want to miss Oracle at this year's show. The 2011 conference agenda will feature speakers representing the leaders of the world's most innovative companies, both from within the Communications industry and from the growing number of adjacent market sectors joining our expanding mobile ecosystem. Join us to learn how Oracle enables innovative services while reducing the cost and complexity of infrastructure software and hardware.

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  • Timeout Considerations for Solicit Response

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Background One of the clients I work with had been experiencing some issues for a while surrounding web service timeouts.  It's been a little challenging to work through the problems due to limitations in the diagnostic information available from one of the applications, but I learned some interesting things while troubleshooting the problem which don't seem to have been discussed much in the community so I thought I'd share my findings. In the scenario we have BizTalk trying to make calls to a .net web service which was exposed as a WSE 2 endpoint.  In the process BizTalk will try to make a large number of concurrent web service calls to the application, and the backend application has more than enough infrastructure and capability to handle the load. We have configured the <ConnectionManagement> section of the BizTalk configuration file to support up to 100 concurrent connections from each of our 2 BizTalk send servers to the web servers of the application. The problem we were facing was that the BizTalk side was reporting a significant number of timeouts when calling the web service.   One of the biggest issues was the challenge of being able to correlate a message from BizTalk to the IIS log in the .net application and the custom logs in the application especially when there was a fairly large number of servers hosting the web services.  However the key moment came when we were able to identify a specific call which had taken 40 seconds to execute on the server (yes a long time I know but that's a different story!).  Anyway we were able to identify that this had timed out on the BizTalk side.  Based on the normal 2 minute timeout we knew something unexpected was going on. From here I decided to do some experimentation and I wanted to start outside of BizTalk because my hunch was this was not a BizTalk behaviour but something which was being highlighted by BizTalk because of our large load.     Server-side - Sample Web Service To begin with I created a sample web service.  Nothing special just a vanilla asmx web service hosted in IIS6 on Windows 2003 Standard Edition.  The web service is just a hello world style web service as shown in the below picture.  The only key feature is that the server side web method has a 30 second sleep in it and will trace out some information before and after the thread is set to sleep.      In the configuration for this web service there again is nothing special it's pretty much the most plain simple web service you could build. Client-Side To begin looking at what was happening with our example I created a number of different ways to consume the web service. SoapHttpClientProtocol Example I created a small application which would use a normal proxy generated to call the web service.  It would iterate around a loop and make calls using the begin/end methods so I can do this asynchronously.  I would do a loop of 20 calls with the ConnectionManager configuration section supporting only 5 concurrent connections to the server.     <connectionManagement> <remove address="*"/> <add address = "*" maxconnection = "12" /> <add address = "http://<ServerName>" maxconnection = "5" />                         </connectionManagement> </system.net>     The below picture shows an example of the service calling code, key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service         The Test I would run the client and execute 21 calls to the web service.   The Results  Below is the client side trace showing what's happening on the client. In the below diagram is the web service side trace showing what's happening on the server Some observations on the results are: All of the calls were successful from the clients perspective You could see the next call starting on the server as soon as the previous one had completed Calls took significantly longer than 40 seconds from the start of our call to the return. In fact call 20 took 2 minutes and 30 seconds from the perspective of my code to execute even though I had set the timeout to 40 seconds     WSE 2 Sample In the second example I used the exact same code to call the web service again with a single exception that I modified the web service proxy to derive from WebServiceClient protocol which is part of WSE 2 (using SP3).  The below picture shows the basic code and the key points are: I have configured the timeout of 40 seconds for the proxy I am using the asynchronous methods on the proxy to call the web service        The Test This test would execute 21 calls from the client to the web service.   The Results  The below trace is from the client side: The below trace is from the server side:   Some observations on the trace results for this scenario are: With call 4 if you look at the server side trace it did not start executing on the server for a number of seconds after the other 4 initial calls which were accepted by the server. I re-ran the test and this happened a couple of times and not on most others so at this point I'm just putting this down to something unexpected happening on the development machine and we will leave this observation out of scope of this article. You can see that the client side trace statement executed almost immediately in all cases All calls after the initial few calls would timeout On the client side the calls that did timeout; timed out in a longer duration than the 40 seconds we set as the timeout You can see that as calls were completing on the server the next calls were starting to come through The calls that timed out on the client did actually connect to the server and their server side execution completed successfully     Elaboration on the findings Based on the above observations I have drawn the below sequence diagram to illustrate conceptually what is happening.  Everything except the final web service object is on the client side of the call. In the diagram below I've put two notes on the Web Service Proxy to show the two different places where the different base classes seem to start their timeout counters. From the earlier samples we can work out that the timeout counter for the WSE web service proxy starts before the one for the SoapHttpClientProtocol proxy and the WSE one includes the time to get a connection from the pool; whereas the Soap proxy timeout just covers the method execution. One interesting observation is if we rerun the above sample and increase the number of calls from 21 to 100,000 then for the WSE sample we will see a similar pattern where everything after the first few calls will timeout on the client as soon as it makes a connection to the server whereas the soap proxy will happily plug away and process all of the calls without a single timeout. I have actually set the sample running overnight and this did happen. At this point you are probably thinking the same thoughts I was at the time about the differences in behaviour and which is right and why are they different? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer to this in the documentation, or at least not that I could find! I think you just have to consider that they are different and they could have different effects depending on your messaging solution. In lots of situations this is just not an issue as your concurrent requests doesn't get to the situation where you end up throttling the web service calls on the client side, however this is definitely more common with an integration broker such as BizTalk where you often have high throughput requirements.  Some of the considerations you should make Based on this behaviour you should be aware of the following: In a .net application if you are making lots of concurrent web service calls from an application in an asynchronous manner your user may thing they are experiencing poor performance but you think your web service is working well. The problem could be that the client will have a default of 2 connections to remote servers so you should bear this in mind When you are developing a BizTalk solution or a .net solution with the WSE 2 stack you may experience timeouts under load and throttling the number of connections using the max connections element in the configuration file will not help you For an application using WSE2 or SoapHttpClientProtocol an expired timeout will not throw an error until after a connection to the server has been made so you should consider this in your transaction and durability patterns     Our Work Around In the short term for our specific scenario we know that we can handle this by just increasing our timeout value.  There is only a specific small window when we get lots of concurrent traffic that causes this scenario so we should be able to increase the timeout to take into consideration the additional client side wait, and on the odd occasion where we do get a timeout the BizTalk send port retry will handle this. What was causing our original problem was that for that short window we were getting a lot of retries which significantly increased the load on our send servers and highlighted the issue.  Longer Term Solution As a longer term solution this really gives us more ammunition to argue a migration to WCF. The application we are calling has some factors which limit the protocols we can use but with WCF we would have more control on the various timeout options because in WCF you can configure specific parts of the timeout. Summary I've had this blog post on my to do list for ages but hopefully it will be useful to some people to just understand this behaviour and to possibly help you with some performance issues you may have. I do not believe there is too much in the way of documentation particularly around WSE2 and ASMX in this area so again another bit of ammunition for migrating to WCF. I'll try to do a follow up post with the sample for WCF to show how this changes things.

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  • What exactly is UV and UVW Mapping?

    - by Michael Stum
    Trying to understand some basic 3D concepts, at the moment I'm trying to figure out how textures actually work. I know that UV and UVW mapping are techniques that map 2D Textures to 3D Objects - Wikipedia told me as much. I googled for explanations but only found tutorials that assumed that I already know what it is. From my understanding, each 3D Model is made out of Points, and several points create a face? Does each point or face have a secondary coordinate that maps to a x/y position in the 2D Texture? Or how does unwrapping manipulate the model? Also, what does the W in UVW really do, what does it offer over UV? As I understand it, W maps to the Z coordinate, but in what situation would I have different textures for the same X/Y and different Z, wouldn't the Z part be invisible? Or am I completely misunderstanding this?

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  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: Use Cast() and TypeOf() to Change Sequence Type

    - by James Michael Hare
    Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. We’ve seen how the Select() extension method lets you project a sequence from one type to a new type which is handy for getting just parts of items, or building new items.  But what happens when the items in the sequence are already the type you want, but the sequence itself is typed to an interface or super-type instead of the sub-type you need? For example, you may have a sequence of Rectangle stored in an IEnumerable<Shape> and want to consider it an IEnumerable<Rectangle> sequence instead.  Today we’ll look at two handy extension methods, Cast<TResult>() and OfType<TResult>() which help you with this task. Cast<TResult>() – Attempt to cast all items to type TResult So, the first thing we can do would be to attempt to create a sequence of TResult from every item in the source sequence.  Typically we’d do this if we had an IEnumerable<T> where we knew that every item was actually a TResult where TResult inherits/implements T. For example, assume the typical Shape example classes: 1: // abstract base class 2: public abstract class Shape { } 3:  4: // a basic rectangle 5: public class Rectangle : Shape 6: { 7: public int Widtgh { get; set; } 8: public int Height { get; set; } 9: } And let’s assume we have a sequence of Shape where every Shape is a Rectangle… 1: var shapes = new List<Shape> 2: { 3: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 4: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 5: // ... 6: }; To get the sequence of Shape as a sequence of Rectangle, of course, we could use a Select() clause, such as: 1: // select each Shape, cast it to Rectangle 2: var rectangles = shapes 3: .Select(s => (Rectangle)s) 4: .ToList(); But that’s a bit verbose, and fortunately there is already a facility built in and ready to use in the form of the Cast<TResult>() extension method: 1: // cast each item to Rectangle and store in a List<Rectangle> 2: var rectangles = shapes 3: .Cast<Rectangle>() 4: .ToList(); However, we should note that if anything in the list cannot be cast to a Rectangle, you will get an InvalidCastException thrown at runtime.  Thus, if our Shape sequence had a Circle in it, the call to Cast<Rectangle>() would have failed.  As such, you should only do this when you are reasonably sure of what the sequence actually contains (or are willing to handle an exception if you’re wrong). Another handy use of Cast<TResult>() is using it to convert an IEnumerable to an IEnumerable<T>.  If you look at the signature, you’ll see that the Cast<TResult>() extension method actually extends the older, object-based IEnumerable interface instead of the newer, generic IEnumerable<T>.  This is your gateway method for being able to use LINQ on older, non-generic sequences.  For example, consider the following: 1: // the older, non-generic collections are sequence of object 2: var shapes = new ArrayList 3: { 4: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 13 }, 5: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 20 }, 6: // ... 7: }; Since this is an older, object based collection, we cannot use the LINQ extension methods on it directly.  For example, if I wanted to query the Shape sequence for only those Rectangles whose Width is > 5, I can’t do this: 1: // compiler error, Where() operates on IEnumerable<T>, not IEnumerable 2: var bigRectangles = shapes.Where(r => r.Width > 5); However, I can use Cast<Rectangle>() to treat my ArrayList as an IEnumerable<Rectangle> and then do the query! 1: // ah, that’s better! 2: var bigRectangles = shapes.Cast<Rectangle>().Where(r => r.Width > 5); Or, if you prefer, in LINQ query expression syntax: 1: var bigRectangles = from s in shapes.Cast<Rectangle>() 2: where s.Width > 5 3: select s; One quick warning: Cast<TResult>() only attempts to cast, it won’t perform a cast conversion.  That is, consider this: 1: var intList = new List<int> { 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 }; 2:  3: // casting ints to longs, this should work, right? 4: var asLong = intList.Cast<long>().ToList(); Will the code above work?  No, you’ll get a InvalidCastException. Remember that Cast<TResult>() is an extension of IEnumerable, thus it is a sequence of object, which means that it will box every int as an object as it enumerates over it, and there is no cast conversion from object to long, and thus the cast fails.  In other words, a cast from int to long will succeed because there is a conversion from int to long.  But a cast from int to object to long will not, because you can only unbox an item by casting it to its exact type. For more information on why cast-converting boxed values doesn’t work, see this post on The Dangers of Casting Boxed Values (here). OfType<TResult>() – Filter sequence to only items of type TResult So, we’ve seen how we can use Cast<TResult>() to change the type of our sequence, when we expect all the items of the sequence to be of a specific type.  But what do we do when a sequence contains many different types, and we are only concerned with a subset of a given type? For example, what if a sequence of Shape contains Rectangle and Circle instances, and we just want to select all of the Rectangle instances?  Well, let’s say we had this sequence of Shape: 1: var shapes = new List<Shape> 2: { 3: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 4: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 5: new Circle { Radius = 10 }, 6: new Square { Side = 13 }, 7: // ... 8: }; Well, we could get the rectangles using Select(), like: 1: var onlyRectangles = shapes.Where(s => s is Rectangle).ToList(); But fortunately, an easier way has already been written for us in the form of the OfType<T>() extension method: 1: // returns only a sequence of the shapes that are Rectangles 2: var onlyRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>().ToList(); Now we have a sequence of only the Rectangles in the original sequence, we can also use this to chain other queries that depend on Rectangles, such as: 1: // select only Rectangles, then filter to only those more than 2: // 5 units wide... 3: var onlyBigRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>() 4: .Where(r => r.Width > 5) 5: .ToList(); The OfType<Rectangle>() will filter the sequence to only the items that are of type Rectangle (or a subclass of it), and that results in an IEnumerable<Rectangle>, we can then apply the other LINQ extension methods to query that list further. Just as Cast<TResult>() is an extension method on IEnumerable (and not IEnumerable<T>), the same is true for OfType<T>().  This means that you can use OfType<TResult>() on object-based collections as well. For example, given an ArrayList containing Shapes, as below: 1: // object-based collections are a sequence of object 2: var shapes = new ArrayList 3: { 4: new Rectangle { Width = 3, Height = 5 }, 5: new Rectangle { Width = 10, Height = 13 }, 6: new Circle { Radius = 10 }, 7: new Square { Side = 13 }, 8: // ... 9: }; We can use OfType<Rectangle> to filter the sequence to only Rectangle items (and subclasses), and then chain other LINQ expressions, since we will then be of type IEnumerable<Rectangle>: 1: // OfType() converts the sequence of object to a new sequence 2: // containing only Rectangle or sub-types of Rectangle. 3: var onlyBigRectangles = shapes.OfType<Rectangle>() 4: .Where(r => r.Width > 5) 5: .ToList(); Summary So now we’ve seen two different ways to get a sequence of a superclass or interface down to a more specific sequence of a subclass or implementation.  The Cast<TResult>() method casts every item in the source sequence to type TResult, and the OfType<TResult>() method selects only those items in the source sequence that are of type TResult. You can use these to downcast sequences, or adapt older types and sequences that only implement IEnumerable (such as DataTable, ArrayList, etc.). Technorati Tags: C#,CSharp,.NET,LINQ,Little Wonders,TypeOf,Cast,IEnumerable<T>

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  • Webcast: Leveraging Mobile And Social Commerce To Deliver A Complete Customer Experience

    - by Michael Hylton
      Mobile and social media are emerging as new channels for customers to interact and transact with brands. Mobile users demand experiences that are relevant and engaging and are designed with the capabilities and constraints of devices in mind. Just having a mobile app or mobile-specific website is not a long-term strategy. Brands must invest in an optimized experience, especially as mobile becomes critical to an overall digital commerce strategy.Debating the merits of using Facebook or not is missing the point when it comes to social media. True innovators are thinking beyond the social channel and are building programs that leverage Facebook data to drive conversions and engagement both on and off Facebook.  Learn how to be more strategic about mobile and social commerce in this informative editorial webcast.Attend this webcast and you will learn: How to leverage mobile and social touchpoints in digital commerce Why having a Facebook page or a mobile app is not enough The benefits of a consistent, personalized and relevant customer experience Strategies for integrating mobile and social into an overall digital commerce strategy Featured Speakers: Peter Sheldon, Senior Analyst, eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals, Forrester Research Brenna Johnson, Product Manager, Oracle Commerce Click here to register.

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  • Webcast: Leveraging Mobile And Social Commerce To Deliver A Complete Customer Experience

    - by Michael Hylton
      Mobile and social media are emerging as new channels for customers to interact and transact with brands. Mobile users demand experiences that are relevant and engaging and are designed with the capabilities and constraints of devices in mind. Just having a mobile app or mobile-specific website is not a long-term strategy. Brands must invest in an optimized experience, especially as mobile becomes critical to an overall digital commerce strategy.Debating the merits of using Facebook or not is missing the point when it comes to social media. True innovators are thinking beyond the social channel and are building programs that leverage Facebook data to drive conversions and engagement both on and off Facebook.  Learn how to be more strategic about mobile and social commerce in this informative editorial webcast.Attend this webcast and you will learn: How to leverage mobile and social touchpoints in digital commerce Why having a Facebook page or a mobile app is not enough The benefits of a consistent, personalized and relevant customer experience Strategies for integrating mobile and social into an overall digital commerce strategy Featured Speakers: Peter Sheldon, Senior Analyst, eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals, Forrester Research Brenna Johnson, Product Manager, Oracle Commerce Click here to register.

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  • JavaScript function to Redirects parent of IFrame to specified URL

    - by Michael Freidgeim
    /// <summary>    /// Redirects parent of IFrame to specified URL    /// If current page doesn't have parent, redirect itself    /// </summary>    /// <param name="page"></param>    /// <param name="url"></param>    public static void NavigateParentToUrl(Page page, string url)    {     String script = @" try { var sUrl='" + url + @"'; if (self.parent.frames.length != 0)     self.parent.location=sUrl; else   self.location = sUrl; } catch (Exception) {} ";     page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(TypeForClientScript(), MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name, script, true);    }    /// <summary>

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  • University Choices For Programmers

    - by Michael
    I've noticed that the majority of eminent hackers seem to have come from prestigious universities. How true is this, and is it important to have this type of background to become prominent in the programming field? I don't necessarily have the means to attend a top school, but I have the desire to work among the best. Is it possible without coming from a highly-regarded program? Is graduate study at a good school more important than undergraduate in this regard?

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  • Playing a Song causing WP7 to crash on phone, but not on emulator

    - by Michael Zehnich
    Hi there, I am trying to implement a song into a game that begins playing and continually loops on Windows Phone 7 via XNA 4.0. On the emulator, this works fine, however when deployed to a phone, it simply gives a black screen before going back to the home screen. Here is the rogue code in question, and commenting this code out makes the app run fine on the phone: // in the constructor fields private Song song; // in the LoadContent() method song = Content.Load<Song>("song"); // in the Update() method if (MediaPlayer.GameHasControl && MediaPlayer.State != MediaState.Playing) { MediaPlayer.Play(song); } The song file itself is a 2:53 long, 2.28mb .wma file at 106kbps bitrate. Again this works perfectly on emulator but does not run at all on phone. Thanks for any help you can provide!

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  • Chem eStandards 5.1 in Public Review

    - by michael.rowell
    The Open Applications Group has announced the opening of the 45 day public review period for Chem eStandards version 5.1. Interested parties have until 13 July to submit comments. There will be two webinars review sessions on 23 June and 24 June. The details of the webinars will be available soon. You can download the Chem eStandards review package. If you have any questions, contact Jim Wilson, the OAGi Chemical Council Architect.

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  • Why prefer a wildcard to a type discriminator in a Java API (Re: Effective Java)

    - by Michael Campbell
    In the generics section of Bloch's Effective Java (which handily is the "free" chapter available to all: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/generics.pdf), he says: If a type parameter appears only once in a method declaration, replace it with a wildcard. (See page 31-33 of that pdf) The signature in question is: public static void swap(List<?> list, int i, int j) vs public static void swap(List<E> list, int i, int j) And then proceeds to use a static private "helper" function with an actual type parameter to perform the work. The helper function signature is EXACTLY that of the second option. Why is the wildcard preferable, since you need to NOT use a wildcard to get the work done anyway? I understand that in this case since he's modifying the List and you can't add to a collection with an unbounded wildcard, so why use it at all?

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  • Rapid Evolution of Society & Technology

    - by Michael Snow
    We caught up with Brian Solis on the phone the other day and Christie Flanagan had a chance to chat with him and learn a bit more about him and some of the concepts he'll be addressing in our Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast on Thursday 12/13/12. «--- Interview with Brian Solis  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Be sure and register for this week's webcast ---» ------------------- Guest post by Brian Solis. Reposted (Borrowed) from his posting of May 24, 2012 Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise? - Brian Solis You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words. You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people. Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors. You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself. You’re a change agent and you truly wish to bring about change, but you’ve not invested time or resources to answer “why” in your endeavors to become a connected or social business. If we are to truly change, we must find purpose. We must uncover the essence of our business and the value it delivers to traditional and connected consumers. We must rethink the spirit of today’s embrace and clearly articulate how transformation is going to improve customer and employee experiences and relationships now and over time. Without doing so, any attempts at evolution will be thwarted by reality. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. These are undisciplined times which require alternative approaches to recognize and pursue new opportunities. But everything begins with acknowledging the 360 view of the world that you see today is actually a filtered view of managed and efficient convenience. Today, many organizations that were once inspired by innovation and engagement have fallen into a process of marketing, operationalizing, managing, and optimizing. That might have worked for the better part of the last century, but for the next 10 years and beyond, new vision, leadership and supporting business models will be written to move businesses from rigid frameworks to adaptive and agile entities. I believe that today’s executives will undergo a great test; a test of character, vision, intention, and universal leadership. It starts with a simple, but essential question…what is your promise? Notice, I didn’t ask about your brand promise. Nor did I ask for you to cite your mission and vision statements. This is much more than value propositions or manufactured marketing language designed to hook audiences and stakeholders. I asked for your promise to me as your consumer, stakeholder, and partner. This isn’t about B2B or B2C, but instead, people to people, person to person. It is this promise that will breathe new life into an organization that on the outside, could be misdiagnosed as catatonic by those who are disrupting your markets. A promise, for example, is meant to inspire. It creates alignment. It serves as the foundation for your vision, mission, and all business strategies and it must come from the top to mean anything. For without it, we cannot genuinely voice what it is we stand for or stand behind. Think for a moment about the definition of community. It’s easy to confuse a workplace or a market where everyone simply shares common characteristics. However, a community in this day and age is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter The next few years will force a divide where companies are separated by intention as measured by actions and words. But, becoming a social business is not enough. Becoming more authentic and transparent doesn’t serve as a mantra for a renaissance. A promise is the ink that inscribes the spirit of the relationship between you and me. A promise serves as the words that influence change from within and change beyond the halls of our business. It is the foundation for a renewed embrace, one that must then find its way to every aspect of the organization. It’s the difference between a social business and an adaptive business. While an adaptive business can also be social, it is the culture of the organization that strives to not just use technology to extend current philosophies or processes into new domains, but instead give rise to a new culture where striving for relevance is among its goals. The tools and networks simply become enablers of a greater mission You are reading this because you believe in something more than what you’re doing today. While you fight for change within your organization, remember to aim for a higher purpose. Organizations that strive for innovation, imagination, and relevance will outperform those that do not. Part of your job is to lead a missionary push that unites the groundswell with a top down cascade. Change will only happen because you and other internal champions see what others can’t and will do what other won’t. It takes resolve. It takes the ability to translate new opportunities into business value. And, it takes courage. “This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us”-Steve Jobs ----------------------------------------------------------------- So -- where do you begin to evaluate the kind of experience you are delivering for your customers, partners, and employees?  Take a look at this White Paper: Creating a Successful and Meaningful Customer Experience on the Web and then have a cup of coffee while you listen to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki in a short video below.   An interview with Guy Kawasaki on Maximizing Social Media Channels 

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  • BizTalk 360 Alarms, How do you configure yours?

    - by Michael Stephenson
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/18/153157.aspxIve recently written a guest post for BizTalk 360 on their blog about how customers may configure BizTalk 360 Alarms to optimize getting the right information to the right type of support people.This is my thoughts on how users of BTS 360 can get the best value out of BizTalk 360 alarmshttp://blogs.biztalk360.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-alarms-alerts-you-should-configure-in-biztalk360/

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  • C#: A "Dumbed-Down" C++?

    - by James Michael Hare
    I was spending a lovely day this last weekend watching my sons play outside in one of the better weekends we've had here in Saint Louis for quite some time, and whilst watching them and making sure no limbs were broken or eyes poked out with sticks and other various potential injuries, I was perusing (in the correct sense of the word) this month's MSDN magazine to get a sense of the latest VS2010 features in both IDE and in languages. When I got to the back pages, I saw a wonderful article by David S. Platt entitled, "In Praise of Dumbing Down"  (msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336129.aspx).  The title captivated me and I read it and found myself agreeing with it completely especially as it related to my first post on divorcing C++ as my favorite language. Unfortunately, as Mr. Platt mentions, the term dumbing-down has negative connotations, but is really and truly a good thing.  You are, in essence, taking something that is extremely complex and reducing it to something that is much easier to use and far less error prone.  Adding safeties to power tools and anti-kick mechanisms to chainsaws are in some sense "dumbing them down" to the common user -- but that also makes them safer and more accessible for the common user.  This was exactly my point with C++ and C#.  I did not mean to infer that C++ was not a useful or good language, but that in a very high percentage of cases, is too complex and error prone for the job at hand. Choosing the correct programming language for a job is a lot like choosing any other tool for a task.  For example: if I want to dig a French drain in my lawn, I can attempt to use a huge tractor-like backhoe and the job would be done far quicker than if I would dig it by hand.  I can't deny that the backhoe has the raw power and speed to perform.  But you also cannot deny that my chances of injury or chances of severing utility lines or other resources climb at an exponential rate inverse to the amount of training I may have on that machinery. Is C++ a powerful tool?  Oh yes, and it's great for those tasks where speed and performance are paramount.  But for most of us, it's the wrong tool.  And keep in mind, I say this even though I have 17 years of experience in using it and feel myself highly adept in utilizing its features both in the standard libraries, the STL, and in supplemental libraries such as BOOST.  Which, although greatly help with adding powerful features quickly, do very little to curb the relative dangers of the language. So, you may say, the fault is in the developer, that if the developer had some higher skills or if we only hired C++ experts this would not be an issue.  Now, I will concede there is some truth to this.  Obviously, the higher skilled C++ developers you hire the better the chance they will produce highly performant and error-free code.  However, what good is that to the average developer who cannot afford a full stable of C++ experts? That's my point with C#:  It's like a kinder, gentler C++.  It gives you nearly the same speed, and in many ways even more power than C++, and it gives you a much softer cushion for novices to fall against if they code less-than-optimally.  A bug is a bug, of course, in any language, but C# does a good job of hiding and taking on the task of handling almost all of the resource issues that make C++ so tricky.  For my money, C# is much more maintainable, more feature-rich, second only slightly in performance, faster to market, and -- last but not least -- safer and easier to use.  That's why, where I work, I much prefer to see the developers moving to C#.  The quantity of bugs is much lower, and we don't need to hire "experts" to achieve the same results since the language itself handles those resource pitfalls so prevalent in poorly written C++ code.  C++ will still have its place in the world, and I'm sure I'll still use it now and again where it is truly the correct tool for the job, but for nearly every other project C# is a wonderfully "dumbed-down" version of C++ -- in the very best sense -- and to me, that's the smart choice.

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