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• Unable to make the session state request to the session state server

  - by Angry_IT_Guru

  For about 4-5 months now, I seem to be having this sporadic issue--mainly during our busiest time of the day between 10:30-11:45AM, where all my Windows 2003 web servers in a Microsoft NLB cluster start throwing session state server errors. A sample error is below. System.Web.HttpException: Unable to make the session state request to the session state server. Please ensure that the ASP.NET State service is started and that the client and server ports are the same. If the server is on a remote machine, please ensure that it accepts remote requests by checking the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aspnet_state\Parameters\AllowRemoteConnection. If the server is on the local machine, and if the before mentioned registry value does not exist or is set to 0, then the state server connection string must use either 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' as the server name. at System.Web.SessionState.OutOfProcSessionStateStore.MakeRequest(StateProtocolVerb verb, String id, StateProtocolExclusive exclusiveAccess, Int32 extraFlags, Int32 timeout, Int32 lockCookie, Byte[] buf, Int32 cb, Int32 networkTimeout, SessionNDMakeRequestResults& results) at System.Web.SessionState.OutOfProcSessionStateStore.SetAndReleaseItemExclusive(HttpContext context, String id, SessionStateStoreData item, Object lockId, Boolean newItem) at System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.OnReleaseState(Object source, EventArgs eventArgs) at System.Web.HttpApplication.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) Now I'm using ASP.NET State service on a centralized back-end Windows 2003 server that all servers communicate to. I was originally using SQL Server state for a couple years as well prior to having this issue. The problem with SQL wqas that when the issue occurred, it created a blocking situation which essentially impacted all users across all servers. The product company recommended that I use the standard ASP.NET State service as that was what they technically supported. Why this would make a difference is beyond me -- but I had no choice but to try it! I have attempted to create multiple application pools, adding additional servers, chaning TCP/IP timeout from 20 to 30 seconds, and even calling Microsoft ASP.NET product support, with very little success. I even recommended that they review whether they are using read-only session state instead of read/write per page request -- as I understand that this basically causes every page to make round-trips to state server even if state isn't being used on the page. Unfortunately, the application is developed by our product company and they insist that it is something with my environment because other clients do not have these sort of issues. However, I've talked to other clients and they tell me when they've seen issues like they, they've basically had to create another web farm. This issue almost seems like I've simply reached some architectural limit within the application... Microsoft's position on the issue is that the session state needs to be reduced and the returncode being reported back from the state server indicates buffers are full. To better understand the scope of issues (rather than wait for customers to call and complain), I installed ELMAH and configured it to send me e-mails when unhandled exceptions occur. I basically get 500-1000 e-mails during the time period of high activity! If any one has any other ideas I could try or better ways to troubleshoot, I'd appreciate it.

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• What was scientifically shown to support productivity when organizing/accessing file and folders?

  - by Tom Wijsman

  I have gathered terabytes of data but it has became a habit to store files and folders to the same folder, that folder could be kind of seen as a Inbox where most files (non-installations) enter my system. This way I end up with a big collections of files that are hard to organize properly, I mostly end up making folders that match their file type but then I still have several gigabytes of data per folder which doesn't make it efficient such that I can productively use the folder. I'd rather do a few clicks than having to search through the files, whether that's by some software product or by looking through the folder. Often the file names themselves are not proper so it would be easier to recognize them if there were few in a folder, rather than thousands of them. Scaling in the structure of directory trees in a computer cluster summarizes this problem as following: The processes of storing and retrieving information are rapidly gaining importance in science as well as society as a whole [1, 2, 3, 4]. A considerable effort is being undertaken, firstly to characterize and describe how publicly available information, for example in the world wide web, is actually organized, and secondly, to design efficient methods to access this information. [1] R. M. Shiffrin and K. B¨orner, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 5183 (2004). [2] S. Lawrence, C.L. Giles, Nature 400, 107–109 (1999). [3] R.F.I. Cancho and R.V. Sol, Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. B 268, 2261 (2001). [4] M. Sigman and G. A. Cecchi, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99, 1742 (2002). It goes further on explaining how the data is usually organized by taking general looks at it, but by looking at the abstract and conclusion it doesn't come with a conclusion or approach which results in a productive organization of a directory hierarchy. So, in essence, this is a problem for which I haven't found a solution yet; and I would love to see a scientific solution to this problem. Upon searching further, I don't seem to find anything useful or free papers that approach this problem so it might be that I'm looking in the wrong place. I've also noted that there are different ways to term this problem, which leads out to different results of papers. Perhaps a paper is out there, but I'm not just using the same terms as that paper uses? They often use more scientific terms. I've once heard a story about an advocate with a laptop which has simply outperformed an advocate with had tons of papers, which shows how proper organization leads to productivity; but that story didn't share details on how the advocate used the laptop or how he had organized his data. But in any case, it was way more useful than how most of us organize our data these days... Advice me how I should organize my data, I'm not looking for suggestions here. I would love to see statistics or scientific measurement approaches that help me confirm that it does help me reach my goal.

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• How to configure multiple iSCSI Portal Groups on a EqualLogic PS6100?

  - by kce

  I am working on a migration from a VMware vSphere environment to a Hyper-V Cluster utilizing Windows Server 2012 R2. The setup is pretty small, an EqualLogic PS6100e and two Dell PowerConnect 5424 switches and handful of R710s and R620s. The SAN was configured as a non-RFC1918 network that is not assigned to our organization and since I am working on building a new virtualization environment I figured that this would be an appropriate time to do a subnet migration. I configured a separate VLAN and subnet on the switches and the two previously unused NICs on the PS6100's controllers. At this time I only have a single Hyper-V host cabled in but I can successfully ping the PS6100 from the host. From the PS6100 I can ping each of the four NICs that currently on the storage network. I cannot connect the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator to the Target. I have successfully added the Target Portals (the IP addresses of PS6100 NICs) and the Targets are discovered but listed as inactive. If I try to Connect to them I get the following error, "Log onto Target - Connection Failed" and ISCSIPrt 1 and 70 events are recorded in the Event Log. I have verified that access control to the volume is not the problem by temporarily disabling it. I suspect the problem is with the Portal Group IP address which is still listed as Group Address of old subnet (I know, I know I might be committing the sin of the X/Y problem but everything else looks good): RFC3720 has this to say about Network Portal and Portal Groups: Network Portal: The Network Portal is a component of a Network Entity that has a TCP/IP network address and that may be used by an iSCSI Node within that Network Entity for the connection(s) within one of its iSCSI sessions. A Network Portal in an initiator is identified by its IP address. A Network Portal in a target is identified by its IP address and its listening TCP port. Portal Groups: iSCSI supports multiple connections within the same session; some implementations will have the ability to combine connections in a session across multiple Network Portals. A Portal Group defines a set of Network Portals within an iSCSI Network Entity that collectively supports the capability of coordinating a session with connections spanning these portals. Not all Network Portals within a Portal Group need participate in every session connected through that Portal Group. One or more Portal Groups may provide access to an iSCSI Node. Each Network Portal, as utilized by a given iSCSI Node, belongs to exactly one portal group within that node. The EqualLogic Group Manager documentation has this to say about the Group IP Address: You use the group IP address as the iSCSI discovery address when connecting initiators to iSCSI targets in the group. If you modify the group IP address, you might need to change your initiator configuration to use the new discovery address Changing the group IP address disconnects any iSCSI connections to the group and any administrators logged in to the group through the group IP address. Which sounds equivalent to me (I am following up with support to confirm). I think a reasonable explanation at this point is that the Initiator can't complete the connection to the Target because the Group IP Address / Network Portal is on a different subnet. I really want to avoid a cutover and would prefer to run both subnets side-by-side until I can install and configure each Hyper-V host. Question/s: Is my assessment at all reasonable? Is it possible to configure multiple Group IP Addresses on the EqualLogic PS6100? I don't want to just change it as it will disconnect the remaining ESXi hosts. Am I just Doing It Wrong(TM)?

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• Expert iptables help needed?

  - by Asad Moeen

  After a detailed analysis, I collected these details. I am under a UDP Flood which is more of application dependent. I run a Game-Server and an attacker is flooding me with "getstatus" query which makes the GameServer respond by making the replies to the query which cause output to the attacker's IP as high as 30mb/s and server lag. Here are the packet details, Packet starts with 4 bytes 0xff and then getstatus. Theoretically, the packet is like "\xff\xff\xff\xffgetstatus " Now that I've tried a lot of iptables variations like state and rate-limiting along side but those didn't work. Rate Limit works good but only when the Server is not started. As soon as the server starts, no iptables rule seems to block it. Anyone else got more solutions? someone asked me to contact the provider and get it done at the Network/Router but that looks very odd and I believe they might not do it since that would also affect other clients. Responding to all those answers, I'd say: Firstly, its a VPS so they can't do it for me. Secondly, I don't care if something is coming in but since its application generated so there has to be a OS level solution to block the outgoing packets. At least the outgoing ones must be stopped. Secondly, its not Ddos since just 400kb/s input generates 30mb/s output from my GameServer. That never happens in a D-dos. Asking the provider/hardware level solution should be used in that case but this one is different. And Yes, Banning his IP stops the flood of outgoing packets but he has many more IP-Addresses as he spoofs his original so I just need something to block him automatically. Even tried a lot of Firewalls but as you know they are just front-ends to iptables so if something doesn't work on iptables, what would the firewalls do? These were the rules I tried, iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name DDOS --rsource iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 1 --hitcount 5 --name DDOS --rsource -j DROP It works for the attacks on un-used ports but when the server is listening and responding to the incoming queries by the attacker, it never works. Okay Tom.H, your rules were working when I modified them somehow like this: iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m length --length 1:1024 -m recent --set --name XXXX --rsource iptables -A INPUT -p udp -m string --string "xxxxxxxxxx" --algo bm --to 65535 -m recent --update --seconds 1 --hitcount 15 --name XXXX --rsource -j DROP They worked for about 3 days very good where the string "xxxxxxxxx" would be rate-limited, blocked if someone flooded and also didn't affect the clients. But just today, I tried updating the chain to try to remove a previously blocked IP so for that I had to flush the chain and restore this rule ( iptables -X and iptables -F ), some clients were already connected to servers including me. So restoring the rules now would also block some of the clients string completely while some are not affected. So does this mean I need to restart the server or why else would this happen because the last time the rules were working, there was no one connected?

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• Why are my httpd mpm_prefork processes being reaped so quickly?

  - by Dan Pritts

  We've got a system running RHEL6, x64. We are using a local installation of apache 2.2.22 from source. we serve primarily: mod_perl applications (with a local installation of perl 5.16.0) tomcat applications proxied with mod_jk Here is some context; the main question is below. All of this talks to an Oracle backend. We are having issues with Oracle becoming unresponsive. We think this is because we're hitting the maximum process limit in oracle. We've upped the process limit, but now we are hitting memory pressure on the oracle server. We have tons of oracle sessions sitting idle. I can trace a bunch of them back to the httpd processes. We have mod_perl's Apache::DBI start up a new connection to the database with each httpd child that's spawned. We are concerned that these are not always getting closed out properly when the httpd's exit...and the httpd's are exiting very frequently. I know that it would be good to modify the mod_perl applications to use some better form of db connection pooling; we plan to pursue that but would like to solve our immediate problem sooner. So here's the main question. We are using the prefork MPM. The apache child processes are lasting at most a few minutes. Log analysis shows that each one is serving fewer than 50 clients before exiting; the last request each child serves is OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0 on some sort of internal connection; I'm under the impression that this is a "ping" from the master process. I've adjusted the MPM config as follows. I didn't want to raise MinSpareServers too high, because, after all, i'm trying to minimize the number of sessions to oracle. MinSpareServers 5 MaxSpareServers 30 MaxClients 150 MaxRequestsPerChild 10000 Right now we're serving 250-300 requests per minute. We've got 21 httpd's running, the eldest (other than the master, owned by root) being 3 minutes old. This rate of reaping of the apache children really seems excessive. What could be causing it? Apache was built with: $ ./configure --prefix=/opt/apache --with-ssl=/usr/lib --enable-expires --enable-ext-filter --enable-info --enable-mime-magic --enable-rewrite --enable-so --enable-speling --enable-ssl --enable-usertrack --enable-proxy --enable-headers --enable-log-forensic Apache config info: % /opt/apache/bin/httpd -V Server version: Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) Server built: Jul 23 2012 22:30:13 Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:30 Server loaded: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.4.1 Compiled using: APR 1.4.5, APR-Util 1.4.1 Architecture: 64-bit Server MPM: Prefork threaded: no forked: yes (variable process count) Server compiled with.... -D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork" -D APR_HAS_SENDFILE -D APR_HAS_MMAP -D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled) -D APR_USE_SYSVSEM_SERIALIZE -D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE -D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT -D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD -D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS -D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128 -D HTTPD_ROOT="/opt/apache" -D SUEXEC_BIN="/opt/apache/bin/suexec" -D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="logs/httpd.pid" -D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status" -D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="logs/accept.lock" -D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log" -D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="conf/mime.types" -D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="conf/httpd.conf" modules are compiled into apache rather than shared libs: % /opt/apache/bin/httpd -l Compiled in modules: core.c mod_authn_file.c mod_authn_default.c mod_authz_host.c mod_authz_groupfile.c mod_authz_user.c mod_authz_default.c mod_auth_basic.c mod_ext_filter.c mod_include.c mod_filter.c mod_log_config.c mod_log_forensic.c mod_env.c mod_mime_magic.c mod_expires.c mod_headers.c mod_usertrack.c mod_setenvif.c mod_version.c mod_proxy.c mod_proxy_connect.c mod_proxy_ftp.c mod_proxy_http.c mod_proxy_scgi.c mod_proxy_ajp.c mod_proxy_balancer.c mod_ssl.c prefork.c http_core.c mod_mime.c mod_status.c mod_autoindex.c mod_asis.c mod_info.c mod_cgi.c mod_negotiation.c mod_dir.c mod_actions.c mod_speling.c mod_userdir.c mod_alias.c mod_rewrite.c mod_so.c One final note - the red hat httpd, apr, and perl packages are all installed, but ldd shows that none of those libraries are linked with the running httpd.

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• Hardware recommendations / parts list for a modern, quiet ZFS NAS box - 2011-Feb edition [closed]

  - by dandv

  I want to build some really reliable storage for my data, and it seems that ZFS is the only filesystem at the moment that does live checksumming. That rules out DroboPro, so I'm looking to building a quiet ZFS NAS that would start with 4 2TB or larger hard drives. I'd like this system to be very reliable and relatively future-proof for 2-3 years, so I'm willing to invest some $$$ and buy higher end components. I did see questions here and on other forums about low-cost servers, but I'm not looking for those. I'd be super happy to go for an off-the-shelf solution, but I haven't found one that's quiet. I started doing the research (summarized on my wiki), but I realized that it just gets too complicated for what I know as a software dude, and I'm entering the analysis paralysis area. At this point, I'm basically looking for a parts list for a configuration that will work (and is modern), and I know there are folks around here who are way more competent than me. I've built computers and am comfortable assembling one and messing with *nix; I can follow guides; I just want to end the decision process for the hardware and software configuration. What I've researched so far (not that these are very modern components): Case: I think I've settled on the Antec Twelve Hundred case because it cools well, is quiet, and simply has 12 bays that allow elastic mounting. The SilverStone Raven is its counter-candidate, but I find its construction quite odd. For the PSU, I'm torn between Antec CP-850 and Nexus RX-8500, but I did this research more than a year ago. The Nexus has a very uniform power profile, and I'd rather not have the Antec spin up and down based on load. On the other hand, I'm not sure how often my file server will draw more than 400W under use. For the hard drives, I've read that WD Black drives are actually WD RE3 with a software setting changed. I'd also like to buy different drive types, not just 4 WDs. Recommendations? Right now I have a 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K300. For the motherboard, CPU and RAM I have no idea, other than the RAM must be ECC. I already asked a question here about ECC RAM, but I was misguided and was looking for a motherboard that would support USB 3.0 as well. I've learned to go with eSATA, or worry about USB later. Then there's the (liquid) cooling, Wi-Fi card, and FreeBSD vs. OpenSolaris Express. Lastly, I'm wondering if I can make this PC into a media server by adding a Blu-ray drive and a good sound card. But support for Blu-Ray is spotty on Linux, and I don't know if Windows 7 on VirtualBox would get sufficient hardware access to output HDMI or SPDIFF signals. (Running OpenSolaris virtualized is not an option because of the reliability risk.) Then there are HDCP concerns. Suggestions on that would be appreciated as well, but I don't want us to get sidetracked. A specific shopping list on the core components would be great, so I can start ordering, and in the meantime educate myself with regards to the other issues. Finally, I think this could become a great FAQ for those technically inclined to build their own ZFS server, but confused by the dizzying array of options out there, and I promise to compile the results and share my experience building and benchmarking the server.

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• Proliant server will not accept new hard disks in RAID 1+0?

  - by Leigh

  I have a HP ProLiant DL380 G5, I have two logical drives configured with RAID. I have one logical drive RAID 1+0 with two 72 gb 10k sas 1 port spare no 376597-001. I had one hard disk fail and ordered a replacement. The configuration utility showed error and would not rebuild the RAID. I presumed a hard disk fault and ordered a replacement again. In the mean time I put the original failed disk back in the server and this started rebuilding. Currently shows ok status however in the log I can see hardware errors. The new disk has come and I again have the same problem of not accepting the hard disk. I have updated the P400 controller with the latest firmware 7.24 , but still no luck. The only difference I can see is the original drive has firmware 0103 (same as the RAID drive) and the new one has HPD2. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance Logs from server ctrl all show config Smart Array P400 in Slot 1 (sn: PAFGK0P9VWO0UQ) array A (SAS, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 1 (68.5 GB, RAID 1, Interim Recovery Mode) physicaldrive 2I:1:1 (port 2I:box 1:bay 1, SAS, 73.5 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:2 (port 2I:box 1:bay 2, SAS, 72 GB, Failed array B (SAS, Unused Space: 0 MB) logicaldrive 2 (558.7 GB, RAID 5, OK) physicaldrive 1I:1:5 (port 1I:box 1:bay 5, SAS, 300 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:3 (port 2I:box 1:bay 3, SAS, 300 GB, OK) physicaldrive 2I:1:4 (port 2I:box 1:bay 4, SAS, 300 GB, OK) ctrl all show config detail Smart Array P400 in Slot 1 Bus Interface: PCI Slot: 1 Serial Number: PAFGK0P9VWO0UQ Cache Serial Number: PA82C0J9VWL8I7 RAID 6 (ADG) Status: Disabled Controller Status: OK Hardware Revision: E Firmware Version: 7.24 Rebuild Priority: Medium Expand Priority: Medium Surface Scan Delay: 15 secs Surface Scan Mode: Idle Wait for Cache Room: Disabled Surface Analysis Inconsistency Notification: Disabled Post Prompt Timeout: 0 secs Cache Board Present: True Cache Status: OK Cache Status Details: A cache error was detected. Run more information. Cache Ratio: 100% Read / 0% Write Drive Write Cache: Disabled Total Cache Size: 256 MB Total Cache Memory Available: 208 MB No-Battery Write Cache: Disabled Battery/Capacitor Count: 0 SATA NCQ Supported: True Array: A Interface Type: SAS Unused Space: 0 MB Status: Failed Physical Drive Array Type: Data One of the drives on this array have failed or has Logical Drive: 1 Size: 68.5 GB Fault Tolerance: RAID 1 Heads: 255 Sectors Per Track: 32 Cylinders: 17594 Strip Size: 128 KB Full Stripe Size: 128 KB Status: Interim Recovery Mode Caching: Enabled Unique Identifier: 600508B10010503956574F305551 Disk Name: \\.\PhysicalDrive0 Mount Points: C:\ 68.5 GB Logical Drive Label: A0100539PAFGK0P9VWO0UQ0E93 Mirror Group 0: physicaldrive 2I:1:2 (port 2I:box 1:bay 2, S Mirror Group 1: physicaldrive 2I:1:1 (port 2I:box 1:bay 1, S Drive Type: Data physicaldrive 2I:1:1 Port: 2I Box: 1 Bay: 1 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SAS Size: 73.5 GB Rotational Speed: 10000 Firmware Revision: 0103 Serial Number: B379P8C006RK Model: HP DG072A9B7 PHY Count: 2 PHY Transfer Rate: Unknown, Unknown physicaldrive 2I:1:2 Port: 2I Box: 1 Bay: 2 Status: Failed Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SAS Size: 72 GB Rotational Speed: 15000 Firmware Revision: HPD9 Serial Number: D5A1PCA04SL01244 Model: HP EH0072FARUA PHY Count: 2 PHY Transfer Rate: Unknown, Unknown Array: B Interface Type: SAS Unused Space: 0 MB Status: OK Array Type: Data Logical Drive: 2 Size: 558.7 GB Fault Tolerance: RAID 5 Heads: 255 Sectors Per Track: 32 Cylinders: 65535 Strip Size: 64 KB Full Stripe Size: 128 KB Status: OK Caching: Enabled Parity Initialization Status: Initialization Co Unique Identifier: 600508B10010503956574F305551 Disk Name: \\.\PhysicalDrive1 Mount Points: E:\ 558.7 GB Logical Drive Label: AF14FD12PAFGK0P9VWO0UQD007 Drive Type: Data physicaldrive 1I:1:5 Port: 1I Box: 1 Bay: 5 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SAS Size: 300 GB Rotational Speed: 10000 Firmware Revision: HPD4 Serial Number: 3SE07QH300009923X1X3 Model: HP DG0300BALVP Current Temperature (C): 32 Maximum Temperature (C): 45 PHY Count: 2 PHY Transfer Rate: Unknown, Unknown physicaldrive 2I:1:3 Port: 2I Box: 1 Bay: 3 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SAS Size: 300 GB Rotational Speed: 10000 Firmware Revision: HPD4 Serial Number: 3SE0AHVH00009924P8F3 Model: HP DG0300BALVP Current Temperature (C): 34 Maximum Temperature (C): 47 PHY Count: 2 PHY Transfer Rate: Unknown, Unknown physicaldrive 2I:1:4 Port: 2I Box: 1 Bay: 4 Status: OK Drive Type: Data Drive Interface Type: SAS Size: 300 GB Rotational Speed: 10000 Firmware Revision: HPD4 Serial Number: 3SE08NAK00009924KWD6 Model: HP DG0300BALVP Current Temperature (C): 35 Maximum Temperature (C): 47 PHY Count: 2 PHY Transfer Rate: Unknown, Unknown

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• Using PHP to connect to RADIUS works on one server but not another

  - by JDS

  I have a fleet of webservers that server a LAMP webapp broken into multiple customer apps by virtualhost/domain. The platform is Ubuntu 10.04 VM + PHP 5.3 + Apache 2.2.14, on top of VMware ESX (v4 I think). This stuff's not too important, though -- I'm just setting up the background. I have one customer that connects to a RADIUS server for authentication. We've found that the app responds as if some number of web servers are configured correctly and some are not. i.e. Apparently random authentication failures or successes, with no rhyme or reason. I did a lot of analysis of our fleet, and resolved it down to the differences between two specific web servers. I'll call them "A" and "B". "A" works. "B" does not. "Works" means "connects to and gets authentication data successfully from the RADIUS server". Ultimately, I'm looking for one thing that is different, and I've exhausted everything that I can come up with, so, looking for something else. Here are things I've looked at PHP package versions (all from Ubuntu repos). These are exactly the same across servers. PECL package. There are no PECL packages that aren't installed by apt. Other libraries or packages. Nothing that was network-related or RADIUS-related was different among servers. (There were some minor package differences, though.) Network or hosting environment. I found that some of the working servers were on the same physical environment as some not-working ones (i.e. same ESX containers). So, probably, the physical network layer is not the problem. Test case. I created a test case as follows. It works on the working servers, and fails on the not-working servers, very consistently. <?php $radius = radius_auth_open(); $username = 'theusername'; $password = 'thepassword'; $hostname = '12.34.56.78'; $radius_secret = '39wmmvxghg'; if (! radius_add_server($radius,$hostname,0,$radius_secret,5,3)) { die('Radius Error 1: ' . radius_strerror($radius) . "\n"); } if (! radius_create_request($radius,RADIUS_ACCESS_REQUEST)) { die('Radius Error 2: ' . radius_strerror($radius) . "\n"); } radius_put_attr($radius,RADIUS_USER_NAME,$username); radius_put_attr($radius,RADIUS_USER_PASSWORD,$password); switch (radius_send_request($radius)) { case RADIUS_ACCESS_ACCEPT: echo 'GOOD LOGIN'; break; case RADIUS_ACCESS_REJECT: echo 'BAD LOGIN'; break; case RADIUS_ACCESS_CHALLENGE: echo 'CHALLENGE REQUESTED'; break; default: die('Radius Error 3: ' . radius_strerror($radius) . "\n"); } ?>

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• Unable to make the session state request to the session state server.

  - by Angry_IT_Guru

  For about 4-5 months now, I seem to be having this sporadic issue--mainly during our busiest time of the day between 10:30-11:45AM, where all my Windows 2003 web servers in a Microsoft NLB cluster start throwing session state server errors. A sample error is below. System.Web.HttpException: Unable to make the session state request to the session state server. Please ensure that the ASP.NET State service is started and that the client and server ports are the same. If the server is on a remote machine, please ensure that it accepts remote requests by checking the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\aspnet_state\Parameters\AllowRemoteConnection. If the server is on the local machine, and if the before mentioned registry value does not exist or is set to 0, then the state server connection string must use either 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' as the server name. at System.Web.SessionState.OutOfProcSessionStateStore.MakeRequest(StateProtocolVerb verb, String id, StateProtocolExclusive exclusiveAccess, Int32 extraFlags, Int32 timeout, Int32 lockCookie, Byte[] buf, Int32 cb, Int32 networkTimeout, SessionNDMakeRequestResults& results) at System.Web.SessionState.OutOfProcSessionStateStore.SetAndReleaseItemExclusive(HttpContext context, String id, SessionStateStoreData item, Object lockId, Boolean newItem) at System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.OnReleaseState(Object source, EventArgs eventArgs) at System.Web.HttpApplication.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) Now I'm using ASP.NET State service on a centralized back-end Windows 2003 server that all servers communicate to. I was originally using SQL Server state for a couple years as well prior to having this issue. The problem with SQL wqas that when the issue occurred, it created a blocking situation which essentially impacted all users across all servers. The product company recommended that I use the standard ASP.NET State service as that was what they technically supported. Why this would make a difference is beyond me -- but I had no choice but to try it! I have attempted to create multiple application pools, adding additional servers, chaning TCP/IP timeout from 20 to 30 seconds, and even calling Microsoft ASP.NET product support, with very little success. I even recommended that they review whether they are using read-only session state instead of read/write per page request -- as I understand that this basically causes every page to make round-trips to state server even if state isn't being used on the page. Unfortunately, the application is developed by our product company and they insist that it is something with my environment because other clients do not have these sort of issues. However, I've talked to other clients and they tell me when they've seen issues like they, they've basically had to create another web farm. This issue almost seems like I've simply reached some architectural limit within the application... Microsoft's position on the issue is that the session state needs to be reduced and the returncode being reported back from the state server indicates buffers are full. To better understand the scope of issues (rather than wait for customers to call and complain), I installed ELMAH and configured it to send me e-mails when unhandled exceptions occur. I basically get 500-1000 e-mails during the time period of high activity! If any one has any other ideas I could try or better ways to troubleshoot, I'd appreciate it.

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• Configuring a PIX 506e for Asterisk

  - by orthogonal3

  Hi all! I'm having problems configuring a old Cisco PIX running 6.3 and wondered if anyone can lend a hand? Simply put I have a PIX 506e that I want to put in my VoIP data path. I can't update it and getting a compat version of Java for that version of PIX is tough so I can't log onto the web interface. The PIX straddles two networks..... 192.168.5.0 on the inside, ...50.0 on the outside both net masks are 255.255.255.0 I have a local Asterisk server cluster with a single service IP (<local asterisk>) SIP is on UDP 5060 and RTP (for the voip data) is on UDP 18000-18999 I know thats a big range but hey may as well. I need the 192.168.5.0 net to have web and ftp access for updates and the like. DHCP, DNS and NTP is already provided on that network so I don't need external DNS access. So I think I want the following rules: SIP or RTP from <my itsp> arriving at <outside voip ip> NATed to <local asterisk> SIP or RTP able to do the reverse route (should be covered by high sec - low sec??) HTTP and FTP access outbound for software update for the servers etc I have the following config at the minute - and I think I'm almost there (I hope)... interface ethernet0 auto interface ethernet1 auto nameif ethernet0 outside security0 nameif ethernet1 inside security100 enable password wouldyouliketobeapeppertoo encrypted passwd wouldyouliketobeapeppertoo encrypted hostname afirewall domain-name adomain fixup protocol dns maximum-length 512 fixup protocol ftp 21 fixup protocol h323 h225 1720 fixup protocol h323 ras 1718-1719 fixup protocol http 80 fixup protocol rsh 514 fixup protocol rtsp 554 fixup protocol sip 5060 fixup protocol sip udp 5060 fixup protocol skinny 2000 fixup protocol smtp 25 fixup protocol sqlnet 1521 fixup protocol tftp 69 access-list acl_ping permit icmp any any access-list voip permit ip host <my itsp> host <local asterisk> mtu outside 1500 mtu inside 1500 ip address outside <outside pix ip> 255.255.255.0 ip address inside <inside pix ip> 255.255.255.0 arp timeout 14400 global (outside) 1 <outside generic ip> nat (inside) 1 192.168.5.0 255.255.255.0 0 0 static (inside,outside) <outside voip ip> <local asterisk> netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 static (outside,inside) <local asterisk> <outside voip ip> netmask 255.255.255.255 0 0 access-group acl_ping in interface outside access-group acl_ping in interface inside route outside 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 <my next hop router> 1 route outside <my itsp> 255.255.255.255 <my next hop router> 1 I think I just need a hand with the access-lists and NAT/static rules. Would anyone be able to help as I've RTFM'd the Cisco docs a few times and they're heavy. Wishing I'd completed my CCNA now! Thanks all for any help, Phil

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• Trying to prevent Windows from hibernating/sleeping automatically

  - by user328821

  My Dell XPS 8700 (Win 7) suddenly began putting itself to sleep at 6pm daily, even if I'm typing. I don't know what caused this to occur, except possibly a windows update that took place in the middle of the night. I initially went into settings for power and saw 2 plans set up, one from Dell and the other window's Power saver plan. I set both to never for sleep and hibernate yet it still occurred. I have current drivers and a fairly new UPS that has software to set to shutdown only after power loss. Dell is of little help, can anyone point me in the right direction? I did do the powerdfg -energy program and came up with this: Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report Scan Time 2014-05-08T19:21:48Z Scan Duration 60 seconds System Manufacturer Dell Inc. System Product Name XPS 8700 BIOS Date 08/23/2013 BIOS Version A04 OS Build 7601 Platform Role PlatformRoleDesktop Plugged In true Process Count 115 Thread Count 1631 Report GUID {097caf99-039b-44c3-b154-d797bfbfdfcc} Analysis Results Errors Power Policy:Sleep timeout is disabled (Plugged In) The computer is not configured to automatically sleep after a period of inactivity. System Availability Requests:System Required Request The device or driver has made a request to prevent the system from automatically entering sleep. Requesting Driver Instance HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0899&SUBSYS_102805B7&REV_1000\4&220b1bbc&0&0001 Requesting Driver Device Realtek High Definition Audio CPU Utilization:Processor utilization is high The average processor utilization during the trace was high. The system will consume less power when the average processor utilization is very low. Review processor utilization for individual processes to determine which applications and services contribute the most to total processor utilization. Average Utilization (%) 9.48 Warnings Platform Timer Resolution:Platform Timer Resolution The default platform timer resolution is 15.6ms (15625000ns) and should be used whenever the system is idle. If the timer resolution is increased, processor power management technologies may not be effective. The timer resolution may be increased due to multimedia playback or graphical animations. Current Timer Resolution (100ns units) 10000 Maximum Timer Period (100ns units) 156001 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Kernel Timer Request A kernel component or device driver has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Request Count 2 Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 10000 Requesting Process ID 8672 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe Platform Timer Resolution:Outstanding Timer Request A program or service has requested a timer resolution smaller than the platform maximum timer resolution. Requested Period 100000 Requesting Process ID 1212 Requesting Process Path \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe Power Policy:802.11 Radio Power Policy is Maximum Performance (Plugged In) The current power policy for 802.11-compatible wireless network adapters is not configured to use low-power modes. CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name audiodg.exe PID 1304 Average Utilization (%) 4.73 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\msvcrt.dll 1.88 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\MaxxAudioAPO5064.dll 1.77 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\AudioEng.dll 0.80 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name thunderbird.exe PID 6036 Average Utilization (%) 0.35 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\xul.dll 0.16 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\mozjs.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\System32\win32k.sys 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace. Process Name dwm.exe PID 1340 Average Utilization (%) 0.25 Module Average Module Utilization (%) \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\dwmcore.dll 0.08 \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\nvwgf2umx.dll 0.05 \SystemRoot\system32\ntoskrnl.exe 0.03 CPU Utilization:Individual process with significant processor utilization. This process is responsible for a significant portion of the total processor utilization recorded during the trace.

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• Windows 7 disk errors after a few hours of runtime

  - by GFK

  I'm having trouble understanding what is going on with my work PC. Whenever I boot it, it runs fine for a while, then starts to randomly show disk errors. The displayed error often contains the message "not enough storage is available to process this command", although depending on the application that fails it can be different. This has happened for weeks now and is getting worse. This is what troubles me: It never seems to impact critical parts of the system (no BSOD, no freeze). Only some applications seem impacted, refusing to function correctly after a while: Outlook 2010 cannot download RSS feeds anymore, Firefox 6 or IE9 cannot download anything bigger than 3MB without failing, Windows Update fails, all msi installers fail, Visual Studio 2010 starts failing in weird manners... It only happens after a while using it (typically 3 hours, but it seems that installing a program or compiling several times makes it shorter) Rebooting solves it (temporarily). The system: The OS is Windows 7 Pro Spanish SP1, 32 bits The system is an HP Compaq 6000 Pro with 4 GB memory (only 3.4GB usable since the system is 32bit), one 500GB hard drive. Installed applications include: Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, VMWare Workstation 7, Microsoft Security Essentials, Office 2010. Shutting down all related services and processes doesn't seem to change anything. The diagnostics I've run so far: Hard drive : 465GB, 165GB free Process Explorer : physical and virtual memory seem ok (pagefile is 5.3GB, physical memory usage 70%, system commit 39%) Windows Memory diagnostic tool: OK CHKDSK returned: 488282111 KB total disk space. 281668248 KB in 265779 files. 150188 KB in 62949 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 571755 KB in use by the system. The log file has occupied 65536 kilobytes. 205891920 KB available on disk. For non-spanish speakers, that means all ok. SMART diagnostic tools (DiskCheckup) report all values normal. temperatures are in the normal range (HWinfo). The event viewer doesn't seem to contain any significant message. ran CCleaner 3, without any noticeable effect. I was thinking about some file number limit (between Visual Studio projects and other applications, there are around 300.000 files on the hard drive), but I couldn't find any. It's possible there is something related with the use of the temporary folders (it's the only explanation I have for why applications fail but Windows doesn't), but I cannot confirm that. Only thing I cannot find out is if chkdsk reporting 65MB for the log is normal. It seems since Vista it always reports this. Any other cleaning/diagnostic tool you might know of? Edit: I ran several other tools since I first published the question: Seagate SeaTools (the HD manufacturer's analysis tool): complete test run OK. Intel Rapid 10.1 (the HD controller manufacturer's troubleshooting tool): the HD's ok. Microsoft Desktop Heap Monitor: Desktop Heap Information Monitor Tool (Version 8.1.2925.0) Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Session ID: 1 Total Desktop: ( 46464 KB - 11 desktops) WinStation\Desktop Heap Size(KB) Used Rate(%) WinSta0\Winlogon (s1) 128 3.6 WinSta0\Disconnect (s1) 64 3.8 WinSta0\Default (s1) 20480 3.0 msswindowstation\mssrestricteddesk (s0) 1024 0.2 __X78B95_89_IW__A8D9S1_42_ID (s0) 1024 0.2 Service-0x0-3e5$\Default (s0) 1024 0.6 Service-0x0-3e4$\Default (s0) 1024 0.3 Service-0x0-3e7$\Default (s0) 1024 2.1 WinSta0\Winlogon (s0) 128 1.9 WinSta0\Disconnect (s0) 64 3.8 WinSta0\Default (s0) 20480 0.0 All ok, desktop heap usage < 5% Edit 2: I tried totally resetting my account by creating a new one, logging under this new one and delete the first one (local rights and files), then logging back with this deleted account (it is a domain account). No luck. Also, I found out often the error is "not enough storage is available to process this command". Searching on the internet, I found an old troubleshooting tip (setting a registry key to raise the IRP stack limit, whatever it is) which did not change anything.

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• Issue 15: The Benefits of Oracle Exastack

  - by rituchhibber

       SOLUTIONS FOCUS The Benefits of Oracle Exastack Paul ThompsonDirector, Alliances and Solutions Partner ProgramsOracle EMEA Alliances & Channels RESOURCES -- Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Program Oracle Exastack Ready Oracle Exastack Optimized Oracle Exastack Labs and Enablement Resources Oracle Exastack Labs Video Tour SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES Exastack is a revolutionary programme supporting Oracle independent software vendor partners across the entire Oracle technology stack. Oracle's core strategy is to engineer software and hardware together, and our ISV strategy is the same. At Oracle we design engineered systems that are pre-integrated to reduce the cost and complexity of IT infrastructures while increasing productivity and performance. Oracle innovates and optimises performance at every layer of the stack to simplify business operations, drive down costs and accelerate business innovation. Our engineered systems are optimised to achieve enterprise performance levels that are unmatched in the industry. Faster time to production is achieved by implementing pre-engineered and pre-assembled hardware and software bundles. Our strategy of delivering a single-vendor stack simplifies and reduces costs associated with purchasing, deploying, and supporting IT environments for our customers and partners. In parallel to this core engineered systems strategy, the Oracle Exastack Program enables our Oracle ISV partners to leverage a scalable, integrated infrastructure that delivers their applications tuned, tested and optimised for high-performance. Specifically, the Oracle Exastack Program helps ISVs run their solutions on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and Oracle SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 - integrated systems products in which the software and hardware are engineered to work together. These products provide OPN members with a lower cost and high performance infrastructure for database and application workloads across on-premise and cloud based environments. Ready and Optimized Oracle Partners can now leverage our new Oracle Exastack Program to become Oracle Exastack Ready and Oracle Exastack Optimized. Partners can achieve Oracle Exastack Ready status through their support for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle VM, Oracle Database, Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and Oracle SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. By doing this, partners can demonstrate to their customers that their applications are available on the latest major releases of these products. The Oracle Exastack Ready programme helps customers readily differentiate Oracle partners from lesser software developers, and identify applications that support Oracle engineered systems. Achieving Oracle Exastack Optimized status demonstrates that an OPN member has proven itself against goals for performance and scalability on Oracle integrated systems. This status enables end customers to readily identify Oracle partners that have tested and tuned their solutions for optimum performance on an Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and Oracle SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. These ISVs can display the Oracle Exadata Optimized, Oracle Exalogic Optimized or Oracle SPARC SuperCluster Optimized logos on websites and on all their collateral to show that they have tested and tuned their application for optimum performance. Deliver higher value to customers Oracle's investment in engineered systems enables ISV partners to deliver higher value to customer business processes. New innovations are enabled through extreme performance unachievable through traditional best-of-breed multi-vendor server/software approaches. Core product requirements can be launched faster, enabling ISVs to focus research and development investment on core competencies in order to bring value to market as quickly as possible. Through Exastack, partners no longer have to worry about the underlying product stack, which allows greater focus on the development of intellectual property above the stack. Partners are not burdened by platform issues and can concentrate simply on furthering their applications. The advantage to end customers is that partners can focus all efforts on business functionality, rather than bullet-proofing underlying technologies, and so will inevitably deliver application updates faster. Exastack provides ISVs with a number of flexible deployment options, such as on-premise or Cloud, while maintaining one single code base for applications regardless of customer deployment preference. Customers buying their solutions from Exastack ISVs can therefore be confident in deploying on their own networks, on private clouds or into a public cloud. The underlying platform will support all conceivable deployments, enabling a focus on the ISV's application itself that wouldn't be possible with other vendor partners. It stands to reason that Exastack accelerates time to value as well as lowering implementation costs all round. There is a big competitive advantage in partners being able to offer customers an optimised, pre-configured solution rather than an assortment of components and a suggested fit. Once a customer has decided to buy an Oracle Exastack Ready or Optimized partner solution, it will be up and running without any need for the customer to conduct testing of its own. Operational costs and complexity are also reduced, thanks to streamlined customer support through standardised configurations and pro-active monitoring. 'Engineered to Work Together' is a significant statement of Oracle strategy. It guarantees smoother deployment of a single vendor solution, clear ownership with no finger-pointing and the peace of mind of the Oracle Support Centre underpinning the entire product stack. Next steps Every OPN member with packaged applications must seriously consider taking steps to become Exastack Ready, or Exastack Optimized at the first opportunity. That first step down the track is to talk to an expert on the OPN Portal, at the Oracle Partner Business Center or to discuss the next steps with the closest Oracle account manager. Oracle Exastack lab environments and other technical enablement resources are available for OPN members wishing to further their knowledge of Oracle Exastack and qualify their applications for Oracle Exastack Optimized. New Boot Camps and Guided Learning Paths (GLPs), tailored specifically for ISVs, are available for Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Linux, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Database, and Oracle WebLogic Server. More information about these GLPs and Boot Camps (including delivery dates and locations) are posted on the OPN Competency Center and corresponding OPN Knowledge Zones. Learn more about Oracle Exastack labs and ISV specific enablement resources. "Oracle Specialized partners are of course front-and-centre, with potential customers clearly directed to those partners and to Exadata Ready partners as a matter of priority." --More OpenWorld 2011 highlights for Oracle partners and customers Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.3 application testing solution for Web, SOA and Oracle Applications Oracle Application Express Release 4.1 improving the development of database-centric Web 2.0 applications and reports Oracle Unified Directory 11g helping customers manage the critical identity information that drives their business applications Oracle SOA Suite for healthcare integration Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse 11g demonstrating continued commitment to the developer and open source communities Oracle Coherence 3.7.1, the latest release of the industry's leading distributed in-memory data grid Oracle Process Accelerators helping to simplify and accelerate time-to-value for customers' business process management initiatives Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the iPad meeting the increasingly mobile demands of today's workforces Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack introducing industry-leading hosted call centre and enterprise-marketing capabilities designed to drive further revenue and productivity while reducing costs and improving the customer experience Oracle's Primavera Portfolio Management 9 for businesses delivering on project portfolio goals with increased versatility, transparency and accuracy Oracle's PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) 9.1 On Demand Standard Edition helping customers manage their long-term investment in enterprise-wide business applications New versions of Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking and Oracle FLEXCUBE Investor Servicing for Financial Institutions, as well as Oracle Financial Services Enterprise Case Management, Oracle Financial Services Pricing Management, Oracle Financial Management Analytics and Oracle Tax Analytics Oracle Utilities Network Management System 1.11 offering new modelling and analysis features to improve distribution-grid management for electric utilities Oracle Communications Network Charging and Control 4.4 helping communications service providers (CSPs) offer their customers more flexible charging options Plus many, many more technology announcements, enhancements, momentum news and community updates -- Oracle OpenWorld 2012 A date has already been set for Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Held once again in San Francisco, exhibitors, partners, customers and Oracle people will gather from 30 September until 4 November to meet, network and learn together with the rest of the global Oracle community. Register now for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and save $$$! We'll reward your early planning for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 with reduced rates. Super Saver deals are now available! -- Back to the welcome page

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• Bye Bye Year of the Dragon, Hello BPM

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} As 2012 fades and we usher in a New Year, let’s look back at some of the hottest BPM trends and those we’ll be seeing more of in the coming months. BPM is as much about people as it is about technology. As people adopt new ways of engagement, new channels of communications and new devices to interact , the changes are reflected in BPM practices. As Social and Mobile have become an integral part of our personal and professional lives, we’ll see tighter integration of social and mobile with BPM, and more use cases emerging for smarter process management in 2013. And with products and services becoming less differentiated, organizations will strive to differentiate on Customer Experience. Concepts like Pace Layered Architecture and Dynamic Case Management will provide more flexibility and agility to IT groups and knowledge workers. Take a look at some of these capabilities we showcased (see video) at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Some of these trends that will continue to gain momentum in 2013: Social networks and social media have provided a new way for businesses to engage with customers. A prospect is likely to reach out to their social network before making any purchase. Companies are increasingly engaging with customers in social networks to influence their purchasing decisions, as well as listening to customers via tools like sentiment analysis to see what customers think about a particular product or process. These insights are valuable as companies look to improve their processes. Inside organizations, workers are using social tools to engage with each other to design new products and processes. Social collaboration tools are being used to resolve issues where an employee needs consultation to reach a decision. Oracle BPM Suite includes social interaction as an integral part of its process design and work management to empower today’s business users. Ubiquitous smart mobile devices are trending as a tool of choice for many workers. Many companies are adopting the policy of “Bring Your Own Device,” and the device of choice is a tablet. Devices like smart phones and tablets not only provide mobility to workers and customers, but they also provide additional important information – the context. By integrating the mobile context (location, photos, and preferences) into your processes, organizations can make much more informed decisions, as well as offer more personalized service to customers. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, you can easily create user interfaces for mobile devices and also capture location data for process execution. Customer experience was at the forefront of trending topics in 2012. Organizations are trying to understand their customers better and offer them more personalized and differentiated services. Customer experience is paramount when companies design sales and support processes. Companies are looking to BPM to consistently and efficiently orchestrate customer facing processes across disparate systems, departments and channels of communication. Oracle BPM Suite provides just the right capabilities for organizations to design and deliver an excellent customer experience. Pace Layered Architecture strategy is gaining traction as a way to maximize agility and minimize disruption in organizations. It provides a framework to manage the evolution of your information system when different pieces of it are changing at different rates and need to be updated independent of one another. Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle BPM Suite are designed with this in mind. The database layer, integration layer, application layer, and process layer should not be required to change at the same time. Most of the business changes to policy or process can be done at the process layer without disrupting the whole infrastructure. By understanding the type of change needed at a particular level, organizations can become much more agile and efficient. Adaptive Case Management proposes more flexibility to manage processes or cases that do not follow a structured process flow. In such situations, the knowledge worker managing the case needs to evaluate what step should occur next because the sequence of steps can’t be predetermined. Another characteristic is that it requires much more collaboration than straight-through process. As simple processes become automated, and customers adopt more and more self-service, cases that reach the case workers are much more complex and need more investigation. Oracle BPM suite includes comprehensive adaptive case management capability to manage such unstructured and complex processes. Smart BPM or making your BPM intelligent has been the holy grail for BPM practitioners who imagined that one day BPM would become one with Business Intelligence, Business Activity Monitoring and Complex Event Processing, making it much more responsive and helpful in organizational decision making. In 2013, organizations will begin to deploy these intelligent BPM solutions. Oracle offers an integrated solution that brings together the powerful functionality of BI, BAM, event processing, and Real Time Decisions to help organizations create smart process based solutions. In order to help customers reach their BPM goals faster and remove risks associated with BPM initiatives, Oracle has introduced Oracle Process Accelerators, pre-built best practices applications built on Oracle BPM Suite that are fully production grade and ready to deploy. These are exiting times for BPM practitioners and there is so much to look forward to in 2013. We wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year 2013. Happy BPMing!

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• Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study

  - by charlie.berger

  There is a complete and detailed Telco Churn case study "How to" Blog Series just posted by Ari Mozes, ODM Dev. Manager.  In it, Ari provides detailed guidance in how to leverage various strengths of Oracle Data Mining including the ability to: mine Star Schemas and join tables and views together to obtain a complete 360 degree view of a customer combine transactional data e.g. call record detail (CDR) data, etc. define complex data transformation, model build and model deploy analytical methodologies inside the Database  His blog is posted in a multi-part series.  Below are some opening excerpts for the first 3 blog entries.  This is an excellent resource for any novice to skilled data miner who wants to gain competitive advantage by mining their data inside the Oracle Database.  Many thanks Ari! Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (1 of 3) One of the strengths of Oracle Data Mining is the ability to mine star schemas with minimal effort.  Star schemas are commonly used in relational databases, and they often contain rich data with interesting patterns.  While dimension tables may contain interesting demographics, fact tables will often contain user behavior, such as phone usage or purchase patterns.  Both of these aspects - demographics and usage patterns - can provide insight into behavior.Churn is a critical problem in the telecommunications industry, and companies go to great lengths to reduce the churn of their customer base.  One case study1 describes a telecommunications scenario involving understanding, and identification of, churn, where the underlying data is present in a star schema.  That case study is a good example for demonstrating just how natural it is for Oracle Data Mining to analyze a star schema, so it will be used as the basis for this series of posts...... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (2 of 3) This post will follow the transformation steps as described in the case study, but will use Oracle SQL as the means for preparing data.  Please see the previous post for background material, including links to the case study and to scripts that can be used to replicate the stages in these posts.1) Handling missing values for call data recordsThe CDR_T table records the number of phone minutes used by a customer per month and per call type (tariff).  For example, the table may contain one record corresponding to the number of peak (call type) minutes in January for a specific customer, and another record associated with international calls in March for the same customer.  This table is likely to be fairly dense (most type-month combinations for a given customer will be present) due to the coarse level of aggregation, but there may be some missing values.  Missing entries may occur for a number of reasons: the customer made no calls of a particular type in a particular month, the customer switched providers during the timeframe, or perhaps there is a data entry problem.  In the first situation, the correct interpretation of a missing entry would be to assume that the number of minutes for the type-month combination is zero.  In the other situations, it is not appropriate to assume zero, but rather derive some representative value to replace the missing entries.  The referenced case study takes the latter approach.  The data is segmented by customer and call type, and within a given customer-call type combination, an average number of minutes is computed and used as a replacement value.In SQL, we need to generate additional rows for the missing entries and populate those rows with appropriate values.  To generate the missing rows, Oracle's partition outer join feature is a perfect fit.  select cust_id, cdre.tariff, cdre.month, minsfrom cdr_t cdr partition by (cust_id) right outer join     (select distinct tariff, month from cdr_t) cdre     on (cdr.month = cdre.month and cdr.tariff = cdre.tariff);   ....... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (3 of 3) Now that the "difficult" work is complete - preparing the data - we can move to building a predictive model to help identify and understand churn.The case study suggests that separate models be built for different customer segments (high, medium, low, and very low value customer groups).  To reduce the data to a single segment, a filter can be applied: create or replace view churn_data_high asselect * from churn_prep where value_band = 'HIGH'; It is simple to take a quick look at the predictive aspects of the data on a univariate basis.  While this does not capture the more complex multi-variate effects as would occur with the full-blown data mining algorithms, it can give a quick feel as to the predictive aspects of the data as well as validate the data preparation steps.  Oracle Data Mining includes a predictive analytics package which enables quick analysis. begin  dbms_predictive_analytics.explain(   'churn_data_high','churn_m6','expl_churn_tab'); end; /select * from expl_churn_tab where rank <= 5 order by rank; ATTRIBUTE_NAME       ATTRIBUTE_SUBNAME EXPLANATORY_VALUE RANK-------------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------LOS_BAND                                      .069167052          1MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-5                   .034881648          2REV_PER_MON          REV-5                    .034527798          3DROPPED_CALLS                                 .028110322          4MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON  PEAK-4                   .024698149          5From the above results, it is clear that some predictors do contain information to help identify churn (explanatory value > 0).  The strongest uni-variate predictor of churn appears to be the customer's (binned) length of service.  The second strongest churn indicator appears to be the number of peak minutes used in the most recent month.  The subname column contains the interior piece of the DM_NESTED_NUMERICALS column described in the previous post.  By using the object relational approach, many related predictors are included within a single top-level column. .....   NOTE:  These are just EXCERPTS.  Click here to start reading the Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study from the beginning.    

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• Building services with the .NET framework Cont’d

  - by Allan Rwakatungu

  In my previous blog I wrote an introductory post on services and how you can build services using the .NET frameworks Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) In this post I will show how to develop a real world application using WCF The problem During the last meeting we realized developers in Uganda are not so cool – they don’t use twitter so may not get the latest news and updates from the technology world. We also noticed they mostly use kabiriti phones (jokes). With their kabiriti phones they are unable to access the twitter web client or alternative twitter mobile clients like tweetdeck , twirl or tweetie. However, the kabiriti phones support SMS (Yeeeeeeei). So what we going to do to make these developers cool and keep them updated is by enabling them to receive tweets via SMS. We shall also enable them to develop their own applications that can extend this functionality Analysis Thanks to services and open API’s solving our problem is going to be easy.  1. To get tweets we can use the twitter service for FREE 2. To send SMS we shall use www.clickatell.com/ as they can send SMS to any country in the world. Besides we could not find any local service that offers API's for sending SMS :(. 3. To enable developers to integrate with our application so that they can extend it and build even cooler applications we use WCF. In addittion , because connectivity might be an issue we decided to use WCF because if has a inbuilt queing features. We also choose WCF because this is a post about .NET and WCF :). The Code Accessing the tweets To consume twitters REST API we shall use the WCF REST starter kit. Like it name indicates , the REST starter kit is a set of .NET framework classes that enable developers to create and access REST style services ( like the twitter service). 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;} using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using Microsoft.Http; using System.Net; using System.Xml.Linq;   namespace UG.Demo {     public class TwitterService     {         public IList<TwitterStatus> SomeMethodName()         {             //Connect to the twitter service (HttpClient is part of the REST startkit classes)             HttpClient cl = new HttpClient("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/friends_timeline.xml");             //Supply your basic authentication credentials             cl.TransportSettings.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("ourusername", "ourpassword");             //issue an http             HttpResponseMessage resp = cl.Get();             //ensure we got reponse 200             resp.EnsureStatusIsSuccessful();             //use XLinq to parse the REST XML             var statuses = from r in resp.Content.ReadAsXElement().Descendants("status")                            select new TwitterStatus                            {                                User = r.Element("user").Element("screen_name").Value,                                Status = r.Element("text").Value                            };             return statuses.ToList();         }     }     public class TwitterStatus     {         public string User { get; set; }         public string Status { get; set; }     } }  Sending SMS 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;} public class SMSService     {         public void Send(string phone, string message)         {                         HttpClient cl1 = new HttpClient();              //the clickatell XML format for sending SMS             string xml = String.Format("<clickAPI><sendMsg><api_id>3239621</api_id><user>ourusername</user><password>ourpassword</password><to>{0}</to><text>{1}</text></sendMsg></clickAPI>",phone,message);             //Post form data             HttpUrlEncodedForm form = new HttpUrlEncodedForm();             form.Add("data", xml);             System.Net.ServicePointManager.Expect100Continue = false;             string uri = @"http://api.clickatell.com/xml/xml";             HttpResponseMessage resp = cl1.Post(uri, form.CreateHttpContent());             resp.EnsureStatusIsSuccessful();         }     }

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCAPTCHA Solver: Initial Release: This is the initial Release :) Still very much a WIP.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.17: Reccomended update to 2.2.16 Changelog for 2.2.17 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed bugs around thread synchronization with new remote model (fixes cause the app to crash or hang) 2. Updated UPnP code base, faster and more reliable now 3. Now you can get audio/video properties for multiple files on main page. Selected multiple files and right click, all selected files properties will be shown. 4. Fix a bug, not able to enter a conversion task name in the GUIAggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.Snake!: Snake 1.0: Version 1 StablePaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: Paginglistitems V1.0: This is a console application which has two methods both on CSOM and SOM to display the listitems in a paged manner.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads ver 0.1: ver 0.1NTCPMSG: V1.1.1.0: increase the performance. Support .net framework 4.0.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????New Projects2D Sprite Editor: This is a 2d sprite editor. Import your sprite sheet, trace your animations frame and export the coordinates points in a simple txt file, ready to import.caifenweb1: test project.CatchThatException: This is a small logging library We created at developerpath.com to help us log exceptions. It write it to a text file and you can easilay open that txt.FsxWs - WebServices for Microsoft FSX: WebServices for MS Flight Simulator. Get flights data as JSON, KML. !! Still in SetUp phase - be patient !!GetTPB: Some training in downloading and parsing web pages, with multithreading too.JSON-RPC Client Generator (for XBMC): The goal of this project is to provide a .Net client for the XBMC JSONRPC API. The main part is not XBMC dependent and may be used for any JSON-RPC client.matlab-silhouette-pose-wtf: Whatevermfp: this is random codeMVC Grid: MVC Grid ExampleMyWebSocketTry: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssNetduino Console: Netduino Console is an interface with built in messaging layers that allows you as a developer to dynamically create plugins following a provided interface to iSharePoint ASP.NET Verifier: Project will allow to verify SharePoint 2010 components using ASP.NET web applicationSharepoint Custom Upload: This is a SharePoint solution that allows an administrator to customize the upload page individually for each document library in a site.. It allows you to makeWinWeb Browser Deluxe: WinWeb Browser Deluxe es un navegador web de código abierto basado en Internet Explorer hecho en Visual Basic .NET. Descargalo ya!writethatoutput: This is the official release page for WriteThatOutPut from developerpath.com

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• A Guided Tour of Complexity

  - by JoshReuben

  I just re-read Complexity – A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell , protégé of Douglas Hofstadter ( author of “Gödel, Escher, Bach”) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339744329&sr=8-1 here are some notes and links:   Evolved from Cybernetics, General Systems Theory, Synergetics some interesting transdisciplinary fields to investigate: Chaos Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory – small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible. System Dynamics / Cybernetics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Dynamics – study of how feedback changes system behavior Network Theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory – leverage Graph Theory to analyze symmetric  / asymmetric relations between discrete objects Algebraic Topology - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_topology – leverage abstract algebra to analyze topological spaces There are limits to deterministic systems & to computation. Chaos Theory definitely applies to training an ANN (artificial neural network) – different weights will emerge depending upon the random selection of the training set. In recursive Non-Linear systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_system – output is not directly inferable from input. E.g. a Logistic map: Xt+1 = R Xt(1-Xt) Different types of bifurcations, attractor states and oscillations may occur – e.g. a Lorenz Attractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_system Feigenbaum Constants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigenbaum_constants express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map – the convergent limit of R (the rate of period-doubling bifurcations) is 4.6692016 Maxwell’s Demon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon - the Second Law of Thermodynamics has only a statistical certainty – the universe (and thus information) tends towards entropy. While any computation can theoretically be done without expending energy, with finite memory, the act of erasing memory is permanent and increases entropy. Life & thought is a counter-example to the universe’s tendency towards entropy. Leo Szilard and later Claude Shannon came up with the Information Theory of Entropy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) whereby Shannon entropy quantifies the expected value of a message’s information in bits in order to determine channel capacity and leverage Coding Theory (compression analysis). Ludwig Boltzmann came up with Statistical Mechanics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_mechanics – whereby our Newtonian perception of continuous reality is a probabilistic and statistical aggregate of many discrete quantum microstates. This is relevant for Quantum Information Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information and the Physics of Information - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information. Hilbert’s Problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_problems pondered whether mathematics is complete, consistent, and decidable (the Decision Problem – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem – is there always an algorithm that can determine whether a statement is true).  Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems  proved that mathematics cannot be both complete and consistent (e.g. “This statement is not provable”). Turing through the use of Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine symbol processors that can prove mathematical statements) and Universal Turing Machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine Turing Machines that can emulate other any Turing Machine via accepting programs as well as data as input symbols) that computation is limited by demonstrating the Halting Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem (is is not possible to know when a program will complete – you cannot build an infinite loop detector). You may be used to thinking of 1 / 2 / 3 dimensional systems, but Fractal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal systems are defined by self-similarity & have non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions !!!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension – the fractal dimension quantifies the number of copies of a self similar object at each level of detail – eg Koch Snowflake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake Definitions of complexity: size, Shannon entropy, Algorithmic Information Content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory - size of shortest program that can generate a description of an object) Logical depth (amount of info processed), thermodynamic depth (resources required). Complexity is statistical and fractal. John Von Neumann’s other machine was the Self-Reproducing Automaton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_machine  . Cellular Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton are alternative form of Universal Turing machine to traditional Von Neumann machines where grid cells are locally synchronized with their neighbors according to a rule. Conway’s Game of Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life demonstrates various emergent constructs such as “Glider Guns” and “Spaceships”. Cellular Automatons are not practical because logical ops require a large number of cells – wasteful & inefficient. There are no compilers or general program languages available for Cellular Automatons (as far as I am aware). Random Boolean Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network are extensions of cellular automata where nodes are connected at random (not to spatial neighbors) and each node has its own rule –> they demonstrate the emergence of complex  & self organized behavior. Stephen Wolfram’s (creator of Mathematica, so give him the benefit of the doubt) New Kind of Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science proposes the universe may be a discrete Finite State Automata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite-state_machine whereby reality emerges from simple rules. I am 2/3 through this book. It is feasible that the universe is quantum discrete at the plank scale and that it computes itself – Digital Physics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics – a simulated reality? Anyway, all behavior is supposedly derived from simple algorithmic rules & falls into 4 patterns: uniform , nested / cyclical, random (Rule 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30) & mixed (Rule 110 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110 localized structures – it is this that is interesting). interaction between colliding propagating signal inputs is then information processing. Wolfram proposes the Principle of Computational Equivalence - http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrincipleofComputationalEquivalence.html - all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication. Meaning in information may emerge from analogy & conceptual slippages – see the CopyCat program: http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/courses/concepts/copycat.pdf Scale Free Networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale-free_network have a distribution governed by a Power Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law - much more common than Normal Distribution). They are characterized by hubs (resilience to random deletion of nodes), heterogeneity of degree values, self similarity, & small world structure. They grow via preferential attachment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_attachment – tipping points triggered by positive feedback loops. 2 theories of cascading system failures in complex systems are Self-Organized Criticality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality and Highly Optimized Tolerance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_optimized_tolerance. Computational Mechanics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_mechanics – use of computational methods to study phenomena governed by the principles of mechanics. This book is a great intuition pump, but does not cover the more mathematical subject of Computational Complexity Theory – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory I am currently reading this book on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Complexity-Christos-H-Papadimitriou/dp/0201530821/ref=pd_sim_b_1   stay tuned for that review!

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• The new workflow management of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning: Define more details with Planning Unit Hierarchies and Promotional Paths

  - by Alexandra Georgescu

  After having been almost unchanged for several years, starting with the 11.1.2 release of Oracle´s Hyperion Planning the Process Management has not only got a new name: “Approvals” now is offering the possibility to further split Planning Units (comprised of a unique Scenario-Version-Entity combination) into more detailed combinations along additional secondary dimensions, a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy, and also to pre-define a path of planners, reviewers and approvers, called Promotional Path. I´d like to introduce you to changes and enhancements in this new process management and arouse your curiosity for checking out more details on it. One reason of using the former process management in Planning was to limit data entry rights to one person at a time based on the assignment of a planning unit. So the lowest level of granularity for this assignment was, for a given Scenario-Version combination, the individual entity. Even if in many cases one person wasn´t responsible for all data being entered into that entity, but for only part of it, it was not possible to split the ownership along another additional dimension, for example by assigning ownership to different accounts at the same time. By defining a so called Planning Unit Hierarchy (PUH) in Approvals this gap is now closed. Complementing new Shared Services roles for Planning have been created in order to manage set up and use of Approvals: The Approvals Administrator consisting of the following roles: Approvals Ownership Assigner, who assigns owners and reviewers to planning units for which Write access is assigned (including Planner responsibilities). Approvals Supervisor, who stops and starts planning units and takes any action on planning units for which Write access is assigned. Approvals Process Designer, who can modify planning unit hierarchy secondary dimensions and entity members for which Write access is assigned, can also modify scenarios and versions that are assigned to planning unit hierarchies and can edit validation rules on data forms for which access is assigned. (this includes as well Planner and Ownership Assigner responsibilities) Set up of a Planning Unit Hierarchy is done under the Administration menu, by selecting Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy. Here you create new PUH´s or edit existing ones. The following window displays: After providing a name and an optional description, a pre-selection of entities can be made for which the PUH will be defined. Available options are: All, which pre-selects all entities to be included for the definitions on the subsequent tabs None, manual entity selections will be made subsequently Custom, which offers the selection for an ancestor and the relative generations, that should be included for further definitions. Finally a pattern needs to be selected, which will determine the general flow of ownership: Free-form, uses the flow/assignment of ownerships according to Planning releases prior to 11.1.2 In Bottom-up, data input is done at the leaf member level. Ownership follows the hierarchy of approval along the entity dimension, including refinements using a secondary dimension in the PUH, amended by defined additional reviewers in the promotional path. Distributed, uses data input at the leaf level, while ownership starts at the top level and then is distributed down the organizational hierarchy (entities). After ownership reaches the lower levels, budgets are submitted back to the top through the approval process. Proceeding to the next step, now a secondary dimension and the respective members from that dimension might be selected, in order to create more detailed combinations underneath each entity. After selecting the Dimension and a Parent Member, the definition of a Relative Generation below this member assists in populating the field for Selected Members, while the Count column shows the number of selected members. For refining this list, you might click on the icon right beside the selected member field and use the check-boxes in the appearing list for deselecting members. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: In order to reduce maintenance of the PUH due to changes in the dimensions included (members added, moved or removed) you should consider to dynamically link those dimensions in the PUH with the dimension hierarchies in the planning application. For secondary dimensions this is done using the check-boxes in the Auto Include column. For the primary dimension, the respective selection criteria is applied by right-clicking the name of an entity activated as planning unit, then selecting an item of the shown list of include or exclude options (children, descendants, etc.). Anyway in order to apply dimension changes impacting the PUH a synchronization must be run. If this is really necessary or not is shown on the first screen after selecting from the menu Administration, then Approvals, then Planning Unit Hierarchy: under Synchronized you find the statuses Yes, No or Locked, where the last one indicates, that another user is just changing or synchronizing the PUH. Select one of the not synchronized PUH´s (status No) and click the Synchronize option in order to execute. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the next step owners and reviewers are assigned to the PUH. Using the icons with the magnifying glass right besides the columns for Owner and Reviewer the respective assignments can be made in the ordermthat you want them to review the planning unit. While it is possible to assign only one owner per entity or combination of entity+ member of the secondary dimension, the selection for reviewers might consist of more than one person. The complete Promotional Path, including the defined owners and reviewers for the entity parents, can be shown by clicking the icon. In addition optional users might be defined for being notified about promotions for a planning unit. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TIP: Reviewers cannot change data, but can only review data according to their data access permissions and reject or promote planning units. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to complete your PUH definitions click Finish - this saves the PUH and closes the window. As a final step, before starting the approvals process, you need to assign the PUH to the Scenario-Version combination for which it should be used. From the Administration menu select Approvals, then Scenario and Version Assignment. Expand the PUH in order to see already existing assignments. Under Actions click the add icon and select scenarios and versions to be assigned. If needed, click the remove icon in order to delete entries. After these steps, set up is completed for starting the approvals process. Start, stop and control of the approvals process is now done under the Tools menu, and then Manage Approvals. The new PUH feature is complemented by various additional settings and features; some of them at least should be mentioned here: Export/Import of PUHs: Out of Office agent: Validation Rules changing promotional/approval path if violated (including the use of User-defined Attributes (UDAs)): And various new and helpful reviewer actions with corresponding approval states. About the Author: Bernhard Kinkel started working for Hyperion Solutions as a Presales Consultant and Consultant in 1998 and moved to Hyperion Education Services in 1999. He joined Oracle University in 2007 where he is a Principal Education Consultant. Based on these many years of working with Hyperion products he has detailed product knowledge across several versions. He delivers both classroom and live virtual courses. His areas of expertise are Oracle/Hyperion Essbase, Oracle Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Web Analysis.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, March 22, 2010New Projects[Tool] Vczh Non-public DLL Classes Caller: Generate C# code for you to call non-public classes in DLLs very easily.Artefact Animator: Artefact Animator provides an easy to use framework for procedural time-based animations in Silverlight and WPF.cacheroo: Cacheroo is a social networking community that will make it easier for people who love geocaching to get connected.Data Processing Toolkit: An utility app to collected data from different sources (i.e. bugzilla bug reports) in a structured way. We are currently setting up the site. Mo...eXternal SQL Bridge (PHP): The eXternal SQL Bridge (XSB) allows you to bridge two websites together in a secure manner through pre-shared keys. XSB is resilient against repla...'G' - Language to Define Gestures for Touch Based Applications: A cross plat form multi-touch application framework with a language to define gestures. The application is build on Silverlight 4.0 and the languag...IIS Network Diagnostic Tools: Web implementation of "looking glass" like services (ping, traceroute) as HTTP modules for Internet Information Services.Interop Router: This project establishes a communication framework and job dispatcher for a mixed operating system cluster environment.L2 Commander: L2Commander makes it easier for both new and old l2j users to manage your server.You no longer have to waste time on finding the files you need and...MediaHelper: A utility to help clean up empty/unwanted files and folders in your filesystem.mhinze: matt hinze stuffOneMan: Focus on Silverlight and WCF technology.Rss Photo Frame Android Widget: RSS Photo Frame Android Widget permits showing pictures from any RSS feed on your Android device's desktopSingle Web Session: Web Tool Kits Current project provide developer with different tools that help to enhance web site performance, security, and other common functio...Work Item Visualization: Use DGML to visualize and analyze your TFS Work Items. Included is the ability to perform basic risk/impact analysis. It helps answer the question,...New Releases[Tool] Vczh Non-public DLL Classes Caller: Wrapper Coder (beta): Click "<Click Me To Open Assembly File>", WrapperCoder will load the assembly and referenced assembly. Check the non-public classes that you want...APS - Automatic Print Screen: APS 1.0: APS automatizes the tasks of paste the image in Paint and save it after print screen or alt+print screen. Choose directory, name and file extension...BTP Tools: e-Sword generator build 20100321: 1. Modify the indent after subtitle. 2. Add 2 spaces after subtitle.Combres - WebForm & MVC Client-side Resource Combine Library: Combres 2.0: Changes since last version (1.2) Support ignore Combres pipeline in debug mode - see issue #6088 Debug mode generates comment helping identify in...Desafio Office 2010 Brasil: DesafioOutlook: Controlando um robo com o Outlook 2010dylan.NET: dylan.NET v. 9.4: Adding Platform Invocation Services Support, full Managed Pointer Support, Charset,Dllimport,Callconv setting for P/Invoke, MarshalAs for parametersFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.3.2.0: Version 1.3.2.0 Add open folder button to IGI Search Form Fixes to Fact Location processing - IGIName renamed to RegionID Fix if Region ID not fou...Fasterflect - A Fast and Simple Reflection API: Fasterflect 2.0: We are pleased to release version 2.0 of Fasterflect, which contains a lot of additions and improvements from the previous version. Please refer t...IIS Network Diagnostic Tools: 1.0: Initial public release.Informant: Informant (Desktop) v0.1: This release allows users to send sms messages to 1-Many Groups or 1-Many contacts. It is a very basic release of the application. No styling has b...InfoService: InfoService v1.5 - MPE1 Package: InfoService Release v1.5.0.65 Please read Plugin installation for installation instructions.InfoService: InfoService v1.5 - RAR Package: InfoService Release v1.5.0.65 Please read Plugin installation for installation instructions.L2 Commander: Source Code Link: Where to find our source.ModularCMS: ModularCMS 1.2: Minor bug fixes.NMTools: NMTools-v40b0-20100321-0: The most noticeable aspect of this release is that NMTools is now an independent project. It will no longer tied to OpenSLIM. Nevertheless, OpenSLI...SharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint LogViewer 1.5.3: Log loading performance enhanced. Search text box now has auto complete feature.Single Web Session: Single Web Session: !Single Web Session! <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.WebSessionModule, SingleWebSession"/> </httpModules>Sprite Sheet Packer: 2.1 Release: Made a few crucial fixes from 2.0: - Fixed error with paths having spaces. - Fixed error with UI not unlocking. - Fixed NullReferenceException on ...uManage - AD Self-Service Portal: uManage v1.1 (.NET 4.0 RC): Updated Releasev1.1 Adds the primary ability to setup and configure the application through a setup wizard. The setup wizard will continue to evol...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30321.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVS ChessMania: VS ChessMania V2 March Beta: Second Beta Release with move correction and making application more safe for user. New features will be added soon.WatchersNET CKEditor™ Provider for DotNetNuke: CKEditor Provider 1.9.00: Whats New Added New Toolbar Plugin (By Kent Safransk) 'MediaEmbed' to Include Embed Media from Youtube, Vimeo, etc. Media Embed Plugin Added New ...WeatherBar: WeatherBar 1.0 [No Installation]: Extract the ZIP archive and run WeatherBar.exe. Current release contains some bugs that will be fixed in the next version. Check the Issue Tracker...Work Item Visualization: Release 1.0: This is the initial release of the Work Item Visualization tool. There are no known issues when it comes to the visualization aspects of the tool b...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 1.0.0.10: Version: 1.0.0.10 (Milestone 10): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requi...WPF AutoComplete TextBox Control: Version 1.2: What's Newadds AutoAppend feature adds a new provider: UrlHistoryDataProvider sample application is updated to reflect the new things Bug Fixe...ZoomBarPlus: V2 (Beta): - Fixed bug: if the active window changed while you were in the middle of a single tap delay, long tap delay, or swipe-repeat, it would continue re...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpSavvy DateTimeRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Most Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesDirectQPHPExcelFarseer Physics Enginepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Welcome to VS2012

  - by Shaun

  When the Microsoft released the first preview version of Windows 8 and Visual Studio, many people in the community were asking if the windows azure tool is available to it. The answer was “NO”. Microsoft promised that the windows azure tool will only support the Visual Studio 2010 but when the 2012 was final released, windows azure tool should be work. But now alone with the new windows azure platform was published we got the latest Windows Azure SDK 1.7, which is compatible to the Visual Studio 2012 RC.   You can retrieve the latest version of the Windows Azure SDK through Web Platform Installer, which I think it’s the easiest and simplest way to download and install, since besides the SDK itself it also needs some other components. To download the latest windows azure SDK from Web Platform Installer, just go to the windows azure website and clicked the Develop, .NET and click the blue “install” button. Then you need to select which version of Visual Studio you want to use, Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 RC. After selected the current version you will download an EXE file. This file will lead you to install the Web Platform Installer 4.0 (if you haven’t installed) and the latest windows azure SDK. You can see the version name is June 2012, 1.7. Finally the WebPI will detect the dependent components you need to download and begin to install. But if you want to challenge yourself you can download the components and install them manually. The standalone installations are listed in this page with the instruction on how to install them with necessary pre-requirements.   Once you finished the installation you can open the Visual Studio 2012 RC and as usual, it need to be run as administrator. If you clicked the New Project link from the start page, navigated to Cloud category you will find that there no project template available. Is there anything wrong? So, if you changed the target framework from the default .NET 4.5 to .NET 4 you will see the azure project template. This is because, currently the windows azure instance does not support .NET 4.5. After clicked OK you will see the role creation window, which is similar as what you have seen before. But there are some new role templates in this SDK. Firstly you will have ASP.NET MVC 4 web role available, which means you can create ASP.NET MVC 4 applications for internet, intranet, mobile and WebAPI on the cloud. Then there are two new worker role templates, “Cache Worker Role” and “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue”. “Worker Role with Service Bus Queue” is a worker role which had added necessary references to access the Windows Azure Service Bus Queue. It also have some basic sample code in the worker role class which could read messages from the queue when started. The “Cache Worker Role” is a worker role which has the in-memory distributed cache feature enabled by default. This feature is different than the Windows Azure Caching. It allows the role instance to use its memory as a in-memory distributed cache clusters. By using this feature you can have one or more worker roles as some dedicate cache clusters. Alternatively, you can make part of your web role and worker role’s memory as the cache clusters as well. Let’s just create an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Role, and click F5 to run it under the local emulator. If you have been working with azure for a while you should know that I need to setup the local storage emulator before running locally if it’s a fresh azure SDK installation. But in this version when we started our azure project the Visual Studio will check if the storage emulator had been initialized. If not, it will run the initializer automatically. And as you can see, in this version the storage emulator relies on the SQL Server 2012 Local DB feature. It will create the emulator database and tables in the default local database. You can set the storage emulator to use a standard SQL Server default instance by using the command “dsinit /instance:.”. The “dsinit” tool now is located at %PROGRAM FILES%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\Emulator\devstore After the Visual Studio complied and deployed the package our website should be shown in the browser. This is the MVC 4 Web Role home page on my Windows 8 machine in IE10. Another thing you might notice is that, in this version the compute emulator utilizes IIS Express to host the web roles instead of the full IIS. You can add breakpoint in the code and debug, and you can use the local storage emulator to test your code for accessing the storage service. All of them are same as what your are doing now on SDK 1.6. You can switch to use IIS to run your web role in local emulator. Just open the windows azure porject property windows, in the Web page select “Use IIS Web Server”. For more information about this please have a look on Nuno’s blog post. In the role property page in Visual Studio there’s no massive changes. You can configure your role settings such as the endpoints, certificates and local storage, etc.. One thing was added is the Caching tab. Here you can specify enable the caching feature or not, and how much memory you want to use as the cache cluster. I will introduce more details about it in the future posts. The publish and package feature are also no change. You can publish your project to azure directly through Visual Studio 2012, while you can create the package and upload manually. Below is the SDK version of my deployment which is 1.7.30602.1703 in the developer portal.   Summary In this post I introduced about the new Windows Azure SDK 1.7 especially on how it works on the latest Visual Studio 2012 RC. There’s no significant changes in the visual studio tool in this version but some small enhancement such as ASP.NET MVC 4, Cache Worker Role, using SQL 2012 Local DB and IIS Express, etc..   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Using a "white list" for extracting terms for Text Mining

  - by [email protected]

  In Part 1 of my post on "Generating cluster names from a document clustering model" (part 1, part 2, part 3), I showed how to build a clustering model from text documents using Oracle Data Miner, which automates preparing data for text mining. In this process we specified a custom stoplist and lexer and relied on Oracle Text to identify important terms.  However, there is an alternative approach, the white list, which uses a thesaurus object with the Oracle Text CTXRULE index to allow you to specify the important terms. INTRODUCTIONA stoplist is used to exclude, i.e., black list, specific words in your documents from being indexed. For example, words like a, if, and, or, and but normally add no value when text mining. Other words can also be excluded if they do not help to differentiate documents, e.g., the word Oracle is ubiquitous in the Oracle product literature. One problem with stoplists is determining which words to specify. This usually requires inspecting the terms that are extracted, manually identifying which ones you don't want, and then re-indexing the documents to determine if you missed any. Since a corpus of documents could contain thousands of words, this could be a tedious exercise. Moreover, since every word is considered as an individual token, a term excluded in one context may be needed to help identify a term in another context. For example, in our Oracle product literature example, the words "Oracle Data Mining" taken individually are not particular helpful. The term "Oracle" may be found in nearly all documents, as with the term "Data." The term "Mining" is more unique, but could also refer to the Mining industry. If we exclude "Oracle" and "Data" by specifying them in the stoplist, we lose valuable information. But it we include them, they may introduce too much noise. Still, when you have a broad vocabulary or don't have a list of specific terms of interest, you rely on the text engine to identify important terms, often by computing the term frequency - inverse document frequency metric. (This is effectively a weight associated with each term indicating its relative importance in a document within a collection of documents. We'll revisit this later.) The results using this technique is often quite valuable. As noted above, an alternative to the subtractive nature of the stoplist is to specify a white list, or a list of terms--perhaps multi-word--that we want to extract and use for data mining. The obvious downside to this approach is the need to specify the set of terms of interest. However, this may not be as daunting a task as it seems. For example, in a given domain (Oracle product literature), there is often a recognized glossary, or a list of keywords and phrases (Oracle product names, industry names, product categories, etc.). Being able to identify multi-word terms, e.g., "Oracle Data Mining" or "Customer Relationship Management" as a single token can greatly increase the quality of the data mining results. The remainder of this post and subsequent posts will focus on how to produce a dataset that contains white list terms, suitable for mining. CREATING A WHITE LIST We'll leverage the thesaurus capability of Oracle Text. Using a thesaurus, we create a set of rules that are in effect our mapping from single and multi-word terms to the tokens used to represent those terms. For example, "Oracle Data Mining" becomes "ORACLEDATAMINING." First, we'll create and populate a mapping table called my_term_token_map. All text has been converted to upper case and values in the TERM column are intended to be mapped to the token in the TOKEN column. TERM                                TOKEN DATA MINING                         DATAMINING ORACLE DATA MINING                  ORACLEDATAMINING 11G                                 ORACLE11G JAVA                                JAVA CRM                                 CRM CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT    CRM ... Next, we'll create a thesaurus object my_thesaurus and a rules table my_thesaurus_rules: CTX_THES.CREATE_THESAURUS('my_thesaurus', FALSE); CREATE TABLE my_thesaurus_rules (main_term     VARCHAR2(100),                                  query_string  VARCHAR2(400)); We next populate the thesaurus object and rules table using the term token map. A cursor is defined over my_term_token_map. As we iterate over  the rows, we insert a synonym relationship 'SYN' into the thesaurus. We also insert into the table my_thesaurus_rules the main term, and the corresponding query string, which specifies synonyms for the token in the thesaurus. DECLARE   cursor c2 is     select token, term     from my_term_token_map; BEGIN   for r_c2 in c2 loop     CTX_THES.CREATE_RELATION('my_thesaurus',r_c2.token,'SYN',r_c2.term);     EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'insert into my_thesaurus_rules values                        (:1,''SYN(' || r_c2.token || ', my_thesaurus)'')'     using r_c2.token;   end loop; END; We are effectively inserting the token to return and the corresponding query that will look up synonyms in our thesaurus into the my_thesaurus_rules table, for example:     'ORACLEDATAMINING'        SYN ('ORACLEDATAMINING', my_thesaurus)At this point, we create a CTXRULE index on the my_thesaurus_rules table: create index my_thesaurus_rules_idx on        my_thesaurus_rules(query_string)        indextype is ctxsys.ctxrule; In my next post, this index will be used to extract the tokens that match each of the rules specified. We'll then compute the tf-idf weights for each of the terms and create a nested table suitable for mining.

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• 202 blog articles

  - by mprove

  All my blog articles under blogs.oracle.com since August 2005: 202 blog articles Apr 2012 blogs.oracle.com design patch Mar 2012 Interaction 12 - Critique Mar 2012 Typing. Clicking. Dancing. Feb 2012 Desktop Mobility in Hospitals with Oracle VDI /video Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 3 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 2 Feb 2012 Interaction 12 in Dublin - Highlights of Day 1 Feb 2012 Shit Interaction Designers Say Feb 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #3: How to display custom page titles in Spaces Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #2: How to create an Admin menu in Spaces and save a lot of time Jan 2012 Tips'n'Tricks for WebCenter #1: How to apply custom resources in Spaces Jan 2012 Merry XMas and a Happy 2012! Dec 2011 One Year Oracle SocialChat - The Movie Nov 2011 Frank Ludolph's Last Working Day Nov 2011 Hans Rosling at TED Oct 2011 200 Countries x 200 Years Oct 2011 Blog Aggregation for Desktop Virtualization Oct 2011 Oracle VDI at OOW 2011 Sep 2011 Design for Conversations & Conversations for Design Sep 2011 All Oracle UX Blogs Aug 2011 Farewell Loriot Aug 2011 Oracle VDI 3.3 Overview Aug 2011 Sutherland's Closing Remarks at HyperKult Aug 2011 Surface and Subface Aug 2011 Back to Childhood in UI Design Jul 2011 The Art of Engineering and The Engineering of Art Jul 2011 Oracle VDI Seminar - June-30 Jun 2011 SGD White Paper May 2011 TEDxHamburg Live Feed May 2011 Oracle VDI in 3 Minutes May 2011 Space Ship Earth 2011 May 2011 blog moving times Apr 2011 Frozen tag cloud Apr 2011 Oracle: Hardware Software Complete in 1953 Apr 2011 Interaction Design with Wireframes Apr 2011 A guide to closing down a project Feb 2011 Oracle VDI 3.2.2 Jan 2011 free VDI charts Jan 2011 Sun Founders Panel 2006 Dec 2010 Sutherland on Leadership Dec 2010 SocialChat: Efficiency of E20 Dec 2010 ALWAYS ON Desktop Virtualization Nov 2010 12,000 Desktops at JavaOne Nov 2010 SocialChat on Sharing Best Practices Oct 2010 Globe of Visitors Oct 2010 SocialChat about the Next Big Thing Oct 2010 Oracle VDI UX Story - Wireframes Oct 2010 What's a PC anyway? Oct 2010 SocialChat on Getting Things Done Oct 2010 SocialChat on Infoglut Oct 2010 IT Twenty Twenty Oct 2010 Desktop Virtualization Webcasts from OOW Oct 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 Overview Sep 2010 Blog Usability Top 7 Sep 2010 100 and counting Aug 2010 Oracle'izing the VDI Blogs Aug 2010 SocialChat on Apple Aug 2010 SocialChat on Video Conferencing Aug 2010 Oracle VDI 3.2 - Features and Screenshots Aug 2010 SocialChat: Don't stop making waves Aug 2010 SocialChat: Giving Back to the Community Aug 2010 SocialChat on Learning in Meetings Aug 2010 iPAD's Natural User Interface Jul 2010 Last day for Sun Microsystems GmbH Jun 2010 SirValUse Celebration Snippets Jun 2010 10 years SirValUse - Happy Birthday! Jun 2010 Wim on Virtualization May 2010 New Home for Oracle VDI Apr 2010 Renaissance Slide Sorter Comments Apr 2010 Unboxing Sun Ray 3 Plus Apr 2010 Desktop Virtualisierung mit Sun VDI 3.1 Apr 2010 Blog Relaunch Mar 2010 Social Messaging Slides from CeBIT Mar 2010 Social Messaging Talk at CeBIT Feb 2010 Welcome Oracle Jan 2010 My last presentation at Sun Jan 2010 Ivan Sutherland on Leadership Jan 2010 Learning French with Sun VDI Jan 2010 Learning Danish with Sun Ray Jan 2010 VDI workshop in Nieuwegein Jan 2010 Happy New Year 2010 Jan 2010 On Creating Slides Dec 2009 Best VDI Ever Nov 2009 How to store the Big Bang Nov 2009 Social Enterprise Tools. Beipiel Sun. Nov 2009 Nov-19 Nov 2009 PDF and ODF links on your blog Nov 2009 Q&A on VDI and MySQL Cluster Nov 2009 Zürich next week: Swiss Intranet Summit 09 Nov 2009 Designing for a Sustainable World - World Usabiltiy Day, Nov-12 Nov 2009 How to export a desktop from VDI 3 Nov 2009 Virtualisation Roadshow in the UK Nov 2009 Project Wonderland at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 VDI Roadshow in Dublin, Nov-26, 2009 Nov 2009 Sun VDI at EDUCAUSE 09 Nov 2009 Sun VDI 3.1 Architecture and New Features Oct 2009 VDI 3.1 is Early-Access Sep 2009 Virtualization for MySQL on VMware Sep 2009 Silpion & 13. Stock Sommerparty Sep 2009 Sun Ray and VMware View 3.1.1 2009-08-31 New Set of Sun Ray Status Icons 2009-08-25 Virtualizing the VDI Core? 2009-08-23 World Usability Day Hamburg 2009 - CfP 2009-07-16 Rising Sun 2009-07-15 featuring twittermeme 2009-06-19 ISC09 Student Party on June-20 /Hamburg 2009-06-18 Before and behind the curtain of JavaOne 2009-06-09 20k desktops at JavaOne 2009-06-01 sweet microblogging 2009-05-25 VDI 3 - Why you need 3 VDI hosts and what you can do about that? 2009-05-21 IA Konferenz 2009 2009-05-20 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Power of the Web 2009-05-06 Planet of Sun and Oracle User Experience Design 2009-04-22 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - User Research 2009-04-08 Sun VDI 3 UX Story - Concept Workshops 2009-04-06 Localized documentation for Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 2009-04-03 Sun VDI 3 Press Release 2009-03-25 Sun VDI 3 launches today! 2009-03-25 Sun Ray Connector for VMware View Manager 1.1 Update 2009-03-11 desktop virtualization wiki relaunch 2009-03-06 VDI 3 at CeBIT hall 6, booth E36 2009-03-02 Keyboard layout problems with Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2009-02-23 wikis.sun.com tips & tricks 2009-02-23 Sun VDI 3 is in Early Access 2009-02-09 VirtualCenter unable to decrypt passwords 2009-02-02 Sun & VMware Desktop Training 2009-01-30 VDI at next09? 2009-01-16 Sun VDI: How to use virtual machines with multiple network adapters 2009-01-07 Sun Ray and VMware View 2009-01-07 Hamburg World Usability Day 2008 - Webcasts 2009-01-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM slides 2008-12-15 mother of all demos 2008-12-08 Build your own Thumper 2008-12-03 Troubleshooting Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-12-02 My Roller Tag Cloud 2008-11-28 Sun Ray Connector: SSL connection to VDM 2008-11-25 Setting up SSL and Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM 2008-11-13 Inspiration for Today and Tomorrow 2008-10-23 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM released 2008-10-14 From Sketchpad to ILoveSketch 2008-10-09 Desktop Virtualization on Xing 2008-10-06 User Experience Forum on Xing 2008-10-06 Sun Ray Connector for VMware VDM certified 2008-09-17 Virtual Clouds over Las Vegas 2008-09-14 Bill Verplank sketches metaphors 2008-09-04 End of Early Access - Sun Ray Connector for VMware 2008-08-27 Early Access: Sun Ray Connector for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager 2008-08-12 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 2 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling Part 3 2008-07-20 Sun Virtual Desktop Connector - Insides on Recycling 2008-07-20 lost in wiki space 2008-07-07 Evolution of the Desktop 2008-06-17 Virtual Desktop Webcast 2008-06-16 Woodstock 2008-06-16 What's a Desktop PC anyway? 2008-06-09 Virtual-T-Box 2008-06-05 Virtualization Glossary 2008-05-06 Five User Experience Principles 2008-04-25 Virtualization News Feed 2008-04-21 Acetylcholinesterase - Second Season 2008-04-18 Acetylcholinesterase - End of Signal 2007-12-31 Produkt-Management ist... 2007-10-22 Usability Verbände, Verteiler und Netzwerke. 2007-10-02 The Meaning is the Message 2007-09-28 Visualization Methods 2007-09-10 Inhouse und Open Source Projekte – Usability verankern und Synergien nutzen 2007-09-03 Der Schwabe Darth Vader entdeckt das Virale Marketing 2007-08-29 Dick Hardt 3.0 on Identity 2.0 2007-08-27 quality of written text depends on the tool 2007-07-27 podcasts for reboot9 2007-06-04 It is the user's itch that need to be scratched 2007-05-25 A duel at reboot9 2007-05-14 Taxonomien und Folksonomien - Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2007-05-10 Dueling Interaction Models of Personal-Computing and Web-Computing 2007-03-01 22.März: Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work. /Filmpremiere Hamburg 2007-02-25 Bruce Sterling at UbiComp 2006 /webcast 2006-11-12 FSOSS 2006 /webcasts 2006-11-10 Highway 101 2006-11-09 User Experience Roundtable Hamburg: EuroGEL 2006 2006-11-08 Douglas Adams' Hyperland (BBC 1990) 2006-10-08 Taxonomien und Folksonomien – Tagging als neues HCI-Element 2006-09-13 Usability im Unternehmen 2006-09-13 Doug does HyperScope 2006-08-26 TED Talks and TechTalks 2006-08-21 Kai Krause über seine Freundschaft zu Douglas Adams 2006-07-20 Rebel At Work: Film Portrait on Weizenbaum 2006-07-04 Gabriele Fischer, mp3 2006-06-07 Dick Hardt at ETech 06 2006-06-05 Weinberger: From Control to Conversation 2006-04-16 Eye Tracking at User Experience Roundtable Hamburg 2006-04-14 dropping knowledge 2006-04-09 GEL 2005 2006-03-13 slide photos of reboot7 2006-03-04 Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0 2006-02-28 User Experience Newsletter #13: Versioning 2006-02-03 Ester Dyson on Choice and Happyness 2006-02-02 Requirements-Engineering im Spannungsfeld von Individual- und Produktsoftware 2006-01-15 User Experience Newsletter #12: Intuition Quiz 2005-11-30 User Experience und Requirements-Engineering für Software-Projekte 2005-10-31 Ivan Sutherland on "Research and Fun" 2005-10-18 Ars Electronica / Mensch und Computer 2005 2005-09-14 60 Jahre nach Memex: Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Desktop- und Web-Paradigma 2005-08-31 reboot 7 2005-06-30

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• Eine komplette Virtualisierungslandschaft auf dem eigenen Laptop – So geht’s

  - by Manuel Hossfeld

  Eine komplette Virtualisierungslandschaftauf dem eigenen Laptop – So geht’s Wenn man sich mit dem Virtualisierungsprodukt Oracle VM in der aktuellen Version 3.x näher befassen möchte, bietet es sich natürlich an, eine eigene Umgebung zu Lern- und Testzwecken zu installieren. Doch leichter gesagt als getan: Bei näherer Betrachtung der Architektur wird man schnell feststellen, dass mehrere Rechner benötigt werden, um überhaupt alle Komponenten abbilden zu können: Zum einen gilt es, den oder die OVM Server selbst zu installieren. Das ist recht leicht und schnell erledigt, aber da Oracle VM ein „Typ 1 Hypervisor ist“ - also direkt auf dem Rechner („bare metal“) installiert wird – ist der eigenen Arbeits-PC oder Laptop dafür recht ungeeignet. (Eine Dual-Boot Umgebung wäre zwar denkbar, aber recht unpraktisch.) Zum anderen wird auch ein Rechner benötigt, auf dem der OVM Manager installiert wird. Im Gegensatz zum OVM Server erfolgt dessen Installation nicht „bare metal“, sondern auf einem bestehenden Oracle Linux. Aber was tun, wenn man gerade keinen Linux-Server griffbereit hat und auch keine extra Hardware dafür opfern will? Möchte man alle Funktionen von Oracle VM austesten, so sollte man zusätzlich über einen Shared Storag everüfugen. Dieser kann wahlweise über NFS oder über ein SAN (per iSCSI oder FibreChannel) angebunden werden. Zwar braucht man zum Testen nicht zwingend entsprechende „echte“ Storage-Hardware, aber auch die „Simulation“ entsprechender Komponenten erfordert zusätzliche Hardware mit entsprechendem freien Plattenplatz.(Alternativ können auch fertige „Software Storage Appliances“ wie z.B. OpenFiler oder FreeNAS verwendet werden). Angenommen, es stehen tatsächlich keine „echte“ Server- und Storage Hardware zur Verfügung, so benötigt man für die oben genannten drei Punkte  drei bzw. vier Rechner (PCs, Laptops...) - je nachdem ob man einen oder zwei OVM Server starten möchte. Erfreulicherweise geht es aber auch mit deutlich weniger Aufwand: Wie bereits kurz im Blogpost anlässlich des letzten OVM-Releases 3.1.1 beschrieben, ist die aktuelle Version in der Lage, selbst vollständig innerhalb von VirtualBox als Gast zu laufen. Wer bei dieser „doppelten Virtualisierung“ nun an das Prinzip der russischen Matroschka-Puppen denkt, liegt genau richtig. Oracle VM VirtualBox stellt dabei gewissermaßen die äußere Hülle dar – und da es sich bei VirtualBox im Gegensatz zu Oracle VM Server um einen „Typ 2 Hypervisor“ handelt, funktioniert dieser Ansatz auch auf einem „normalen“ Arbeits-PC bzw. Laptop, ohne dessen eigentliche Betriebsystem komplett zu überschreiben. Doch das beste dabei ist: Die Installation der jeweiligen VirtualBox VMs muss man nicht selber durchführen. Der OVM Manager als auch der OVM Server stehen bereits als vorgefertigte „VirtualBox Appliances“ im Oracle Technology Network zum Download zur Verfügung und müssen im Grunde nur noch importiert und konfiguriert werden. Das folgende Schaubild verdeutlicht das Prinzip: Die dunkelgrünen Bereiche stellen jeweils Instanzen der eben erwähnten VirtualBox Appliances für OVM Server und OVM Manager dar. (Hier im Bild sind zwei OVM Server zu sehen, als Minimum würde natürlich auch einer genügen. Dann können aber viele Features wie z.B. OVM HA nicht ausprobieren werden.) Als cleveren Trick zur Einsparung einer weiteren VM für Storage-Zwecke hat Wim Coekaerts (Senior Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering bei Oracle), der „Erbauer“ der VirtualBox Appliances, die OVM Manager Appliance bereits so vorbereitet, dass diese gleichzeitig als NFS-Share (oder ggf. sogar als iSCSI Target) dienen kann. Dies beschreibt er auch kurz auf seinem Blog. Die hellgrünen Ovale stellen die VMs dar, welche dann innerhalb einer der virtualisierten OVM Server laufen können. Aufgrund der Tatsache, dass durch diese „doppelte Virtualisierung“ die Fähigkeit zur Hardware-Virtualisierung verloren geht, können diese „Nutz-VMs“ demzufolge nur paravirtualisiert sein (PVM). Die hier in blau eingezeichneten Netzwerk-Schnittstellen sind virtuelle Interfaces, welche beliebig innerhalb von VirtualBox eingerichtet werden können. Wer die verschiedenen Netzwerk-Rollen innerhalb von Oracle VM im Detail ausprobieren will, kann hier natürlich auch mehr als zwei dieser Interfaces konfigurieren. Die Vorteile dieser Lösung für Test- und Demozwecke liegen auf der Hand: Mit lediglich einem PC bzw. Laptop auf dem VirtualBox installiert ist, können alle oben genannten Komponenten installiert und genutzt werden – genügend RAM vorausgesetzt. Als Minimum darf hier 8GB gelten. Soll auf der „Host-Umgebung“ (also dem PC auf dem VirtualBox läuft) nebenbei noch gearbeiten werden und/oder mehrere „Nutz-VMs“ in dieser simulierten OVM-Server-Umgebung laufen, empfehlen sich natürlich eher 16GB oder mehr. Da die nötigen Schritte zum Installieren und initialen Konfigurieren der Umgebung ausführlich in einem entsprechenden Paper beschrieben sind, möchte ich im Rest dieses Artikels noch einige zusätzliche Tipps und Details erwähnen, welche einem das Leben etwas leichter machen können: Um möglichst entstpannt und mit zusätzlichen „Sicherheitsnetz“ an die Konfiguration der Umgebung herangehen zu können, empfiehlt es sich, ausgiebigen Gebrauch von der in VirtualBox eingebauten Funktionalität der VM Snapshots zu machen. Dies ermöglicht nicht nur ein Zurücksetzen falls einmal etwas schiefgehen sollte, sondern auch ein beliebiges Wiederholen von bereits absolvierten Teilschritten (z.B. um eine andere Idee oder Variante der Umgebung auszuprobieren). Sowohl bei den gerade erwähnten Snapshots als auch bei den VMs selbst sollte man aussagekräftige Namen verwenden. So ist sichergestellt, dass man nicht durcheinander kommt und auch nach ein paar Wochen noch weiß, welche Umgebung man da eigentlich vor sich hat. Dies beinhaltet auch die genaue Versions- und Buildnr. des jeweiligen OVM-Releases. (Siehe dazu auch folgenden Screenshot.) Weitere Informationen und Details zum aktuellen Zustand sowie Zweck der jeweiligen VMs kann in dem oft übersehenen Beschreibungsfeld hinterlegt werden. Es empfiehlt sich, bereits VOR der Installation einen Notizzettel (oder eine Textdatei) mit den geplanten IP-Adressen und Namen für die VMs zu erstellen. (Nicht vergessen: Auch der Server Pool benötigt eine eigene IP.) Dabei sollte man auch nochmal die tatsächlichen Netzwerke der zu verwendenden Virtualbox-Interfaces prüfen und notieren. Achtung: Es gibt im Rahmen der Installation einige Passworte, die vom Nutzer gesetzt werden können – und solche, die zunächst fest eingestellt sind. Zu letzterem gehört das Passwort für den ovs-agent sowie den root-User auf den OVM Servern, welche beide per Default „ovsroot“ lauten. (Alle weiteren Passwort-Informationen sind in dem „Read me first“ Dokument zu finden, welches auf dem Desktop der OVM Manager VM liegt.) Aufpassen muss man ggf. auch in der initialen „Interview-Phase“ welche die VirtualBox VMs durchlaufen, nachdem sie das erste mal gebootet werden. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt ist nämlich auf jeden Fall noch die amerikanische Tastaturbelegung aktiv, so dass man z.B. besser kein „y“ und „z“ in seinem selbst gewählten Passwort verwendet. Aufgrund der Tatsache, dass wie oben erwähnt der OVM Manager auch gleichzeitig den Shared Storage bereitstellt, sollte darauf geachtet werden, dass dessen VM vor den OVM Server VMs gestartet wird. (Andernfalls „findet“ der dem OVM Server Pool zugrundeliegende Cluster sein sog. „Server Pool File System“ nicht.)

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• SQL SERVER – 5 Tips for Improving Your Data with expressor Studio

  - by pinaldave

  It’s no secret that bad data leads to bad decisions and poor results.  However, how do you prevent dirty data from taking up residency in your data store?  Some might argue that it’s the responsibility of the person sending you the data.  While that may be true, in practice that will rarely hold up.  It doesn’t matter how many times you ask, you will get the data however they decide to provide it. So now you have bad data.  What constitutes bad data?  There are quite a few valid answers, for example: Invalid date values Inappropriate characters Wrong data Values that exceed a pre-set threshold While it is certainly possible to write your own scripts and custom SQL to identify and deal with these data anomalies, that effort often takes too long and becomes difficult to maintain.  Instead, leveraging an ETL tool like expressor Studio makes the data cleansing process much easier and faster.  Below are some tips for leveraging expressor to get your data into tip-top shape. Tip 1:     Build reusable data objects with embedded cleansing rules One of the new features in expressor Studio 3.2 is the ability to define constraints at the metadata level.  Using expressor’s concept of Semantic Types, you can define reusable data objects that have embedded logic such as constraints for dealing with dirty data.  Once defined, they can be saved as a shared atomic type and then re-applied to other data attributes in other schemas. As you can see in the figure above, I’ve defined a constraint on zip code.  I can then save the constraint rules I defined for zip code as a shared atomic type called zip_type for example.   The next time I get a different data source with a schema that also contains a zip code field, I can simply apply the shared atomic type (shown below) and the previously defined constraints will be automatically applied. Tip 2:     Unlock the power of regular expressions in Semantic Types Another powerful feature introduced in expressor Studio 3.2 is the option to use regular expressions as a constraint.   A regular expression is used to identify patterns within data.   The patterns could be something as simple as a date format or something much more complex such as a street address.  For example, I could define that a valid IP address should be made up of 4 numbers, each 0 to 255, and separated by a period.  So 192.168.23.123 might be a valid IP address whereas 888.777.0.123 would not be.   How can I account for this using regular expressions? A very simple regular expression that would look for any 4 sets of 3 digits separated by a period would be:  ^[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}$ Alternatively, the following would be the exact check for truly valid IP addresses as we had defined above:  ^(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])$ .  In expressor, we would enter this regular expression as a constraint like this: Here we select the corrective action to be ‘Escalate’, meaning that the expressor Dataflow operator will decide what to do.  Some of the options include rejecting the offending record, skipping it, or aborting the dataflow. Tip 3:     Email pattern expressions that might come in handy In the example schema that I am using, there’s a field for email.  Email addresses are often entered incorrectly because people are trying to avoid spam.  While there are a lot of different ways to define what constitutes a valid email address, a quick search online yields a couple of really useful regular expressions for validating email addresses: This one is short and sweet:  \b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b (Source: http://www.regular-expressions.info/) This one is more specific about which characters are allowed:  ^([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.)|(([a-zA-Z0-9\-]+\.)+))([a-zA-Z]{2,4}|[0-9]{1,3})(\]?)$ (Source: http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?regexp_id=26 ) Tip 4:     Reject “dirty data” for analysis or further processing Yet another feature introduced in expressor Studio 3.2 is the ability to reject records based on constraint violations.  To capture reject records on input, simply specify Reject Record in the Error Handling setting for the Read File operator.  Then attach a Write File operator to the reject port of the Read File operator as such: Next, in the Write File operator, you can configure the expressor operator in a similar way to the Read File.  The key difference would be that the schema needs to be derived from the upstream operator as shown below: Once configured, expressor will output rejected records to the file you specified.  In addition to the rejected records, expressor also captures some diagnostic information that will be helpful towards identifying why the record was rejected.  This makes diagnosing errors much easier! Tip 5:    Use a Filter or Transform after the initial cleansing to finish the job Sometimes you may want to predicate the data cleansing on a more complex set of conditions.  For example, I may only be interested in processing data containing males over the age of 25 in certain zip codes.  Using an expressor Filter operator, you can define the conditional logic which isolates the records of importance away from the others. Alternatively, the expressor Transform operator can be used to alter the input value via a user defined algorithm or transformation.  It also supports the use of conditional logic and data can be rejected based on constraint violations. However, the best tip I can leave you with is to not constrain your solution design approach – expressor operators can be combined in many different ways to achieve the desired results.  For example, in the expressor Dataflow below, I can post-process the reject data from the Filter which did not meet my pre-defined criteria and, if successful, Funnel it back into the flow so that it gets written to the target table. I continue to be impressed that expressor offers all this functionality as part of their FREE expressor Studio desktop ETL tool, which you can download from here.  Their Studio ETL tool is absolutely free and they are very open about saying that if you want to deploy their software on a dedicated Windows Server, you need to purchase their server software, whose pricing is posted on their website. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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