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• Dealing with "I-am-cool-and-you-are-dumb" manager [closed]

  - by Software Guy

  I have been working with a software company for about 6 months now. I like the projects I work on there and I really like all the people there except for 1 guy. That guy is technically smart, and he is a co-founder of the company. He is an okay guy in person (the kind you wouldn't want to care about much) but things get tricky when he is your manager. In general I am all okay but there are times when I feel I am not being treated fairly: He doesn't give much thought to when he makes mistakes and when I do something similar, he is super critical. Recently he went as far as to say "I am not sure if I can trust you with this feature". The detais of this specific case are this: I was working on this feature, and I was already a couple of hours over my normal working hours, and then I decided to stop and continue tomorrow. We use git, and I like to commit changes locally and only push when I feel they are ready. This manager insists that I push all the changes to the central repo (in case my hard drive crashes). So I push the change, and the ticket is marked as "to be tested". Next day I come in, he sits next to me and starts complaining and says that I posted above. I really didn't know what to say, I tried to explain to him that the ticket is still being worked upon but he didn't seem to listen. He interrupts me in-between when I am coding, which I do not mind, but when I do that same, his face turns like this :| and reacts as if his work was super important and I am just wasting his time. He asks me to accumulate all questions, and then ask him altogether which is not always possible, as you need a clarification before you can continue on a feature implementation. And when I am coding, he talks on the phone with his customers next to me (when he can go to the meeting room with his laptop) and doesn't care. He made me switch to a whole new IDE (from Netbeans to a commercial IDE costing a lot of money) for a really tiny feature (which I later found out was in Netbeans as well!). I didn't make a big deal out of it as I am equally comfortable working with this new IDE, but I couldn't get the science behind his obsession. He said this feature makes sure that if any method is updated by a programmer, the IDE will turn the method name to red in places where it is used. I told him that I do not have a problem since I always search for method usage in the project and make sure its updated. IDEs even have refactoring features for exactly that, but... I recently implemented a feature for a project, and I was happy about it and considering him a senior, I asked him his comments about the implementation quality.. he thought long and hard, made a few funny faces, and when he couldn't find anything, he said "ummm, your program will crash if JS is disabled" - he was wrong, since I had made sure it would work fine with default values even if JS was disabled. I told him that and then he said "oh okay". BUT, the funny thing is, a few days back, he implemented something and I objected with "But that would not run if JS is disabled" and his response was "We don't have to care about people who disable JS" :-/ Once he asked me to investigate if there was a way to modify a CMS generated menu programmatically by extending the CMS, I did my research and told him that the only was is to inject a menu item using JavaScript / jQuery and his reaction was "ah that's ugly, and hacky, not acceptable" and two days later, I see that feature implemented in the same way as I had suggested. The point is, his reaction was not respectful at all, even if what I proposed was hacky, he should be respectful, that I know what's hacky and if I am suggesting something hacky, there must be a reason for it. There are plenty of other reasons / examples where I feel I am not being treated fairly. I want your advice as to what is it that I am doing wrong and how to deal with such a situation. The other guys in the team are actually very good people, and I do not want to leave the job either (although I could, if I want to). All I want is respect and equal treatment. I have thought about talking to this guy in a face to face meeting, but that worries me that his attitude might get worse and make things more difficult for me (since he doesn't seem to be the guy who thinks he can be wrong too). I am also considering talking to the other co-founder but I am not sure how he will take it (as both founders have been friends forever). Thanks for reading the long message, I really appreciate your help.

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• How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

  - by Carnotaurus

  There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

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• Yes, I did it - Skydiving in Mauritius

  Finally, I did it or better said we did it. Already back in November last year I saw the big billboard advertisement of Skydive Austral Mauritius near Caudan Waterfront in Port Louis and decided for myself that this is going to be the perfect birthday gift for my wife. Simply out of curiosity I would join her tandem jump with a second instructor. Due to her pregnancy of our son I had to be patient... But then finally, her birthday had arrived and on our midnight celebration session I showed her her netbook with the website preloaded. Actually, it was the "perfect" timing... Recovery from her cesarean is fine, local weather conditions are gorgious and the children were under surveillance of my mum - spending her annual holidays on the island. So, after late wake-up in the morning, we packed our stuff and off we went. According to Google Maps direction indication we had to drive for roughly 50km (only) but traffic here in Mauritius is always challenging. The dropzone is at the Zone Industrielle Mon Loisir Sugar Estate near Riviere du Rempart at the northern east coast. Anyways, we were not in a hurry and arrived there shortly after noon. The access road to the airfield are just small down-driven paths through sugar cane fields and according to our daughter "it's bumpy!". True true true... The facilities at Skydive Austral Mauritius are complete except for food. Enough space for parking, easy handling at the reception and a lot to see for the kids. There's even a big terrace with several sets of tables and chairs, small bar for soft drinks, strictly non-alcoholic. The team over there is all welcoming and warm-hearthy! Having the kids with us was no issue at all. Quite the opposite, our daugther was allowed to discover a lot of things than we adults did. Even visiting the small air plane was on the menu for her. Really great stuff! While waiting for our turn we enjoyed watching other people getting ready in the jump gear, taking off with the Cessna, and finally coming back down on the tandem parachute. Actually, the different expressions on their faces was one of the best parts while waiting. Great mental preparation as my wife was getting more anxious about her first jump... {loadposition content_adsense} First, we got some information about the procedures on the plane about how to get seated, tight up with our instructors and how to get ready for the jump off the plane as soon as we arrive the height of 10.000 ft. All well explained and easy to understand after all.Next, we met with our jumpers Chris and Lee aka "Rasta" to get dressed and ready for take-off. Those guys are really cool and relaxed for their job. From that point on, the DVD session / recording for my wife's birthday started and we really had a lot of fun... The difference between that small Cessna and a commercial flight with an Airbus or a Boeing is astronomic! The climb up to 10.000 ft took us roughly 25 minutes and we enjoyed the magnificent view over the turquoise lagunes near Poste de Flacq, Lafayette and Isle d'Ambre on the north-east coast. After flying through the clouds we sun-bathed and looked over "iced-sugar covered" Mauritius. You might have a look at the picture gallery of Skydive Mauritius for better imagination. The moment of truth, or better said, point of no return came after approximately 25 minutes. The door opens, moving into position on the side on top of the wheel and... out! Back flip and free fall! Slight turns and Wooooohooooo! through the clouds... It so amazing and breath-taking! So undescribable! You have to experience this yourself! Some seconds later the parachute opened and we glided smoothly with some turns and spins back down to the dropzone. The rest of the family could hear and see us soon and the landing was easy going. We never had any doubts or fear about our instructors. They did a great job and we are looking forward to book our next job. I might even consider to follow educational classes on skydiving and earn a license. By the way, feel free to get in touch with Skydive Austral Mauritius. Either via contact details on their website or tweeting a little bit with them. Follow the tweets of Chris and fellows on SkydiveAustral.

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• The Unintended Consequences of Sound Security Policy

  - by Tanu Sood

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 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:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Author: Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM Meet the Author: Kevin Moulton, Senior Sales Consulting Manager, Oracle Kevin Moulton, CISSP, CISM, has been in the security space for more than 25 years, and with Oracle for 7 years. He manages the East Enterprise Security Sales Consulting Team. He is also a Distinguished Toastmaster. Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kevin_moulton, where he sometimes tweets about security, but might also tweet about running, beer, food, baseball, football, good books, or whatever else grabs his attention. Kevin will be a regular contributor to this blog so stay tuned for more posts from him. When I speak to a room of IT administrators, I like to begin by asking them if they have implemented a complex password policy. Generally, they all nod their heads enthusiastically. I ask them if that password policy requires long passwords. More nodding. I ask if that policy requires upper and lower case letters – faster nodding – numbers – even faster – special characters – enthusiastic nodding all around! I then ask them if their policy also includes a requirement for users to regularly change their passwords. Now we have smiles with the nodding! I ask them if the users have different IDs and passwords on the many systems that they have access to. Of course! I then ask them if, when they walk around the building, they see something like this: Thanks to Jake Ludington for the nice example. Can these administrators be faulted for their policies? Probably not but, in the end, end-users will find a way to get their job done efficiently. Post-It Notes to the rescue! I was visiting a business in New York City one day which was a perfect example of this problem. First I walked up to the security desk and told them where I was headed. They asked me if they should call upstairs to have someone escort me. Is that my call? Is that policy? I said that I knew where I was going, so they let me go. Having the conference room number handy, I wandered around the place in a search of my destination. As I walked around, unescorted, I noticed the post-it note problem in abundance. Had I been so inclined, I could have logged in on almost any machine and into any number of systems. When I reached my intended conference room, I mentioned my post-it note observation to the two gentlemen with whom I was meeting. One of them said, “You mean like this,” and he produced a post it note full of login IDs and passwords from his breast pocket! I gave him kudos for not hanging the list on his monitor. We then talked for the rest of the meeting about the difficulties faced by the employees due to the security policies. These policies, although well-intended, made life very difficult for the end-users. Most users had access to 8 to 12 systems, and the passwords for each expired at a different times. The post-it note solution was understandable. Who could remember even half of them? What could this customer have done differently? I am a fan of using a provisioning system, such as Oracle Identity Manager, to manage all of the target systems. With OIM, and email could be automatically sent to all users when it was time to change their password. The end-users would follow a link to change their password on a web page, and then OIM would propagate that password out to all of the systems that the user had access to, even if the login IDs were different. Another option would be an Enterprise Single-Sign On Solution. With Oracle eSSO, all of a user’s credentials would be stored in a central, encrypted credential store. The end-user would only have to login to their machine each morning and then, as they moved to each new system, Oracle eSSO would supply the credentials. Good-bye post-it notes! 3M may be disappointed, but your end users will thank you. I hear people say that this post-it note problem is not a big deal, because the only people who would see the passwords are fellow employees. Do you really know who is walking around your building? What are the password policies in your business? How do the end-users respond?

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• Is Data Science “Science”?

  - by BuckWoody

  I hold the term “science” in very high esteem. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and eventually worked at the Kennedy Space Center, surrounded by very intelligent people who worked in various scientific fields. Recently a new term has entered the computing dialog – “Data Scientist”. Since it’s not a standard term, it has a lot of definitions, and in fact has been disputed as a correct term. After all, the reasoning goes, if there’s no such thing as “Data Science” then how can there be a Data Scientist? This argument has been made before, albeit with a different term – “Computer Science”. In Peter Denning’s excellent article “Is Computer Science Science” (April  2005/Vol. 48, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM) there are many points that separate “science” from “engineering” and even “art”.  I won’t repeat the content of that article here (I recommend you read it on your own) but will leverage the points he makes there. Definition of Science To ask the question “is data science ‘science’” then we need to start with a definition of terms. Various references put the definition into the same basic areas: Study of the physical world Systematic and/or disciplined study of a subject area ...and then they include the things studied, the bodies of knowledge and so on. The word itself comes from Latin, and means merely “to know” or “to study to know”. Greek divides knowledge further into “truth” (episteme), and practical use or effects (tekhne). Normally computing falls into the second realm. Definition of Data Science And now a more controversial definition: Data Science. This term is so new and perhaps so niche that the major dictionaries haven’t yet picked it up (my OED reference is older – can’t afford to pop for the online registration at present). Researching the term's general use I created an amalgam of the definitions this way: “Studying and applying mathematical and other techniques to derive information from complex data sets.” Using this definition, data science certainly seems to be science - it's learning about and studying some object or area using systematic methods. But implicit within the definition is the word “application”, which makes the process more akin to engineering or even technology than science. In fact, I find that using these techniques – and data itself – part of science, not science itself. I leave out the concept of studying data patterns or algorithms as part of this discipline. That is actually a domain I see within research, mathematics or computer science. That of course is a type of science, but does not seek for practical applications. As part of the argument against calling it “Data Science”, some point to the scientific method of creating a hypothesis, testing with controls, testing results against the hypothesis, and documenting for repeatability.  These are not steps that we often take in working with data. We normally start with a question, and fit patterns and algorithms to predict outcomes and find correlations. In this way Data Science is more akin to statistics (and in fact makes heavy use of them) in the process rather than starting with an assumption and following on with it. So, is Data Science “Science”? I’m uncertain – and I’m uncertain it matters. Even if we are facing rampant “title inflation” these days (does anyone introduce themselves as a secretary or supervisor anymore?) I can tolerate the term at least from the intent that we use data to study problems across a wide spectrum, rather than restricting it to a single domain. And I also understand those who have worked hard to achieve the very honorable title of “scientist” who have issues with those who borrow the term without asking. What do you think? Science, or not? Does it matter?

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• Easiest, most fun way to program 2D games? Flash? XNA? Some other engine?

  - by Maxi

  Hi, this is a post detailing my search for the most enjoyable way for a hobbyist game programmer to sweeten his free time with making a game. My requirements: I looked at Flash first, I made a couple of small games but I'm doubtful of the performance. I would like to make a fairly large strategy game, with several hundred units fighting simultaneously, explosions and animations included. Also zoomable maps. I saw that Adobe has a new 3D API for Flash, but I don't know if that improves 2D performance aswell, I couldn't find anything related to that question on their MAX10 sessions. Would you say that Flash is a good technology for making large 2D games easily? I really like Actionscript, and I love how easy everything is in Flash. There are several engines available which make it even easier. I just do this for fun, and it would be even better if there were proper animation/particle editors available and if the engine I were to use, would be available for multiple platforms. (so more people can play my game once finished). I'd like to have it available on many mobile platforms aswell. (because I love touch input for some reason) I do know the XNA framework pretty well, but there are no good engines available for it, and it will only run on Windows, which is a huge turn off. Even bigger is, that you need to install the XNA redistributable each time you want to give the game to someone. If I use XNA, I would have to make all the tools myself, and I'd probably have to make them with WPF. (I'd love to make tools with Adobe AIR, but unfortunately the API's for image manipulation etc. are far worse in Flash, than they are in XNA/WPF.) Now, I'm aware that I could make my own engine that supports each of those platforms, but quite frankly, that would be too much work plowing through APIs. After all, I want to make a game, not an engine. So the question becomes: Is there maybe a cross platform (free or free to develop?) engine available that I could use for 2D development? I prefer: C#, Actionscript. I don't mind using c++ if the toolset is above average, but I highly doubt that there is something out there like that. Please prove me wrong :) So summary: I'd like to use Flash, but I don't know if it scales well enough. I'm not a scripter, I want some real APIs that I can work with inside a proper IDE. Just for information, I looked at several alternatives, I'm actually looking for a long time already. You'd help me a lot to make a decision finally. Feature-wise the Flatredball engine would be ideal. But I tried their tools, and quite frankly, they are horrible. Absolutely unusable, I'd need to make my own for sure. I didn't look at their API, but if their tools are so bad, I'm not inclined to look further. Unity3D. This one is quite nice, but I really don't need 3D, and it is quite ...a lot of work to learn. I also don't like that it is so expensive to use for different platforms and that I can only code for it through scripting. You have to buy each platform separately. The editor usability is average, the product overall is good enough for most purposes, but learning it myself would be overkill. Shiva 3D. It looks good enough, but again: I don't really need 3D. The editor usability is a little worse than Unity3D in my opinion and it wasn't clear to me how to start programming. I think it requires C++ for coding, so that's a negative too. I want to have fun, and c# is fun ;) SDL. Quite frankly, I'd still need to port to all those different SDL implementations. And I don't like OpenGL style programming, it's just plain ugly. And it needs c++, I know that there might be some wrappers available, but I don't like to use wrappers, because... Irrlicht. A lot of features, but support seems to be low and it is aimed at enthusiasts. C# bindings get dropped repeatedly. I'm not an engine enthusiast, I just want to make a game. I don't see this happening with Irrlicht. Ogre3D. Way too much work, it's just a graphics engine. Also no multiple platform support and c++. Torque2D. Costs something to use, and I didn't hear a lot of good things about support and documentation. Also costs extra for each platform.

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• On Reflector Pricing

  - by Nick Harrison

  I have heard a lot of outrage over Red Gate's decision to charge for Reflector. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a fan of Red Gate. I have worked with them on several usability tests. They also sponsor Simple Talk where I publish articles. They are a good company. I am also a BIG fan of Reflector. I have used it since Lutz originally released it. I have written my own add-ins. I have written code to host reflector and use its object model in my own code. Reflector is a beautiful tool. The care that Lutz took to incorporate extensibility is amazing. I have never had difficulty convincing my fellow developers that it is a wonderful tool. Almost always, once anyone sees it in action, it becomes their favorite tool. This wide spread adoption and usability has made it an icon and pivotal pillar in the DotNet community. Even folks with the attitude that if it did not come out of Redmond then it must not be any good, still love it. It is ironic to hear everyone clamoring for it to be released as open source. Reflector was never open source, it was free, but you never were able to peruse the source code and contribute your own changes. You could not even use Reflector to view the source code. From the very beginning, it was never anyone's intention for just anyone to examine the source code and make their own contributions aside from the add-in model. Lutz chose to hand over the reins to Red Gate because he believed that they would be able to build on his original vision and keep the product viable and effective. He did not choose to make it open source, hoping that the community would be up to the challenge. The simplicity and elegance may well have been lost with the "design by committee" nature of open source. Despite being a wonderful and beloved tool, Reflector cannot be an easy tool to maintain. Maybe because it is so wonderful and beloved, it is even more difficult to maintain. At any rate, we have high expectations. Reflector must continue to be able to reasonably disassemble every language construct that the framework and core languages dream up. We want it to be fast, and we also want it to continue to be simple to use. No small order. Red Gate tried to keep the core product free. Sadly there was not enough interest in the Pro version to subsidize the rest of the expenses. $35 is a reasonable cost, more than reasonable. I have read the blog posts and forum posts complaining about the time associated with getting the expense approved. I have heard people complain about the cost being unreasonable if you are a developer from certain countries. Let's do the math. How much of a productivity boost is Reflector? How many hours do you think it saves you in a typical project? The next question is a little easier if you are a contractor or a consultant, but what is your hourly rate? If you are not a contractor, you can probably figure out an hourly rate. How long does it take to get a return on your investment? The value added proposition is not a difficult one to make. I have read people clamoring that Red Gate sucks and is evil. They complain about broken promises and conflicts of interest. Relax! Red Gate is not evil. The world is not coming to an end. The sun will come up tomorrow. I am sure that Red Gate will come up with options for volume licensing or site licensing for companies that want to get a licensed copy for their entire team. Don't panic, and I am sure that many great improvements are on the horizon. Switching the UI to WPF and including a tabbed interface opens up lots of possibilities.

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• Using Resources the Right Way

  - by BuckWoody

  It’s an interesting time in computing technology. At one point there was a dearth of information available for solving a given problem, or educating ourselves on broader topics so that we can solve problems in the future. With dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of web sites and content available (for free, in many cases) from vendors, peers, even colleges and universities, it seems like there is actually too much information. Who has the time to absorb all this information and training? Even if you had the inclination, where to start? In fact, it seems so overwhelming that I often hear people saying that they can’t find the training they need, or that vendor X or Y “doesn’t help their users”. On questioning these folks, however, I often find that they – and sometimes I - haven’t put in the effort to learn what resources we have. That’s where blogs, like this one, can help. If you follow a blog, either by checking it often or perhaps subscribing to the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, you’ll be able to spread out the search or create a mental filter for the information you need. But it’s not enough just read a blog or a web page. The creators need real feedback – what doesn’t work, and what does. Yes, you’re allowed to tell a vendor or writer “This helped me because…” so that you reinforce the positives. To be sure, bring up what doesn’t work as well –  that’s fine. But be specific, and be constructive. You’d be surprised at how much it matters. I know for a fact at Microsoft we listen – there is a real live person that reads your comments. I’m sure this is true of other vendors, and I also know that most blog authors – yours truly most especially – wants to know what you think.   In this blog entry I’d to call your attention to three resources you have at your disposal, and how you can use them to help. I’ll try to bring up things like this from time to time that I find useful, and cover in them in more depth like this. Think of this as a synopsis of a longer set of resources that you can use to filter whether you want to research further, bookmark, or forward on to a circle of friends where you think it might help them.   Data Driven Design Concepts http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156154 I’ll start with a great site that walks you through the process of designing a solution from a data-first perspective. As you know, I believe all computing is merely re-arranging data. If you follow that logic as well, you’ll realize that whenever you create a solution, you should start at the data-end of the application. This resource helps you do that. Even if you don’t use the specific technologies the instructions use, the concepts hold for almost any other technology that deals with data. This should be a definite bookmark for a developer, DBA, or Data Architect. When I mentioned my admiration for this resource here at Microsoft, the team that created it contacted me and asked if I’d share an e-mail address to my readers so that you can comment on it. You’re guaranteed to be heard – you can suggest changes, talk about how useful – or not – it is, and so on. Here’s that address:  [email protected]   End-to-End Example of a complete Hybrid Application – with Live Demo https://azurestocktrader.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx I learn by example. I also like having ready-made, live, functional demos that show the completed solution at work. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how a complex, complete, hybrid application that bridges on-premises systems with cloud-based databases, code, functions and more, this is it. It’s a stock-trading simulator, and you can get everything from the design to the code itself, or you can just play with the application. It’s running on Windows Azure, the actual production servers we use for everything else. Using a Cloud-Based Service https://azureconfigweb.cloudapp.net/Default.aspx Along with that stock-trading application, you have a full demonstration and usable code sample of a web-based service available. If you’re a developer, this is a style of code you need to understand for everything from iPhone development to a full Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment. So check out these resources. I’ll post more from time to time as I run across them. Hopefully they’ll be as useful to you as they are to me. Oh, and if you have a comment on any of the resources, let them know. And if you have any comments about these or any of my entries, feel free to post away. To quote a famous TV Show: “Hello Seattle – I’m listening…”

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• What Counts For a DBA: Fitness

  - by Louis Davidson

  If you know me, you can probably guess that physical exercise is not really my thing. There was a time in my past when it a larger part of my life, but even then never in the same sort of passionate way as a number of our SQL friends.  For me, I find that mental exercise satisfies what I believe to be the same inner need that drives people to run farther than I like to drive on most Saturday mornings, and it is certainly just as addictive. Mental fitness shares many common traits with physical fitness, especially the need to attain it through repetitive training. I only wish that mental training burned off a bacon cheeseburger in the same manner as does jogging around a dewy park on Saturday morning. In physical training, there are at least two goals, the first of which is to be physically able to do a task. The second is to train the brain to perform the task without thinking too hard about it. No matter how long it has been since you last rode a bike, you will be almost certainly be able to hop on and start riding without thinking about the process of pedaling or balancing. If you’ve never ridden a bike, you could be a physics professor /Olympic athlete and still crash the first few times you try, even though you are as strong as an ox and your knowledge of the physics of bicycle riding makes the concept child’s play. For programming tasks, the process is very similar. As a DBA, you will come to know intuitively how to backup, optimize, and secure database systems. As a data programmer, you will work to instinctively use the clauses of Transact-SQL DML so that, when you need to group data three ways (and not four), you will know to use the GROUP BY clause with GROUPING SETS without resorting to a search engine.  You have the skill. Making it naturally then requires repetition and experience is the primary requirement, not just simply learning about a topic. The hardest part of being really good at something is this difference between knowledge and skill. I have recently taken several informative training classes with Kimball University on data warehousing and ETL. Now I have a lot more knowledge about designing data warehouses than before. I have also done a good bit of data warehouse designing of late and have started to improve to some level of proficiency with the theory. Yet, for all of this head knowledge, it is still a struggle to take what I have learned and apply it to the designs I am working on.  Data warehousing is still a task that is not yet deeply ingrained in my brain muscle memory. On the other hand, relational database design is something that no matter how much or how little I may get to do it, I am comfortable doing it. I have done it as a profession now for well over a decade, I teach classes on it, and I also have done (and continue to do) a lot of mental training beyond the work day. Sometimes the training is just basic education, some reading blogs and attending sessions at PASS events.  My best training comes from spending time working on other people’s design issues in forums (though not nearly as much as I would like to lately). Working through other people’s problems is a great way to exercise your brain on problems with which you’re not immediately familiar. The final bit of exercise I find useful for cultivating mental fitness for a data professional is also probably the nerdiest thing that I will ever suggest you do.  Akin to running in place, the idea is to work through designs in your head. I have designed more than one database system that would revolutionize grocery store operations, sales at my local Target store, the ordering process at Amazon, and ways to improve Disney World operations to get me through a line faster (some of which they are starting to implement without any of my help.) Never are the designs truly fleshed out, but enough to work through structures and processes.  On “paper”, I have designed database systems to catalog things as trivial as my Lego creations, rental car companies and my audio and video collections. Once I get the database designed mentally, sometimes I will create the database, add some data (often using Red-Gate’s Data Generator), and write a few queries to see if a concept was realistic, but I will rarely fully flesh out the database since I have no desire to do any user interface programming anymore.  The mental training allows me to keep in practice for when the time comes to do the work I love the most for real…even if I have been spending most of my work time lately building data warehouses.  If you are really strong of mind and body, perhaps you can mix a mental run with a physical run; though don’t run off of a cliff while contemplating how you might design a database to catalog the trees on a mountain…that would be contradictory to the purpose of both types of exercise.

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• CPU Usage in Very Large Coherence Clusters

  - by jpurdy

  When sizing Coherence installations, one of the complicating factors is that these installations (by their very nature) tend to be application-specific, with some being large, memory-intensive caches, with others acting as I/O-intensive transaction-processing platforms, and still others performing CPU-intensive calculations across the data grid. Regardless of the primary resource requirements, Coherence sizing calculations are inherently empirical, in that there are so many permutations that a simple spreadsheet approach to sizing is rarely optimal (though it can provide a good starting estimate). So we typically recommend measuring actual resource usage (primarily CPU cycles, network bandwidth and memory) at a given load, and then extrapolating from those measurements. Of course there may be multiple types of load, and these may have varying degrees of correlation -- for example, an increased request rate may drive up the number of objects "pinned" in memory at any point, but the increase may be less than linear if those objects are naturally shared by concurrent requests. But for most reasonably-designed applications, a linear resource model will be reasonably accurate for most levels of scale. However, at extreme scale, sizing becomes a bit more complicated as certain cluster management operations -- while very infrequent -- become increasingly critical. This is because certain operations do not naturally tend to scale out. In a small cluster, sizing is primarily driven by the request rate, required cache size, or other application-driven metrics. In larger clusters (e.g. those with hundreds of cluster members), certain infrastructure tasks become intensive, in particular those related to members joining and leaving the cluster, such as introducing new cluster members to the rest of the cluster, or publishing the location of partitions during rebalancing. These tasks have a strong tendency to require all updates to be routed via a single member for the sake of cluster stability and data integrity. Fortunately that member is dynamically assigned in Coherence, so it is not a single point of failure, but it may still become a single point of bottleneck (until the cluster finishes its reconfiguration, at which point this member will have a similar load to the rest of the members). The most common cause of scaling issues in large clusters is disabling multicast (by configuring well-known addresses, aka WKA). This obviously impacts network usage, but it also has a large impact on CPU usage, primarily since the senior member must directly communicate certain messages with every other cluster member, and this communication requires significant CPU time. In particular, the need to notify the rest of the cluster about membership changes and corresponding partition reassignments adds stress to the senior member. Given that portions of the network stack may tend to be single-threaded (both in Coherence and the underlying OS), this may be even more problematic on servers with poor single-threaded performance. As a result of this, some extremely large clusters may be configured with a smaller number of partitions than ideal. This results in the size of each partition being increased. When a cache server fails, the other servers will use their fractional backups to recover the state of that server (and take over responsibility for their backed-up portion of that state). The finest granularity of this recovery is a single partition, and the single service thread can not accept new requests during this recovery. Ordinarily, recovery is practically instantaneous (it is roughly equivalent to the time required to iterate over a set of backup backing map entries and move them to the primary backing map in the same JVM). But certain factors can increase this duration drastically (to several seconds): large partitions, sufficiently slow single-threaded CPU performance, many or expensive indexes to rebuild, etc. The solution of course is to mitigate each of those factors but in many cases this may be challenging. Larger clusters also lead to the temptation to place more load on the available hardware resources, spreading CPU resources thin. As an example, while we've long been aware of how garbage collection can cause significant pauses, it usually isn't viewed as a major consumer of CPU (in terms of overall system throughput). Typically, the use of a concurrent collector allows greater responsiveness by minimizing pause times, at the cost of reducing system throughput. However, at a recent engagement, we were forced to turn off the concurrent collector and use a traditional parallel "stop the world" collector to reduce CPU usage to an acceptable level. In summary, there are some less obvious factors that may result in excessive CPU consumption in a larger cluster, so it is even more critical to test at full scale, even though allocating sufficient hardware may often be much more difficult for these large clusters.

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• Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

  - by charlie.mott

  I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found a single site listing the justifications for investing time writing stubs and BizUnit tests. Stubs Stubs should be developed to isolate your development team from external dependencies. This is described by Michael Stephenson here. Failing to do this can result in the following problems: In contract-first scenarios, the external system interface will have been defined.  But the interface may not have been setup or even developed yet for the BizTalk developers to work with. By the time you open the target location to see the data BizTalk has sent, it may have been swept away. If you are relying on the UI of the target system to see the data BizTalk has sent, what do you do if it fails to arrive? It may take time for the data to be processed or it may be scheduled to be processed later. Learning how to use the source\target systems and investigations into where things go wrong in these systems will slow down the BizTalk development effort. By the time the data is visible in a UI it may have undergone further transformations. In larger development teams working together, do you all use the same source and target instances. How do you know which data was created by whose tests? How do you know which event log error message are whose?  Another developer may have “cleaned up” your data. It is harder to write BizUnit tests that clean up the data\logs after each test run. What if your B2B partners' source or target system cannot support the sort of testing you want to do. They may not even have a development or test instance that you can work with. Their single test instance may be used by the SIT\UAT teams. There may be licencing costs of setting up an instances of the external system. The stubs I like to use are generic stubs that can accept\return any message type.  Usually I need to create one per protocol. They should be driven by BizUnit steps to: validates the data received; and select a response messages (or error response). Once built, they can be re-used for many integration tests and from project to project. I’m not saying that developers should never test against a real instance.  Every so often, you still need to connect to real developer or test instances of the source and target endpoints\services. The interface developers may ask you to send them some data to see if everything still works.  Or you might want some messages sent to BizTalk to get confidence that everything still works beyond BizTalk. Tests Automated “Stubbed Integration Tests” are usually built using the BizUnit framework. These facilitate testing of the entire integration process from source stub to target stub. It will ensure that all of the BizTalk components are configured together correctly to meet all the requirements. More fine grained unit testing of individual BizTalk components is still encouraged.  But BizUnit provides much the easiest way to test some components types (e.g. Orchestrations). Using BizUnit with the Behaviour Driven Development approach described by Mike Stephenson delivers the following benefits: source: http://biztalkbddsample.codeplex.com – Video 1. Requirements can be easily defined using Given/When/Then Requirements are close to the code so easier to manage as features and scenarios Requirements are defined in domain language The feature files can be used as part of the documentation The documentation is accurate to the build of code and can be published with a release The scenarios are effective to document the scenarios and are not over excessive The scenarios are maintained with the code There’s an abstraction between the intention and implementation of tests making them easier to understand The requirements drive the testing These same tests can also be used to drive load testing as described here. If you don't do this ... If you don't follow the above “Stubbed Integration Tests” approach, the developer will need to manually trigger the tests. This has the following risks: Developers are unlikely to check all the scenarios each time and all the expected conditions each time. After the developer leaves, these manual test steps may be lost. What test scenarios are there?  What test messages did they use for each scenario? There is no mechanism to prove adequate test coverage. A test team may attempt to automate integration test scenarios in a test environment through the triggering of tests from a source system UI. If this is a replacement for BizUnit tests, then this carries the following risks: It moves the tests downstream, so problems will be found later in the process. Testers may not check all the expected conditions within the BizTalk infrastructure such as: event logs, suspended messages, etc. These automated tests may also get in the way of manual tests run on these environments.

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• 2D isometric picking

  - by Bikonja

  I'm trying to implement picking in my isometric 2D game, however, I am failing. First of all, I've searched for a solution and came to several, different equations and even a solution using matrices. I tried implementing every single one, but none of them seem to work for me. The idea is that I have an array of tiles, with each tile having it's x and y coordinates specified (in this simplified example it's by it's position in the array). I'm thinking that the tile (0, 0) should be on the left, (max, 0) on top, (0, max) on the bottom and (max, max) on the right. I came up with this loop for drawing, which googling seems to have verified as the correct solution, as has the rendered scene (ofcourse, it could still be wrong, also, forgive the messy names and stuff, it's just a WIP proof of concept code) // Draw code int col = 0; int row = 0; for (int i = 0; i < nrOfTiles; ++i) { // XOffset and YOffset are currently hardcoded values, but will represent camera offset combined with HUD offset Point tile = IsoToScreen(col, row, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); int x = tile.X; int y = tile.Y; spriteBatch.Draw(_tiles[i], new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); col++; if (col >= Columns) // Columns is the number of tiles in a single row { col = 0; row++; } } // Get selection overlay location (removed check if selection exists for simplicity sake) Point tile = IsoToScreen(_selectedTile.X, _selectedTile.Y, TileWidth / 2, TileHeight / 2, XOffset, YOffset); spriteBatch.Draw(_selectionTexture, new Rectangle(tile.X, tile.Y, TileWidth, TileHeight), Color.White); // End of draw code public Point IsoToScreen(int isoX, int isoY, int widthHalf, int heightHalf, int xOffset, int yOffset) { Point newPoint = new Point(); newPoint.X = widthHalf * (isoX + isoY) + xOffset; newPoint.Y = heightHalf * (-isoX + isoY) + yOffset; return newPoint; } This code draws the tiles correctly. Now I wanted to do picking to select the tiles. For this, I tried coming up with equations of my own (including reversing the drawing equation) and I tried multiple solutions I found on the internet and none of these solutions worked. Trying out lots of solutions, I came upon one that didn't work, but it seemed like an axis was just inverted. I fiddled around with the equations and somehow managed to get it to actually work (but have no idea why it works), but while it's close, it still doesn't work. I'm not really sure how to describe the behaviour, but it changes the selection at wrong places, while being fairly close (sometimes spot on, sometimes a tile off, I believe never more off than the adjacent tile). This is the code I have for getting which tile coordinates are selected: public Point? ScreenToIso(int screenX, int screenY, int tileHeight, int offsetX, int offsetY) { Point? newPoint = null; int nX = -1; int nY = -1; int tX = screenX - offsetX; int tY = screenY - offsetY; nX = -(tY - tX / 2) / tileHeight; nY = (tY + tX / 2) / tileHeight; newPoint = new Point(nX, nY); return newPoint; } I have no idea why this code is so close, especially considering it doesn't even use the tile width and all my attempts to write an equation myself or use a solution I googled failed. Also, I don't think this code accounts for the area outside the "tile" (the transparent part of the tile image), for which I intend to add a color map, but even if that's true, it's not the problem as the selection sometimes switches on approx 25% or 75% of width or height. I'm thinking I've stumbled upon a wrong path and need to backtrack, but at this point, I'm not sure what to do so I hope someone can shed some light on my error or point me to the right path. It may be worth mentioning that my goal is to not only pick the tile. Each main tile will be divided into 5x5 smaller tiles which won't be drawn seperately from the whole main tile, but they will need to be picked out. I think a color map of a main tile with different colors for different coordinates within the main tile should take care of that though, which would fall within using a color map for the main tile (for the transparent parts of the tile, meaning parts that possibly belong to other tiles).

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• Social Engagement: One Size Doesn't Fit Anyone

  - by Mike Stiles

  The key to achieving meaningful social engagement is to know who you’re talking to, know what they like, and consistently deliver that kind of material to them. Every magazine for women knows this. When you read the article titles promoted on their covers, there’s no mistaking for whom that magazine is intended. And yet, confusion still reigns at many brands as to exactly whom they want to talk to, what those people want to hear, and what kind of content they should be creating for them. In most instances, the root problem is brands want to be all things to all people. Their target audience…the world! Good luck with that. It’s 2012, the age of aggregation and custom content delivery. To cope with the modern day barrage of information, people have constructed technological filters so that content they regard as being “for them” is mostly what gets through. Even if your brand is for men and women, young and old, you may want to consider social properties that divide men from women, and young from old. Yes, a man might find something in a women’s magazine that interests him. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to subscribe to it, or buy even one issue. In fact he’ll probably never see the article he’d otherwise be interested in, because in his mind, “This isn’t for me.” It wasn’t packaged for him. News Flash: men and women are different. So it’s a tall order to craft your Facebook Page or Twitter handle to simultaneously exude the motivators for both. The Harris Interactive study “2012 Connecting and Communicating Online: State of Social Media” sheds light on the differing social behaviors and drivers. -65% of women (vs. 59% of men) stay glued to social because they don’t want to miss anything. -25% of women check social when they wake up, before they check email. Only 18% of men check social before e-mail. -95% of women surveyed belong to Facebook vs. 86% of men. -67% of women log in to Facebook once a day or more vs. 54% of men. -Conventional wisdom is Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing, right? That may be true for viewing, but not true for sharing. Men are actually more likely to share on Pinterest than women, 23% to 10%. -The sharing divide extends to YouTube. 68% of women use it mainly for consumption, as opposed to 52% of men. -Women are as likely to have a Twitter account as men, but they’re much less likely to check it often. 54% of women check it once a week compared to 2/3 of men. Obviously, there are some takeaways from this depending on your target. Women don’t want to miss out on anything, so serialized content might be a good idea, right? Promotional posts that lead to a big payoff could keep them hooked. Posts for women might be better served first thing in the morning. If sharing is your goal, maybe male-targeted content is more likely to get those desired shares. And maybe Twitter is a better place to aim your male-targeted content than Facebook. Some grocery stores started experimenting with male-only aisles. The results have been impressive. Why? Because while it’s true men were finding those same items in the store just fine before, now something has been created just for them. They have a place in the store where they belong. Each brand’s strategy and targets are going to differ. The point is…know who you’re talking to, know how they behave, know what they like, and deliver content using any number of social relationship management targeting tools that meets their expectations. If, however, you’re committed to a one-size-fits-all, “our content is for everybody” strategy (or even worse, a “this is what we want to put out and we expect everybody to love it” strategy), your content will miss the mark for more often than it hits. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.schng

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• Speakers, Please Check Your Time

  - by AjarnMark

  Woodrow Wilson was once asked how long it would take him to prepare for a 10 minute speech. He replied "Two weeks". He was then asked how long it would take for a 1 hour speech. "One week", he replied. 2 hour speech? "I'm ready right now," he replied.  Whether that is a true story or an urban legend, I don’t really know, but either way, it is a poignant reminder for all speakers, and particularly apropos this week leading up to the PASS Community Summit. (Cross-posted to the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog #PASSProfDev.) What’s the point of that story?  Simply this…if you have plenty of time to do your presentation, you don’t need to prepare much because it is easy to throw in more and more material to stretch out to your allotted time.  But if you are on a tight time constraint, then it will take significant preparation to distill your talk down to only the essential points. I have attended seven of the last eight North American Summit events, and every one of them has been fantastic.  The speakers are great, the material is timely and relevant, and the networking opportunities are awesome.  And every year, there is one little thing that just bugs me…speakers going over their allotted time.  Why does it bother me so?  Well, if you look at a typical schedule for a Summit, you’ll see that there are six or more sessions going on at the same time, and only 15 minutes to move from one to another.  If you’re trying to maximize your training dollar by attending something during every session time slot, and you don’t want to be the last guy trying to squeeze into the middle of the row, then those 15 minutes can be critical.  All the more so if you need to stop and use the bathroom or if you have to hike to the opposite end of the convention center.  It is really a bad position to find yourself having to choose between learning the last key points of Speaker A who is going over time, and getting over to Speaker B on time so you don’t miss her key opening remarks. And frankly, I think it is just rude.  Yes, the speakers are the function, after all they are bringing the content that the rest of us are paying to learn.  But it is also an honor to be given the opportunity to speak at a conference like this, and no one speaker is so important that the conference would be a disaster without him.  Speakers know when they submit their abstract, long before the conference, how much time they will have.  It has been the same pattern at the Summit for at least the last eight years.  Program Sessions are 75 minutes long.  Some speakers who have a good track record, and meet other qualifying criteria, are extended an invitation to present a Spotlight Session which is 90 minutes (a 20% increase).  So there really is no excuse.  It’s not like you were promised a 2-hour segment and then discovered when you got here that it was only 75 minutes.  In fact, it’s not like PASS advertised 90-minute sessions for everyone and then a select few were cut back to only 75.  As a speaker, you know well before you get here which type of session you are doing and how long it is, so as a professional, you should plan accordingly. Now you might think that this only happens to rookies, but I’ll tell you that some of the worst offenders are big-name veterans who draw huge attendance numbers for their sessions.  Some attendees blow this off as, “Hey, it’s so-and-so, and I’d stay here for hours and listen to him/her talk.”  To which I would reply, “Then they should have submitted for a pre- or post-conference day-long seminar instead, but don’t try to squeeze your day-long talk into a 90-minute session.”  Now I don’t really believe that these speakers are being malicious or just selfishly trying to extend their time in the spotlight.  I think that most of them are merely being undisciplined and did not trim their presentation sufficiently, or allowed themselves to get off-track (often in a generous attempt to help someone in the audience with a question or problem that really should have been noted for further discussion after the session). So here is my recommendation…my plea, even.  TRIM THE FAT!  Now.  Before it’s too late.  Before you even get on the airplane, take a long, hard look at your presentation and eliminate some of the points that you originally thought you had to make, but in reality are not truly crucial to your main topic.  Delete a few slides.  Test your demos and have them already scripted rather than typing them during your talk.  It is better to cut out too much and end up with plenty of time at the end for Questions & Answers.  And you can always keep some notes on the stuff that you cut out so that you could fill it back in at the end as bonus material if you really do end up with a whole bunch of time on your hands.  But I don’t think you will.  And if you do, that will look even better to the audience as it will look like you’re giving them something extra that not every audience gets.  And they will thank you for that.

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• Rules for Naming

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Naming Documents (or is it “Document, Naming”?) Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself.  Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet Act II, Scene 2 We normally only use the bold portion of the famous Shakespearean quote above, but it is really out of context. As the play unfolds, we learn that a name is all too powerful. Indeed it is because of their names that the doomed lovers die. There might be life and death in a name (BTW, when I wrote this monogram, I was in Hatfield, PA. Remember the Hatfields and the McCoys?) This is a bit extreme, but in the field of Knowledge Management (KM) names are of the utmost importance as well. When I write an article about managing SharePoint sites, how should I name it? “Managing a site” or “Site, managing”? Nine times out of ten I’d opt for the latter. Almost everything we do is “Managing” so to make life easier for a person looking for meaningful content, we title our articles starting with the differentiator rather than the common factor. As a rule of thumb, we start the name with the noun rather than the verb. It is not what we do that is the primary key; it is what we do it to. So, answer this – is it a “rule of thumb” or a “thumb rule?” This is tough. A lot of what we do when naming is a judgment call. Both thumb and rule are nouns, albeit concrete and abstract (more about this later), but to most people “thumb rule” is meaningless while “rule of thumb” is an idiom. The difference between knowledge and information is that knowledge is meaningful information placed in context. Thus I elect the “rule of thumb”. It is the more meaningful title. Abstract and Concrete are relative terms. Many nouns (and verbs) that are abstract to a commoner, are concrete to a practitioner of one profession or another and may even have different concrete meanings in different professional jargons. Think about “running”. To an executive it means running a business, to a marathoner its meaning is much more literal. Generally speaking, we store and disseminate knowledge within a practice more than we do it in general. Even dictionaries encyclopedias define terms as they apply to different audiences. The rule of thumb is to put the more concrete first, but within the audience’s jargon. Even the title of this monogram is a question. Do I name it “Naming Documents” or “Documents, Naming”? Well, my own rule of thumb (“Here he goes again!?”) states that the latter is better because it starts with a noun, but this is a document about naming more than it about documents. The rules of naming also apply to graphs and charts, excel spreadsheets, and so on. Thus, I vote for the former.  A better title could have been “Naming Objects” only the word “Object” is a bit too abstract. How about just “Naming” or “Naming, rules of”? You get the drift. One of the ways to resolve all of this is to store the documents in Knowledge-Bases, which may become the subjects of a future punditry. Knowledge bases use keywords to describe their content.  Use a Metadata store for the keywords to at least attempt some common grounds. Here is another general rule (rule of thumb?!!) – put at least the one keyword in the title. Use subtitles. Here is an example: Migrating documents – Screening, cleaning, and organizing our knowledge. The main keyword is “documents”, next is “migrating”, other keywords also appear in the subtitle. They are “screening”, “cleaning”, and “organizing”. Any questions? Send me an amply named document by email: [email protected]

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• Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  As if the Surface announcement on Monday wasn’t exciting enough, today Microsoft announce that Windows Phone 8 will be coming this fall.  That itself is great news, but the features coming were like confetti flying in all different directions.  Given this speed I couldn’t capture every feature they covered.  A summary of what I did capture is listed below starting with their eight main features. Common Core The first thing that they covered is that Windows Phone 8 will share a core OS with Windows 8.  It will also run natively on multiple cores.  They mentioned that they have run it on up to 64 cores to this point.  The phones as you might expect will at least start as dual core.  If you remember there were metrics saying that Windows Phone 7 performed operations faster on a single core than other platforms did with dual cores.  The metrics they showed here indicate that Windows Phone 8 runs faster on comparable dual core hardware than other platforms. New Screen Resolutions Screen resolution has never been an issue for me, but it has been a criticism of Windows Phone 7 in the media.  Windows Phone 8 will supports three screen resolutions: WVGA 800 x 480, WXGA 1280 x 768, and 720 1280x720.  Hopefully this makes pixel counters a little happier. MicroSD Support This was one of my pet peeves when I got my Samsung Focus. With Windows Phone 8 the operating system will support adding MicroSD cards after initial setup.  Of course this is dependent on the hardware company on implementing it, but I think we have seen that even feature phone manufacturers have not had a problem supporting this in the past. NFC NFC has been an anticipated feature for some time.  What Microsoft showed today included the fact that they didn’t just want it to be for the phone.  There is cross platform NFC functionality between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.  The demos , while possibly a bit fanciful, showed would could be achieved even in a retail environment.  We are getting closer and closer to a Minority Report world with these technologies. Wallet Windows Phone 8 isn’t the first platform to have a wallet concept.  What they have done to differentiate themselves is to make it sot that it is not dependent on a SIM type chip like other platforms.  They have also expanded the concept beyond just banks to other types of credits such as airline miles. Nokia Mapping People have been envious of the Lumia phones having the Nokia mapping software.  Now all Windows Phone 8 devices will use NavTeq data and will have the capability to run in an offline fashion.  This is a major step forward from the Bing “touch for the next turn” maps. IT Administration The lack of features for enterprise administration and deployment was a complaint even before the Windows Phone 7 was released.  With the Windows Phone 8 release such features as Bitlocker and Secure boot will be baked into the OS. We will also have the ability to privately sign and distribute applications. Changing Start Screen Joe Belfiore made a big deal about this aspect of the new release.  Users will have more color themes available to them and the live tiles will be highly customizable. You will have the ability to resize and organize the tiles in a more dynamic way.  This allows for less important tiles or ones with less information to be made smaller.  And There Is More So what other tidbits came out of the presentation?  Later this summer the API for WP8 will be available.  There will be developer events coming to a city near you.  Another announcement of interest to developers is the ability to write applications at a native code level.  This is a boon for game developers and those who need highly efficient applications. As a topper on the cake there was mention of in app payment. On the consumer side we also found out that all updates will be available over the air.  Along with this came the fact that Microsoft will support all devices with updates for at least 18 month and you will be able to subscribe for early updates.  Update coming for Windows Phone 7.5 customers to WP7.8.  The main enhancement will be the new live tile features.  The big bonus is that the update will bypass the carriers.  I would assume though that you will be brought up to date with all previous patches that your carrier may not have released. There is so much more, but that is enough for one post.  Needless to say, EXCITING! del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 8,WP8,Windows Phone 7,WP7,Announcements,Microsoft

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• Content in Context: The right medicine for your business applications

  - by Lance Shaw

  For many of you, your companies have already invested in a number of applications that are critical to the way your business is run. HR, Payroll, Legal, Accounts Payable, and while they might need an upgrade in some cases, they are all there and handling the lifeblood of your business. But are they really running as efficiently as they could be? For many companies, the answer is no. The problem has to do with the important information caught up within documents and paper. It’s everywhere except where it truly needs to be – readily available right within the context of the application itself. When the right information cannot be easily found, business processes suffer significantly. The importance of this recently struck me when I recently went to meet my new doctor and get a routine physical. Walking into the office lobby, I couldn't help but notice rows and rows of manila folders in racks from floor to ceiling, filled with documents and sensitive, personal information about various patients like myself.  As I looked at all that paper and all that history, two things immediately popped into my head.  “How do they find anything?” and then the even more alarming, “So much for information security!” It sure looked to me like all those documents could be accessed by anyone with a key to the building. Now the truth is that the offices of many general practitioners look like this all over the United States and the world.  But it had me thinking, is the same thing going on in just about any company around the world, involving a wide variety of important business processes? Probably so. Think about all the various processes going on in your company right now. Invoice payments are being processed through Accounts Payable, contracts are being reviewed by Procurement, and Human Resources is reviewing job candidate submissions and doing background checks. All of these processes and many more like them rely on access to forms and documents, whether they are paper or digital. Now consider that it is estimated that employee’s spend nearly 9 hours a week searching for information and not finding it. That is a lot of very well paid employees, spending more than one day per week not doing their regular job while they search for or re-create what already exists. Back in the doctor’s office, I saw this trend exemplified as well. First, I had to fill out a new patient form, even though my previous doctor had transferred my records over months previously. After filling out the form, I was later introduced to my new doctor who then interviewed me and asked me the exact same questions that I had answered on the form. I understand that there is value in the interview process and it was great to meet my new doctor, but this simple process could have been so much more efficient if the information already on file could have been brought directly together with the new patient information I had provided. Instead of having a highly paid medical professional re-enter the same information into the records database, the form I filled out could have been immediately scanned into the system, associated with my previous information, discrepancies identified, and the entire process streamlined significantly. We won’t solve the health records management issues that exist in the United States in this blog post, but this example illustrates how the automation of information capture and classification can eliminate a lot of repetitive and costly human entry and re-creation, even in a simple process like new patient on-boarding. In a similar fashion, by taking a fresh look at the various processes in place today in your organization, you can likely spot points along the way where automating the capture and access to the right information could be significantly improved. As you evaluate how content-process flows through your organization, take a look at how departments and regions share information between the applications they are using. Business applications are often implemented on an individual department basis to solve specific problems but a holistic approach to overall information management is not taken at the same time. The end result over the years is disparate applications with separate information repositories and in many cases these contain duplicate information, or worse, slightly different versions of the same information. This is where Oracle WebCenter Content comes into the story. More and more companies are realizing that they can significantly improve their existing application processes by automating the capture of paper, forms and other content. This makes the right information immediately accessible in the context of the business process and making the same information accessible across departmental systems which has helped many organizations realize significant cost savings. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, one of our primary goals is to help customers find new ways to be more effective, more cost-efficient and manage information as effectively as possible. We have a series of three webcasts occurring over the next few weeks that are focused on the integration of enterprise content management within the context of business applications. We hope you will join us for one or all three and that you will find them informative. Click here to learn more about these sessions and to register for them. There are many aspects of information management to consider as you look at integrating content management within your business applications. We've barely scratched the surface here but look for upcoming blog posts where we will discuss more specifics on the value of delivering documents, forms and images directly within applications like Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards Enterprise One, Siebel CRM and many others. What do you think?  Are your important business processes as healthy as they can be?  Do you have any insights to share on the value of delivering content directly within critical business processes? Please post a comment and let us know the value you have realized, the lessons learned and what specific areas you are interested in.

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• Clouds, Clouds, Clouds Everywhere, Not a Drop of Rain!

  - by sxkumar

  At the recently concluded Oracle OpenWorld 2012, the center of discussion was clearly Cloud. Over the five action packed days, I got to meet a large number of customers and most of them had serious interest in all things cloud.  Public Cloud - particularly the Oracle Cloud - clearly got a lot of attention and interest. I think the use cases and the value proposition for public cloud is pretty straight forward. However, when it comes to private cloud, there were some interesting revelations.  Well, I shouldn’t really call them revelations since they are pretty consistent with what I have heard from customers at other conferences as well as during 1:1 interactions. While the interest in enterprise private cloud remains to be very high, only a handful of enterprises have truly embarked on a journey to create what the purists would call true private cloud - with capabilities such as self-service and chargeback/show back. For a large majority, today's reality is simply consolidation and virtualization - and they are quite far off from creating an agile, self-service and transparent IT infrastructure which is what the enterprise cloud is all about.  Even a handful of those who have actually implemented a close-to-real enterprise private cloud have taken an infrastructure centric approach and are seeing only limited business upside. Quite a few were frank enough to admit that chargeback and self-service isn’t something that they see an immediate need for.  This is in quite contrast to the picture being painted by all those surveys out there that show a large number of enterprises having already implemented an enterprise private cloud.  On the face of it, this seems quite contrary to the observations outlined above. So what exactly is the reality? Well, the reality is that there is undoubtedly a huge amount of interest among enterprises about transforming their legacy IT environment - which is often seen as too rigid, too fragmented, and ultimately too expensive - to something more agile, transparent and business-focused. At the same time however, there is a great deal of confusion among CIOs and architects about how to get there. This isn't very surprising given all the buzz and hype surrounding cloud computing. Every IT vendor claims to have the most unique solution and there isn't a single IT product out there that does not have a cloud angle to it. Add to this the chatter on the blogosphere, it will get even a sane mind spinning.  Consequently, most  enterprises are still struggling to fully understand the concept and value of enterprise private cloud.  Even among those who have chosen to move forward relatively early, quite a few have made their decisions more based on vendor influence/preferences rather than what their businesses actually need.  Clearly, there is a disconnect between the promise of the enterprise private cloud and the current adoption trends.  So what is the way forward?  I certainly do not claim to have all the answers. But here is a perspective that many cloud practitioners have found useful and thus worth sharing. To take a step back, the fundamental premise of the enterprise private cloud is IT transformation. It is the quest to create a more agile, transparent and efficient IT infrastructure that is driven more by business needs rather than constrained by operational and procedural inefficiencies. It is the new way of delivering and consuming IT services - where the IT organizations operate more like enablers of  strategic services rather than just being the gatekeepers of IT resources. In an enterprise private cloud environment, IT organizations are expected to empower the end users via self-service access/control and provide the business stakeholders a transparent view of how the resources are being used, what’s the cost of delivering a given service, how well are the customers being served, etc.  But the most important thing to note here is the enterprise private cloud is not just an IT project, rather it is a business initiative to create an IT setup that is more aligned with the needs of today's dynamic and highly competitive business environment. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just remember how the business users have been at the forefront of public cloud adoption within enterprises and private cloud is no exception.   Such a broad-based transformation makes cloud more than a technology initiative. It requires people (organizational) and process changes as well, and these changes are as critical as is the choice of right tools and technology. In my next blog,  I will share how essential it is for enterprise cloud technology to go hand-in hand with process re-engineering and organization changes to unlock true value of  enterprise cloud. I am sharing a short video from my session "Managing your private Cloud" at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. More videos from this session will be posted at the recently introduced Zero to Cloud resource page. Many other experts of Oracle enterprise private cloud solution will join me on this blog "Zero to Cloud"  and share best practices , deployment tips and information on how to plan, build, deploy, monitor, manage , meter and optimize the enterprise private cloud. We look forward to your feedback, suggestions and having an engaging conversion with you on this blog.

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• The design of a generic data synchronizer, or, an [object] that does [actions] with the aid of [helpers]

  - by acheong87

  I'd like to create a generic data-source "synchronizer," where data-source "types" may include MySQL databases, Google Spreadsheets documents, CSV files, among others. I've been trying to figure out how to structure this in terms of classes and interfaces, keeping in mind (what I've read about) composition vs. inheritance and is-a vs. has-a, but each route I go down seems to violate some principle. For simplicity, assume that all data-sources have a header-row-plus-data-rows format. For example, assume that the first rows of Google Spreadsheets documents and CSV files will have column headers, a.k.a. "fields" (to parallel database fields). Also, eventually, I would like to implement this in PHP, but avoiding language-specific discussion would probably be more productive. Here's an overview of what I've tried. Part 1/4: ISyncable class CMySQL implements ISyncable GetFields() // sql query, pdo statement, whatever AddFields() RemFields() ... _dbh class CGoogleSpreadsheets implements ISyncable GetFields() // zend gdata api AddFields() RemFields() ... _spreadsheetKey _worksheetId class CCsvFile implements ISyncable GetFields() // read from buffer AddFields() RemFields() ... _buffer interface ISyncable GetFields() AddFields($field1, $field2, ...) RemFields($field1, $field2, ...) ... CanAddFields() // maybe the spreadsheet is locked for write, or CanRemFields() // maybe no permission to alter a database table ... AddRow() ModRow() RemRow() ... Open() Close() ... First Question: Does it make sense to use an interface, as above? Part 2/4: CSyncer Next, the thing that does the syncing. class CSyncer __construct(ISyncable $A, ISyncable $B) Push() // sync A to B Pull() // sync B to A Sync() // Push() and Pull() only differ in direction; factor. // Sync()'s job is to make sure that the fields on each side // match, to add fields where appropriate and possible, to // account for different column-orderings, etc., and of // course, to add and remove rows as necessary to sync. ... _A _B Second Question: Does it make sense to define such a class, or am I treading dangerously close to the "Kingdom of Nouns"? Part 3/4: CTranslator? ITranslator? Now, here's where I actually get lost, assuming the above is passable. Sometimes, two ISyncables speak different "dialects." For example, believe it or not, Google Spreadsheets (accessed through the Google Data API "list feed") returns column headers lower-cased and stripped of all spaces and symbols! That is, sys_TIMESTAMP is systimestamp, as far as my code can tell. (Yes, I am aware that the "cell feed" does not strip the name so; however cell-by-cell manipulation is too slow for what I'm doing.) One can imagine other hypothetical examples. Perhaps even the data itself can be in different "dialects." But let's take it as given for now, and not argue this if possible. Third Question: How would you implement "translation"? Note: Taking all this as an exercise, I'm more interested in the "idealized" design, rather than the practical one. (God knows that shipped sailed when I began this project.) Part 4/4: Further Thought Here's my train of thought to demonstrate I've thunk, albeit unfruitfully: First, I thought, primitively, "I'll just modify CMySQL::GetFields() to lower-case and strip field names so they're compatible with Google Spreadsheets." But of course, then my class should really be called, CMySQLForGoogleSpreadsheets, and that can't be right. So, the thing which translates must exist outside of an ISyncable implementor. And surely it can't be right to make each translation a method in CSyncer. If it exists outside of both ISyncable and CSyncer, then what is it? (Is it even an "it"?) Is it an abstract class, i.e. abstract CTranslator? Is it an interface, since a translator only does, not has, i.e. interface ITranslator? Does it even require instantiation? e.g. If it's an ITranslator, then should its translation methods be static? (I learned what "late static binding" meant, today.) And, dear God, whatever it is, how should a CSyncer use it? Does it "have" it? Is it, "it"? Who am I? ...am I, "I"? I've attempted to break up the question into sub-questions, but essentially my question is singular: How does one implement an object A that conceptually "links" (has) two objects b1 and b2 that share a common interface B, where certain pairs of b1 and b2 require a helper, e.g. a translator, to be handled by A? Something tells me that I've overcomplicated this design, or violated a principle much higher up. Thank you all very much for your time and any advice you can provide.

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• Inside Red Gate - Be Reasonable!

  - by simonc

  As I discussed in my previous posts, divisions and project teams within Red Gate are allowed a lot of autonomy to manage themselves. It's not just the teams though, there's an awful lot of freedom given to individual employees within the company as well. Reasonableness How Red Gate treats it's employees is embodied in the phrase 'You will be reasonable with us, and we will be reasonable with you'. As an employee, you are trusted to do your job to the best of you ability. There's no one looking over your shoulder, no one clocking you in and out each day. Everyone is working at the company because they want to, and one of the core ideas of Red Gate is that the company exists to 'let people do the best work of their lives'. Everything is geared towards that. To help you do your job, office services and the IT department are there. If you need something to help you work better (a third or fourth monitor, footrests, or a new keyboard) then ask people in Information Systems (IS) or Office Services and you will be given it, no questions asked. Everyone has administrator access to their own machines, and you can install whatever you want on it. If there's a particular bit of software you need, then ask IS and they will buy it. As an example, last year I wanted to replace my main hard drive with an SSD; I had a summer job at school working in a computer repair shop, so knew what to do. I went to IS and asked for 'an SSD, a SATA cable, and a screwdriver'. And I got it there and then, even the screwdriver. Awesome. I screwed it in myself, copied all my main drive files across, and I was good to go. Of course, if you're not happy doing that yourself, then IS will sort it all out for you, no problems. If you need something that the company doesn't have (say, a book off Amazon, or you need some specifications printing off & bound), then everyone has a expense limit of £100 that you can use without any sign-off needed from your managers. If you need a company credit card for whatever reason, then you can get it. This freedom extends to working hours and holiday; you're expected to be in the office 11am-3pm each day, but outside those times you can work whenever you want. If you need a half-day holiday on a days notice, or even the same day, then you'll get it, unless there's a good reason you're needed that day. If you need to work from home for a day or so for whatever reason, then you can. If it's reasonable, then it's allowed. Trust issues? A lot of trust, and a lot of leeway, is given to all the people in Red Gate. Everyone is expected to work hard, do their jobs to the best of their ability, and there will be a minimum of bureaucratic obstacles that stop you doing your work. What happens if you abuse this trust? Well, an example is company trip expenses. You're free to expense what you like; food, drink, transport, etc, but if you expenses are not reasonable, then you will never travel with the company again. Simple as that. Everyone knows when they're abusing the system, so simply don't do it. Along with reasonableness, another phrase used is 'Don't be an a**hole'. If you act like an a**hole, and abuse any of the trust placed in you, even if you're the best tester, salesperson, dev, or manager in the company, then you won't be a part of the company any more. From what I know about other companies, employee trust is highly variable between companies, all the way up to CCTV trained on employee's monitors. As a dev, I want to produce well-written & useful code that solves people's problems. Being able to get whatever I need - install whatever tools I need, get time off when I need to, obtain reference books within a day - all let me do my job, and so let Red Gate help other people do their own jobs through the tools we produce. Plus, I don't think I would like working for a company that doesn't allow admin access to your own machine and blocks Facebook! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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• Revisiting the Generations

  - by Row Henson

  I was asked earlier this year to contribute an article to the IHRIM publication – Workforce Solutions Review.  My topic focused on the reality of the Gen Y population 10 years after their entry into the workforce.  Below is an excerpt from that article: It seems like yesterday that we were all talking about the entry of the Gen Y'ers into the workforce and what a radical change that would have on how we attract, retain, motivate, reward, and engage this new, younger segment of the workforce.  We all heard and read that these youngsters would be more entrepreneurial than their predecessors – the Gen X'ers – who were said to be more loyal to their profession than their employer. And, we heard that these “youngsters” would certainly be far less loyal to their employers than the Baby Boomers or even earlier Traditionalists. It was also predicted that – at least for the developed parts of the world – they would be more interested in work/life balance than financial reward; they would need constant and immediate reinforcement and recognition and we would be lucky to have them in our employment for two to three years. And, to keep them longer than that we would need to promote them often so they would be continuously learning since their long-term (10-year) goal would be to own their own business or be an independent consultant.  Well, it occurred to me recently that the first of the Gen Y'ers are now in their early 30s and it is time to look back on some of these predictions. Many really believed the Gen Y'ers would enter the workforce with an attitude – expect everything to be easy for them – have their employers meet their demands or move to the next employer, and I believe that we can now say that, generally, has not been the case. Speaking from personal experience, I have mentored a number of Gen Y'ers and initially felt that with a 40-year career in Human Resources and Human Resources Technology – I could share a lot with them. I found out very quickly that I was learning at least as much from them! Some of the amazing attributes I found from these under-30s was their fearlessness, ease of which they were able to multi-task, amazing energy and great technical savvy. They were very comfortable with collaborating with colleagues from both inside the company and peers outside their organization to problem-solve quickly. Most were eager to learn and willing to work hard.  This brings me to the generation that will follow the Gen Y'ers – the Generation Z'ers – those born after 1998. We have come full circle. If we look at the Silent Generation or Traditionalists, we find a workforce that preceded the television and even very early telephones. We Baby Boomers (as I fall right squarely in this category) remembered the invention of the television and telephone – but laptop computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) were a thing of “StarTrek” and other science fiction movies and publications. Certainly, the Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers grew up with the comfort of these devices just as we did with calculators. But, what of those under the age of 10 – how will the workplace look in 15 more years and what type of workforce will be required to operate in the mobile, global, virtual world. I spoke to a friend recently who had her four-year-old granddaughter for a visit. She said she found her in the den in front of the TV trying to use her hand to get the screen to move! So, you see – we have come full circle. The under-70 Traditionalist grew up in a world without TV and the Generation Z'er may never remember the TV we knew just a few years ago. As with every generation – we spend much time generalizing on their characteristics. The most important thing to remember is every generation – just like every individual – is different. The important thing for those of us in Human Resources to remember is that one size doesn’t fit all. What motivates one employee to come to work for you and stay there and be productive is very different than what the next employee is looking for and the organization that can provide this fluidity and flexibility will be the survivor for generations to come. And, finally, just when we think we have it figured out, a multitude of external factors such as the economy, world politics, industries, and technologies we haven’t even thought about will come along and change those predictions. As I reach retirement age – I do so believing that our organizations are in good hands with the generations to follow – energetic, collaborative and capable of working hard while still understanding the need for balance at work, at home and in the community! 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• Adventures in Windows 8: Solving activation errors

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Note: I tagged this article with “MVVM” because I got a few support requests for MVVM Light regarding this exact issue. In fact it is a Windows 8 issue and has nothing to do with MVVM Light per se… Sometimes when you work on a Windows 8 app, you will get a very annoying issue when starting the app. In that case, the app doesn’t not even start past the Splash screen. Putting a breakpoint in App.xaml.cs doesn’t help because the app doesn’t even reach that point! So what exactly is happening? Well when a Windows 8 app starts, the system is performing a few check first. One of the checks, for instance, is to see if an app with the same package ID is already available. The package ID is a unique value set in the package manifest. In the Solution Explorer, double click on Package.appxmanifest. This opens the manifest in a special editor Click on the Packaging tab See the GUID under Package Name. This is the unique ID I am talking about. If there is a conflict (i.e. if an app is already installed with the exact same ID), Windows will warm the user that the app is already installed. However when you are in the process of developing an app, you install and uninstall the same app many many times (every time that you start in Visual Studio), and sometimes some issues arise, for instance failing to uninstall the app before starting the new instance of the same app. First step if you get such an error When the application fails to start past the splash screen, the first step is to identify what kind of error happened. In my experience the “already installed” is by far the most frequent (in fact I never had another such error), but it can be something else. An annoying thing is that the popup that shows the error is usually started below the Windows 8 app, and so you don’t even see it! This is especially true if you run this in the Simulator. In that case, do the following: Press on the Simulator’s home button, then press on the Desktop tile on the Start menu. The error popup should be shown on the desktop. If your applications runs on the Local machine, you also do the same and press the Windows button, and then from the Start menu press the Desktop tile. Deployment error in Studio Sometimes the same error causes Visual Studio to fail launching the application at all with a deployment error. This is a better case, because at least it is clear that there is an issue. In that case, write down the code that is shown in the Error window (for instance 0x80073D05 in the example below). Once you have the error code, go to the “Troubleshooting packaging, deployment, and query of Windows Store apps” page and look up the code in question. In my case, the error was “ERROR_DELETING_EXISTING_APPLICATIONDATA_STORE_FAILED”, “An error occurred while deleting the package's previously existing application data.” Solving the “ERROR_DELETING_EXISTING_APPLICATIONDATA_STORE_FAILED” issue Update: Before trying the below, you can also try the simple steps: Exit Visual Studio Go to the Start menu Locate your app’s tile. It should be visible in the Start menu directly, towards the far end on the right. Right click the tile and select Uninstall from the App Bar. Restart Visual Studio and try again. Sometimes it helps. If it doesn’t, then try the following: In order to solve the case where Windows, for any reason, fails to delete the existing application before starting the new instance, follow the steps: Open the Package.appxmanifest in Visual Studio Open the Packaging tab. Change the Package name. For tests you can just try to change the last character of the GUID, though I would recommend creating a brand new GUID. Press Start Type GUID Start the GUID Generator application Select Registry Format Press Copy. Paste the new GUID in place of the Package Name in Visual Studio Important: don’t forget to remove the curly brackets at the beginning and at the end of the newly pasted GUID. Then you just have to cross your fingers and start the application again… If it works, celebrate. if it doesn’t work… well at this point I am not sure so good luck with that ;) Happy coding, Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Using XA Transactions in Coherence-based Applications

  - by jpurdy

  While the costs of XA transactions are well known (e.g. increased data contention, higher latency, significant disk I/O for logging, availability challenges, etc.), in many cases they are the most attractive option for coordinating logical transactions across multiple resources. There are a few common approaches when integrating Coherence into applications via the use of an application server's transaction manager: Use of Coherence as a read-only cache, applying transactions to the underlying database (or any system of record) instead of the cache. Use of TransactionMap interface via the included resource adapter. Use of the new ACID transaction framework, introduced in Coherence 3.6.   Each of these may have significant drawbacks for certain workloads. Using Coherence as a read-only cache is the simplest option. In this approach, the application is responsible for managing both the database and the cache (either within the business logic or via application server hooks). This approach also tends to provide limited benefit for many workloads, particularly those workloads that either have queries (given the complexity of maintaining a fully cached data set in Coherence) or are not read-heavy (where the cost of managing the cache may outweigh the benefits of reading from it). All updates are made synchronously to the database, leaving it as both a source of latency as well as a potential bottleneck. This approach also prevents addressing "hot data" problems (when certain objects are updated by many concurrent transactions) since most database servers offer no facilities for explicitly controlling concurrent updates. Finally, this option tends to be a better fit for key-based access (rather than filter-based access such as queries) since this makes it easier to aggressively invalidate cache entries without worrying about when they will be reloaded. The advantage of this approach is that it allows strong data consistency as long as optimistic concurrency control is used to ensure that database updates are applied correctly regardless of whether the cache contains stale (or even dirty) data. Another benefit of this approach is that it avoids the limitations of Coherence's write-through caching implementation. TransactionMap is generally used when Coherence acts as system of record. TransactionMap is not generally compatible with write-through caching, so it will usually be either used to manage a standalone cache or when the cache is backed by a database via write-behind caching. TransactionMap has some restrictions that may limit its utility, the most significant being: The lock-based concurrency model is relatively inefficient and may introduce significant latency and contention. As an example, in a typical configuration, a transaction that updates 20 cache entries will require roughly 40ms just for lock management (assuming all locks are granted immediately, and excluding validation and writing which will require a similar amount of time). This may be partially mitigated by denormalizing (e.g. combining a parent object and its set of child objects into a single cache entry), at the cost of increasing false contention (e.g. transactions will conflict even when updating different child objects). If the client (application server JVM) fails during the commit phase, locks will be released immediately, and the transaction may be partially committed. In practice, this is usually not as bad as it may sound since the commit phase is usually very short (all locks having been previously acquired). Note that this vulnerability does not exist when a single NamedCache is used and all updates are confined to a single partition (generally implying the use of partition affinity). The unconventional TransactionMap API is cumbersome but manageable. Only a few methods are transactional, primarily get(), put() and remove(). The ACID transactions framework (accessed via the Connection class) provides atomicity guarantees by implementing the NamedCache interface, maintaining its own cache data and transaction logs inside a set of private partitioned caches. This feature may be used as either a local transactional resource or as logging XA resource. However, a lack of database integration precludes the use of this functionality for most applications. A side effect of this is that this feature has not seen significant adoption, meaning that any use of this is subject to the usual headaches associated with being an early adopter (greater chance of bugs and greater risk of hitting an unoptimized code path). As a result, for the moment, we generally recommend against using this feature. In summary, it is possible to use Coherence in XA-oriented applications, and several customers are doing this successfully, but it is not a core usage model for the product, so care should be taken before committing to this path. For most applications, the most robust solution is normally to use Coherence as a read-only cache of the underlying data resources, even if this prevents taking advantage of certain product features.

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• To Make Diversity Work, Managers Must Stop Ignoring Difference

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Kate Pavao - Originally posted on Profit Executive coaches Jane Hyun and Audrey S. Lee noticed something during their leadership development coaching and consulting: Frustrated employees and overwhelmed managers. “We heard from voices saying, ‘I wish my manager understood me better’ or ‘I hope my manager would take the time to learn more about me and my background,’” remembers Hyun. “At the same token, the managers we were coaching had a hard time even knowing how to start these conversations.”  Hyun and Lee wrote Flex to address some of the fears managers have when it comes to leading diverse teams—such as being afraid of offending their employees by stumbling into sensitive territory—and also to provide a sure-footed strategy for becoming a more effective leader. Here, Hyun talks about what it takes to create innovate and productive teams in an increasingly diverse world, including the key characteristics successful managers share. Q: What does it mean to “flex”? Hyun: Flexing is the art of switching between leadership styles to work more effectively with people who are different from you. It’s not fundamentally changing who you are, but it’s understanding when you need to adapt your style in a situation so that you can accommodate people and make them feel more comfortable. It’s understanding the gap that might exist between you and others who are different, and then flexing across that gap to get the result that you're looking for. It’s up to all of us, not just managers, but also employees, to learn how to flex. When you hire new people to the organization, they're expected to adapt. The new people in the organization may need some guidance around how to best flex. They can certainly take the initiative, but if you can give them some direction around the important rules, and connect them with insiders who can help them figure out the most critical elements of the job, that will accelerate how quickly they can contribute to your organization. Q: Why is it important right now for managers to understand flexing? Hyun: The workplace is becoming increasingly younger, multicultural and female. The numbers bear it out. Millennials are entering the workforce and becoming a larger percentage of it, which is a global phenomenon. Thirty-six percent of the workforce is multicultural, and close to half is female. It makes sense to better understand the people who are increasingly a part of your workforce, and how to best lead them and manage them as well. Q: What do companies miss out on when managers don’t flex? Hyun: There are high costs for losing people or failing to engage them. The estimated costs of replacing an employee is about 150 percent of that person’s salary. There are studies showing that employee disengagement costs the U.S. something like $450 billion a year. But voice is the biggest thing you miss out on if you don’t flex. Whenever you want innovation or increased productivity from your people, you need to figure out how to unleash these things. The way you get there is to make sure that everybody’s voice is at the table. Q: What are some of the common misassumptions that managers make about the people on their teams? Hyun: One is what I call the Golden Rule mentality: We assume when we go to the workplace that people are going to think like us and operate like us. But sometimes when you work with people from a different culture or a different generation, they may have a different mindset about doing something, or a different approach to solving a problem, or a different way to manage some situation. When see something that’s different, we don't understand it, so we don't trust it. We have this hidden bias for people who are like us. That gets in the way of really looking at how we can tap our team members best potential by understanding how their difference may help them be effective in our workplace. We’re trained, especially in the workplace, to make assumptions quickly, so that you can make the best business decision. But with people, it’s better to remain curious. If you want to build stronger cross-cultural, cross-generational, cross-gender relationships, before you make a judgment, share what you observe with that team member, and connect with him or her in ways that are mutually adaptive, so that you can work together more effectively. Q: What are the common characteristics you see in leaders who are successful at flexing? Hyun: One is what I call “adaptive ability”—leaders who are able to understand that someone on their team is different from them, and willing to adapt his or her style to do that. Another one is “unconditional positive regard,” which is basically acceptance of others, even in their vulnerable moments. This attitude of grace is critical and essential to a healthy environment in developing people. If you think about when people enter the workforce, they're only 21 years old. It’s quite a formative time for them. They may not have a lot of management experience, or experience managing complex or even global projects. Creating the best possible condition for their development requires turning their mistakes into teachable moments, and giving them an opportunity to really learn. Finally, these leaders are not rigid or constrained in a single mode or style. They have this insatiable curiosity about other people. They don’t judge when they see behavior that doesn’t make sense, or is different from their own. For example, maybe someone on their team is a less aggressive than they are. The leader needs to remain curious and thinks, “Wow, I wonder how I can engage in a dialogue with this person to get their potential out in the open.”

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