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  • Packing a DBF

    - by Tom Hines
    I thought my days of dealing with DBFs as a "production data" source were over, but HA (no such luck). I recently had to retrieve, modify and replace some data that needed to be delivered in a DBF file. Everything was fine until I realized / remembered the DBF driver does not ACTUALLY delete records from the data source -- it only marks them for deletion.  You are responsible for handling the "chaff" either by using a utility to remove deleted records or by simply ignoring them.  If imported into Excel, the marked-deleted records are ignored, but the file size will reflect the extra content.  After several rounds of testing CRUD, the output DBF was huge. So, I went hunting for a method to "Pack" the records (removing deleted ones and resizing the DBF file) and eventually ran across the FOXPRO driver at ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190233.aspx ).  Once installed, I changed the DSN in the code to the new one I created in the ODBC Administrator and ran some tests.  Using MSQuery, I simply tested the raw SQL command Pack {tablename} and it WORKED! One really neat thing is the PACK command is used like regular SQL instructions; "Pack {tablename}" is all that is needed. It is necessary, however, to close all connections to the database (and re-open) before issuing the PACK command or you will get the "File is in use" error.    Here is some C# code for a Pack method.         /// <summary>       /// Pack the DBF removing all deleted records       /// </summary>       /// <param name="strTableName">The table to pack</param>       /// <param name="strError">output of any errors</param>       /// <returns>bool (true if no errors)</returns>       public static bool Pack(string strTableName, ref string strError)       {          bool blnRetVal = true;          try          {             OdbcConnectionStringBuilder csbOdbc = new OdbcConnectionStringBuilder()             {                Dsn = "PSAP_FOX_DBF"             };             string strSQL = "pack " + strTableName;             using (OdbcConnection connOdbc = new OdbcConnection(csbOdbc.ToString()))             {                connOdbc.Open();                OdbcCommand cmdOdbc = new OdbcCommand(strSQL, connOdbc);                cmdOdbc.ExecuteNonQuery();                connOdbc.Close();             }          }          catch (Exception exc)          {             blnRetVal = false;             strError = exc.Message;          }          return blnRetVal;       }

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  • What's a good scheme for multi-user database synchronization?

    - by Mason Wheeler
    I'm working on a system to allow multiple users to collaborate on an online project. Everything is fairly straightforward, except for keeping the users in sync. Each user has their own local copy of the project database, which allows them to make changes and test things out, and then send the updates to the central server. But this runs into the classic synchronization question: how do you keep two users from editing the same thing and stomping each other's work? I've got an idea that should work, but I wonder if there's a simpler way to do it. Here's the basic concept: All project data is stored in a relational database. Each row in the database has an owner. If the current user is not the owner, he can read but not write that row. (This is enforced client-side.) The user can send a request to the server to take ownership of a row, which will be granted if the server's copy says that the current owner is NULL, or to release ownership when they're done with it. It is not possible to release ownership without committing changes to the server. It is not possible to commit changes to the server without having first downloaded all outstanding changes to the server. When any changes are made to rows you own, a trigger marks that row as Dirty. When you commit changes, the database is scanned for all Dirty rows in all tables, and the data is serialized into an update file, which is posted to the server, and all rows are marked Clean. The server applies the updates on its end, and keeps the file around. When other users download changes, the server sends them the update files that they haven't already received. So, essentially this is a reinvention of version control on a relational database. (Sort of.) As long as taking ownership and applying updates to the server are guaranteed atomic changes, and the server verifies that some smart-aleck user didn't edit their local database so they could send an update for a row they don't have ownership of, it should be guaranteed to be correct, and with no need to worry about merges and merge conflicts. (I think.) Can anyone think of any problems with this scheme, or ways to do it better? (And no, "build [insert VCS here] into your project" is not what I'm looking for. I've thought of that already. VCSs work well with text, and not so well with other file formats, such as relational databases.)

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 11/15/2011

    - by Bob Rhubart
    Java Magazine - November/December 2011 - by and for the Java Community Java Magazine is an essential source of knowledge about Java technology, the Java programming language, and Java-based applications for people who rely on them in their professional careers, or who aspire to. Enterprise 2.0 Conference: November 14-17 | Kellsey Ruppel "Oracle is proud to be a Gold sponsor of the Enterprise 2.0 West Conference, November 14-17, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA. You will see the latest collaboration tools and technologies, and learn from thought leaders in Enterprise 2.0's comprehensive conference." The Return of Oracle Wikis: Bigger and Better | @oracletechnet The Oracle Wikis are back - this time, with Oracle SSO on top and powered by Atlassian's Confluence technology. These wikis offer quite a bit more functionality than the old platform. Cloud Migration Lifecycle | Tom Laszewski Laszewski breaks down the four steps in the Set Up Phase of the Cloud Migration lifecycle. Architecture all day. Oracle Technology Network Architect Day - Phoenix, AZ - Dec14 Spend the day with your peers learning from Oracle experts in engineered systems, cloud computing, Oracle Coherence, Oracle WebLogic, and more. Registration is free, but seating is limited. SOA all the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration Hurdles This week on the Architect Home Page on OTN. Live Webcast: New Innovations in Oracle Linux Date: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 Time: 9:00 AM PT / Noon ET Speakers: Chris Mason, Elena Zannoni. People in glass futures should throw stones | Nicholas Carr "Remember that Microsoft video on our glassy future? Or that one from Corning? Or that one from Toyota?" asks Carr. "What they all suggest, and assume, is that our rich natural 'interface' with the world will steadily wither away as we become more reliant on software mediation." Integration of SABSA Security Architecture Approaches with TOGAF ADM | Jeevak Kasarkod Jeevak Kasarkod's overview of a new paper from the OpenGroup and the SABSA institute "which delves into the incorporatation of risk management and security architecture approaches into a well established enterprise architecture methodology - TOGAF." Cloud Computing at the Tactical Edge | Grace Lewis - SEI Lewis describes the SEI's work with Cloudlets, " lightweight servers running one or more virtual machines (VMs), [that] allow soldiers in the field to offload resource-consumptive and battery-draining computations from their handheld devices to nearby cloudlets." Simplicity Is Good | James Morle "When designing cluster and storage networking for database platforms, keep the architecture simple and avoid the complexities of multi-tier topologies," says Morle. "Complexity is the enemy of availability." Mainframe as the cloud? Tom Laszewski There's nothing new about using the mainframe in the cloud, says Laszewski. Let Devoxx 2011 begin! | The Aquarium The Aquarium marks the kick-off of Devoxx 2011 with "a quick rundown of the Java EE and GlassFish side of things."

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  • Understanding G1 GC Logs

    - by poonam
    The purpose of this post is to explain the meaning of GC logs generated with some tracing and diagnostic options for G1 GC. We will take a look at the output generated with PrintGCDetails which is a product flag and provides the most detailed level of information. Along with that, we will also look at the output of two diagnostic flags that get enabled with -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions option - G1PrintRegionLivenessInfo that prints the occupancy and the amount of space used by live objects in each region at the end of the marking cycle and G1PrintHeapRegions that provides detailed information on the heap regions being allocated and reclaimed. We will be looking at the logs generated with JDK 1.7.0_04 using these options. Option -XX:+PrintGCDetails Here's a sample log of G1 collection generated with PrintGCDetails. 0.522: [GC pause (young), 0.15877971 secs] [Parallel Time: 157.1 ms] [GC Worker Start (ms): 522.1 522.2 522.2 522.2 Avg: 522.2, Min: 522.1, Max: 522.2, Diff: 0.1] [Ext Root Scanning (ms): 1.6 1.5 1.6 1.9 Avg: 1.7, Min: 1.5, Max: 1.9, Diff: 0.4] [Update RS (ms): 38.7 38.8 50.6 37.3 Avg: 41.3, Min: 37.3, Max: 50.6, Diff: 13.3] [Processed Buffers : 2 2 3 2 Sum: 9, Avg: 2, Min: 2, Max: 3, Diff: 1] [Scan RS (ms): 9.9 9.7 0.0 9.7 Avg: 7.3, Min: 0.0, Max: 9.9, Diff: 9.9] [Object Copy (ms): 106.7 106.8 104.6 107.9 Avg: 106.5, Min: 104.6, Max: 107.9, Diff: 3.3] [Termination (ms): 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Avg: 0.0, Min: 0.0, Max: 0.0, Diff: 0.0] [Termination Attempts : 1 4 4 6 Sum: 15, Avg: 3, Min: 1, Max: 6, Diff: 5] [GC Worker End (ms): 679.1 679.1 679.1 679.1 Avg: 679.1, Min: 679.1, Max: 679.1, Diff: 0.1] [GC Worker (ms): 156.9 157.0 156.9 156.9 Avg: 156.9, Min: 156.9, Max: 157.0, Diff: 0.1] [GC Worker Other (ms): 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 Avg: 0.3, Min: 0.3, Max: 0.3, Diff: 0.0] [Clear CT: 0.1 ms] [Other: 1.5 ms] [Choose CSet: 0.0 ms] [Ref Proc: 0.3 ms] [Ref Enq: 0.0 ms] [Free CSet: 0.3 ms] [Eden: 12M(12M)->0B(10M) Survivors: 0B->2048K Heap: 13M(64M)->9739K(64M)] [Times: user=0.59 sys=0.02, real=0.16 secs] This is the typical log of an Evacuation Pause (G1 collection) in which live objects are copied from one set of regions (young OR young+old) to another set. It is a stop-the-world activity and all the application threads are stopped at a safepoint during this time. This pause is made up of several sub-tasks indicated by the indentation in the log entries. Here's is the top most line that gets printed for the Evacuation Pause. 0.522: [GC pause (young), 0.15877971 secs] This is the highest level information telling us that it is an Evacuation Pause that started at 0.522 secs from the start of the process, in which all the regions being evacuated are Young i.e. Eden and Survivor regions. This collection took 0.15877971 secs to finish. Evacuation Pauses can be mixed as well. In which case the set of regions selected include all of the young regions as well as some old regions. 1.730: [GC pause (mixed), 0.32714353 secs] Let's take a look at all the sub-tasks performed in this Evacuation Pause. [Parallel Time: 157.1 ms] Parallel Time is the total elapsed time spent by all the parallel GC worker threads. The following lines correspond to the parallel tasks performed by these worker threads in this total parallel time, which in this case is 157.1 ms. [GC Worker Start (ms): 522.1 522.2 522.2 522.2Avg: 522.2, Min: 522.1, Max: 522.2, Diff: 0.1] The first line tells us the start time of each of the worker thread in milliseconds. The start times are ordered with respect to the worker thread ids – thread 0 started at 522.1ms and thread 1 started at 522.2ms from the start of the process. The second line tells the Avg, Min, Max and Diff of the start times of all of the worker threads. [Ext Root Scanning (ms): 1.6 1.5 1.6 1.9 Avg: 1.7, Min: 1.5, Max: 1.9, Diff: 0.4] This gives us the time spent by each worker thread scanning the roots (globals, registers, thread stacks and VM data structures). Here, thread 0 took 1.6ms to perform the root scanning task and thread 1 took 1.5 ms. The second line clearly shows the Avg, Min, Max and Diff of the times spent by all the worker threads. [Update RS (ms): 38.7 38.8 50.6 37.3 Avg: 41.3, Min: 37.3, Max: 50.6, Diff: 13.3] Update RS gives us the time each thread spent in updating the Remembered Sets. Remembered Sets are the data structures that keep track of the references that point into a heap region. Mutator threads keep changing the object graph and thus the references that point into a particular region. We keep track of these changes in buffers called Update Buffers. The Update RS sub-task processes the update buffers that were not able to be processed concurrently, and updates the corresponding remembered sets of all regions. [Processed Buffers : 2 2 3 2Sum: 9, Avg: 2, Min: 2, Max: 3, Diff: 1] This tells us the number of Update Buffers (mentioned above) processed by each worker thread. [Scan RS (ms): 9.9 9.7 0.0 9.7 Avg: 7.3, Min: 0.0, Max: 9.9, Diff: 9.9] These are the times each worker thread had spent in scanning the Remembered Sets. Remembered Set of a region contains cards that correspond to the references pointing into that region. This phase scans those cards looking for the references pointing into all the regions of the collection set. [Object Copy (ms): 106.7 106.8 104.6 107.9 Avg: 106.5, Min: 104.6, Max: 107.9, Diff: 3.3] These are the times spent by each worker thread copying live objects from the regions in the Collection Set to the other regions. [Termination (ms): 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Avg: 0.0, Min: 0.0, Max: 0.0, Diff: 0.0] Termination time is the time spent by the worker thread offering to terminate. But before terminating, it checks the work queues of other threads and if there are still object references in other work queues, it tries to steal object references, and if it succeeds in stealing a reference, it processes that and offers to terminate again. [Termination Attempts : 1 4 4 6 Sum: 15, Avg: 3, Min: 1, Max: 6, Diff: 5] This gives the number of times each thread has offered to terminate. [GC Worker End (ms): 679.1 679.1 679.1 679.1 Avg: 679.1, Min: 679.1, Max: 679.1, Diff: 0.1] These are the times in milliseconds at which each worker thread stopped. [GC Worker (ms): 156.9 157.0 156.9 156.9 Avg: 156.9, Min: 156.9, Max: 157.0, Diff: 0.1] These are the total lifetimes of each worker thread. [GC Worker Other (ms): 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3Avg: 0.3, Min: 0.3, Max: 0.3, Diff: 0.0] These are the times that each worker thread spent in performing some other tasks that we have not accounted above for the total Parallel Time. [Clear CT: 0.1 ms] This is the time spent in clearing the Card Table. This task is performed in serial mode. [Other: 1.5 ms] Time spent in the some other tasks listed below. The following sub-tasks (which individually may be parallelized) are performed serially. [Choose CSet: 0.0 ms] Time spent in selecting the regions for the Collection Set. [Ref Proc: 0.3 ms] Total time spent in processing Reference objects. [Ref Enq: 0.0 ms] Time spent in enqueuing references to the ReferenceQueues. [Free CSet: 0.3 ms] Time spent in freeing the collection set data structure. [Eden: 12M(12M)->0B(13M) Survivors: 0B->2048K Heap: 14M(64M)->9739K(64M)] This line gives the details on the heap size changes with the Evacuation Pause. This shows that Eden had the occupancy of 12M and its capacity was also 12M before the collection. After the collection, its occupancy got reduced to 0 since everything is evacuated/promoted from Eden during a collection, and its target size grew to 13M. The new Eden capacity of 13M is not reserved at this point. This value is the target size of the Eden. Regions are added to Eden as the demand is made and when the added regions reach to the target size, we start the next collection. Similarly, Survivors had the occupancy of 0 bytes and it grew to 2048K after the collection. The total heap occupancy and capacity was 14M and 64M receptively before the collection and it became 9739K and 64M after the collection. Apart from the evacuation pauses, G1 also performs concurrent-marking to build the live data information of regions. 1.416: [GC pause (young) (initial-mark), 0.62417980 secs] ….... 2.042: [GC concurrent-root-region-scan-start] 2.067: [GC concurrent-root-region-scan-end, 0.0251507] 2.068: [GC concurrent-mark-start] 3.198: [GC concurrent-mark-reset-for-overflow] 4.053: [GC concurrent-mark-end, 1.9849672 sec] 4.055: [GC remark 4.055: [GC ref-proc, 0.0000254 secs], 0.0030184 secs] [Times: user=0.00 sys=0.00, real=0.00 secs] 4.088: [GC cleanup 117M->106M(138M), 0.0015198 secs] [Times: user=0.00 sys=0.00, real=0.00 secs] 4.090: [GC concurrent-cleanup-start] 4.091: [GC concurrent-cleanup-end, 0.0002721] The first phase of a marking cycle is Initial Marking where all the objects directly reachable from the roots are marked and this phase is piggy-backed on a fully young Evacuation Pause. 2.042: [GC concurrent-root-region-scan-start] This marks the start of a concurrent phase that scans the set of root-regions which are directly reachable from the survivors of the initial marking phase. 2.067: [GC concurrent-root-region-scan-end, 0.0251507] End of the concurrent root region scan phase and it lasted for 0.0251507 seconds. 2.068: [GC concurrent-mark-start] Start of the concurrent marking at 2.068 secs from the start of the process. 3.198: [GC concurrent-mark-reset-for-overflow] This indicates that the global marking stack had became full and there was an overflow of the stack. Concurrent marking detected this overflow and had to reset the data structures to start the marking again. 4.053: [GC concurrent-mark-end, 1.9849672 sec] End of the concurrent marking phase and it lasted for 1.9849672 seconds. 4.055: [GC remark 4.055: [GC ref-proc, 0.0000254 secs], 0.0030184 secs] This corresponds to the remark phase which is a stop-the-world phase. It completes the left over marking work (SATB buffers processing) from the previous phase. In this case, this phase took 0.0030184 secs and out of which 0.0000254 secs were spent on Reference processing. 4.088: [GC cleanup 117M->106M(138M), 0.0015198 secs] Cleanup phase which is again a stop-the-world phase. It goes through the marking information of all the regions, computes the live data information of each region, resets the marking data structures and sorts the regions according to their gc-efficiency. In this example, the total heap size is 138M and after the live data counting it was found that the total live data size dropped down from 117M to 106M. 4.090: [GC concurrent-cleanup-start] This concurrent cleanup phase frees up the regions that were found to be empty (didn't contain any live data) during the previous stop-the-world phase. 4.091: [GC concurrent-cleanup-end, 0.0002721] Concurrent cleanup phase took 0.0002721 secs to free up the empty regions. Option -XX:G1PrintRegionLivenessInfo Now, let's look at the output generated with the flag G1PrintRegionLivenessInfo. This is a diagnostic option and gets enabled with -XX:+UnlockDiagnosticVMOptions. G1PrintRegionLivenessInfo prints the live data information of each region during the Cleanup phase of the concurrent-marking cycle. 26.896: [GC cleanup ### PHASE Post-Marking @ 26.896### HEAP committed: 0x02e00000-0x0fe00000 reserved: 0x02e00000-0x12e00000 region-size: 1048576 Cleanup phase of the concurrent-marking cycle started at 26.896 secs from the start of the process and this live data information is being printed after the marking phase. Committed G1 heap ranges from 0x02e00000 to 0x0fe00000 and the total G1 heap reserved by JVM is from 0x02e00000 to 0x12e00000. Each region in the G1 heap is of size 1048576 bytes. ### type address-range used prev-live next-live gc-eff### (bytes) (bytes) (bytes) (bytes/ms) This is the header of the output that tells us about the type of the region, address-range of the region, used space in the region, live bytes in the region with respect to the previous marking cycle, live bytes in the region with respect to the current marking cycle and the GC efficiency of that region. ### FREE 0x02e00000-0x02f00000 0 0 0 0.0 This is a Free region. ### OLD 0x02f00000-0x03000000 1048576 1038592 1038592 0.0 Old region with address-range from 0x02f00000 to 0x03000000. Total used space in the region is 1048576 bytes, live bytes as per the previous marking cycle are 1038592 and live bytes with respect to the current marking cycle are also 1038592. The GC efficiency has been computed as 0. ### EDEN 0x03400000-0x03500000 20992 20992 20992 0.0 This is an Eden region. ### HUMS 0x0ae00000-0x0af00000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0af00000-0x0b000000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0b000000-0x0b100000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0b100000-0x0b200000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0b200000-0x0b300000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0b300000-0x0b400000 1048576 1048576 1048576 0.0### HUMC 0x0b400000-0x0b500000 1001480 1001480 1001480 0.0 These are the continuous set of regions called Humongous regions for storing a large object. HUMS (Humongous starts) marks the start of the set of humongous regions and HUMC (Humongous continues) tags the subsequent regions of the humongous regions set. ### SURV 0x09300000-0x09400000 16384 16384 16384 0.0 This is a Survivor region. ### SUMMARY capacity: 208.00 MB used: 150.16 MB / 72.19 % prev-live: 149.78 MB / 72.01 % next-live: 142.82 MB / 68.66 % At the end, a summary is printed listing the capacity, the used space and the change in the liveness after the completion of concurrent marking. In this case, G1 heap capacity is 208MB, total used space is 150.16MB which is 72.19% of the total heap size, live data in the previous marking was 149.78MB which was 72.01% of the total heap size and the live data as per the current marking is 142.82MB which is 68.66% of the total heap size. Option -XX:+G1PrintHeapRegions G1PrintHeapRegions option logs the regions related events when regions are committed, allocated into or are reclaimed. COMMIT/UNCOMMIT events G1HR COMMIT [0x6e900000,0x6ea00000]G1HR COMMIT [0x6ea00000,0x6eb00000] Here, the heap is being initialized or expanded and the region (with bottom: 0x6eb00000 and end: 0x6ec00000) is being freshly committed. COMMIT events are always generated in order i.e. the next COMMIT event will always be for the uncommitted region with the lowest address. G1HR UNCOMMIT [0x72700000,0x72800000]G1HR UNCOMMIT [0x72600000,0x72700000] Opposite to COMMIT. The heap got shrunk at the end of a Full GC and the regions are being uncommitted. Like COMMIT, UNCOMMIT events are also generated in order i.e. the next UNCOMMIT event will always be for the committed region with the highest address. GC Cycle events G1HR #StartGC 7G1HR CSET 0x6e900000G1HR REUSE 0x70500000G1HR ALLOC(Old) 0x6f800000G1HR RETIRE 0x6f800000 0x6f821b20G1HR #EndGC 7 This shows start and end of an Evacuation pause. This event is followed by a GC counter tracking both evacuation pauses and Full GCs. Here, this is the 7th GC since the start of the process. G1HR #StartFullGC 17G1HR UNCOMMIT [0x6ed00000,0x6ee00000]G1HR POST-COMPACTION(Old) 0x6e800000 0x6e854f58G1HR #EndFullGC 17 Shows start and end of a Full GC. This event is also followed by the same GC counter as above. This is the 17th GC since the start of the process. ALLOC events G1HR ALLOC(Eden) 0x6e800000 The region with bottom 0x6e800000 just started being used for allocation. In this case it is an Eden region and allocated into by a mutator thread. G1HR ALLOC(StartsH) 0x6ec00000 0x6ed00000G1HR ALLOC(ContinuesH) 0x6ed00000 0x6e000000 Regions being used for the allocation of Humongous object. The object spans over two regions. G1HR ALLOC(SingleH) 0x6f900000 0x6f9eb010 Single region being used for the allocation of Humongous object. G1HR COMMIT [0x6ee00000,0x6ef00000]G1HR COMMIT [0x6ef00000,0x6f000000]G1HR COMMIT [0x6f000000,0x6f100000]G1HR COMMIT [0x6f100000,0x6f200000]G1HR ALLOC(StartsH) 0x6ee00000 0x6ef00000G1HR ALLOC(ContinuesH) 0x6ef00000 0x6f000000G1HR ALLOC(ContinuesH) 0x6f000000 0x6f100000G1HR ALLOC(ContinuesH) 0x6f100000 0x6f102010 Here, Humongous object allocation request could not be satisfied by the free committed regions that existed in the heap, so the heap needed to be expanded. Thus new regions are committed and then allocated into for the Humongous object. G1HR ALLOC(Old) 0x6f800000 Old region started being used for allocation during GC. G1HR ALLOC(Survivor) 0x6fa00000 Region being used for copying old objects into during a GC. Note that Eden and Humongous ALLOC events are generated outside the GC boundaries and Old and Survivor ALLOC events are generated inside the GC boundaries. Other Events G1HR RETIRE 0x6e800000 0x6e87bd98 Retire and stop using the region having bottom 0x6e800000 and top 0x6e87bd98 for allocation. Note that most regions are full when they are retired and we omit those events to reduce the output volume. A region is retired when another region of the same type is allocated or we reach the start or end of a GC(depending on the region). So for Eden regions: For example: 1. ALLOC(Eden) Foo2. ALLOC(Eden) Bar3. StartGC At point 2, Foo has just been retired and it was full. At point 3, Bar was retired and it was full. If they were not full when they were retired, we will have a RETIRE event: 1. ALLOC(Eden) Foo2. RETIRE Foo top3. ALLOC(Eden) Bar4. StartGC G1HR CSET 0x6e900000 Region (bottom: 0x6e900000) is selected for the Collection Set. The region might have been selected for the collection set earlier (i.e. when it was allocated). However, we generate the CSET events for all regions in the CSet at the start of a GC to make sure there's no confusion about which regions are part of the CSet. G1HR POST-COMPACTION(Old) 0x6e800000 0x6e839858 POST-COMPACTION event is generated for each non-empty region in the heap after a full compaction. A full compaction moves objects around, so we don't know what the resulting shape of the heap is (which regions were written to, which were emptied, etc.). To deal with this, we generate a POST-COMPACTION event for each non-empty region with its type (old/humongous) and the heap boundaries. At this point we should only have Old and Humongous regions, as we have collapsed the young generation, so we should not have eden and survivors. POST-COMPACTION events are generated within the Full GC boundary. G1HR CLEANUP 0x6f400000G1HR CLEANUP 0x6f300000G1HR CLEANUP 0x6f200000 These regions were found empty after remark phase of Concurrent Marking and are reclaimed shortly afterwards. G1HR #StartGC 5G1HR CSET 0x6f400000G1HR CSET 0x6e900000G1HR REUSE 0x6f800000 At the end of a GC we retire the old region we are allocating into. Given that its not full, we will carry on allocating into it during the next GC. This is what REUSE means. In the above case 0x6f800000 should have been the last region with an ALLOC(Old) event during the previous GC and should have been retired before the end of the previous GC. G1HR ALLOC-FORCE(Eden) 0x6f800000 A specialization of ALLOC which indicates that we have reached the max desired number of the particular region type (in this case: Eden), but we decided to allocate one more. Currently it's only used for Eden regions when we extend the young generation because we cannot do a GC as the GC-Locker is active. G1HR EVAC-FAILURE 0x6f800000 During a GC, we have failed to evacuate an object from the given region as the heap is full and there is no space left to copy the object. This event is generated within GC boundaries and exactly once for each region from which we failed to evacuate objects. When Heap Regions are reclaimed ? It is also worth mentioning when the heap regions in the G1 heap are reclaimed. All regions that are in the CSet (the ones that appear in CSET events) are reclaimed at the end of a GC. The exception to that are regions with EVAC-FAILURE events. All regions with CLEANUP events are reclaimed. After a Full GC some regions get reclaimed (the ones from which we moved the objects out). But that is not shown explicitly, instead the non-empty regions that are left in the heap are printed out with the POST-COMPACTION events.

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  • Tellago announces SQL Server 2008 R2 BI quick adoption programs

    - by Vishal
    During the last year, we (Tellago) have been involved in various business intelligence initiatives that leverage some emerging BI techniques such as self-service BI or complex event processing (CEP). Specifically, in the last few months, we have partnered with Microsoft to deliver a series of events across the country where we present the different technologies of the SQL Server 2008 R2 BI stack such as PowerPivot, StreamInsight, Ad-Hoc Reporting and Master Data Services. As part of those events, we try to go beyond the traditional technology presentation and provide a series of best practices and lessons we have learned on real world BI projects that leverage these technologies. Now that SQL Server 2008 R2 has been released to manufacturing, we have launched a series of quick adoption programs that are designed to help customers understand how they can embrace the newest additions to Microsoft's BI stack as part of their IT initiatives. The programs are also designed to help customers understand how the new SQL Server features interact with established technologies such as SQL Server Analysis Services or SQL Server Integration Services. We try to keep these adoption programs very practical by doing a lot of prototyping and design sessions that will give our customers a practical glimpse of the capabilities of the technologies and how they can fit in their enterprise architecture roadmap. Here is our official announcement (you can blame my business partner, BI enthusiast, and Tellago's CEO Elizabeth Redding for the marketing pitch ;)): Tellago Marks Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 R2 Launch With Business Intelligence Quick Adoption Program Microsoft launched SQL Server 2008 R2 last week, which delivers several breakthrough business intelligence (BI) capabilities that enable organizations to:  Efficiently process, analyze and mine data Improve IT and developer efficiency Enable highly scalable and well-managed Business Intelligence on a self-service basis for business users The release offers a new feature called PowerPivot, which enables self service BI through connecting business users directly to enterprise data sources and providing improved reporting and analytics. The release also offers Master Data Management which helps enterprises centrally manage critical data assets company-wide and across diverse systems, enabling increased integrity of information over time. Finally, the release includes StreamInsight, which is a framework for implementing Complex Event Processing (CEP) applications on the Microsoft platform. With StreamInsight, IT organizations can implement the infrastructure to process a large volume of events near real time, execute continuous queries against event streams and enable real time business intelligence. As a thought leader in the Business Intelligence community, Tellago has recognized the occasion by launching a series of quick adoption programs to enable the adoption of this new BI technology stack in your enterprise. Our Quick Adoption programs are designed to help you: Brainstorm BI solution options  Architect initial infrastructure components Prototype key features of a solution As a 2-3 day program, our approach is more efficient and cost effective than a traditional Proof of Concept because it allows you to understand the new SQL Server 2008 R2 feature set  while seeing directly how you can leverage it for your business intelligence needs. If you are interested in learning more about the BI capabilities of Microsoft's Business Intelligence stack, including SQL Server 2008 R2, we can help.  As industry experts and software content advisers to Microsoft, Tellago is the place where ideas meet technology expertise.  Let us help you see for yourself the advantages that you can gain from Microsoft's  SQL Server 2008 R2. Email or call for more information - [email protected] or 847-925-2399.

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  • Download Internet Explorer 9 RTM

    - by Harish Ranganathan
    The much anticipated RTM release of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) happened today.  IE9 preview release was first showcased at MIX 2010 and post that there were 7-8 Platform Preview releases.  Also, IE9 Beta came out in September 2010 with close to 10 million downloads within a month.  More recently, the RC version was out with much improved performance.  Today, marks the launch of IE9 RTM.  What this means is that, within an year, the IE Team has shipped the stable product, much faster than the earlier cycles for IE8 and IE7.  I wanted to clarify a few things (myths) that arise in common 1. I am already using Chrome and its faster for me, why would I need IE9 IE9 uses 100% hardware acceleration which means, you are going to get the best of performance compared to any other browser that shipped/will ship in future.  With native Windows support, IE9 will outperform all other browsers in terms of performance. 2. What about standards and security Agreed IE6 hasn’t been in the best of standards, but why would someone compare IE6 which was released almost 10 years back.  Later, we shipped IE7 and IE8 which had the best of standards and supports during their timeframes, but one would agree that standards and specifications keep getting updated and its hard to keep pace with the same for older browsers.  Example. HTML5 support is not there in IE8 but it is very much there in IE9.  IE9 supports most of the stable standards of HTML5 and its going to provide preview releases for the work-in-progress standards. 3. IE doesn’t keep in pace with other browsers Agreed! we don’t force/release updates on major versions in very short time periods.  What we do is provide Windows Update that provides security updates/patches and other critical updates for not just IE but the whole of Windows operating system 4. I am running Windows XP, what do I do? This is the trickiest part.  Windows XP isn’t the supported operating system for IE9 and there are various reasons to it.  The recommended operating system is Windows Vista and Windows 7.  In the interest of technology and its pace, we had to discontinue Windows XP both from a retail selling perspective as well as IE9 support.  But, the recent 2 years has seen PCs/Laptops only shipped with Windows Vista or Windows 7 so, it shouldn't affect them. 5. Where do I verify IE9’s performance/standard support and other information. http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/ietestcenter/  Here below is a snapshot of one of the tests. Clearly IE9 outperforms all other browsers and will continue to outperform them in future.  You can download IE9 from www.beautyoftheweb.com Cheers!!!

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  • Responding to Invites

    - by Daniel Moth
    Following up from my post about Sending Outlook Invites here is a shorter one on how to respond. Whatever your choice (ACCEPT, TENTATIVE, DECLINE), if the sender has not unchecked the "Request Response" option, then send your response. Always send your response. Even if you think the sender made a mistake in keeping it on, send your response. Seriously, not responding is plain rude. If you knew about the meeting, and you are happy investing your time in it, and the time and location work for you, and there is an implicit/explicit agenda, then ACCEPT and send it. If one or more of those things don't work for you then you have a few options. Send a DECLINE explaining why. Reply with email to ask for further details or for a change to be made. If you don’t receive a response to your email, send a DECLINE when you've waited enough. Send a TENTATIVE if you haven't made up your mind yet. Hint: if they really require you there, they'll respond asking "why tentative" and you have a discussion about it. When you deem appropriate, instead of the options above, you can also use the counter propose feature of Outlook but IMO that feature has questionable interaction model and UI (on both sender and recipient) so many people get confused by it. BTW, two of my outlook rules are relevant to invites. The first one auto-marks as read the ACCEPT responses if there is no comment in the body of the accept (I check later who has accepted and who hasn't via the "Tracking" button of the invite). I don’t have a rule for the DECLINE and TENTATIVE cause typically I follow up with folks that send those.   The second rule ensures that all Invites go to a specific folder. That is the first folder I see when I triage email. It is also the only folder which I have configured to show a count of all items inside it, rather than the unread count - when sending a response to an invite the item disappears from the folder and hence it is empty and not nagging me. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Now Shipping! NetAdvantage for .NET 2010 Volume 3!

    The new NetAdvantage Ultimate includes all four Line of Business user interface control sets for ASP .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight plus two advanced Data Visualization UI control sets for WPF and Silverlight. With six NetAdvantage products in one robust package, Infragistics® gives you hundreds of controls and infinite development possibilities. Unified XAML Product Strategy-Share Code, Get More Controls In the 10.3 release, Infragistics continues to deliver code parity between the XAML platforms, WPF and Silverlight. In the line of business toolsets, Infragistics introduces the new xamSchedule™, full-featured, Outlook® 2010-style schedule controls, and the new xamDataTree™, a data bound tree view that comfortably handles tens of thousands of tree nodes. Mimicking our Silverlight Drag and Drop Framework, the WPF Drag and Drop Framework CTP empowers you to add your own rich touches to your applications. Track Users' Behaviors New to all NetAdvantage Silverlight controls is the Infragistics Analytics Framework (IGAF), which empowers you to track user behavior in RIAs running on Silverlight 4. Building on the Microsoft® Silverlight Analytics Framework, with IGAF you can analyze the user's behaviors to ensure the experience you want to deliver. NetAdvantage for Windows Forms--New Office® 2010 Ribbon and Application Menu 2010 Create new experiences with Windows Forms. Now with Office 2010 styling, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has new features such as Microsoft® Office 2010 ribbon and enhanced Infragistics.Excel to export the contents of the high performance WinGrid™ into Microsoft Excel® 2010. The new Windows Message Support enables Infragistics standalone editor controls to process numerous Windows® OS messages, allowing them to respond just like native controls to changes in the Windows environment. Create Faster Web 2.0 Experiences with NetAdvantage for ASP .NET Infragistics continues to push the envelope to deliver the fastest ASP .NET WebForms controls available on the market. Our lightning fast ASP .NET grids are now enhanced with XPS/PDF Exporting and Summary Rows. This release also includes support for jQuery Templating (as a CTP) within our WebDataGrid™ and WebDataTree™ controls allowing you to quickly cut down overall page size. Deliver Business Intelligence with Power, Flexibility and the Office 2010 Experience NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization and NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization help you deliver flexible, powerful and usable end user experiences in Business Intelligence applications. Both suites include the Pivot Grid that delivers the full power of online analytical processing (OLAP) to present multi-dimensional data, sliced and diced in cross-tabulated form for end users to drill down into, interact with and easily extract meaning from the data. Mapping Made Easy 10.3 marks the official release of the WPF Data Visualization xamMap™ control to map anything and everything from geographic to geo-spacial mapping data. Map layers allow you to add successive levels of detail, navigational panes for panning in all directions, color swatch panes that facilitate value scales like Choropleth shading, and scale panes allowing users to zoom-in and out. Both toolsets introduce the first of many relationship maps! With the xamOrgChart™ CTP you can map out organizational charts of up to 50K employees, competitive brackets (think World Cup) and any other relational, organizational map your application needs. http://www.infragistics.com span.fullpost {display:none;}

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  • What's new in the RightNow November 2012 release?

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    What new in the RightNow November 2012? In order to find out, please watch this tutorial with imbedded demonstration or read the November 2012 Release notes.   News Facts The November 2012 release of     Oracle’s RightNow CX Cloud Service marks the completion of development efforts for 2012 and continues Oracle’s commitment to enhancing the Oracle RightNow offering following the acquisition. New release delivers key capabilities designed to help organizations improve customer experiences in order to increase customer acquisition and retention, while reducing total cost of ownership. Part of the Oracle Cloud, Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service now integrates Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service with Oracle Engagement Engine Cloud Service, helping organizations intelligently and proactively engage with customers through the right channel at the right time. Chat solutions have emerged as an important component of a cross-channel customer experience strategy. According to Forrester Research, Inc., chat adoption has risen dramatically between 2009 and 2011 from 19% to 37%, and it has the highest satisfaction level of all customer service channels at 62% satisfaction. (*) To help companies deliver enhanced customer experiences, Oracle has made significant investments in Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service throughout 2012. With the addition of rules-based engagement to existing capabilities such as co-browse, mobile chat, and cross-channel knowledge integration with the contact center, all delivered via the cloud, Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service is differentiated as the industry-leading chat solution. The Oracle Cloud offers a broad portfolio of software as-a-service applications, including Oracle Customer Service and Support Cloud Service, which is based on the Oracle RightNow CX Cloud Service. New Capabilities Key Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service and other cross-channel capabilities include: Chat Business Rules, with over 70 built-in rule conditions, leverage the Oracle Engagement Engine to help enable organizations capture rich visitor data and invoke complex actions and triggers. Chat Business Rules allow granular control over when to engage a customer via the chat channel based on customer behavior, customer profile information and operational information. Click-to-Call provides the option for a customer to engage with a live agent over the phone during the Web browsing experience. Chat Availability Controls provide organizations with the ability to throttle volume through the chat channel based on real-time agent availability and wait time thresholds. This ability to manage the channel more efficiently allows organizations to provide a better experience to customers using the chat channel. Strategic and Operational Chat Channel Analytics provide better insight into channel and agent productivity and utilization and effectiveness with both out-of-the-box reports and ad hoc reports. New chat channel analytics provide comprehensive metrics with full data transparency. Background Service Updates improve high availability metrics for Oracle RightNow Chat Cloud Service during service update periods, setting the industry leading standard for sales and service delivery to customers via the chat channel. Additional Capabilities include: Improved Web developer tools for more efficient self-service user interface design Improved administration for enhanced user sessions management Increased cross-channel community collaboration Enhanced extensibility widgets and syndication management Streamlined content management and analytics capabilities Read the full announcement here

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  • Convert DVDs and ISO Files to MKV with MakeMKV

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Looking for a quick and easy way to convert your DVDs or ISOs to MKV files? Today we take a look at the MakeMKV Beta which gets the job done very well. Installing and Using MakeMKV Download and install MakeMKV (See download link below) If converting a DVD, place it into your optical drive. When you open MakeMKV you will be greeted by it’s minimalistic interface. Click on the DVD to hard drive button to open the DVD, or the folder icon on the top menu to browse for an ISO file.   MakeMKV will open the disc or file. Once the disc or file is opened, you’ll see the titles listed in the window on the left. Double-click on the titles to expand the tree structure.   Remove any title or tracks you don’t want to convert by unselecting the check box to the left. On the right side of the window, click the folder icon to select browse for your file output directory. When ready, click the MakeMkv button to begin the conversion process.   Conversion will proceed.   When the conversion is finished. Click OK. That’s all there is to it! Your MKV file is ready to play. Conclusion MakeMKV is currently still in beta and during the beta phase it will rip both DVD and Blu-ray for free. However, the DVD ripping functionality will always remain free. After 30 days if you want to continue ripping Blu-ray discs, you’ll need to purchase a license. DVD rips are very quick…typically around 15-20 minutes depending on the length of the movie. MakeMKV is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and will rip and convert DVDs to MKV files. Not all media players natively support MKV playback, so if you’re having trouble playing MKV files, try downloading VLC Media player, or the latest version of the DivX codec. Download MakeMKV Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How To Rip DVDs with VLCEasily Change Audio File Formats with XRECODEHow To Convert Video Files to MP3 with VLCConvert PDF Files to Word Documents and Other FormatsConvert DVD to MP4 / H.264 with HD Decrypter and Handbrake TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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  • Using CTAS & Exchange Partition Replace IAS for Copying Partition on Exadata

    - by Bandari Huang
    Usage Scenario: Copy data&index from one partition to another partition in a partitioned table. Solution: Create a partition definition Copy data from one partition to another partiton by 'Insert as select (IAS)' Create a nonpartitioned table by 'Create table as select (CTAS)' Convert a nonpartitioned table into a partition of partitoned table by exchangng their data segments. Rebuild unusable index Exchange Partition Convertion Mutual convertion between a partition (or subpartition) and a nonpartitioned table Mutual convertion between a hash-partitioned table and a partition of a composite *-hash partitioned table Mutual convertiton a [range | list]-partitioned table into a partition of a composite *-[range | list] partitioned table. Exchange Partition Usage Scenario High-speed data loading of new, incremental data into an existing partitioned table in DW environment Exchanging old data partitions out of a partitioned table, the data is purged from the partitioned table without actually being deleted and can be archived separately Exchange Partition Syntax ALTER TABLE schema.table EXCHANGE [PARTITION|SUBPARTITION] [partition|subprtition] WITH TABLE schema.table [INCLUDE|EXCLUDING] INDEX [WITH|WITHOUT] VALIDATION UPDATE [INDEXES|GLOBAL INDEXES] INCLUDING | EXCLUDING INDEXES Specify INCLUDING INDEXES if you want local index partitions or subpartitions to be exchanged with the corresponding table index (for a nonpartitioned table) or local indexes (for a hash-partitioned table). Specify EXCLUDING INDEXES if you want all index partitions or subpartitions corresponding to the partition and all the regular indexes and index partitions on the exchanged table to be marked UNUSABLE. If you omit this clause, then the default is EXCLUDING INDEXES. WITH | WITHOUT VALIDATION Specify WITH VALIDATION if you want Oracle Database to return an error if any rows in the exchanged table do not map into partitions or subpartitions being exchanged. Specify WITHOUT VALIDATION if you do not want Oracle Database to check the proper mapping of rows in the exchanged table. If you omit this clause, then the default is WITH VALIDATION.  UPADATE INDEX|GLOBAL INDEX Unless you specify UPDATE INDEXES, the database marks UNUSABLE the global indexes or all global index partitions on the table whose partition is being exchanged. Global indexes or global index partitions on the table being exchanged remain invalidated. (You cannot use UPDATE INDEXES for index-organized tables. Use UPDATE GLOBAL INDEXES instead.) Exchanging Partitions&Subpartitions Notes Both tables involved in the exchange must have the same primary key, and no validated foreign keys can be referencing either of the tables unless the referenced table is empty.  When exchanging partitioned index-organized tables: – The source and target table or partition must have their primary key set on the same columns, in the same order. – If key compression is enabled, then it must be enabled for both the source and the target, and with the same prefix length. – Both the source and target must be index organized. – Both the source and target must have overflow segments, or neither can have overflow segments. Also, both the source and target must have mapping tables, or neither can have a mapping table. – Both the source and target must have identical storage attributes for any LOB columns. 

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  • Beware of const members

    - by nmarun
    I happened to learn a new thing about const today and how one needs to be careful with its usage. Let’s say I have a third-party assembly ‘ConstVsReadonlyLib’ with a class named ConstSideEffect.cs: 1: public class ConstSideEffect 2: { 3: public static readonly int StartValue = 10; 4: public const int EndValue = 20; 5: } In my project, I reference the above assembly as follows: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: for (int i = ConstSideEffect.StartValue; i < ConstSideEffect.EndValue; i++) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine(i); 6: } 7: Console.ReadLine(); 8: } You’ll see values 10 through 19 as expected. Now, let’s say I receive a new version of the ConstVsReadonlyLib. 1: public class ConstSideEffect 2: { 3: public static readonly int StartValue = 5; 4: public const int EndValue = 30; 5: } If I just drop this new assembly in the bin folder and run the application, without rebuilding my console application, my thinking was that the output would be from 5 to 29. Of course I was wrong… if not you’d not be reading this blog. The actual output is from 5 through 19. The reason is due to the behavior of const and readonly members. To begin with, const is the compile-time constant and readonly is a runtime constant. Next, when you compile the code, a compile-time constant member is replaced with the value of the constant in the code. But, the IL generated when you reference a read-only constant, references the readonly variable, not its value. So, the IL version of the Main method, after compilation actually looks something like: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: for (int i = ConstSideEffect.StartValue; i < 20; i++) 4: { 5: Console.WriteLine(i); 6: } 7: Console.ReadLine(); 8: } I’m no expert with this IL thingi, but when I look at the disassembled code of the exe file (using IL Disassembler), I see the following: I see our readonly member still being referenced by the variable name (ConstVsReadonlyLib.ConstSideEffect::StartValue) in line 0001. Then there’s the Console.WriteLine in line 000b and finally, see the value of 20 in line 0017. This, I’m pretty sure is our const member being replaced by its value which marks the upper bound of the ‘for’ loop. Now you know why the output was from 5 through 19. This definitely is a side-effect of having const members and one needs to be aware of it. While we’re here, I’d like to add a few other points about const and readonly members: const is slightly faster, but is less flexible readonly cannot be declared within a method scope const can be used only on primitive types (numbers and strings) Just wanted to share this before going to bed!

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  • WinMo&rsquo;s Demise: Notifying Next of &ldquo;Kin&rdquo;

    - by andrewbrust
    This past Monday, April 12th, Visual Studio 2010 was launched.  And on that same day, Microsoft also launched a new line of  mobile phone handsets, called Kin.  The two product launches are actually connected, but only by what they do not have in common, and what they commonly lack. On the former point: VS 2010 had released to manufacturing a couple weeks prior to its launch.  The Kin phones, meanwhile are not yet available.  We don’t even know what they will cost.  (And I think cost will be a major factor in Kin’s success…I told ChannelWeb’s Yara Souza so in this article). What do the two products both lack? Simple: Windows Mobile 6.x. For example, Kin seems to be based on the same platform as Windows Phone 7 (albeit a subset).  And VS 2010 does not support .NET Compact Framework development, which means no .NET development support for WinMo 6.x and earlier. So I guess April 12th marks Windows Phone “clean slate day.”  If you want to develop for the old phone platform, you will need to use the old version of Visual Studio (i.e. 2008).  Luckily VS 2010 and 2008 can be installed side-by-side.  But I doubt that’s much consolation to developers who still target WinMo 6.5 and earlier. Remember, WinMo isn’t just about the phone.  There are all sorts of non-telephony mobile devices, including ruggedized Pocket PC-style instruments, bar code readers and shop-floor-deployed units that don’t run Windows Phone 7 and couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Where will developers in these markets go?  I would guess some will stick with WinMo 6.x and earlier, until Windows Phone 7 can handle their workloads, assuming that does indeed happen.  Others will likely go to Google’s Android platform. For OEMs and developers who need a customizable mobile software stack, Android is turning out to be out-WinMo-ing WinMo.  As I wrote in this post, Google took Microsoft’s model (minus the licensing fees) and combined it with a modern SmartPhone feature set (rather than a late 90s/early oughts PDA paradigm), to great success.  You might say Google embraced and extended. You might also say Microsoft shunned and withdrew.

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  • Oracle Tutor: *** CAUTION to Word .docx Users ***

    - by [email protected]
    Microsoft released a security update KB969604 for Office 2007 (around June 2009) This update causes document variables within Word docx files to be scrambled. This update might still be pushed out via Office 2007 updates DO NOT save files as docx using MS OFFICE 2007 until you apply the MS hotfix # 970942 available here If you are using Windows XP with Office 2003 or Office 2000 and have installed an older Office 2007 compatibility pack, documents saved as docx may also cause the scrambled document variables. Installing the 2007 compatibility pack published on 1/6/2010 (version 4) will prevent the document variables from becoming corrupt. Those on Windows 2000 may not be able to install the latest compatibility pack, or the compatibility pack may not function properly. This situation will hopefully be rectified in the coming months. What is a document variable? Document variables store data inside the document, invisible to the user. The Tutor software uses them when converting the document to HTML and when creating the flowchart, just to name a couple of uses. How will you know if a document's variables are scrambled? The difficulty in diagnosing the issue is that the symptoms can take myriad forms. There isn't a single error message or a single feature that one can point to and say, "test for the problem by doing this." The best clue about the error is seeing any kind of string in an error message that has garbage characters, question marks, xml code snippets, or just nonsense. Such as "Language ?????????????xlr;lwlerkjl could not be found." It is also possible to see the corrupted data in the footers of the Word docs. And, just because the footers look correct does not mean that the document variables are not corrupted. The corruption problem does not occur in every document variable in the document, just some of them. Often it is less than a quarter of them. What is the difference between docx files and doc files? Office 2007 uses Office Open XML formats with .docx and .docm filename extensions. - Docx is an Office Open XML word document. - Docm is a macro enabled Office Open XML document. This means the file structure behind the scenes is quite different from the binary file formats used prior to Office 2007 such as .doc, .dot, .xls, and .ppt. Solution Summary: For Windows XP and Word 2007: Install the hotfix, or save files as *.doc For Windows XP and Word 2000 and 2003: Install the latest compatibility pack or save files as *.doc For Windows 2000 with Word 2000 or 2003, do not use any compatibility pack, save files as *.doc Emily Chorba Principle Product Manager for Oracle Tutor

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  • How To Disable Individual Plug-ins in Google Chrome

    - by The Geek
    Have you ever wondered how to disable useless or insecure browser plug-ins in Google Chrome? Here’s the lowdown on how to get rid of Java, Acrobat, Silverlight, and the rest of the plugins you probably want to get rid of. Disabling Plugins in Google Chrome If you head to about:plugins in your address bar, you’ll probably see a list of plugins, but won’t be able to disable them yet. What you’ll need to do is switch over to the Dev channel of Chrome, which gives you access to all the latest features—though you might be warned that sometimes the dev channel might be less stable than the release or beta channels. Ready to proceed? Head to the Dev Channel page, and then click the link to run the installer. You’ll be prompted to restart Chrome when you’re done. Note that Mac and Windows users can both run an installer to switch. Linux users will have to install a package. Note: Once you’ve switched to the Dev channel, you can’t really switch to the stable channel. You’ll have to uninstall Chrome and then reinstall the regular version. Now that you’ve switched to the dev channel and restarted your browser, head to about:plugins in the address bar, and then just disable each plugin you really don’t need. Plugins you can generally live without?  Java, Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight. These will be on a case-by-case basis, of course, but the vast majority of large websites don’t require any of those. When it comes right down to it, the only plugin that most people require is Flash… and leave the “Default Plug-in” alone too. Special thanks to @jordanconway for pointing out the solution. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Disable YouTube Comments while using ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default BrowserSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single ClickAdd Notes to Google Notebook from ChromeAccess Google Chrome’s Special Pages the Easy Way TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 Product Guides Google Maps Place marks – Pizza, Guns or Strip Clubs Monitor Applications With Kiwi LocPDF is a Visual PDF Search Tool Download Free iPad Wallpapers at iPad Decor Get Your Delicious Bookmarks In Firefox’s Awesome Bar

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  • Java EE 7 turns one today!

    - by delabassee
    "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." (Benjamin Franklin) Today marks the first year anniversary of Java EE 7. The JSR 342 specification was finalised on May 28, 2013 with the official launch taking place on June 12, 2013 (original press release). As of today, there are already 3 Java EE 7 compatible Application Servers, coming from different 'vendors' (Oracle, TmaxSoft and Red Hat). Two of those Java EE 7 Application Servers are free and open source. We expect the list of Java EE 7 compatible Application Servers to grow over the coming months. Source: RebelLabs - 'Java Tools and Technologies Landscape for 2014' According to a recent independent survey, one third of the Java EE users who participated in that survey is already using Java EE 7. This is a good sign but it also means that a lot of people are not yet on Java EE 7. So if you haven't yet embarked on Java EE 7, now is really the time to do so! There are various ways to learn Java EE 7, in no particular order ... Continue to read The Aquarium. Through this blog, we are relaying Java EE news but we are also doing our best to highlight relevant technical contents such as articles, community tutorials, etc. Watch the GlassFish YouTube channel. Amongst others, it contains the different videos of the Java EE 7 launch, those videos will give you good technical update on Java EE and its different components specifications (JMS 2.0, JAX-RS 2.0, EJB 3.2, etc.) Take a formal training. Oracle University is starting to roll-out Java EE 7 trainings like the 'Java EE 7: New Features' class.  Attend conferences and JUGs sessions. On that note, we have spent a lot of time to create a strong JavaOne 'Server-Side Java' track. It's still possible to benefit from the early bird JavaOne pricing but don't wait too much! Read books. There are more than 25 (!) books related to Java EE 7 or to one of the Java EE 7 component specification.  There are many more ways to learn Java EE but if I have to suggest one and only one way, I would recommend the Java EE 7 Tutorial. It's exhaustive and clear, it's free and it continues to evolve. And finally as the introductory quote suggest, participation is key to learning. Participate in JUGs,  participate in Adopt-a-JSR, get involved in the different open source communities evolving around Java EE, participate in the JCP... in one word, participate!

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  • Tales of a corrupt SQL log

    - by guybarrette
    Warning: I’m a simple dev, not an all powerful DBA with godly powers. This morning, one of my sites was down and DNN reported a problem with the database.  A quick series of tests revealed that the culprit was a corrupted log file. Easy fix I said, I have daily backups so it’s just a mater of restoring a good copy of the database and log files.  Well, I found out that’s not exactly true.  You see, for this database, I have daily file backups and these are not database backups created by SQL Server. So I restored a set of files from a couple of days ago, stopped the SQL service, copied the files over the bad ones, restarted the service only to find out that SQL doesn’t like when you do that.  It suspects something fishy and marks the database as suspect.  A database marked as suspect can’t be accessed at all.  So now what? I searched throughout the tubes of the InterWeb and found that you can restore from a corrupted log file by creating a new database with the same name as the defective one, then copy the restored database file (the one with data) over the newly created one.  Sweet!  But you still end up with SQL marking the database as suspect but at least, the newly created log is OK.  Well not true, it’s not corrupted but the lack of data makes it not OK for SQL so you need to rebuild the log.  How can you do that when SQL blocks any action the database?  First, you need to change the database status from suspect to emergency.  Then you need to set the database for single access only.  After that, you need to repair the log with DBCC and do the DBA dance.  If you dance long enough, SQL should repair the log file.  Now you need to set the access back to multi user.  Here’s the T-SQL script: use master GO EXEC sp_resetstatus 'MyDatabase' ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET EMERGENCY Alter database MyDatabase set Single_User DBCC checkdb('MyDatabase') ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE DBCC CheckDB ('MyDatabase', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS) ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET MULTI_USER So I guess that I would have been a lot easier to restore a SQL backup.  I can’t really say but the InterWeb seems to say so.  Anyway, lessons learned: Vive la différence: File backups are different then SQL backups. Don’t touch me: SQL doesn’t like when you restore a file over a corrupted one. The more the merrier: You should do both SQL and file backups. WTF?: The InterWeb provides you with dozens of way to deal with the problem but many are SQL 2000 or SQL 2005 only, many are confusing and many are written in strange dialects only DBAs understand. var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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  • 2D Grid Map Connectivity Check (avoiding stack overflow)

    - by SombreErmine
    I am trying to create a routine in C++ that will run before a more expensive A* algorithm that checks to see if two nodes on a 2D grid map are connected or not. What I need to know is a good way to accomplish this sequentially rather than recursively to avoid overflowing the stack. What I've Done Already I've implemented this with ease using a recursive algorithm; however, depending upon different situations it will generate a stack overflow. Upon researching this, I've come to the conclusion that it is overflowing the stack because of too many recursive function calls. I am sure that my recursion does not enter an infinite loop. I generate connected sets at the beginning of the level, and then I use those connected sets to determine connectivity on the fly later. Basically, the generating algorithm starts from left-to-right top-to-bottom. It skips wall nodes and marks them as visited. Whenever it reaches a walkable node, it recursively checks in all four cardinal directions for connected walkable nodes. Every node that gets checked is marked as visited so they aren't handled twice. After checking a node, it is added to either a walls set, a doors set, or one of multiple walkable nodes sets. Once it fills that area, it continues the original ltr ttb loop skipping already-visited nodes. I've also looked into flood-fill algorithms, but I can't make sense of the sequential algorithms and how to adapt them. Can anyone suggest a better way to accomplish this without causing a stack overflow? The only way I can think of is to do the left-to-right top-to-bottom loop generating connected sets on a row basis. Then check the previous row to see if any of the connected sets are connected and then join the sets that are. I haven't decided on the best data structures to use for that though. I also just thought about having the connected sets pre-generated outside the game, but I wouldn't know where to start with creating a tool for that. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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  • Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3)

    - by Ankit G
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Delighted to announce the GA of EM Cloud Control Release 3 on all supported platforms. This release includes a new 12.1.0.3 version of platform (OMS & Agent), along with revised new versions of several Plug-ins and Metadata plug-ins (including a brand new Metadata plug-in for Oracle Virtual Networking). This release marks yet another major & significant milestone for Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control product releases. Following shows the list of new plug-ins versions available along the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3). The new plug-ins have dependency on 12.1.0.3 platform, and customer needs to be on minimum 12.1.0.3 platform (OMS/Agent) version of the product before being able to deploy/use these plug-in versions. (In other words, the new plug-in versions cannot be deployed, unless Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3) is installed or upgraded to). Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3) release includes tons of new features, along with several stability and performance bug fixes and is available for download for all platforms from OTN:Installation/Upgrade paths: EM Customers can do a fresh installation using "Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 (12.1.0.3)", and will get the latest version of the platform, along with all the latest versions of plug-ins and Metadata plug-ins out of the box. EM Customers who are on Release1 (12.1.0.1+BP1) or Release 2 (12.1.0.2), or on older releases 11g and 10.2.0.5, can choose to use Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c Release 3 bits, to upgrade directly to the latest Release 3, and the plug-ins will be automatically upgraded to the latest versions. Enterprise Manager Certification Matrix is also now available on My Oracle Support - here.

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  • C++11 Tidbits: Decltype (Part 2, trailing return type)

    - by Paolo Carlini
    Following on from last tidbit showing how the decltype operator essentially queries the type of an expression, the second part of this overview discusses how decltype can be syntactically combined with auto (itself the subject of the March 2010 tidbit). This combination can be used to specify trailing return types, also known informally as "late specified return types". Leaving aside the technical jargon, a simple example from section 8.3.5 of the C++11 standard usefully introduces this month's topic. Let's consider a template function like: template <class T, class U> ??? foo(T t, U u) { return t + u; } The question is: what should replace the question marks? The problem is that we are dealing with a template, thus we don't know at the outset the types of T and U. Even if they were restricted to be arithmetic builtin types, non-trivial rules in C++ relate the type of the sum to the types of T and U. In the past - in the GNU C++ runtime library too - programmers used to address these situations by way of rather ugly tricks involving __typeof__ which now, with decltype, could be rewritten as: template <class T, class U> decltype((*(T*)0) + (*(U*)0)) foo(T t, U u) { return t + u; } Of course the latter is guaranteed to work only for builtin arithmetic types, eg, '0' must make sense. In short: it's a hack. On the other hand, in C++11 you can use auto: template <class T, class U> auto foo(T t, U u) -> decltype(t + u) { return t + u; } This is much better. It's generic and a construct fully supported by the language. Finally, let's see a real-life example directly taken from the C++11 runtime library as implemented in GCC: template<typename _IteratorL, typename _IteratorR> inline auto operator-(const reverse_iterator<_IteratorL>& __x, const reverse_iterator<_IteratorR>& __y) -> decltype(__y.base() - __x.base()) { return __y.base() - __x.base(); } By now it should appear be completely straightforward. The availability of trailing return types in C++11 allowed fixing a real bug in the C++98 implementation of this operator (and many similar ones). In GCC, C++98 mode, this operator is: template<typename _IteratorL, typename _IteratorR> inline typename reverse_iterator<_IteratorL>::difference_type operator-(const reverse_iterator<_IteratorL>& __x, const reverse_iterator<_IteratorR>& __y) { return __y.base() - __x.base(); } This was guaranteed to work well with heterogeneous reverse_iterator types only if difference_type was the same for both types.

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  • Now Shipping! NetAdvantage for .NET 2010 Volume 3!

    The new NetAdvantage Ultimate includes all four Line of Business user interface control sets for ASP .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight plus two advanced Data Visualization UI control sets for WPF and Silverlight. With six NetAdvantage products in one robust package, Infragistics® gives you hundreds of controls and infinite development possibilities. Unified XAML Product Strategy-Share Code, Get More Controls In the 10.3 release, Infragistics continues to deliver code parity between the XAML platforms, WPF and Silverlight. In the line of business toolsets, Infragistics introduces the new xamSchedule™, full-featured, Outlook® 2010-style schedule controls, and the new xamDataTree™, a data bound tree view that comfortably handles tens of thousands of tree nodes. Mimicking our Silverlight Drag and Drop Framework, the WPF Drag and Drop Framework CTP empowers you to add your own rich touches to your applications. Track Users' Behaviors New to all NetAdvantage Silverlight controls is the Infragistics Analytics Framework (IGAF), which empowers you to track user behavior in RIAs running on Silverlight 4. Building on the Microsoft® Silverlight Analytics Framework, with IGAF you can analyze the user's behaviors to ensure the experience you want to deliver. NetAdvantage for Windows Forms--New Office® 2010 Ribbon and Application Menu 2010 Create new experiences with Windows Forms. Now with Office 2010 styling, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has new features such as Microsoft® Office 2010 ribbon and enhanced Infragistics.Excel to export the contents of the high performance WinGrid™ into Microsoft Excel® 2010. The new Windows Message Support enables Infragistics standalone editor controls to process numerous Windows® OS messages, allowing them to respond just like native controls to changes in the Windows environment. Create Faster Web 2.0 Experiences with NetAdvantage for ASP .NET Infragistics continues to push the envelope to deliver the fastest ASP .NET WebForms controls available on the market. Our lightning fast ASP .NET grids are now enhanced with XPS/PDF Exporting and Summary Rows. This release also includes support for jQuery Templating (as a CTP) within our WebDataGrid™ and WebDataTree™ controls allowing you to quickly cut down overall page size. Deliver Business Intelligence with Power, Flexibility and the Office 2010 Experience NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization and NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization help you deliver flexible, powerful and usable end user experiences in Business Intelligence applications. Both suites include the Pivot Grid that delivers the full power of online analytical processing (OLAP) to present multi-dimensional data, sliced and diced in cross-tabulated form for end users to drill down into, interact with and easily extract meaning from the data. Mapping Made Easy 10.3 marks the official release of the WPF Data Visualization xamMap™ control to map anything and everything from geographic to geo-spacial mapping data. Map layers allow you to add successive levels of detail, navigational panes for panning in all directions, color swatch panes that facilitate value scales like Choropleth shading, and scale panes allowing users to zoom-in and out. Both toolsets introduce the first of many relationship maps! With the xamOrgChart™ CTP you can map out organizational charts of up to 50K employees, competitive brackets (think World Cup) and any other relational, organizational map your application needs. http://www.infragistics.com span.fullpost {display:none;}

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  • Big Companies Influence Retail in 2010

    - by David Dorf
    From a retail industry perspective, 2010 will go down as the year mobile went mainstream, the economy recovered from the crash, and Facebook surpassed Google as the most influential online property. While the economy certainly had the biggest impact on the retail industry, a few big companies also exerted influence. Here's a rundown and a look back at 2010: Apple -- Steve Jobs and company continued to lead the mobile pack. Consumers are using their iPhones to shop, retailers are using the iPod Touch for mobile checkout, and both are embracing the iPad as the next wave of technology. The Next Technology from Apple Mobile Platforms in Retail Apple Stores, Touch2Systems, and the iPad Google -- Not to be outdone, Google's Android platform grew faster than Apple's, plus they support QRCodes natively and will probably beat Apple to NFC. Google Checkout, Product Search, and Boutiques.com continue to impact the e-commerce scene. Google Leverages Like.com Facebook -- While the movie The Social Network certainly made Facebook a household name, Connect, Places, and seeing the "like" button all over the Web really pushed Facebook everywhere. 2010 set the foundations for f-commerce. Facebook Participatory Promotions Crowd Savers What's the value of a Facebook fan? Step Aside Google Leveraging Social Networks for Retail Social Shopping at Nine West Groupon -- This newcomer executed on a simple concept flawlessly, making them the fasted company to reach $1B in revenue. (See cool chart from Silicon Alley Insider.) Google's offer of $5-6B wasn't enough, so now they are raising an additional $1B in funding, presumably to buy-up all the copycats across the globe. Changing the Way We Shop Amazon -- As if leading the e-commerce charge wasn't enough, Amazon shook things up with their purchase of Woot and release of their Price Checker mobile app. They continue to push boundaries with Kindle, and don't seem worried about the iPad at all. You Can't Win on Price Amazon Looks at Your Social Graph eBay -- Acquiring Skype didn't exactly work out, but eBay's purchase of PayPal and RedLaser are driving the company forward. They are still a major force. Bump the Bill Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, and Cisco left their marks on the retail industry as well with various acquisitions and CxO shake-ups. We'll just have to wait and see what 2011 brings next.

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  • How to interview a natural scientist for a dev position?

    - by Silas
    I already did some interviews for my company, mostly computer scientists for dev positions but also some testers and project managers. Now I have to fill a vacancy in our research group within the R&D department (side note: “research” means that we try to solve problems in our professional domain/market niche using software in research projects together with universities, other companies, research centres and end user organisations. It’s not computer science research; we’re not going to solve the P=NP problem). Now we invited a guy holding an MSc in chemistry (with a lot of physics in his CV, too), who never had any computer science lesson. I already talked with him about half an hour at a local university’s career days and there’s no doubt the guy is smart. Also his marks are excellent and he graduated with distinction. For his BSc he needed to teach himself programming in Mathematica and told me believably that he liked programming a lot. Also he solved some physical chemistry problem that I probably don’t understand using his own software, implemented in Mathematica, for his MSc thesis. It includes a GUI and a notable size of 8,000 LoC. He seems to be very attracted by what we’re doing in our research group and to be honest it’s quite difficult for an SME like us to get good people. I also am very interested in hiring him since he could assist me in writing project proposals, reports, doing presentations and so on. He would probably fit to our team, too. The only question left is: How can I check if he will get the programming skills he needs to do software implementation in our projects since this will be a significant part of the job? Of course I will ask him what it is, that is fascinating him about programming. I’ll also ask how he proceeded to write his natural science software and how he structured it. I’ll ask about how he managed to obtain the skills and information about software development he needed. But is there something more I could ask? Something more concrete perhaps? Should I ask him to explain his Mathematica solution? To be clear: I’m not looking for knowledge in a particular language or technology stack. We’re a .NET shop in product development but I want to have a free choice for our research projects. So I’m interested in the meta-competence being able to learn whatever is actually needed. I hope this question is answerable and not open-ended since I really like to know if there is a default way to check for the ability to get further programming skills on the job. If something is not clear to you please give me some comments and let me improve my question.

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  • Maximizing the Value of Software

    - by David Dorf
    A few years ago we decided to increase our investments in documenting retail processes and architectures.  There were several goals but the main two were to help retailers maximize the value they derive from our software and help system integrators implement our software faster.  The sale is only part of our success metric -- its actually more important that the customer realize the benefits of the software.  That's when we actually celebrate. This week many of our customers are gathered in Chicago to discuss their successes during our annual Crosstalk conference.  That provides the perfect forum to announce the release of the Oracle Retail Reference Library.  The RRL is available for free to Oracle Retail customers and partners.  It contains 1000s of hours of work and represents years of experience in the retail industry.  The Retail Reference Library is composed of three offerings: Retail Reference Model We've been sharing the RRM for several years now, with lots of accolades.  The RRM is a set of business process diagrams at varying levels of granularity. This release marks the debut of Visio documents, which should make it easier for retailers to adopt and edit the diagrams.  The processes represent an approximation of the Oracle Retail software, but at higher levels they are pretty generic and therefore usable with other software as well.  Using these processes, the business and IT are better able to communicate the expectations of the software.  They can be used to guide customization when necessary, and help identify areas for optimization in the organization. Retail Reference Architecture When embarking on a software implementation project, it can be daunting to start from a blank sheet of paper.  So we offer the RRA, a comprehensive set of documents that describe the retail enterprise in terms of logical architecture, physical deployments, and systems integration.  These documents and diagrams describe how all the systems typically found in a retailer enterprise work together.  They serve as a way to jump-start implementations using best practices we've captured over the years. Retail Semantic Glossary Have you ever seen two people argue over something because they're using misaligned terminology?  Its a huge waste and happens all the time.  The Retail Semantic Glossary is a simple application that allows retailers to define terms and metrics in a centralized database.  This initial version comes with limited content with the goal of adding more over subsequent releases.  This is the single source for defining key performance indicators, metrics, algorithms, and terms so that the retail organization speaks in a consistent language. These three offerings are downloaded from MyOracleSupport separately and linked together using the start page above.  Everything is navigated using a Web browser.  See the Oracle Retail Documentation blog for more details.

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  • Analysing SQLBits Feedback

    - by jamiet
    Earlier this week I received all the feedback that people offered on my session at SQLBits 7 in York – “SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning” (the video is available online if you wish to see it). As you may have gathered from previous posts on this blog and my less-SQLy-focused Wordpress blog I am a big fan of collecting and tracking both personal and public data and session feedback lends itself very well to tracking because it is quantitative rather than qualitative; by that I mean attendees are invited to provide marks out of ten rather than (or, in the case of SQLBits, as well as) written comments. The SQLBits feedback is also useful because they use a consistent format – the same questions are asked each time – this means it is particularly easy to to track whether the scores that people give are trending up or down. I suspect that somewhere the SQLBits organisers have a big Analysis Services cube (ok, perhaps its an Excel pivot table) that allows them to analyse these scores per conference, speaker, track etc.… and there’s no reason that we as session speakers cannot do the same thing. To that end I have started to store my feedback in an Excel spreadsheet of my own which in the interests of transparency is available for public viewing (only a web browser required) on SkyDrive at http://cid-550f681dad532637.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/Misc/Personal%20SQLBits%20Session%20Feedback.xlsx. I have used a pivot table to aggregate all that feedback and here is a screenshot: I am hereby making a public plea to the SQLBits organisers (on the off-chance that they are reading) to please continue to keep the feedback format consistent in the future and I encourage them to publish all of the feedback in an anonymised form. I would also encourage anyone doing conference speaking to track their conference feedback in the same way that I am doing so that you get an insight into whether or not you are improving over time. It is not difficult to setup and maintaining it as you do more sessions takes very little effort. Storing feedback data like this leads me to wider thoughts about well-known conventions and data format standardisation. Let’s imagine a utopia where there were a standard set of questions for capturing session feedback that were leveraged at every conference regardless of subject matter, location or culture; that would give rise to immense cross-conference and cross-discipline analysis – the data analyst in me goes giddy at the thought of it. It is scenarios like this that drive my interest both in data formats such as iCalendar, microformats and RDF, and in emerging movements such as the semantic web and linked data, all things which I have written about in the past. I don’t know whether we will ever reach the stage where every piece of data has structured, descriptive metadata associated with it but I live in hope. @Jamiet

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