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• Changing direction of rotation Pygame

  - by czl

  How would you change the direction of a rotating image/rect in Pygame? Applying positive and negative degree values works but it seems to only be able to rotate one direction throughout my window. Is there a way to ensure a change in direction of rotation? Perhaps change up rotation of a spinning image every 5 seconds, or if able to change the direction of the spin when hitting a X or Y axis. I've added some code below. It seems like switching movement directions is easy with rect.move_ip as long as I specify a speed and have location clause, it does what I want. Unfortunately rotation is't like that. Here I'l adding angles to make sure it spins, but no matter what I try, I'm unable to negate the rotation. def rotate_image(self): #rotate image orig_rect = self.image.get_rect() rot_image = pygame.transform.rotate(self.image, self.angle) rot_rect = orig_rect.copy() rot_rect.center = rot_image.get_rect().center rot_image = rot_image.subsurface(rot_rect).copy() return rot_image def render(self): self.screen.fill(self.bg_color) self.rect.move_ip(0,5) #Y axis movement at 5 px per frame self.angle += 5 #add 5 anglewhen the rect has not hit one of the window self.angle %= 360 if self.rect.left < 0 or self.rect.right > self.width: self.speed[0] = -self.speed[0] self.angle = -self.angle #tried to invert the angle self.angle -= 5 #trying to negate the angle rotation self.angle %= 360 self.screen.blit(self.rotate_image(),self.rect) pygame.display.flip() I would really like to know how to invert rotation of a image. You may provide your own examples.

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• UPDATE Table SET Field

  - by davlyo

  This is my Very first Post! Bear with me. I have an Update Statement that I am trying to understand how SQL Server handles it. UPDATE a SET a.vField3 = b.vField3 FROM tableName a INNER JOIN tableName b ON a.vField1 = b.vField1 AND b.nField2 = a.nField2 – 1 This is my query in its simplest form. vField1 is a Varchar nField2 is an int (autonumber) vField3 is a Varchar I have left the WHERE clause out so understand there is logic that otherwise makes this a nessessity. Say vField1 is a Customer Number and that Customer has 3 records The value in nField2 is 1, 2, and 3 consecutively. vField3 is a Status When the Update comes to a.nField2 = 1 there is no a.nField2 -1 so it continues When the Update comes to a.nField2 = 2, b.nField2 = 1 When the Update comes to a.nField2 = 3, b.nField2 = 2 So when the Update is on a.nField2 = 2, alias b reflects what is on the line prior (b.nField2 = 1) And it SETs the Varchar Value of a.vField3 = b.vField3 When the Update is on a.nField2 = 3, alias b reflects what is on the line prior (b.nField2 = 2) And it (should) SET the Varchar Value of a.vField3 = b.vField3 When the process is complete –the Second of three records looks as expected –hence the value in vField3 of the second record reflects the value in vField3 from the First record However, vField3 of the Third record does not reflect the value in vField3 from the Second record. I think this demonstrates that SQL Server may be producing a transaction of some sort and then an update. Question: How can I get the DB to Update after each transaction so I can reference the values generated by each transaction?

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• FreeText COUNT query on multiple tables is super slow

  - by Eric P

  I have two tables: **Product** ID Name SKU **Brand** ID Name Product table has about 120K records Brand table has 30K records I need to find count of all the products with name and brand matching a specific keyword. I use freetext 'contains' like this: SELECT count(*) FROM Product inner join Brand on Product.BrandID = Brand.ID WHERE (contains(Product.Name, 'pants') or contains(Brand.Name, 'pants')) This query takes about 17 secs. I rebuilt the FreeText index before running this query. If I only check for Product.Name. They query is less then 1 sec. Same, if I only check the Brand.Name. The issue occurs if I use OR condition. If I switch query to use LIKE: SELECT count(*) FROM Product inner join Brand on Product.BrandID = Brand.ID WHERE Product.Name LIKE '%pants%' or Brand.Name LIKE '%pants%' It takes 1 secs. I read on MSDN that: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187787.aspx To search on multiple tables, use a joined table in your FROM clause to search on a result set that is the product of two or more tables. So I added an INNER JOINED table to FROM: SELECT count(*) FROM (select Product.Name ProductName, Product.SKU ProductSKU, Brand.Name as BrandName FROM Product inner join Brand on product.BrandID = Brand.ID) as TempTable WHERE contains(TempTable.ProductName, 'pants') or contains(TempTable.BrandName, 'pants') This results in error: Cannot use a CONTAINS or FREETEXT predicate on column 'ProductName' because it is not full-text indexed. So the question is - why OR condition could be causing such as slow query?

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• Using the JPA Criteria API, can you do a fetch join that results in only one join?

  - by Shaun

  Using JPA 2.0. It seems that by default (no explicit fetch), @OneToOne(fetch = FetchType.EAGER) fields are fetched in 1 + N queries, where N is the number of results containing an Entity that defines the relationship to a distinct related entity. Using the Criteria API, I might try to avoid that as follows: CriteriaBuilder builder = entityManager.getCriteriaBuilder(); CriteriaQuery<MyEntity> query = builder.createQuery(MyEntity.class); Root<MyEntity> root = query.from(MyEntity.class); Join<MyEntity, RelatedEntity> join = root.join("relatedEntity"); root.fetch("relatedEntity"); query.select(root).where(builder.equals(join.get("id"), 3)); The above should ideally be equivalent to the following: SELECT m FROM MyEntity m JOIN FETCH myEntity.relatedEntity r WHERE r.id = 3 However, the criteria query results in the root table needlessly being joined to the related entity table twice; once for the fetch, and once for the where predicate. The resulting SQL looks something like this: SELECT myentity.id, myentity.attribute, relatedentity2.id, relatedentity2.attribute FROM my_entity myentity INNER JOIN related_entity relatedentity1 ON myentity.related_id = relatedentity1.id INNER JOIN related_entity relatedentity2 ON myentity.related_id = relatedentity2.id WHERE relatedentity1.id = 3 Alas, if I only do the fetch, then I don't have an expression to use in the where clause. Am I missing something, or is this a limitation of the Criteria API? If it's the latter, is this being remedied in JPA 2.1 or are there any vendor-specific enhancements? Otherwise, it seems better to just give up compile-time type checking (I realize my example doesn't use the metamodel) and use dynamic JPQL TypedQueries.

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• Composable FLinq expressions

  - by Daniel

  When doing linq-to-sql in c#, you could do something like this: var data = context.MyTable.Where(x => x.Parameter > 10); var q1 = data.Take(10); var q2 = data.Take(3); q1.ToArray(); q2.ToArray(); This would generate 2 separate SQL queries, one with TOP 10, and the other with TOP 3. In playing around with Flinq, I see that: let data = query <@ seq { for i in context.MyTable do if x.Parameter > 10 then yield i } @> data |> Seq.take 10 |> Seq.toList data |> Seq.take 3 |> Seq.toList is not doing the same thing. Here it seems to do one full query, and then do the "take" calls on the client side. An alternative that I see used is: let q1 = query <@ for i in context.MyTable do if x.Param > 10 then yield i } |> Seq.take 10 @> let q2 = query <@ for i in context.MyTable do if x.Param > 10 then yield i } |> Seq.take 3 @> These 2 generate the SQL with the appropriate TOP N filter. My problem with this is that it doesn't seem composable. I'm basically having to duplicate the "where" clause, and potentially would have to duplicate other other subqueries that I might want to run on a base query. Is there a way to have F# give me something more composable? (I originally posted this question to hubfs, where I have gotten a few answers, dealing with the fact that C# performs the query transformation "at the end", i.e. when the data is needed, where F# is doing that transformation eagerly.)

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• Loop through Array with conditional output based on key/value pair

  - by Daniel C

  I have an array with the following columns: Task Status I would like to print out a table that shows a list of the Tasks, but not the Status column. Instead, for Tasks where the Status = 0, I want to add a tag <del> to make the completed task be crossed out. Here's my current code: foreach ($row as $key => $val){ if ($key != 'Status') print "<td>$val</td>"; else if ($val == '0') print "<td><del>$val</del></td>"; } This seems to be correct, but when I print it out, it prints all the tasks with the <del> tag. So basically the "else" clause is being run every time. Here is the var_dump($row): array 'Task' => string 'Task A' (length=6) 'Status' => string '3' (length=1) array 'Task' => string 'Task B' (length=6) 'Status' => string '0' (length=1)

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• dm_exec_query_stats returning stale data?

  - by VoiceOfUnreason

  I've been testing my app on a SQL Server 2005 database, and am trying to establish a preliminary picture of the query performance using sys.dm_exec_query_stats. Problem: there's a particular query that I'm interested in, because total_elapsed_time and last_elapsed_time are both large numbers. When I tickle my app to invoke that query (this runs successfully), then refresh my view of the stats, I find that 1) execution_count has incremented (expected) 2) last_execution_time has updated to now (expected) 3) last_elapsed_time is still a large value (not expected - I anticipated a new value) 4) total_elapsed_time is unchanged (contradiction?) If last_elapsed_time refers to the execution that happened @ last_execution_time, then the total_elapsed_time should have increased? This documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189741(SQL.90).aspx tells me that last_execution_time is the last time the plan was executed, and last_elapsed_time comes from the "most recently executed plan", but doesn't tell me why those might be different. The query itself is uncomplicated (SELECT/WHERE/ORDER BY - parameters appearing in the where clause, but no clever operations), the table has maybe 25 rows in it right now. Questions: 1) What's the real relationship between execution_count, last_execution_time, and last_elapsed_time? 2) Where is the documentation of this relationship (manual, third party book, blog, bug ticket, stone tablets...) ?

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• Create an index only on certain rows in mysql

  - by dhruvbird

  So, I have this funny requirement of creating an index on a table only on a certain set of rows. This is what my table looks like: USER: userid, friendid, created, blah0, blah1, ..., blahN Now, I'd like to create an index on: (userid, friendid, created) but only on those rows where userid = friendid. The reason being that this index is only going to be used to satisfy queries where the WHERE clause contains "userid = friendid". There will be many rows where this is NOT the case, and I really don't want to waste all that extra space on the index. Another option would be to create a table (query table) which is populated on insert/update of this table and create a trigger to do so, but again I am guessing an index on that table would mean that the data would be stored twice. How does mysql store Primary Keys? I mean is the table ordered on the Primary Key or is it ordered by insert order and the PK is like a normal unique index? I checked up on clustered indexes (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-index-types.html), but it seems only InnoDB supports them. I am using MyISAM (I mention this because then I could have created a clustered index on these 3 fields in the query table). I am basically looking for something like this: ALTER TABLE USERS ADD INDEX (userid, friendid, created) WHERE userid=friendid

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• Implementing search functionality with multiple optional parameters against database table.

  - by quarkX

  Hello, I would like to check if there is a preferred design pattern for implementing search functionality with multiple optional parameters against database table where the access to the database should be only via stored procedures. The targeted platform is .Net with SQL 2005, 2008 backend, but I think this is pretty generic problem. For example, we have customer table and we want to provide search functionality to the UI for different parameters, like customer Type, customer State, customer Zip, etc., and all of them are optional and can be selected in any combinations. In other words, the user can search by customerType only or by customerType, customerZIp or any other possible combinations. There are several available design approaches, but all of them have some disadvantages and I would like to ask if there is a preferred design among them or if there is another approach. Generate sql where clause sql statement dynamically in the business tier, based on the search request from the UI, and pass it to a stored procedure as parameter. Something like @Where = ‘where CustomerZip = 111111’ Inside the stored procedure generate dynamic sql statement and execute it with sp_executesql. Disadvantage: dynamic sql, sql injection Implement a stored procedure with multiple input parameters, representing the search fields from the UI, and use the following construction for selecting the records only for the requested fields in the where statement. WHERE (CustomerType = @CustomerType OR @CustomerType is null ) AND (CustomerZip = @CustomerZip OR @CustomerZip is null ) AND ………………………………………… Disadvantage: possible performance issue for the sql. 3.Implement separate stored procedure for each search parameter combinations. Disadvantage: The number of stored procedures will increase rapidly with the increase of the search parameters, repeated code.

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• Adding up row number and displaying total using COUNT (PHP MySQL)

  - by Yvonne

  I'm attempting to run a query that adds up the total number of subjects in a class. A class has many subjects. There is a 'teachersclasses' table between teachers (the user table) and classes. The principles sounds pretty simple but I'm having some trouble in getting my page to display the number of subjects for each class (directly associated with the teacher) This is what I have so far, trying to make use of the COUNT with a nested SELECT: SELECT (SELECT count(*) FROM subjects WHERE subjects.classid = class.classid) AS total_subjects, class.classname, class.classid FROM class Then I am calling up 'num_subjects' to present the total within a while loop: <?php echo $row['total_subjects']?> From the above, I am receiving the total subjects for a class, but within the same table row (for one class) and my other while loop doesnt run anymore, which returns all of the classes associated with a teacher :( ... Bit of a mess now! I know to return the classes for a particular teacher, I can do an additional WHERE clause on the session of 'teacherid' but I think my query is getting too complicated for me that errors are popping up everywhere. Anyone have a quick fix for this! Thanks very much

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• Creating nested fields for column on assignment table?

  - by H O

  I have three models, that represent a many to many relationship - Product, Sale and Product_sale. I have a nested form that allows me to create new products from the sale form - so far, so good. I have, however, added some additional fields to the assignment table - price, for example. How can I set the price on the assignment table from the product form, when it is nested in the sale form? I currently have the code below: <%= sale.fields_for :products do |products_builder| %> <%= render :partial => "products/form", :locals => {:f => products_builder, :form_actions_visible => false} %> <% end -%> I could nest a Product_sale form within the product form, but this would create a new product_sale, which is not what I am looking for. I will most likely need to nest the price field within the product form, to ensure that it updates the correct assignment record (since there could be multiple products on one sale form). How can I use a fields_for loop on the product form to update the existing assignment record that is built when I do @sale.products.build? The assignment record will not yet be saved, so I can not access it using a where clause and edit it that way. Thanks!

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• limiting mysql results by range of a specific key INCLUDING DUPLICATES

  - by aVC

  I have a query SELECT p.*, m.*, (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM newPhotoonAlert n WHERE n.userIDfor='$id' AND n.threadID=p.threadID and n.seen='0') AS unReadCount FROM posts p JOIN myMembers m ON m.id = p.user_id LEFT JOIN following f ON (p.user_id = f.user_id AND f.follower_id='$id' AND f.request='0' AND f.status='1') JOIN myMembers searcher ON searcher.id = '$id' WHERE ((f.follower_id = searcher.id) OR m.id='$id') AND p.flagged <'5' ORDER BY p.threadID DESC,p.positionID It brings result as expected but I want to add Another CLAUSE to limit the results. Say a sample (minimal shown) set of data looks like this with the above query. threadID postID positionID url 564 1254 2 a.com 564 1245 1 a1.com 541 1215 3 b1.com 541 1212 2 b2.com 541 1210 1 b3.com 523 745 1 c1.com 435 689 2 d2.com 435 688 1 a4.com 256 345 1 s3.com 164 316 1 f1.com . . I want to get ROWS corresponding to 2 DISTINCT threadIDs starting from MAX, but I want to include duplicates as well. Something like AND p.threadID IN (Select just Two of all threadIDs currently selected, but include duplicate rows) So my result should be threadID postID positionID url 564 1254 2 a.com 564 1245 1 a1.com 541 1215 3 b1.com 541 1212 2 b2.com 541 1210 1 b3.com

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• MySQL: Replicating the MySQL database

  - by Lee

  Hi guys, I have a primary write server (server1) which replications to two servers (server2 and server3) which are query servers. I am replicating all databases to these servers including the MySQL database. When i execute a GRANT as follows replication works perfectly.. GRANT execute,select ON database1.* TO `user1`@`host` IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; However if i did the same GRANT to alter permissions on an existing user without IDENTIFIED clause replication breaks.. Error 'Can't find any matching row in the user table' on query. Default database: 'mysql'. Query: 'GRANT execute,select ON database1.* TO `user`@`host`' If I try and run the query manually i get the same error.. Server 1: mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%"; +-------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | protocol_version | 10 | | version | 5.0.77-log | **my.cnf** [mysqld] datadir=/var/lib/mysql socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock user=mysql old_passwords=1 symbolic-links=0 max_allowed_packet = 100M log-bin = /var/lib/mysql/logs/borg-binlog.log max_binlog_size=50M expire_logs_days=7 [mysql.server] user=mysql basedir=/var/lib [mysqld_safe] log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid Server 2: mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%"; +-------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | protocol_version | 10 | | version | 5.0.77-log | my.cnf server-id=12 master-host=x master-user=x master-password=x master-connect-retry=60 relay-log=/var/lib/mysql/borg-relay.log relay-log-index=/var/lib/mysql/borg-relay-log.index Thanks for taking a look Edit: Currently its running fine, until you do the grant which breaks it... mysql> show slave status\G *************************** 1. row *************************** Slave_IO_State: Waiting for master to send event Master_Host: 10.128.0.5 Master_User: repli-ragnarok Master_Port: 3306 Connect_Retry: 60 Master_Log_File: borg-binlog.002730 Read_Master_Log_Pos: 4375760 Relay_Log_File: borg-relay.005489 Relay_Log_Pos: 4375899 Relay_Master_Log_File: borg-binlog.002730 Slave_IO_Running: Yes Slave_SQL_Running: Yes Replicate_Do_DB: Replicate_Ignore_DB: Replicate_Do_Table: Replicate_Ignore_Table: Replicate_Wild_Do_Table: Replicate_Wild_Ignore_Table: Last_Errno: 0 Last_Error: Skip_Counter: 0 Exec_Master_Log_Pos: 4375760 Relay_Log_Space: 4375899 Until_Condition: None Until_Log_File: Until_Log_Pos: 0 Master_SSL_Allowed: No Master_SSL_CA_File: Master_SSL_CA_Path: Master_SSL_Cert: Master_SSL_Cipher: Master_SSL_Key: Seconds_Behind_Master: 0 1 row in set (0.00 sec) Edit: Broken show slave status from history +----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+--------------------+---------------------+-------------------+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+-------------------+-----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+---------------------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------+-----------------------+ | Slave_IO_State | Master_Host | Master_User | Master_Port | Connect_Retry | Master_Log_File | Read_Master_Log_Pos | Relay_Log_File | Relay_Log_Pos | Relay_Master_Log_File | Slave_IO_Running | Slave_SQL_Running | Replicate_Do_DB | Replicate_Ignore_DB | Replicate_Do_Table | Replicate_Ignore_Table | Replicate_Wild_Do_Table | Replicate_Wild_Ignore_Table | Last_Errno | Last_Error | Skip_Counter | Exec_Master_Log_Pos | Relay_Log_Space | Until_Condition | Until_Log_File | Until_Log_Pos | Master_SSL_Allowed | Master_SSL_CA_File | Master_SSL_CA_Path | Master_SSL_Cert | Master_SSL_Cipher | Master_SSL_Key | Seconds_Behind_Master | +----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+--------------------+---------------------+-------------------+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+-------------------+-----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+---------------------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------+-----------------------+ | Waiting for master to send event | 10.128.0.5 | repli-valhalla | 3306 | 60 | borg-binlog.002729 | 40429793 | borg-relay.005486 | 40311514 | borg-binlog.002729 | Yes | No | | | | | | | 1133 | Error 'Can't find any matching row in the user table' on query. Default database: 'mysql'. Query: 'GRANT execute,select ON auth_tracker.* TO `mail-sin1`@`%.sin1.netline.net.uk` IDENTIFIED BY 'mail-sin1666'' | 0 | 40311375 | 40429932 | None | | 0 | No | | | | | | NULL | +----------------------------------+-------------+----------------+-------------+---------------+--------------------+---------------------+-------------------+---------------+-----------------------+------------------+-------------------+-----------------+---------------------+--------------------+------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------------------+------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+---------------------+-----------------+-----------------+----------------+---------------+--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------+-----------------------+ 1 row in set (0.06 sec)

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• Do’s and Don’ts Building SharePoint Applications

  - by Bil Simser

  SharePoint is a great platform for building quick LOB applications. Simple things from employee time trackers to server and software inventory to full blown Help Desks can be crafted up using SharePoint from just customizing Lists. No programming necessary. However there are a few tricks I’ve painfully learned over the years that you can use for your own solutions. DO What’s In A Name? When you create a new list, column, or view you’ll commonly name it something like “Expense Reports”. However this has the ugly effect of creating a url to the list as “Expense%20Reports”. Or worse, an internal field name of “Expense_x0x0020_Reports” which is not only cryptic but hard to remember when you’re trying to find the column by internal name. While “Expense Reports 2011” is user friendly, “ExpenseReports2011” is not (unless you’re a programmer). So that’s not the solution. Well, not entirely. Instead when you create your column or list or view use the scrunched up name (I can’t think of the technical term for it right now) of “ExpenseReports2011”, “WomenAtTheOfficeThatAreMen” or “KoalaMeatIsGoodWhenBroiled”. After you’ve created it, go back and change the name to the more friendly “Silly Expense Reports That Nobody Reads”. The original internal name will be the url and code friendly one without spaces while the one used on data entry forms and view headers will be the human version. Smart Columns When building a view include columns that make sense. By default when you add a column the “Add to default view” is checked. Resist the urge to be lazy and leave it checked. Uncheck that puppy and decide consciously what columns should be included in the view. Pick columns that make sense to what the user is trying to do. This means you have to talk to the user. Yes, I know. That can be trying at times and even painful. Go ahead, talk to them. You might learn something. Find out what’s important to them and why. If they’re doing something repetitively as part of their job, try to make their life easier by including what’s most important to them. Do they really need to see the Created *and* Modified date of a document or do they just need the title and author? You’ll only find out after talking to them (or getting them drunk in a bar and leaving them in the back alley handcuffed to a garbage bin, don’t ask). Gotta Keep it Separated Hey, views are there for a reason. Use them. While “All Items” is a fine way to present a list of well, all items, it’s hardly sufficient to present a list of servers built before the Y2K bug hit. You’ll be scrolling the list for hours finally arriving at Page 387 of 12,591 and cursing that SharePoint guy for convincing you that putting your hardware into a list would be of any use to anyone. Next to collecting the data, presenting it is just as important. Views are often overlooked and many times ignored or misused. They’re the way you can slice and dice the data up so that you’re not trying to consume 3,000 years of human evolution on a single web page. Remember views can be filtered so feel free to create a view for each status or one for each operating system or one for each species of Information Worker you might be putting in that list or document library. Not only will it reduce the number of items someone sees at one time, it’ll also make the information that much more relevant. Also remember that each view is a separate page. Use it in navigation by creating a menu on the Quick Launch to each view. The discoverability of the Views menu isn’t overly obvious and if you violate the rule of columns (see Horizontally Scrolling below) the view menu doesn’t even show up until you shuffle the scroll bar to the left. Navigation links, big giant buttons, a screaming flashing “CLICK ME NOW” will help your users find their way. Sort It! Views are great so we’re building nice, rich views for the user. Awesomesauce. However sort is not very discoverable by the user. For example when you’re looking at a view how do you know if it’s ascending or descending and what is it sorted on. Maybe it’s sorted using two fields so what’s that all about? Help your users by letting them know the information they’re looking at is sorted. Maybe you name the view something appropriate like “Bogus Expense Claims Sorted By Deadbeats”. If you use the naming strategy just make sure you keep the name consistent with the description. In the previous example their better be a Deadbeat column so I can see the sort in action. Having a “Loser” column, while equally correct, is a little obtuse to the average Information Worker. Remember, they usually don’t use acronyms and even if they knew how to, it’s not immediately obvious to them that’s what you’re trying to convey. Another option is to simply drop a Content Editor Web Part above the list and explain exactly the view they’re looking at. Each view is it’s own page so one CEWP won’t be used across the board. Be descriptive in what the user is seeing but try to keep it brief. Dumping the first chapter of I, Claudius might be informative to the data but can gobble up screen real estate and miss the point of having the list. DO NOT Useless Attachments The attachments column is, in a word, useless. For the most part. Sure it indicates there’s an attachment on the list item but in the grand scheme of things that’s not overly informative. Maybe it is and by all means, if it makes sense to you include it. Colour it. Make it shine and stand like the Return of Clippy on every SharePoint list. Without it being functional it can be boring. EndUserSharePoint.com has an article to make the son of Clippy that much more useful so feel free to head over and check out this blog post by Paul Grenier on the task (Warning code ahead! Danger Will Robinson!) In any case, I would suggest you remove it from your views. Again if it’s important then include it but consider the jQuery solution above to make it functional. It’s added by default to views and one of things that people forget to clean up. Horizontal Scrolling Screen real estate is premium so building a list that contains 8,000 columns and stretches horizontally across 15 screens probably isn’t the most user friendly experience. Most users can’t figure out how to scroll vertically let alone horizontally so don’t make it even that more confusing for them. Take the Steve Krug approach in your view designs and try not to make the user think. Again views are your friend. Consider splitting up the data into views where one view contains 10 columns and other view contains the other 10. Okay, maybe your information doesn’t work that way but humans can only process 7 pieces of data at a time, 10 at most (then their heads explode and you don’t want to clean that mess up, especially on a Friday night before the big dance). It drives me batshit crazy when I see a view with 80 columns of data. I often ask the user “So what do you do with all this information”. The response is usually “With this data [the first 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to fire everyone, and with this data [the next 10 columns] I decide if I’m going to set the building on fire and collect the insurance”. It’s at that point I show them how to create two new views “People Who Are About To Get The Axe” and “Beach Time For The Executives”. Again, talk to your users and try to reason with them on cutting down the number of columns they see at once. Vertical Scrolling Another big faux pas I find is the use of multi-line comment fields in views. It’s not so bad when you have a statement like this in your view: “I really like, oh my god, thought I was going to scream when I saw this turtle then I decided what I was going to have for dinner and frankly I hate having to work late so when I was talking to the customer I thought, oh my god, what if the customer has turtles and then it appeared to me that I really was hungry so I'm going to have lunch now.” It’s fine if that’s the only column along with two or three others, but once you slap those 20 columns of data into the list, the comment field wraps and forms a new multi-page novel that takes up your entire screen. Do everyone a favour and just avoid adding the column to views. Train the user to just click through to the item if they need to see the contents. Duplicate Information Duplication is never good. Views and great as you can group data together. For example create a view of project status reports grouped by author. Then you can see what project manager is being a dip and not submitting their report. However if you group by author do you really need the Created By field as well in the view? Or if the view is grouped by Project then Author do you need both. Horizontal real estate is always at a premium so try not to clutter up the view with duplicate data like this. Oh  yeah, if you’re scratching your head saying “But Bil, if I don’t include the Project name in the view and I have a lot of items then how do I know which one I’m looking at”. That’s a hint that your grouping is too vague or you have too much data in the view based on that criteria. Filter it down a notch, create some views, and try to keep the group down to a single screen where you can see the group header at the top of the page. Again it’s just managing the information you have. Redundant, See Redundant This partially relates to duplicate information and smart columns but basically remember to not include the obvious in a view. Remember, don’t make me think. If you’ve gone to the trouble (and it was a lot of trouble wasn’t it?) to create separate views of your data by creating a “September Zombie Brain Sales”, “October Zombie Brain Sales”, etc. then please for the love of all that is holy do not include the Month and Product columns in your view. Similarly if you create a “My” view of anything (“My Favourite Brands of Spandex”, “My Co-Workers I Find The Urge To Disinfect”) then again, do not include the owner or author field (or whatever field you use to identify “My”). That’s just silly. Hope that helps! Happy customizing!

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• Begin the Clone Wars Have!

  - by Antony Reynolds

  Creating a New Virtual Machine from an Existing Virtual Disk In previous posts I described how I set up an OEL6 machine under VirtualBox that can run an 11gR2 database and FMW 11.1.1.5.  That is great if you want the DB and FMW running in the same virtual image and it has served me well for some proof of concepts and also for some testing of different JVMs.  However I also wanted to run some testing of FMW with the database running on a separate physical machine.  So in this post I will show how to take a VirtualBox image and create a new image based on the disks from that original image. What are my Options? There is more than one way to skin a cat, or in this case to create two separate VMs that can run on different hardware.  Some of the options include: Create new virtual disk images for each new VM. Clone the existing disk images and point the new VM at the cloned images. Point the new VM at the existing snapshots. #1 is too much like hard work, install OEL twice, install a database again, install FMW again, run RCU again!  Life is too short! #2 is probably the safest way of doing things.  VirtualBox allows you to clone a disk image for use in a separate machine.  However this of course duplicates the disk and means that it is now occupying 3 times the space, once for the original disk and twice more for the two clones I would need. #3 is the most space efficient way of doing things.  It does mean however that I can only run the new “cloned” images if I have access to the original image because that is where the base snapshots reside.  However this is not a problem for me as long as I remember to keep all threee images together.  So this is the approach we will follow. Snapshot, What Snapshot? As we are going to create new virtual machines based on existing snapshots we need to figure out which snapshot to use.  We do this by opening the “Media Manager” from within VirtualBox and moving the mouse over the snapshot images until we find the snapshots we want – the snapshot name is identified in the “Attached to:” comment.  In my case I wanted the FMW installed snapshot because that had a database configured for FMW alongside the FMW software.  I made a note of the filename of that snapshot (actually I just noted the first 5 characters as that was all that was needed to uniquely identify the snapshot file). When we create the new machines we will point them at the snapshot filename we have just checked. Network or NotWork? Because we want the two new machines to communicate with each other when hosted in different physical machines we can’t use the default NAT networking mode without a lot of hassle.  But at the same time we need them to have fixed IP addresses relative to each other so that they can see each other whilst also being able to see the outside world. To achieve all these requirements I created two network adapters for each machine.  Adapter 1 was a standard NAT mapping.  This will allow each machine to get a dynamic IP address (10.0.2.15 by default) that can be used to access the external world through the VBox provided NAT gateway.  This is the same as the existing configuration. The second adapter I created as a bridged adapter.  This gives the virtual machine direct access to the host network card and by using fixed IP addresses each machine can see the other.  It is important to choose fixed IP addresses that are not routable across your internal network so you don’t get any clashes with other machines on your network.  Of course you could always get proper fixed IP addresses from your network people, but I have serveral people using my images and as long as I don’t have two instances of the same VM on the same network segment this is easier and avoids reconfiguring the network every time someone wants a copy of my VM.  If it is available I would suggest using the 10.0.3.* network as 10.0.2.* is the default NAT network.  You can check availability by pinging 10.0.3.1 and 10.0.3.2 from your host machine.  If it times out then you are probably safe to use that. Creating the New VMs Now that I had collected the data that I needed I went ahead and created the new VMs. When asked for a “Boot Hard Disk” I used the “Choose a virtual hard disk file…” link to find the snapshot I had previously selected and set that to be the existing hard disk.  I chose the previously existing SOA 11.1.1.5 install for both the new DB and FMW machines because that snapshot had the database with the RCU completed that I wanted for my DB machine and it had the SOA software installed which I wanted for my FMW machine. After the initial creation of the virtual machine go into the network setting section and enable a second adapter which will be bridged.  Make a note of the MAC addresses (the last four digits should be sufficient) of the two adapters so that you can later set the bridged adapter to use fixed IP and the NAT adapter to use DHCP. We are now ready to start the VMs and reconfigure Linux. Reconfiguring Linux Because I now have two new machines I need to change their network configuration.  In particular I need to change the hostname, update the hosts file and change the network settings. Changing the Hostname I renamed both hosts by running the hostname command as root: hostname vboxfmw.oracle.com I also edited the /etc/sysconfig file and set the correct hostname in there. HOSTNAME=vboxfmw.oracle.com Changing the Network Settings I needed to change the network configuration to give the bridged network a fixed IP address.  I first explicitly set the MAC addresses of the two adapters, because the order of the virtual adapters in the VirtualBox Manager is not necessarily the same as the order of the adapters in the guest OS.  So I went in to the System->Preferences->Network Connections screen and explicitly set the “Device MAC address” for the two adapters. Having correctly mapped the Linux adapters to the VirtualBox adapters I then set the Bridged adapter to use fixed IP addressing rather than DHCP.  There is no need for additional routing or default gateways because we expect the two machine to be on the same LAN segment. Updating the Hosts File Having renamed the machines and reconfigured the network I then updated the /etc/hosts file to refer to the new machine name add a new line to the hosts file to provide an additional IP address for my server (the new fixed IP address) add a new line for the fixed IP address of the other virtual machine 10.0.3.101      vboxdb.oracle.com       vboxdb  # Added by NetworkManager 10.0.2.15       vboxdb.oracle.com       vboxdb  # Added by NetworkManager 10.0.3.102      vboxfmw.oracle.com      vboxfmw # Added by NetworkManager 127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain   localhost ::1     vboxdb.oracle.com       vboxdb  localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6 To make sure everything takes effect I restarted the server. Reconfiguring the Database on the DB Machine Because we changed the hostname the listener and the EM console no longer start so I need to modify the listener.ora to use the new hostname and I also need to rebuild the EM configuration because it also relies on the hostname. I edited the $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/listener.ora and changed the listening address to the new hostname:       (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = vboxdb.oracle.com)(PORT = 1521)) After changing the listener.ora I was able to start the listener using: lsnrctl start I also had to reconfigure the EM database control.  I first deconfigured it using the command: emca -deconfig dbcontrol db -repos drop This drops the repository and removes any existing registered dbcontrols. I then re-configured it using the following command: emca -config dbcontrol db -repos create This creates the EM repository and then configures and starts dbcontrol. Now my database machine is ready so I can close it down and take a snapshot. Disabling the Database on the FMW Machine I set up the database to start automatically by creating a service called “dbora”.  On the FMW machine I do not need the database running so I can prevent it auto-starting by running the following command: chkconfig –del dbora Note that because I am using a snapshot it is not a waste of disk space to have the DB installed but not used.  As long as I don’t run it, it won’t cost me anything. I can now close the FMW machine down and take a snapshot. Creating a New Domain The FMW machine is now ready to create a new domain.  When creating the domain I can point it at the second machine which is running the database.  I can potentially run these machines on two separate physical machines as long as I have the original virtual machine available to both of the physical machines. Gotchas in Snapshotting VirtualBox does not support the concept of linked machines in a network like some virtualization technologies so when creating a snapshot it is a good idea to shut both VMs down and then take a snapshot on both of them.  This is because we want to keep the database in sync with the middleware.  One way to make sure that this happens would be to place all the domain configuration files on the database server via an NFS share, this would mean that all we would need to snapshot would be the database machine because that would hold all the state and configuration. The Sky’s the Limit We have covered a simple case of having just two machines.  I have a more complicated configuration in which two machine run a RAC database off the same base OS image, and two more machines run a SOA cluster based on the same OS image.  Just remember what machine holds state and what are the consequences of taking a snapshot.

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• MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

  Unfortunately, there was no monthly meetup during May. Which means that it was even more important and interesting to go forward with a great topic for this month. Earlier this year I already spoke to Nayar Joolfoo about doing a presentation on version control systems (VCS), and he gladly agreed since then. It was just about finding the right date for the action. Furthermore, it was also a great coincidence that Avinash Meetoo announced on social media networks that Knowledge 7 is about to have a new training on "Effective git" - which correlates to a book title Avinash is currently working on - all the best with your approach on this and reach out to our MSCC craftsmen for recessions. Once again a big Thank you to Orange Ebene Accelerator on providing the venue for us, and the MSCC members involved on securing the time slot for our event. Unfortunately, it's kind of tough to get an early confirmation for our meetups these days. I'll keep you posted on that one as there are some interesting and exciting options coming up soon. Okay, let's talk about the meeting and version control systems again. As usual, I'm going to put my first impression of the meetup: "Absolutely great topic, questions and discussions on version control systems, like git or VSO. I was also highly pleased by the number of first timers and female IT geeks. Hopefully, we will be able to keep this trend for future get-togethers." And I really have to emphasise the amount of fresh blood coming to our gathering. Also, during the initial phase it was surprising to see that exactly those first-timers, most of them students at various campuses here on the island, had absolutely no idea about version control systems. More about further down... Reactions of other attendees If I counted correctly, we had a total of 17 attendees this month, and I'd like to give you feedback from some of them: "Inspiring. Helped me understand more about GIT." -- Sean on event comments "Joined the meetup today with literally no idea what is a version control system. I have several reasons why I should be starting to use VCS as from NOW in my projects. Thanks Nayar, Jochen and other participants :)" -- Yudish on event comments "Was present today and I'm very satisfied.I was not aware if there was a such tool like git available. Thanks to those who contributed for this meetup.It was great. Learned a lot from this meetup!!" -- Leonardo on event comments "Seriously, I can see how it’s going to ease my task and help me save time. Gone are the issues with files backups.  And since I’ll be doing my dissertation this year, using Git would help me a lot for my backups and I’m grateful to Nayar for the great explanation." -- Swan-Iyah on MSCC meetup : Version Controls Hopefully, I'll be able to get some other sources - personal blogs preferred - on our meeting. Geeks, thank you so much for those encouraging comments. It's really great to experience that we, all members of the MSCC, are doing the right thing to get more IT information out, and to help each other to improve and evolve in our professional careers. Our agenda of the day Honestly, we had a bumpy start... First, I was battling a little bit with the movable room divider in order to maximize the space. I mean, we had 24 RSVPs and usually there might additional people coming along. Then, for what ever reason, we were facing power outages - actually twice in short periods. Not too good for the projector after all, but hey it went smooth for the rest of the time being. And last but not least... our first speaker Nayar got stuck somewhere on the road. ;-) Anyway, not a real show-stopper and we used the time until Nayar's arrival to introduce ourselves a little bit. It is always important for me to get to know the "newbies" a little bit, and as a result we had lots of students of university - first year, second year and recent graduates - among them. Surprisingly, none of them was ever in contact with version control systems at all. I mean, this is a shocking discovery! Similar to the ability of touch-typing I'd say that being able to use (and master) any kind of version control system is compulsory in any job in the IT industry. Seriously, I'm wondering what is being taught during the classes on the campus. All of them have to work on semester assessments or final projects, even in small teams of 2-4 people. That's the perfect occasion to get started with VCS. Already in this phase, we had great input from more experienced VCS users, like Sean, Avinash and myself. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar What a tour! Nayar gave us the full round of git from start to finish, even touching some more advanced techniques. First, he started to explain about the importance of version control systems as an essential tool for software developers, even working alone on a project, and the ability to have a kind of "time machine" that allows you to inspect and revert to a previous version of source code at any time. Then he showed how easy it is to install git on an Ubuntu based system but also mentioned that git is literally available for any operating system, like Windows, Mac OS X and of course other Linux distributions. Next, he showed us how to set the initial configuration values of user name and email address which simplifies the daily usage of the git client while working with your repositories. Then he initialised and added a new repository for some local development of a blogging software. All commands were done using the command line interface (CLI) so that they can be repeated on any system as reference. The syntax and the procedure is always the same, and Nayar clearly mentioned this to the attendees. Now, having a git repository in place it was about time to work on some "important" changes on the blogging software - just for the sake of demonstrating the ease of use and power of git. One interesting question came very early: "How many commands do we have to learn? It looks quite difficult at the moment" - Well, rest assured that during daily development circles you will need less than 10 git commands on a regular base: git add, commit, push, pull, checkout, and merge And Nayar demo'd all of them. Much to the delight of everyone he also showed gitk which is the git repository browser. It's an UI tool to display changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision. Using gitk to display and browse information of a local git repository And last but not least, we took advantage of the internet connectivity and reached out to various online portals offering git hosting for free. Nayar showed us how to push the local repository into a remote system on github. Showing the web-based git browser and history handling, and then also explained and demo'd on how to connect to existing online repositories in order to get access to either your own source code or other people's open source projects. Next to github, we also spoke about bitbucket and gitlab as potential online platforms for your projects. Have a look at the conditions and details about their free service packages and what you can get additionally as a paying customer. Usually, you already get a lot of services for up to five users for free but there might be other important aspects that might have an impact on your decision. Anyways, moving git-based repositories between systems is a piece of cake, and changing online platforms is possible at any stage of your development. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Well, Nayar literally covered all elements of working with git during his session, including the use of external online platforms. So, what would be the advantage of talking about Visual Studio Online (VSO)? First of all, VSO is "just another" online platform for hosting and managing git repositories on remote systems, equivalent to github, bitbucket, or any other web site. At the moment (of writing), Microsoft also provides a free package of up to five users / developers on a git repository but there is more in that package. Of course, it is related to software development on the Windows systems and the bonds are tightened towards the use of Visual Studio but out of experience you are absolutely not restricted to that. Connecting a Linux or Mac OS X machine with a git client or an integrated development environment (IDE) like Eclipse or Xcode works as smooth as expected. So, why should one opt in for VSO? Well, one of the main aspects that I would like to mention here is that VSO integrates the Application Life Cycle Methodology (ALM) of Microsoft in their platform. Meaning that you get agile project management with Backlogs, Sprints, Burn-down charts as well as the ability to track tasks, bug reports and work items next to collaborative team chats. It's the whole package of agile development you'll get. And, something I mentioned briefly during the begin of our meeting, VSO gives you the possibility of an automated continuous integrated (CI) process which builds and can run tests of your source code after each commit of changes. Having a proper CI strategy is also part of the Clean Code Developer practices - on Level Green actually -, and not only simplifies your life as a software developer but also reduces the sources of potential errors. Seamless integration and automated deployment between Microsoft Azure Web Sites and git repository But my favourite feature is the seamless continuous deployment to Microsoft Azure. Especially, while working on web projects it's absolutely astounishing that as soon as you commit your chances it just takes a couple of seconds until your modifications are deployed and available on your Azure-hosted web sites. Upcoming Events and networking Due to the adjusted times, everybody was kind of hungry and we didn't follow up on networking or upcoming events - very unfortunate to my opinion and this will have an impact on future planning of our meetups. Because I rather would like to see more conversations during and at the end of our meetings than everyone just packing their laptops, bags and accessories and rush off to grab some food. I was hoping to get some information regarding this year's Code Challenge - supposedly to be organised during July? Maybe someone could leave a comment on that - but I couldn't get any updates. Well, I'll keep digging... In case that you would like to get more into git and how to use it effectively, please check out Knowledge 7's upcoming course on "Effective git". Thanks Avinash for your vital input into today's conversation and I'm looking forward to get a grip on your book title very soon. My resume of the day Do not work in IT without any kind of version control system! Seriously, without a VCS in place you're doing it wrong. It's like driving a car without seat belts attached or riding your bike without safety helmet. You don't do that! End of discussion. ;-) Nowadays, having access to free (as in cost) tools to install on your machine and numerous online platforms to host your source code for free for up to five users it's a no-brainer to get yourself familiar with VCS. Today's sessions gave a good overview on how to start using git and how to connect to various remote services like github or VSO.

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• ADDS: 1 - Introducing and designing

  - by marc dekeyser

  Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} What is ADDS?  Every Microsoft oriented infrastructure in today's enterprises will depend largely on the active directory version built by Microsoft. It is the foundation stone on which all other products (Exchange, update services, office communicator, the system center family, etc) rely on to get their information. And that is just looking at it from an infrastructure perspective. A well designed and implemented Active Directory implementation makes life for IT personnel and user alike a lot easier. Centralised management and the abilities opened up  by having it in place are ample.  But what is Active Directory Domain Services? We can look at ADDS as a centralised directory containing all objects your infrastructure runs on in one way or another. Since it is a Microsoft product you'll obviously not be seeing linux or mac clients listed in here (exceptions exist) but in general we can say it contains everything your company has in place in one form or another.  The domain name services. The domain naming service (or DNS for short) is a service which translates IP address (the identifiers for each computer in your domain) into readable and easy to understand names. This service is a prequisite for ADDA to work and having wrong record in a DNS server will make any ADDS service fail. Generally speaking a DNS service will be run on the same server as the ADDS service but it is worth wile to remember that this is not necessary. You could, for example, run your DNS services on a linux box (which would need special preparing to host an ADDS integrated DNS zone) and run the ADDS service of another box… Where to start? If the aim is to put in place a first time implementation of ADDS in your enterprise there are plenty of things to consider depending on what you are going to do in the long run. Great care has to be taken when first designing and implementing as having it set up wrong will cause a headache down the line. It is for that reason that I like to start building from the bottom up and start with a generic installation of ADDS (which will still differ for every client) and make it adaptable for future services which can hook in to the existing environment. Adapting existing environments is out of scope for this document (and series) although it is possible to take the pointers and change your existing environment to run in a smoother manor. Take great care when changing things as one small slip of the hand can give you a forest wide failure… Whenever starting with an ADDS deployment I ask the client the following questions:  What are your long term plans and goals?  How flexible do you want it? Are you currently linux heavy and want to keep this or can we go for an all Microsoft design? Those three questions should give some sort of indicator what direction can be taken and if the client has thought about some things themselves :).  The technical side of things  What is next to consider is what kind of infrastructure is already in place. For these series I'll keep it simple and introduce some general concepts without going in to depth on integrating ADDS with other DNS services.  Building from the ground up means we need to consider our layers on which our infrastructure will rely. In my view that goes as follows:  Network (WAN/LAN links and physical sites DNS Namespacing All in one domain or split up in different domains/forests? Security (both for ADDS and physical sites) The network side of things  Looking at how the network is currently set up can potentially teach us a large deal about the client. Do they have multiple physical site? What network speeds exist between these sites, etc… Depending on this information we will design our site links (which controls replication) in future stages. DNS Namespacing Maybe the single most intresting thing to know is what the domain will be named (ADDS will need a DNS domain with the same name) and where this will be hosted. Note that active directory can be set up with a singe name (aka contoso instead of contoso.com) but it is highly recommended to never do this. If you do end up with a domain like that for some reason there will be a lot of services that are going to give you good grief in the future (exchange being one of them). So one of the best practises would be always to use a double name (contoso.com or contoso.lan for example). Internal namespace A single namespace is just what it sounds like. You have a DNS domain which is different internally from what the client has as an external namespace. f.e. contoso.com as an external name (out on the internet) and contoso.lan on the internal network. his setup is has its advantages in that you have more obscurity from the internet in the DNS side of this but it will require additional work to publish services to the web. External namespace Quite like the internal namespace only here you do not differ the internal namespace of the company from what is known on the internet. In this implementation you would host your own DNS servers for the external domain inside the network. Or in other words, any external computer doing a DNS lookup would contact your internal DNS server for the resolution. Generally speaking this set up is a bad idea from the security side of things. Split DNS Whilst using an external namespace design is fairly easy it involves a lot of security risks. Opening up you ADDS DSN servers for lookups exposes your entire network to the internet and should be avoided at any cost. And that is where the "split DNS" design comes in. In this setup up would still have the same namespace internally and externally but you would be using different DNS servers for lookups on the external network who have no records of your internal resources unless you explicitly publish them. All in one or not? In determining your active directory design you can look at the following possibilities:  Single forest, Single domain Single forest, multiple domains Multiple forests, multiple domains I've listed the possibilities for design in increasing order of administrative magnitude. Microsoft recommends trying to use a single forest, single domain in as much situations as possible. It is, however, always possible that you require your services to be seperated from your users in a resource forest with trusts set up between the different forests. To start out I would go with the single forest design to avoid complexity unless there are strict requirements to have multiple forests. Security What kind of security is required on the domain and does this reflect the physical security on the sites? Not every client can afford to have a domain controller in a secluded server room on every site and it is exactly for that reason that Microsoft introduced the RODC (read only domain controller). A RODC is a domain controller that has been limited in functionality, in essence it will only cache the data you explicitly tell it to cache and in the case of a DC compromise (it being stolen) only a limited number of accounts will need to be affected. Th- Th- Th- That’s all folks! Well at least for now! In future editions of this series we’ll be walking through the different task that need to be done and the thought which needs to be put in to it. But for all editions we’ll be going from the concept of running a single forest, single domain with a split DNS setup… See you next time!

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• Solaris: What comes next?

  - by alanc

  As you probably know by now, a few months ago, we released Solaris 11 after years of development. That of course means we now need to figure out what comes next - if Solaris 11 is “The First Cloud OS”, then what do we need to make future releases of Solaris be, to be modern and competitive when they're released? So we've been having planning and brainstorming meetings, and I've captured some notes here from just one of those we held a couple weeks ago with a number of the Silicon Valley based engineers. Now before someone sees an idea here and calls their product rep wanting to know what's up, please be warned what follows are rough ideas, and as I'll discuss later, none of them have any committment, schedule, working code, or even plan for integration in any possible future product at this time. (Please don't make me force you to read the full Oracle future product disclaimer here, you should know it by heart already from the front of every Oracle product slide deck.) To start with, we did some background research, looking at ideas from other Oracle groups, and competitive OS'es. We examined what was hot in the technology arena and where the interesting startups were heading. We then looked at Solaris to see where we could apply those ideas. Making Network Admins into Socially Networking Admins We all know an admin who has grumbled about being the only one stuck late at work to fix a problem on the server, or having to work the weekend alone to do scheduled maintenance. But admins are humans (at least most are), and crave companionship and community with their fellow humans. And even when they're alone in the server room, they're never far from a network connection, allowing access to the wide world of wonders on the Internet. Our solution here is not building a new social network - there's enough of those already, and Oracle even has its own Oracle Mix social network already. What we proposed is integrating Solaris features to help engage our system admins with these social networks, building community and bringing them recognition in the workplace, using achievement recognition systems as found in many popular gaming platforms. For instance, if you had a Facebook account, and a group of admin friends there, you could register it with our Social Network Utility For Facebook, and then your friends might see: Alan earned the achievement Critically Patched (April 2012) for patching all his servers. Matt is only at 50% - encourage him to complete this achievement today! To avoid any undue risk of advertising who has unpatched servers that are easier targets for hackers to break into, this information would be tightly protected via Facebook's world-renowned privacy settings to avoid it falling into the wrong hands. A related form of gamification we considered was replacing simple certfications with role-playing-game-style Experience Levels. Instead of just knowing an admin passed a test establishing a given level of competency, these would provide recruiters with a more detailed level of how much real-world experience an admin has. Achievements such as the one above would feed into it, but larger numbers of experience points would be gained by tougher or more critical tasks - such as recovering a down system, or migrating a service to a new platform. (As long as it was an Oracle platform of course - migrating to an HP or IBM platform would cause the admin to lose points with us.) Unfortunately, we couldn't figure out a good way to prevent (if you will) “gaming” the system. For instance, a disgruntled admin might decide to start ignoring warnings from FMA that a part is beginning to fail or skip preventative maintenance, in the hopes that they'd cause a catastrophic failure to earn more points for bolstering their resume as they look for a job elsewhere, and not worrying about the effect on your business of a mission critical server going down. More Z's for ZFS Our suggested new feature for ZFS was inspired by the worlds most successful Z-startup of all time: Zynga. Using the Social Network Utility For Facebook described above, we'd tie it in with ZFS monitoring to help you out when you find yourself in a jam needing more disk space than you have, and can't wait a month to get a purchase order through channels to buy more. Instead with the click of a button you could post to your group: Alan can't find any space in his server farm! Can you help? Friends could loan you some space on their connected servers for a few weeks, knowing that you'd return the favor when needed. ZFS would create a new filesystem for your use on their system, and securely share it with your system using Kerberized NFS. If none of your friends have space, then you could buy temporary use space in small increments at affordable rates right there in Facebook, using your Facebook credits, and then file an expense report later, after the urgent need has passed. Universal Single Sign On One thing all the engineers agreed on was that we still had far too many "Single" sign ons to deal with in our daily work. On the web, every web site used to have its own password database, forcing us to hope we could remember what login name was still available on each site when we signed up, and which unique password we came up with to avoid having to disclose our other passwords to a new site. In recent years, the web services world has finally been reducing the number of logins we have to manage, with many services allowing you to login using your identity from Google, Twitter or Facebook. So we proposed following their lead, introducing PAM modules for web services - no more would you have to type in whatever login name IT assigned and try to remember the password you chose the last time password aging forced you to change it - you'd simply choose which web service you wanted to authenticate against, and would login to your Solaris account upon reciept of a cookie from their identity service. Pinning notes to the cloud We also all noted that we all have our own pile of notes we keep in our daily work - in text files in our home directory, in notebooks we carry around, on white boards in offices and common areas, on sticky notes on our monitors, or on scraps of paper pinned to our bulletin boards. The contents of the notes vary, some are things just for us, some are useful for our groups, some we would share with the world. For instance, when our group moved to a new building a couple years ago, we had a white board in the hallway listing all the NIS & DNS servers, subnets, and other network configuration information we needed to set up our Solaris machines after the move. Similarly, as Solaris 11 was finishing and we were all learning the new network configuration commands, we shared notes in wikis and e-mails with our fellow engineers. Users may also remember one of the popular features of Sun's old BigAdmin site was a section for sharing scripts and tips such as these. Meanwhile, the online "pin board" at Pinterest is taking the web by storm. So we thought, why not mash those up to solve this problem? We proposed a new BigAddPin site where users could “pin” notes, command snippets, configuration information, and so on. For instance, once they had worked out the ideal Automated Installation manifest for their app server, they could pin it up to share with the rest of their group, or choose to make it public as an example for the world. Localized data, such as our group's notes on the servers for our subnet, could be shared only to users connecting from that subnet. And notes that they didn't want others to see at all could be marked private, such as the list of phone numbers to call for late night pizza delivery to the machine room, the birthdays and anniversaries they can never remember but would be sleeping on the couch if they forgot, or the list of automatically generated completely random, impossible to remember root passwords to all their servers. For greater integration with Solaris, we'd put support right into the command shells — redirect output to a pinned note, set your path to include pinned notes as scripts you can run, or bring up your recent shell history and pin a set of commands to save for the next time you need to remember how to do that operation. Location service for Solaris servers A longer term plan would involve convincing the hardware design groups to put GPS locators with wireless transmitters in future server designs. This would help both admins and service personnel trying to find servers in todays massive data centers, and could feed into location presence apps to help show potential customers that while they may not see many Solaris machines on the desktop any more, they are all around. For instance, while walking down Wall Street it might show “There are over 2000 Solaris computers in this block.” [Note: this proposal was made before the recent media coverage of a location service aggregrator app with less noble intentions, and in hindsight, we failed to consider what happens when such data similarly falls into the wrong hands. We certainly wouldn't want our app to be misinterpreted as “There are over $20 million dollars of SPARC servers in this building, waiting for you to steal them.” so it's probably best it was rejected.] Harnessing the power of the GPU for Security Most modern OS'es make use of the widespread availability of high powered GPU hardware in today's computers, with desktop environments requiring 3-D graphics acceleration, whether in Ubuntu Unity, GNOME Shell on Fedora, or Aero Glass on Windows, but we haven't yet made Solaris fully take advantage of this, beyond our basic offering of Compiz on the desktop. Meanwhile, more businesses are interested in increasing security by using biometric authentication, but must also comply with laws in many countries preventing discrimination against employees with physical limations such as missing eyes or fingers, not to mention the lost productivity when employees can't login due to tinted contacts throwing off a retina scan or a paper cut changing their fingerprint appearance until it heals. Fortunately, the two groups considering these problems put their heads together and found a common solution, using 3D technology to enable authentication using the one body part all users are guaranteed to have - pam_phrenology.so, a new PAM module that uses an array USB attached web cams (or just one if the user is willing to spin their chair during login) to take pictures of the users head from all angles, create a 3D model and compare it to the one in the authentication database. While Mythbusters has shown how easy it can be to fool common fingerprint scanners, we have not yet seen any evidence that people can impersonate the shape of another user's cranium, no matter how long they spend beating their head against the wall to reshape it. This could possibly be extended to group users, using modern versions of some of the older phrenological studies, such as giving all users with long grey beards access to the System Architect role, or automatically placing users with pointy spikes in their hair into an easy use mode. Unfortunately, there are still some unsolved technical challenges we haven't figured out how to overcome. Currently, a visit to the hair salon causes your existing authentication to expire, and some users have found that shaving their heads is the only way to avoid bad hair days becoming bad login days. Reaction to these ideas After gathering all our notes on these ideas from the engineering brainstorming meeting, we took them in to present to our management. Unfortunately, most of their reaction cannot be printed here, and they chose not to accept any of these ideas as they were, but they did have some feedback for us to consider as they sent us back to the drawing board. They strongly suggested our ideas would be better presented if we weren't trying to decipher ink blotches that had been smeared by the condensation when we put our pint glasses on the napkins we were taking notes on, and to that end let us know they would not be approving any more engineering offsites in Irish themed pubs on the Friday of a Saint Patrick's Day weekend. (Hopefully they mean that situation specifically and aren't going to deny the funding for travel to this year's X.Org Developer's Conference just because it happens to be in Bavaria and ending on the Friday of the weekend Oktoberfest starts.) They recommended our research techniques could be improved over just sitting around reading blogs and checking our Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest accounts, such as considering input from alternate viewpoints on topics such as gamification. They also mentioned that Oracle hadn't fully adopted some of Sun's common practices and we might have to try harder to get those to be accepted now that we are one unified company. So as I said at the beginning, don't pester your sales rep just yet for any of these, since they didn't get approved, but if you have better ideas, pass them on and maybe they'll get into our next batch of planning.

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• Announcing: Great Improvements to Windows Azure Web Sites

  - by ScottGu

  I’m excited to announce some great improvements to the Windows Azure Web Sites capability we first introduced earlier this summer.  Today’s improvements include: a new low-cost shared mode scaling option, support for custom domains with shared and reserved mode web-sites using both CNAME and A-Records (the later enabling naked domains), continuous deployment support using both CodePlex and GitHub, and FastCGI extensibility.  All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. New “Shared” Scaling Tier Windows Azure allows you to deploy and host up to 10 web-sites in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment. You can start out developing and testing web sites at no cost using this free shared mode, and it supports the ability to run web sites that serve up to 165MB/day of content (5GB/month).  All of the capabilities we introduced in June with this free tier remain the same with today’s update. Starting with today’s release, you can now elastically scale up your web-site beyond this capability using a new low-cost “shared” option (which we are introducing today) as well as using a “reserved instance” option (which we’ve supported since June).  Scaling to either of these modes is easy.  Simply click on the “scale” tab of your web-site within the Windows Azure Portal, choose the scaling option you want to use with it, and then click the “save” button.  Changes take only seconds to apply and do not require any code to be changed, nor the app to be redeployed: Below are some more details on the new “shared” option, as well as the existing “reserved” option: Shared Mode With today’s release we are introducing a new low-cost “shared” scaling mode for Windows Azure Web Sites.  A web-site running in shared mode is deployed in a shared/multi-tenant hosting environment.  Unlike the free tier, though, a web-site in shared mode has no quotas/upper-limit around the amount of bandwidth it can serve.  The first 5 GB/month of bandwidth you serve with a shared web-site is free, and then you pay the standard “pay as you go” Windows Azure outbound bandwidth rate for outbound bandwidth above 5 GB. A web-site running in shared mode also now supports the ability to map multiple custom DNS domain names, using both CNAMEs and A-records, to it.  The new A-record support we are introducing with today’s release provides the ability for you to support “naked domains” with your web-sites (e.g. http://microsoft.com in addition to http://www.microsoft.com).  We will also in the future enable SNI based SSL as a built-in feature with shared mode web-sites (this functionality isn’t supported with today’s release – but will be coming later this year to both the shared and reserved tiers). You pay for a shared mode web-site using the standard “pay as you go” model that we support with other features of Windows Azure (meaning no up-front costs, and you pay only for the hours that the feature is enabled).  A web-site running in shared mode costs only 1.3 cents/hr during the preview (so on average $9.36/month). Reserved Instance Mode In addition to running sites in shared mode, we also support scaling them to run within a reserved instance mode.  When running in reserved instance mode your sites are guaranteed to run isolated within your own Small, Medium or Large VM (meaning no other customers run within it).  You can run any number of web-sites within a VM, and there are no quotas on CPU or memory limits. You can run your sites using either a single reserved instance VM, or scale up to have multiple instances of them (e.g. 2 medium sized VMs, etc).  Scaling up or down is easy – just select the “reserved” instance VM within the “scale” tab of the Windows Azure Portal, choose the VM size you want, the number of instances of it you want to run, and then click save.  Changes take effect in seconds: Unlike shared mode, there is no per-site cost when running in reserved mode.  Instead you pay only for the reserved instance VMs you use – and you can run any number of web-sites you want within them at no extra cost (e.g. you could run a single site within a reserved instance VM or 100 web-sites within it for the same cost).  Reserved instance VMs start at 8 cents/hr for a small reserved VM.  Elastic Scale-up/down Windows Azure Web Sites allows you to scale-up or down your capacity within seconds.  This allows you to deploy a site using the shared mode option to begin with, and then dynamically scale up to the reserved mode option only when you need to – without you having to change any code or redeploy your application. If your site traffic starts to drop off, you can scale back down the number of reserved instances you are using, or scale down to the shared mode tier – all within seconds and without having to change code, redeploy, or adjust DNS mappings.  You can also use the “Dashboard” view within the Windows Azure Portal to easily monitor your site’s load in real-time (it shows not only requests/sec and bandwidth but also stats like CPU and memory usage). Because of Windows Azure’s “pay as you go” pricing model, you only pay for the compute capacity you use in a given hour.  So if your site is running most of the month in shared mode (at 1.3 cents/hr), but there is a weekend when it gets really popular and you decide to scale it up into reserved mode to have it run in your own dedicated VM (at 8 cents/hr), you only have to pay the additional pennies/hr for the hours it is running in the reserved mode.  There is no upfront cost you need to pay to enable this, and once you scale back down to shared mode you return to the 1.3 cents/hr rate.  This makes it super flexible and cost effective. Improved Custom Domain Support Web sites running in either “shared” or “reserved” mode support the ability to associate custom host names to them (e.g. www.mysitename.com).  You can associate multiple custom domains to each Windows Azure Web Site.  With today’s release we are introducing support for A-Records (a big ask by many users). With the A-Record support, you can now associate ‘naked’ domains to your Windows Azure Web Sites – meaning instead of having to use www.mysitename.com you can instead just have mysitename.com (with no sub-name prefix).  Because you can map multiple domains to a single site, you can optionally enable both a www and naked domain for a site (and then use a URL rewrite rule/redirect to avoid SEO problems). We’ve also enhanced the UI for managing custom domains within the Windows Azure Portal as part of today’s release.  Clicking the “Manage Domains” button in the tray at the bottom of the portal now brings up custom UI that makes it easy to manage/configure them: As part of this update we’ve also made it significantly smoother/easier to validate ownership of custom domains, and made it easier to switch existing sites/domains to Windows Azure Web Sites with no downtime. Continuous Deployment Support with Git and CodePlex or GitHub One of the more popular features we released earlier this summer was support for publishing web sites directly to Windows Azure using source control systems like TFS and Git.  This provides a really powerful way to manage your application deployments using source control.  It is really easy to enable this from a website’s dashboard page: The TFS option we shipped earlier this summer provides a very rich continuous deployment solution that enables you to automate builds and run unit tests every time you check in your web-site, and then if they are successful automatically publish to Azure. With today’s release we are expanding our Git support to also enable continuous deployment scenarios and integrate with projects hosted on CodePlex and GitHub.  This support is enabled with all web-sites (including those using the “free” scaling mode). Starting today, when you choose the “Set up Git publishing” link on a website’s “Dashboard” page you’ll see two additional options show up when Git based publishing is enabled for the web-site: You can click on either the “Deploy from my CodePlex project” link or “Deploy from my GitHub project” link to walkthrough a simple workflow to configure a connection between your website and a source repository you host on CodePlex or GitHub.  Once this connection is established, CodePlex or GitHub will automatically notify Windows Azure every time a checkin occurs.  This will then cause Windows Azure to pull the source and compile/deploy the new version of your app automatically.  The below two videos walkthrough how easy this is to enable this workflow and deploy both an initial app and then make a change to it: Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and CodePlex (2 minutes) Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and GitHub (2 minutes) This approach enables a really clean continuous deployment workflow, and makes it much easier to support a team development environment using Git: Note: today’s release supports establishing connections with public GitHub/CodePlex repositories.  Support for private repositories will be enabled in a few weeks. Support for multiple branches Previously, we only supported deploying from the git ‘master’ branch.  Often, though, developers want to deploy from alternate branches (e.g. a staging or future branch). This is now a supported scenario – both with standalone git based projects, as well as ones linked to CodePlex or GitHub.  This enables a variety of useful scenarios.  For example, you can now have two web-sites - a “live” and “staging” version – both linked to the same repository on CodePlex or GitHub.  You can configure one of the web-sites to always pull whatever is in the master branch, and the other to pull what is in the staging branch.  This enables a really clean way to enable final testing of your site before it goes live. This 1 minute video demonstrates how to configure which branch to use with a web-site. Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming in the weeks ahead – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 next month).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Sharing A Stage: JDeveloper/ADF & NetBeans/Java EE 6?

  - by Geertjan

  A highlight for me during last week's Oracle Developer Day in Romania (which I blogged about here) was meeting Jernej Kaše (who is from Slovenia, just like my philosopher hero Slavoj Žižek), who is an Oracle Fusion Middleware evangelist. At the conference, while I was presenting NetBeans and Java EE 6 in one room, Jernej was presenting JDeveloper and ADF in another room. The application he created looks as follows, i.e., a realistic CRUD app, with a master/detail view, a search feature, and validation: In a conversation during a break, we started imagining a scenario where the two of us would be on the same stage, taking turns talking about NetBeans/Java EE and JDeveloper/ADF. In that way, attendees at a conference wouldn't need to choose which of the two topics to attend, because they'd be handled in the same session, with the session possibly being longer so that sufficient time could be spent on the respective technologies. (The JDeveloper/ADF session would then not be competing with the NetBeans/Java EE 6 session, since they'd be handled simultaneously.) The session would focus on the similarities/differences between the two respective tools/solutions, which would be extremely interesting and also unique. The crucial question in making this kind of co-presentation possible is whether (and how quickly) an application such as the one created above with JDeveloper/ADF could be created with NetBeans/Java EE 6. The NetBeans/Java EE 6 story is extremely strong on the model and controler levels, but less strong on the view layer. Though there are choices between using PrimeFaces, RichFaces, and IceFaces, that support is quite limited in the absence of a visual designer or of other specific tools (e.g., code generators to generate snippets of PrimeFaces) connected to JSF component libraries. However, it so happens that in recent months we at NetBeans have established really good connections with the PrimeFaces team (more about that another time). So I asked them what it would take to write the above UI in PrimeFaces. The PrimeFaces team were very helpful. They sent me the following screenshot, which is of the UI they created in PrimeFaces, reproducing the ADF screenshot above: Of course, the above is purely the UI layer, there's no EJB and entity classes and data connection hooked into it yet. However, this is the Facelets file that the PrimeFaces team sent me, i.e., using the PrimeFaces component library, that produces the above result: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" xmlns:p="http://primefaces.org/ui"> <f:view> <h:head> <style type="text/css"> .alignRight { text-align: right; } .alignLeft { text-align: left; } .alignTop { vertical-align: top; } .ui-validation-required { color: red; font-size: 14px; margin-right: 5px; position: relative; vertical-align: top; } .ui-selectonemenu .ui-selectonemenu-trigger .ui-icon { margin-top: 7px !important; } </style> </h:head> <h:body> <h:form prependId="false" id="form"> <p:panel header="Employees"> <h:panelGrid columns="4" id="searchPanel"> Search <p:selectOneMenu> <f:selectItem itemLabel="FirstName" itemValue="FirstName" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="LastName" itemValue="LastName" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Email" itemValue="Email" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="PhoneNumber" itemValue="PhoneNumber" /> </p:selectOneMenu> <p:inputText /> <p:commandLink process="searchPanel" update="@form"> <h:graphicImage name="next.gif" library="img" /> </p:commandLink> </h:panelGrid> <h:panelGrid columns="3" columnClasses="alignTop,,alignTop" style="width:90%;margin-left:10%"> <h:panelGrid columns="2" columnClasses="alignRight,alignLeft"> <h:outputLabel for="firstName">FirstName</h:outputLabel> <p:inputText id="firstName" /> <h:outputLabel for="lastName"> <sup class="ui-validation-required">*</sup>LastName </h:outputLabel> <p:inputText id="lastName" style="width:250px;" /> <h:outputLabel for="email"> <sup class="ui-validation-required">*</sup>Email </h:outputLabel> <p:inputText id="email" style="width:250px;" /> <h:outputLabel for="phoneNumber" value="PhoneNumber" /> <p:inputMask id="phoneNumber" mask="999.999.9999" /> <h:outputLabel for="hireDate"> <sup class="ui-validation-required">*</sup>HireDate</h:outputLabel> <p:calendar id="hireDate" pattern="MM/dd/yyyy" showOn="button" /> </h:panelGrid> <p:outputPanel style="min-width:40px;" /> <h:panelGrid columns="2" columnClasses="alignRight,alignLeft"> <h:outputLabel for="jobId"> <sup class="ui-validation-required">*</sup>JobId </h:outputLabel> <p:selectOneMenu id="jobId" > <f:selectItem itemLabel="Administration Vice President" itemValue="Administration Vice President" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Vice President" itemValue="Vice President" /> </p:selectOneMenu> <h:outputLabel for="salary">Salary</h:outputLabel> <p:inputText id="salary" styleClass="alignRight" /> <h:outputLabel for="commissionPct">CommissionPct</h:outputLabel> <p:inputText id="commissionPct" style="width:30px;" maxlength="3" /> <h:outputLabel for="manager">ManagerId</h:outputLabel> <p:selectOneMenu id="manager"> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Steven King" itemValue="Steven" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Michael Cook" itemValue="Michael" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="John Benjamin" itemValue="John" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="Dav Glass" itemValue="Dav" /> </p:selectOneMenu> <h:outputLabel for="department">DepartmentId</h:outputLabel> <p:selectOneMenu id="department"> <f:selectItem itemLabel="90" itemValue="90" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="80" itemValue="80" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="70" itemValue="70" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="60" itemValue="60" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="50" itemValue="50" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="40" itemValue="40" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="30" itemValue="30" /> <f:selectItem itemLabel="20" itemValue="20" /> </p:selectOneMenu> </h:panelGrid> </h:panelGrid> <p:outputPanel id="buttonPanel"> <p:commandButton value="First" process="@this" update="@form" /> <p:commandButton value="Previous" process="@this" update="@form" style="margin-left:15px;" /> <p:commandButton value="Next" process="@this" update="@form" style="margin-left:15px;" /> <p:commandButton value="Last" process="@this" update="@form" style="margin-left:15px;" /> </p:outputPanel> <p:tabView style="margin-top:25px"> <p:tab title="Job History"> <p:dataTable var="history"> <p:column headerText="StartDate"> <h:outputText value="#{history.startDate}"> <f:convertDateTime pattern="MM/dd/yyyy" /> </h:outputText> </p:column> <p:column headerText="EndDate"> <h:outputText value="#{history.endDate}"> <f:convertDateTime pattern="MM/dd/yyyy" /> </h:outputText> </p:column> <p:column headerText="JobId"> <h:outputText value="#{history.jobId}" /> </p:column> <p:column headerText="DepartmentId"> <h:outputText value="#{history.departmentIdId}" /> </p:column> </p:dataTable> </p:tab> </p:tabView> </p:panel> </h:form> </h:body> </f:view> </html> Right now, NetBeans IDE only has code completion to create the above. So there's not much help for creating such a UI right now. I don't believe that a visual designer is mandatory to create the above. A few code generators and file templates could do the job too. And I'm looking forward to seeing those kinds of tools for PrimeFaces, as well as other JSF component libraries, appearing in NetBeans IDE in upcoming releases. A related option would be for the NetBeans generated CRUD app to include the option of having a master/detail view, as well as the option of having a search feature, i.e., the application generators would provide the option of having additional features typical in Java enterprise apps. In the absence of such tools, there still is room, I believe, for NetBeans/Java EE and JDeveloper/ADF sharing a stage at a conference. The above file would have been prepared up front and the presenter would state that fact. The UI layer is only one aspect of a Java EE 6 application, so that the presenter would have ample other features to show (i.e., the entity class generation, the tools for working with servlets, with session beans, etc) prior to getting to the point where the statement would be made: "On the UI layer, I have prepared this Facelets file, which I will now show you can be connected to the lower layers of the application as follows." At that point, the session beans could be hooked into the Facelets file, the file would be saved, the browser refreshed, and then the whole application would work exactly as the ADF application does. So, Jernej, let's share a stage soon!

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• Clean Code Development & Flexible work environment - MSCC 26.10.2013

  Finally, some spare time to summarize my impressions and experiences of the recent meetup of Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community. I already posted my comment on the event and on our social media networks: Professional - It's getting better with our meetups and I really appreciated that 'seniors' and 'juniors' were present today. Despite running a little bit out of time it was really great to see more students coming to the gathering. This time we changed location for our Saturday meetup and it worked out very well. A big thank you to Ebene Accelerator, namely Mrs Poonum, for the ability to use their meeting rooms for our community get-together. Already some weeks ago I had a very pleasant conversation with her about the MSCC aims, 'mission' and how we organise things. Additionally, I think that an environment like the Ebene Accelerator is a good choice as it acts as an incubator for young developers and start-ups. Reactions from other craftsmen Before I put my thoughts about our recent meeting down, I'd like to mention and cross-link to some of the other craftsmen that were present: "MSCC meet up is a massive knowledge gaining strategies for students, future entrepreneurs, or for geeks all around. Knowledge sharing becomes a fun. For those who have not been able to made it do subscribe on our MSCC meet up group at meetup.com." -- Nitin on Learning is fun with #MSCC #Ebene Accelerator "We then talked about the IT industry in Mauritius, salary issues in various field like system administration, software development etc. We analysed the reasons why people tend to hop from one company to another. That was a fun debate." -- Ish on MSCC meetup - Gang of Geeks "Flexible Learning Environment was quite interesting since these lines struck cords : "You're not a secretary....9 to 5 shouldn't suit you"....This allowed reflection...deep reflection....especially regarding the local mindset...which should be changed in a way which would promote creativity rather than choking it till death..." -- Yannick on 2nd MSCC Monthly Meet-up And others on Facebook... ;-) Visual impressions are available on our Meetup event page. More first time attendees We great pleasure I noticed that we have once again more first time visitors. A quick overlook showed that we had a majority of UoM students in first, second or last year. Some of them are already participating in the UoM Computer Club or are nominated as members of the Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) programme. Personally, I really appreciate the fact that the MSCC is able to gather such a broad audience. And as I wrote initially, the MSCC is technology-agnostic; we want IT people from any segment of this business. Of course, students which are about to delve into the 'real world' of working are highly welcome, and I hope that they might get one or other glimpse of experience or advice from employees. Sticking to the schedule? No, not really... And honestly, it was a good choice to go a little bit of the beaten tracks. I mean, yes we have a 'rough' agenda of topics that we would like to talk about or having a presentation about. But we keep it 'agile'. Due to the high number of new faces, we initiated another quick round of introductions and I gave a really brief overview of the MSCC. Next, we started to reflect on the Clean Code Developer (CCD) - Red Grade which we introduced on the last meetup. Nirvan was the lucky one and he did a good job on summarizing the various abbreviations of the first level of being a CCD. Actually, more interesting, we exchanged experience about the principles and practices of Red Grade, and it was very informative to get to know that Yann actually 'interviewed' a couple of friends, other students, local guys working in IT companies as well as some IT friends from India in order to counter-check on what he learned first-hand about Clean Code. Currently, he is reading the book of Robert C. Martin on that topic and I'm looking forward to his review soon. More output generates more input What seems to be like a personal mantra is working out pretty well for me since the beginning of this year. Being more active on social media networks, writing more article on my blog, starting the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community, and contributing more to other online communities has helped me to receive more project requests, job offers and possibilities to expand my business at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. Actually, it is not a coincidence that one of the questions new craftsmen should answer during registration asks about having a personal blog. Whether you are just curious about IT, right in the middle of your Computer Studies, or already working in software development or system administration since a while you should consider to advertise and market yourself online. Easiest way to resolve this are to have online profiles on professional social media networks like LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, and Google+ (no Facebook should be considered for private only), and considering to have a personal blog. Why? -- Be yourself, be proud of your work, and let other people know that you're passionate about your profession. Trust me, this is going to open up opportunities you might not have dreamt about... Exchanging ideas about having a professional online presence - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 Furthermore, consider to put your Curriculum Vitae online, too. There are quite a number of service providers like 1ClickCV, Stack Overflow Careers 2.0, etc. which give you the ability to have an up to date CV online. At least put it on your site, next to your personal blog. Similar to what you would be able to see on my site here. Cyber Island Mauritius - are we there? A couple of weeks ago I got a 'cold' message on LinkedIn from someone living in the U.S. asking about the circumstances and conditions of the IT world of Mauritius. He has a great business idea, venture capital and is currently looking for a team of software developers (mainly mobile - iOS) for a new startup here in Mauritius. Since then we exchanged quite some details through private messages and Skype conversations, and I suggested that it might be a good chance to join our meetup through a conference call and see for yourself about potential candidates. During approximately 30 to 40 minutes the brief idea of the new startup was presented - very promising state-of-the-art technology aspects and integration of various public APIs -, and we had a good Q&A session about it. Also thanks to the excellent bandwidth provided by the Ebene Accelerator the video conference between three parties went absolutely well. Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade Hahaha - nice one... Being at the Orange Tower at Ebene and then talking about an Orange Grade as CCD. Well, once again I provided an overview of the principles and practices in that rank of Clean Code, and similar to our last meetup we discussed on the various aspect of each principle, whether someone already got in touch with it during studies or work, and how it could affect their future view on their source code. Following are the principles and practices of Clean Code Developer - Orange Grade: CCD Orange Grade - Principles Single Level of Abstraction (SLA) Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) Separation of Concerns (SoC) Source Code conventions CCD Orange Grade - Practices Issue Tracking Automated Integration Tests Reading, Reading, Reading Reviews Especially the part on reading technical books got some extra attention. We quickly gathered our views on that and came up with a result that ranges between Zero (0) and up to Fifteen (15) book titles per year. Personally, I'm keeping my progress between Six (6) and Eight (8) titles per year, but at least One (1) per quarter of a year. Which is also connected to the fact that I'm participating in the O'Reilly Reader Review Program and have a another benefit to get access to free books only by writing and publishing a review afterwards. We also had a good exchange on the extended topic of 'Reviews' - which to my opinion is abnormal difficult here in Mauritius for various reasons. As far as I can tell from my experience working with Mauritian software developers, either as colleagues, employees or during consulting services there are unfortunately two dominant pattern on that topic: Keeping quiet Running away Honestly, I have no evidence about why these are the two 'solutions' on reviews but that's the situation that I had to face over the last couple of years. Sitting together and talking about problematic issues, tackling down root causes of de-motivational activities and working on general improvements doesn't seem to have a ground within the IT world of Mauritius. Are you a typist or a creative software craftsman? - MSCC meetup on the 26th October 2013 One very good example that we talked about was the fact of 'job hoppers' as you can easily observe it on someone's CV - those people change job every single year; for no obvious reason! Frankly speaking, I wouldn't even consider an IT person like to for an interview. As a company you're investing money and effort into the abilities of your employees. Hiring someone that won't stay for a longer period is out of question. And sorry to say, these kind of IT guys smell fishy about their capabilities and more likely to cause problems than actually produce productive results. One of the reasons why there is a probation period on an employment contract is to give you the liberty to leave as early as possible in case that you don't like your new position. Don't fool yourself or waste other people's time and money by hanging around a full year only to snatch off the bonus payment... Future outlook: Developer's Conference Even though it is not official yet I already mentioned it several times during our weekly Code & Coffee sessions. The MSCC is looking forward to be able to organise or to contribute to an upcoming IT event. Currently, the rough schedule is set for April 2014 but this mainly depends on availability of location(s), a decent time frame for preparations, and the underlying procedures with public bodies to have it approved and so on. As soon as the information about date and location has been fixed there will be a 'Call for Papers' period in order to attract local IT enthusiasts to apply for a session slot and talk about their field of work and their passion in IT. More to come for sure... My resume of the day It was a great gathering and I am very pleased about the fact that we had another 15 craftsmen (plus 2 businessmen on conference call plus 2 young apprentices) in the same room, talking about IT related topics and sharing their experience as employees and students. Personally, I really appreciated the feedback from the students about their current view on their future career, and I really hope that some of them are going to pursue their dreams. Start promoting yourself and it will happen... Looking forward to your blogs! And last but not least our numbers on Meetup and Facebook have been increased as a direct consequence of this meetup. Please, spread the word about the MSCC and get your friends and colleagues to join our official site. The higher the number of craftsmen we have the better chances we have t achieve something great! Thanks!

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• Image auto resizes in PdfPCell with iTextSharp

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  Hi, i'm having a weird problem with images in iTextSharp library. I'm adding the image to the PdfPCell and for some reason it gets scaled up. How do i keep it to original size? Here's the image of the PDF at 100% and the image in its original size opened in paint.net. I though that the images would be same when printed but the difference on the pic is the same on the printed version. Having to manually scale the image with ScaleXXX to get it to right seems a bit illogical and does not give a good result. So how do I put the image in its original size inside a PdfPCell of a table without having to scale it? Here's my code: private PdfPTable CreateTestPDF() { PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(1); table.WidthPercentage = 100; Phrase phrase = new Phrase("MY TITLE", _font24Bold); table.AddCell(phrase); PdfPTable nestedTable = new PdfPTable(5); table.WidthPercentage = 100; Phrase cellText = new Phrase("cell 1", _font9BoldBlack); nestedTable.AddCell(cellText); cellText = new Phrase("cell 2", _font9BoldBlack); nestedTable.AddCell(cellText); cellText = new Phrase("cell 3", _font9BoldBlack); nestedTable.AddCell(cellText); iTextSharp.text.Image image = iTextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(@"d:\MyPic.jpg"); image.Alignment = iTextSharp.text.Image.ALIGN_CENTER; PdfPCell cell = new PdfPCell(image); cell.HorizontalAlignment = PdfPCell.ALIGN_MIDDLE; nestedTable.AddCell(cell); cellText = new Phrase("cell 5", _font9BoldBlack); nestedTable.AddCell(cellText); nestedTable.AddCell(""); string articleInfo = "Test Text"; cellText = new Phrase(articleInfo, _font8Black); nestedTable.AddCell(cellText); nestedTable.AddCell(""); nestedTable.AddCell(""); nestedTable.AddCell(""); table.AddCell(nestedTable); SetBorderSizeForAllCells(table, iTextSharp.text.Rectangle.NO_BORDER); return table; } static BaseColor _textColor = new BaseColor(154, 154, 154); iTextSharp.text.Font _font8 = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 8, iTextSharp.text.Font.NORMAL, _textColor); iTextSharp.text.Font _font8Black = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 8, iTextSharp.text.Font.NORMAL, BaseColor.BLACK); iTextSharp.text.Font _font9 = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 9, iTextSharp.text.Font.NORMAL, _textColor); iTextSharp.text.Font _font9BoldBlack = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 9, iTextSharp.text.Font.BOLD, BaseColor.BLACK); iTextSharp.text.Font _font10 = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 10, iTextSharp.text.Font.NORMAL, _textColor); iTextSharp.text.Font _font10Black = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 10, iTextSharp.text.Font.NORMAL, BaseColor.BLACK); iTextSharp.text.Font _font10BoldBlack = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 10, iTextSharp.text.Font.BOLD, BaseColor.BLACK); iTextSharp.text.Font _font24Bold = new iTextSharp.text.Font(iTextSharp.text.Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 24, iTextSharp.text.Font.BOLD, _textColor);

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• xaml : Retrigger opacity animation on multiple conditions

  - by Sdry

  I have a problem figuring out how datatriggers and multidatatriggers work. I am trying to display a message, and depending on the type of message keep it displayed( + having a background), or having it fade out by a double animation on the opacity property (+ having a transparent background). My xaml view has a game object as datacontext, which has a dependency property of type GameMessage, of which the constructor looks like this: public GameMessage(bool containsMessage, string message, bool canFadeAway) { ContainsMessage = containsMessage; Message = message; CanFadeAway = canFadeAway; } pretty straight forward, I want to display the message when ContainsMessage =equals true, and trigger a fade out animation if canFadeAway equals true. But also set the background based on canFadeAway. <Canvas Name="messageCanvas" Width="300" Height="100" Style="{StaticResource fadeInOut}"> <TextBlock Name="txtMessage" Text="{Binding Path=GameMessage.Message}" Canvas.Top="25" Canvas.Left="0" Foreground="{StaticResource MessageForegroundBrush}"> </TextBlock> </Canvas> Now, the Style and triggers is where I get into trouble: <Style.Triggers> <MultiDataTrigger> <MultiDataTrigger.Conditions> <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=GameMessage.ContainsMessage}" Value="True"/> <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=GameMessage.CanFadeAway}" Value="False"/> </MultiDataTrigger.Conditions> <Setter Property="Background" Value="{StaticResource MessageBackgroundBrush}" /> <Setter Property="Opacity" Value="8" /> </MultiDataTrigger> <MultiDataTrigger> <MultiDataTrigger.Conditions> <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=GameMessage.ContainsMessage}" Value="True"/> <Condition Binding="{Binding Path=GameMessage.CanFadeAway}" Value="True"/> </MultiDataTrigger.Conditions> <Setter Property="Background" Value="Transparent" /> <Setter Property="Opacity" Value="8" /> </MultiDataTrigger> <DataTrigger Binding="{Binding Path=GameMessage.CanFadeAway}" Value="True"> <DataTrigger.EnterActions> <BeginStoryboard > <Storyboard BeginTime="0:0:0" > <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" From="8" To="0" Duration="0:0:1" BeginTime="0:0:0" /> </Storyboard> </BeginStoryboard> </DataTrigger.EnterActions> <DataTrigger.ExitActions> <BeginStoryboard> <Storyboard> <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="8" Duration="0:0:0.1" /> </Storyboard> </BeginStoryboard> </DataTrigger.ExitActions> </DataTrigger> </Style.Triggers> </Style> The problem is in resetting the opacity when the GameMessage Property ( of type GameMessage) is of type true,msg",true, and gets replaced by a GameMessage object of the same kind. The opcacity remains 0, and messages only get restored again when I have a message of kind true,"msg,false. After the animation, the opacity is 0, and where I would expect the second multidatatrigger to set it back to 8, and then have the animation performed by the Datatrigger, it doesnt. What would be the best way to get this working ?

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• How to overcome shortcomings in reporting from EAV database?

  - by David Archer

  The major shortcomings with Entity-Attribute-Value database designs in SQL all seem to be related to being able to query and report on the data efficiently and quickly. Most of the information I read on the subject warn against implementing EAV due to these problems and the commonality of querying/reporting for almost all applications. I am currently designing a system where almost all the fields necessary for data storage are not known at design/compile time and are defined by the end-user of the system. EAV seems like a good fit for this requirement but due to the problems I've read about, I am hesitant in implementing it as there are also some pretty heavy reporting requirements for this system as well. I think I've come up with a way around this but would like to pose the question to the SO community. Given that typical normalized database (OLTP) still isn't always the best option for running reports, a good practice seems to be having a "reporting" database (OLAP) where the data from the normalized database is copied to, indexed extensively, and possibly denormalized for easier querying. Could the same idea be used to work around the shortcomings of an EAV design? The main downside I see are the increased complexity of transferring the data from the EAV database to reporting as you may end up having to alter the tables in the reporting database as new fields are defined in the EAV database. But that is hardly impossible and seems to be an acceptable tradeoff for the increased flexibility given by the EAV design. This downside also exists if I use a non-SQL data store (i.e. CouchDB or similar) for the main data storage since all the standard reporting tools are expecting a SQL backend to query against. Do the issues with EAV systems mostly go away if you have a seperate reporting database for querying? EDIT: Thanks for the comments so far. One of the important things about the system I'm working on it that I'm really only talking about using EAV for one of the entities, not everything in the system. The whole gist of the system is to be able to pull data from multiple disparate sources that are not known ahead of time and crunch the data to come up with some "best known" data about a particular entity. So every "field" I'm dealing with is multi-valued and I'm also required to track history for each. The normalized design for this ends up being 1 table per field which makes querying it kind of painful anyway. Here are the table schemas and sample data I'm looking at (obviously changed from what I'm working on but I think it illustrates the point well): EAV Tables Person ------------------- - Id - Name - ------------------- - 123 - Joe Smith - ------------------- Person_Value ------------------------------------------------------------------- - PersonId - Source - Field - Value - EffectiveDate - ------------------------------------------------------------------- - 123 - CIA - HomeAddress - 123 Cherry Ln - 2010-03-26 - - 123 - DMV - HomeAddress - 561 Stoney Rd - 2010-02-15 - - 123 - FBI - HomeAddress - 676 Lancas Dr - 2010-03-01 - ------------------------------------------------------------------- Reporting Table Person_Denormalized ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Id - Name - HomeAddress - HomeAddress_Confidence - HomeAddress_EffectiveDate - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 123 - Joe Smith - 123 Cherry Ln - 0.713 - 2010-03-26 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Normalized Design Person ------------------- - Id - Name - ------------------- - 123 - Joe Smith - ------------------- Person_HomeAddress ------------------------------------------------------ - PersonId - Source - Value - Effective Date - ------------------------------------------------------ - 123 - CIA - 123 Cherry Ln - 2010-03-26 - - 123 - DMV - 561 Stoney Rd - 2010-02-15 - - 123 - FBI - 676 Lancas Dr - 2010-03-01 - ------------------------------------------------------ The "Confidence" field here is generated using logic that cannot be expressed easily (if at all) using SQL so my most common operation besides inserting new values will be pulling ALL data about a person for all fields so I can generate the record for the reporting table. This is actually easier in the EAV model as I can do a single query. In the normalized design, I end up having to do 1 query per field to avoid a massive cartesian product from joining them all together.

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• Problem with memset after an instance of a user defined class is created and a file is opened

  - by Liberalkid

  I'm having a weird problem with memset, that was something to do with a class I'm creating before it and a file I'm opening in the constructor. The class I'm working with normally reads in an array and transforms it into another array, but that's not important. The class I'm working with is: #include <vector> #include <algorithm> using namespace std; class PreProcess { public: PreProcess(char* fileName,char* outFileName); void SortedOrder(); private: vector< vector<double > > matrix; void SortRow(vector<double> &row); char* newFileName; vector< pair<double,int> > rowSorted; }; The other functions aren't important, because I've stopped calling them and the problem persists. Essentially I've narrowed it down to my constructor: PreProcess::PreProcess(char* fileName,char* outFileName):newFileName(outFileName){ ifstream input(fileName); input.close(); //this statement is inconsequential } I also read in the file in my constructor, but I've found that the problem persists if I don't read in the matrix and just open the file. Essentially I've narrowed it down to if I comment out those two lines the memset works properly, otherwise it doesn't. Now to the context of the problem I'm having with it: I wrote my own simple wrapper class for matrices. It doesn't have much functionality, I just need 2D arrays in the next part of my project and having a class handle everything makes more sense to me. The header file: #include <iostream> using namespace std; class Matrix{ public: Matrix(int r,int c); int &operator()(int i,int j) {//I know I should check my bounds here return matrix[i*columns+j]; } ~Matrix(); const void Display(); private: int *matrix; const int rows; const int columns; }; Driver: #include "Matrix.h" #include <string> using namespace std; Matrix::Matrix(int r,int c):rows(r),columns(c) { matrix=new int[rows*columns]; memset(matrix,0,sizeof(matrix)); } const void Matrix::Display(){ for(int i=0;i<rows;i++){ for(int j=0;j<columns;j++) cout << (*this)(i,j) << " "; cout << endl; } } Matrix::~Matrix() { delete matrix; } My main program runs: PreProcess test1(argv[1],argv[2]); //test1.SortedOrder(); Matrix test(10,10); test.Display(); And when I run this with the input line uncommented I get: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -1371727776 32698 -1 0 0 0 0 0 6332656 0 -1 -1 0 0 6332672 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 -1371732704 32698 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 I really don't have a clue what's going on in memory to cause this, on a side note if I replace memset with: for(int i=0;i<rows*columns;i++) *(matrix+i) &= 0x0; Then it works perfectly, it also works if I don't open the file. If it helps I'm running GCC 64-bit version 4.2.4 on Ubuntu.I assume there's some functionality of memset that I'm not properly understanding.

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