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• A developer&rsquo;s WBS &ndash; 3 factors of 5

  - by johndoucette

  As a development manager, I have requested work breakdown structures (WBS) many times from the dev leads. Everyone has their own approach and why it takes sometimes days to get this simple list is often frustrating. Here is a simple way to get that elusive WBS done in 30 minutes and have 125 items in your list – well, 126. The WBS is made up of parent-child entities representing the overall outcome of the project. At the bottom of the hierarchical list should be the task item that a developer would perform in support of the branch in the list or WBS. Because I work with different dev leads on every project, I always ask the “what time value would you like to see at the lowest task in order to assign it to a developer and ensure it gets done within the timeframe”. I am particular to a task being 8 hours. Some like 8 to 24 hours. Stay away from tasks defaulting to 1 week. The task becomes way to vague and hard to manage completeness, especially on short budgets. As a developer, your focus is identifying the tasks you to accomplish in order to deliver the product. As a project manager, you will take the developer's WBS and add all the “other stuff” like quality testing, meetings, documentation, transition to maintenance, etc… Start your exercise with the name of the product you are delivering as a result of the project. You should be able to represent what you are building and deploying with one to three words. Example; XYZ Public Website Middleware BizTalk Application The reason you start with that single identifier is to always see the list as the product. It helps during each of the next three passes. Now, choose 5 tasks which in their entirety represent the product you will be delivering and add them to list under the product name you created earlier; Public Website     Security     Sites     Infrastructure     Publishing     Creative Continue this concept of seeing the list as the complete picture and decompose it one more level. You should have 25 items. Public Website     Security         Authentication         Login Control         Administration         DRM         Workflow     Sites         Masterpages         Page Layouts         Web Parts (RIA, Multimedia)         Content Types         Structures     Infrastructure         ...     Publishing         ...     Creative         ... And one more time for a total of 125 items. The top item makes the list 126. Public Website     Security         Authentication             Install (AD/ADAM/LDAP/SQL)             Configuration             Management             Web App Configuration             Implement Provider         Login Control             Login Form             Login/Logoff             pw change             pw recover/forgot             email verification         Administration             ...         DRM             ...         Workflow             ...     Sites         Masterpages         Page Layouts         Web Parts (RIA, Multimedia)         Content Types         Structures     Infrastructure         ...     Publishing         ...     Creative         ... The next step is to make sure the task at the bottom of every branch represents the “time value” you planned for the project. You can add more to the WBS and of course if you can’t find 5 items, 4 is fine. If a task can be done in a fraction of the time value you determined for the project, try to roll it up into a larger task. In the task actions (later when the iteration is being planned), decompose the details back to the simple tasks. Now, go estimate!

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• Feynman's inbox

  - by user12607414

  Here is Richard Feynman writing on the ease of criticizing theories, and the difficulty of forming them: The problem is not just to say something might be wrong, but to replace it by something — and that is not so easy. As soon as any really definite idea is substituted it becomes almost immediately apparent that it does not work. The second difficulty is that there is an infinite number of possibilities of these simple types. It is something like this. You are sitting working very hard, you have worked for a long time trying to open a safe. Then some Joe comes along who knows nothing about what you are doing, except that you are trying to open the safe. He says ‘Why don’t you try the combination 10:20:30?’ Because you are busy, you have tried a lot of things, maybe you have already tried 10:20:30. Maybe you know already that the middle number is 32 not 20. Maybe you know as a matter of fact that it is a five digit combination… So please do not send me any letters trying to tell me how the thing is going to work. I read them — I always read them to make sure that I have not already thought of what is suggested — but it takes too long to answer them, because they are usually in the class ‘try 10:20:30’. (“Seeking New Laws”, page 161 in The Character of Physical Law.) As a sometime designer (and longtime critic) of widely used computer systems, I have seen similar difficulties appear when anyone undertakes to publicly design a piece of software that may be used by many thousands of customers. (I have been on both sides of the fence, of course.) The design possibilities are endless, but the deep design problems are usually hidden beneath a mass of superfluous detail. The sheer numbers can be daunting. Even if only one customer out of a thousand feels a need to express a passionately held idea, it can take a long time to read all the mail. And it is a fact of life that many of those strong suggestions are only weakly supported by reason or evidence. Opinions are plentiful, but substantive research is time-consuming, and hence rare. A related phenomenon commonly seen with software is bike-shedding, where interlocutors focus on surface details like naming and syntax… or (come to think of it) like lock combinations. On the other hand, software is easier than quantum physics, and the population of people able to make substantial suggestions about software systems is several orders of magnitude bigger than Feynman’s circle of colleagues. My own work would be poorer without contributions — sometimes unsolicited, sometimes passionately urged on me — from the open source community. If a Nobel prize winner thought it was worthwhile to read his mail on the faint chance of learning a good idea, I am certainly not going to throw mine away. (In case anyone is still reading this, and is wondering what provoked a meditation on the quality of one’s inbox contents, I’ll simply point out that the volume has been very high, for many months, on the Lambda-Dev mailing list, where the next version of the Java language is being discussed. Bravo to those of my colleagues who are surfing that wave.) I started this note thinking there was an odd parallel between the life of the physicist and that of a software designer. On second thought, I’ll bet that is the story for anybody who works in public on something requiring special training. (And that would be pretty much anything worth doing.) In any case, Feynman saw it clearly and said it well.

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• Sitting Pretty

  - by Phil Factor

  Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk IT Pro newsletter'DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed' I dislike the term 'avatar', when used to describe a portrait photograph. An avatar, in the sense of a picture, is merely the depiction of one's role-play alter-ego, often a ridiculous bronze-age deity. However, professional image is important. The choice and creation of online photos has an effect on the way your message is received and it is important to get that right. It is fine to use that photo of you after ten lagers on holiday in an Ibiza nightclub, but what works on Facebook looks hilarious on LinkedIn. My splendid photograph that I use online was done by a professional photographer at great expense and I've never had the slightest twinge of regret when I remember how much I paid for it. It is me, but a more pensive and dignified edition, oozing trust and wisdom. One gasps at the magical skill that a professional photographer can conjure up, without digital manipulation, to make the best of a derisory noggin (ed: slang for a head). Even if he had offered to depict me as a semi-naked, muscle-bound, sword-wielding hero, I'd have demurred. No, any professional person needs a carefully cultivated image that looks right. I'd never thought of using that profile shot, though I couldn't help noticing the photographer flinch slightly when he first caught sight of my face. There is a problem with using an avatar. The use of a single image doesn't express the appropriate emotion. At the moment, it is weird to see someone with a laughing portrait writing something solemn. A neutral cast to the face, somewhat like a passport photo, is probably the best compromise. Actually, the same is true of a working life in IT. One of the first skills I learned was not to laugh at managers, but, instead, to develop a facial expression that promoted a sense of keenness, energy and respect. Every profession has its own preferred facial cast. A neighbour of mine has the natural gift of a face that displays barely repressed grief. Though he is characteristically cheerful, he earns a remarkable income as a pallbearer. DBAs and SysAdmins generally prefer an expression of calmness under adversity. It is a subtle trick, and requires practice in front of a mirror to get it just right. Too much adversity and they think you're not coping; too much calmness and they think you're under-employed. With an appropriate avatar, you could do away with a lot of the need for 'smilies' to give clues as to the meaning of what you've written on forums and blogs. If you had a set of avatars, showing the full gamut of human emotions expressible in writing: Rage, fear, reproach, joy, ebullience, apprehension, exasperation, dissembly, irony, pathos, euphoria, remorse and so on. It would be quite a drop-down list on forums, but given the vast prairies of space on the average hard drive, who cares? It would cut down on the number of spats in Forums just as long as one picks the right avatar. As an unreconstructed geek, I find it hard to admit to the value of image in the workplace, but it is true. Just as we use professionals to tidy up and order our CVs and job applications, we should employ experts to enhance our professional image. After all you don't perform surgery or dentistry on yourself do you?

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Parsing T-SQL – The easy way

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  Every once in a while, I hit an issue that would require me to interrogate/parse some T-SQL code.  Normally, I would shy away from this and attempt to solve the problem in some other way.  I have written parsers before in the the past using LEX and YACC, and as much fun and awesomeness that path is,  I couldnt justify the time it would take. However, this week I have been faced with just such an issue and at the back of my mind I can remember reading through the SQLServer 2012 feature pack and seeing something called “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Transact-SQL Language Service “.  This is described there as : “The SQL Server Transact-SQL Language Service is a component based on the .NET Framework which provides parsing validation and IntelliSense services for Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008. “ Sounds just what I was after.  Documentation is very scant on this so dont take what follows as best practice or best use, just a practice and a use. Knowing what I was sort of looking for something, I found the relevant assembly in the gac which is the simply named ,’Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser’. Even knowing that you wont find much in terms of documentation if you do a web-search, but you will find the MSDN documentation that list the members and methods etc… The “scanner”  class sounded the most appropriate for my needs as that is described as “Scans Transact-SQL searching for individual units of code or tokens.”. After a bit of poking, around the code i ended up with was something like [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser") | Out-Null $ParseOptions = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.ParseOptions $ParseOptions.BatchSeparator = 'GO' $Parser = new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Scanner($ParseOptions) $Sql = "Create Procedure MyProc as Select top(10) * from dbo.Table" $Parser.SetSource($Sql,0) $Token=[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::TOKEN_SET $Start =0 $End = 0 $State =0 $IsEndOfBatch = $false $IsMatched = $false $IsExecAutoParamHelp = $false while(($Token = $Parser.GetNext([ref]$State ,[ref]$Start, [ref]$End, [ref]$IsMatched, [ref]$IsExecAutoParamHelp ))-ne [Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]::EOF) { try{ ($TokenPrs =[Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens]$Token) | Out-Null $TokenPrs $Sql.Substring($Start,($end-$Start)+1) }catch{ $TokenPrs = $null } } As you can see , the $Sql variable holds the sql to be parsed , that is pushed into the $Parser object using SetSource,  and then we will use GetNext until the EOF token is returned.  GetNext will also return the Start and End character positions within the source string of the parsed text. This script’s output is : TOKEN_CREATE Create TOKEN_PROCEDURE Procedure TOKEN_ID MyProc TOKEN_AS as TOKEN_SELECT Select TOKEN_TOP top TOKEN_INTEGER 10 TOKEN_FROM from TOKEN_ID dbo TOKEN_TABLE Table note that the ‘(‘, ‘)’  and ‘*’ characters have returned a token type that is not present in the Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.SqlParser.Parser.Tokens Enum that has caused an error which has been caught in the catch block.  Fun, Fun ,Fun , Simple T-SQL Parsing.  Hope this helps someone in the same position,  let me know how you get on.

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• Why do I need two Instances in Windows Azure?

  - by BuckWoody

  Windows Azure as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) means that there are various components you can use in it to solve a problem: Compute “Roles” - Computers running an OS and optionally IIS - you can have more than one "Instance" of a given Role Storage - Blobs, Tables and Queues for Storage Other Services - Things like the Service Bus, Azure Connection Services, SQL Azure and Caching It’s important to understand that some of these services are Stateless and others maintain State. Stateless means (at least in this case) that a system might disappear from one physical location and appear elsewhere. You can think of this as a cashier at the front of a store. If you’re in line, a cashier might take his break, and another person might replace him. As long as the order proceeds, you as the customer aren’t really affected except for the few seconds it takes to change them out. The cashier function in this example is stateless. The Compute Role Instances in Windows Azure are Stateless. To upgrade hardware, because of a fault or many other reasons, a Compute Role's Instance might stop on one physical server, and another will pick it up. This is done through the controlling fabric that Windows Azure uses to manage the systems. It’s important to note that storage in Azure does maintain State. Your data will not simply disappear - it is maintained - in fact, it’s maintained three times in a single datacenter and all those copies are replicated to another for safety. Going back to our example, storage is similar to the cash register itself. Even though a cashier leaves, the record of your payment is maintained. So if a Compute Role Instance can disappear and re-appear, the things running on that first Instance would stop working. If you wrote your code in a Stateless way, then another Role Instance simply re-starts that transaction and keeps working, just like the other cashier in the example. But if you only have one Instance of a Role, then when the Role Instance is re-started, or when you need to upgrade your own code, you can face downtime, since there’s only one. That means you should deploy at least two of each Role Instance not only for scale to handle load, but so that the first “cashier” has someone to replace them when they disappear. It’s not just a good idea - to gain the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for our uptime in Azure it’s a requirement. We point this out right in the Management Portal when you deploy the application: (Click to enlarge) When you deploy a Role Instance you can also set the “Upgrade Domain”. Placing Roles on separate Upgrade Domains means that you have a continuous service whenever you upgrade (more on upgrades in another post) - the process looks like this for two Roles. This example covers the scenario for upgrade, so you have four roles total - One Web and one Worker running the "older" code, and one of each running the new code. In all those Roles you want at least two instances, and this example shows that you're covered for High Availability and upgrade paths: The take-away is this - always plan for forward-facing Roles to have at least two copies. For Worker Roles that do background processing, there are ways to architect around this number, but it does affect the SLA if you have only one.

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• Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Announcement

  - by Tim Murphy

  Today Nokia and Microsoft had an event to officially introduce the Lumia 920.  Below is a rundown of some of the things I found interesting. As a person who likes photography there was a lot to drool over.  The main feature that caught my attention was PureView with its optical stabilization.  This alone should improve the majority of you pictures.  Add to that the SmartShoot Object remover that uses multiple images to remove unwanted people or objects that move through your picture and you never have to accept reality again. For the most part the lenses concept introduced in Windows Phone 8 just makes the usability of leveraging camera better.  Of course that is Microsoft’s selling point.  One lens that caught my attention was the Bing lens.  I have to say it is about time that we can take pictures and use them to search for answers using Bing. There were a couple of features shown that involved augmented reality.  One was similar to the yapf application that is already in the market which overlays restaurants and other destination over live camera views.  The other was using the navigation directions with a live view. Then you get down to some of the physical features of the Lumia 920.  The one that got the most stage time is that it has a great 2000mah battery which can be charged wirelessly.  They also pointed out the improved glare reduction of the 4.5 in. curved glass screen.  This hardware improvement is improved further with software that detects glare conditions and adjusts the display attributes to enhance viewing ease. Adding to the wireless cool factor of the Lumia 920 is the general NFC capabilities.  This was demonstrated with NFC docking stations as well as JBL speakers and headphones. There was one more hardware feature that I applauded.  The super sensitive touch screen did away with one of my pet peeves with capacitive touch screens.  You will never have to remove you gloves to operate your phone again.  The mittens that they did the demo with looked more like boxing gloves. I was disappointed with Joe Belfiore said that they were only going to show a couple of new features of the Windows Phone 8 and would hear more at future events.  One of the things he did show is the ability to customize which buttons you preferred as defaults in IE10.  For example you could have the folders button where the refresh button normally is.  He also showed that at long last you can natively take screenshots on your phone.  Hopefully he will be back quickly to give us the rest of the features. The most disappointing part of the event was that we never found out when they would be released or how much they would cost.  Let’s hope this comes soon.  Even with these couple of items still left on my wish list I can’t wait to get my hands on a Lumia 920.  del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Windows Phone 8,Nokia,Lumia,Lumia 920,Microsoft

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• Oracle ties social, CRM, analytics products to customer experience

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Oracle will embark on a new product strategy that centers on customer experience management, an approach driven by the company’s many recent acquisitions.  The new approach, announced by the company Monday night, will be seen in an expansive suite that features familiar Oracle products -- such as its Fusion CRM platform -- and offerings the company recently gained through acquisitions, including FatWire, RightNow and Vitrue. Billed as Oracle Customer Experience (CX), the suite enables businesses to respond to a market centered on the customer experience, said Anthony Lye, the company’s senior vice president of CRM. Companies “are very aware their products are commoditizing,” Lye said in an interview last week, referring to how the Web and social media channels have empowered customers. Customer experiences start and mature outside of CRM, and applications today need to reflect that shift, Lye said. Businesses thus need to step away from a pure CRM model, he said. Oracle claims CX will improve customer experience management by connecting businesses with customers across Web sites and social channels. Companies can create a single, real-time view of the customer and use predictive analytics of interactions to strengthen the customer experience, Oracle said. “Companies have to connect with their customers wherever, whenever and however they want,” Lye said. “They have to know and understand their customer.” Lye promoted Oracle CX as a suite that will work across channels to complement the company’s applications. A new strategy has been “cooking” for years now, but the acquisitions Oracle has made over the past two years made the time right for a “unique collaboration,” Lye said. CX includes basic Oracle CRM solutions such as Siebel and the new Fusion Apps. It also includes the company’s MDM products, Enterprise Data Quality, Customer Hub and Product Hub. And the suite is rounded out by the services that Oracle recently bought, transactions that created or enhanced the company’s presence in social, marketing, e-commerce and customer service. For instance, FatWire provides tools for marketing. ATG focuses on e-commerce. And RightNow specializes in customer service. Two recent acquisitions -- Collective Intellect and Vitrue -- gave Oracle a seat at the social table. Collective Intellect is a social intelligence program, and Vitrue is a social marketing and engagement platform. Those acquisitions have yet to be finalized. Oracle hopes to eventually integrate the two social offerings, as well as most of the other services, into the CX suite. CX can integrate on Oracle’s standard middleware, and can give users a lower TCO by leveraging it as a single stack on premise or as a cloud solution. Lye deferred questions about the pricing of CX, and instead pitched Oracle’s ability to offer multiple customer experience solutions in one suite. Businesses have struggled with the complexity of infrastructure and modern services that communicate with customers, Lye said. “They’ve struggled to pull all these things together. We’ve done that,” he said. Stephen Powers, a research director at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said it’s not surprising for Oracle to offer the CX suite and a related customer experience strategy.  “They’ve got CRM, ATG, FatWire. Clearly, it’s been the strategy for them,” he said. But the challenge for Oracle, and for any other vendor that has gone on an “acquisition spree,” is to connect its many products, Powers said. “The portfolio has to be more than the parts. They’ve got to realize the efficiencies and value of having these pieces to tie them together,” he said. “The proof is in the pudding. Adobe has done a nice job in its space with the products they’ve got. Now, Oracle has got to show it has something.” Albert McKeon (SearchCRM) Published: 25 Jun 2012 : http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/news/2240158644/Oracle-ties-social-CRM-analytics-products-to-customer-experience

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• Type of computer for a developer on the road

  - by nabucosound

  Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

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• Virtualized data centre&ndash;Part three: Architecture

  - by marc dekeyser

  Having the basics (like discussed in the previous articles) is all good and well, but how do we get started on this?! It can be quite daunting after all!   From my own point of view I can absolutely confirm your worries and concerns, but also tell you that it is not as hard as it seems! Deciding on what kind of motherboard to buy, processor and how much memory is an activity you will spend quite some time doing research on. And that is not even mentioning storage! All in all it comes down to setting you expectations and your budget. Probably adjusting your expectations according to your budget :). Processors As a rule of thumb you want VT-D (virtualization) technology built in to the processor allowing you to have 64 bit machines running on your host. Memory The more the better! If you are building a home lab don’t bother with ECC unless you are going to run machines that absolutely should be on all the time and your comfort depends on it! Motherboard Depends on what you are going to do with storage: If you are going the NAS way then the number of SATA port/RAID capabilities do not really matter. If you decide to have a single server with lots of dedicated storage it obviously matters how much SATA ports you will have, alternatively you could use a RAID controller (but these set you back a pretty penny if you want one. DELL 6i’s are usually available for a good bargain if you can find one!). Easiest is to get one with a built-in graphics card (on-board) as you are just adding more heat, power usage and possible points of failure. Networking Just like your choice of motherboard the networking side tends to depend on how you want to go. A single virtualization  host with local storage can usually get away with having a single network card, a cluster or server which uses iSCSI storage tends to have more than one teamed up :). Storage The dreaded beast from the dark! The horror which lives in the forest! The most difficult decision you are going to make in the building of your lab. Why you might ask? Simple my friend, having the right choice of storage can make or break your virtualization solution. The performance of you storage choice will have an important impact on the responsiveness of your virtual machines and the deployment of new machines. It also makes a run with your budget! If you decide to go the NAS route you will be dropping a lot more money than if you would be having just a bunch of disks sitting in a server and manually distributing the virtual machines over the disks. Platform I’m a Microsoftee so Hyper-V is a dead giveaway for me. If you are interested in using VMware I won’t stop you but the rest of my posts will be oriented on Server 2012 Hyper-V (aka 3.0)! What did I use? Before someone asks me this in the comments I’ll give you a quick run down of what I am using. - Intel 2.4 quad core processors (i something something) - 24 GB DDR3 Memory - Single disk in each server (might look at this as I move the servers to 2012) - Synology DS1812+ NAS - 3 network interfaces where possible - HP1800 procurve managed switch I decided to spring for the NAS as I will also be using it for backups and media storage (which is working out quite nicely with my Xbox 360 I must say). At the time of building my 2 boxes (over a year and a half ago) these set me back about 900 euros each so I can image you can build the same or better for a lower price. Next article will be diagramming what I want to achieve and starting a build on the Hyper V 3.0 cluster!

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• The Three-Legged Milk Stool - Why Oracle Fusion Incentive Compensation makes the difference!

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  During the London Olympics, we were exposed to dozens of athletes who worked with sports psychologists to maximize their performance. Executives often hire business psychologists to coach their teams to excellence. In the same vein, Fusion Incentive Compensation can be used to get people to change their sales behavior so we can make our numbers. But what about using incentive compensation solutions in a non-sales scenario to drive change? Recently, I was working an opportunity where a company was having a low user adoption rate for Salesforce.com, which was causing problems for them. I suggested they use Fusion Incentive Comp to change the reps' behavior. We tossed around the idea of tracking user adoption by creating a variable bonus for reps based on how well they forecasted revenues in the new system. Another thought was to reward the reps for how often they logged into the system or for the percentage of leads that became opportunities and turned into revenue. A new twist on a great product. Fusion CRM's Sweet Spot I'm excited about the sales performance management (SPM) tools in Fusion CRM. This trio of Incentive Compensation, Territory Management, and Quota Management sets us apart from the competition because Oracle is the only vendor that provides all three of these capabilities on a single tech stack, in a single application, and with a single look and feel. The niche vendors offer standalone territory or incentive compensation solutions, but then the customer has to custom build the other tools and can end up with a Frankenstein-type environment. On average, companies overpay sales commissions by three to eight percent. You calculate that number for a company the size of Oracle for one quarter and it makes a pretty air-tight financial case for using SPM tools to figure accurate commissions. Plus when sales reps get the right compensation, they can be out selling rather than spending precious time figuring out what they didn't get paid or looking for another job. And one more thing ... Oracle knows incentive comp. We have been a Gartner Market Scope leader in this space for the last five years. Our solution gets high marks because of its scalability and because of its interoperability with other technologies. And now that we're leading with Fusion, our incentive compensation offering includes the innovations that the Fusion team built, plus enhancements from the E-Business Suite Incentive Comp team. It's a case of making a good thing even better. (See product video.) The "Wedge" Apps In a number of accounts that I'm working on, there is a non-Oracle CRM system of record. That gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce the benefits of our SPM tools and to get the customer using Fusion. Then the door is wide open for the company to uptake more of Fusion CRM, especially since all the integrations they need are out of the box. I really believe that implementing this wedge of SPM tools is the ticket to taking market share away from other vendors. It allows us to insert ourselves in an environment where no other CRM solution in the market has the extending capabilities of Fusion. Not Just Your Usual Suspects Usually the stakeholders that I talk to for Territory Management are tightly aligned with the sales management team. When I sell the quota planning tool, I'm talking to finance people on the ERP side of the house who are measuring quotas and forecasting revenue. And then Incentive Comp is of most interest to the sales operations people, and generally these people roll up to either HR or the payroll department. I think of our Fusion SPM tools as a three-legged stool straddling an organization's Sales, Finance, and HR departments. So when you're prospecting for opportunities -- yes, people with a CRM perspective will be very interested -- but don't limit yourselves to that constituency. You might find stakeholders in accounting, revenue planning, or HR compensation teams. You just might discover, as I did at United Airlines, that the HR organization is spearheading the CRM project because incentive compensation is what they need ... and they're the ones with the budget. Jason Loh Global Solutions Manager, Fusion CRM Sales Planning Oracle Corporation

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• How should I plan the inheritance structure for my game?

  - by Eric Thoma

  I am trying to write a platform shooter in C++ with a really good class structure for robustness. The game itself is secondary; it is the learning process of writing it that is primary. I am implementing an inheritance tree for all of the objects in my game, but I find myself unsure on some decisions. One specific issue that it bugging me is this: I have an Actor that is simply defined as anything in the game world. Under Actor is Character. Both of these classes are abstract. Under Character is the Philosopher, who is the main character that the user commands. Also under Character is NPC, which uses an AI module with stock routines for friendly, enemy and (maybe) neutral alignments. So under NPC I want to have three subclasses: FriendlyNPC, EnemyNPC and NeutralNPC. These classes are not abstract, and will often be subclassed in order to make different types of NPC's, like Engineer, Scientist and the most evil Programmer. Still, if I want to implement a generic NPC named Kevin, it would nice to be able to put him in without making a new class for him. I could just instantiate a FriendlyNPC and pass some values for the AI machine and for the dialogue; that would be ideal. But what if Kevin is the one benevolent Programmer in the whole world? Now we must make a class for him (but what should it be called?). Now we have a character that should inherit from Programmer (as Kevin has all the same abilities but just uses the friendly AI functions) but also should inherit from FriendlyNPC. Programmer and FriendlyNPC branched away from each other on the inheritance tree, so inheriting from both of them would have conflicts, because some of the same functions have been implemented in different ways on the two of them. 1) Is there a better way to order these classes to avoid these conflicts? Having three subclasses; Friendly, Enemy and Neutral; from each type of NPC; Engineer, Scientist, and Programmer; would amount to a huge number of classes. I would share specific implementation details, but I am writing the game slowly, piece by piece, and so I haven't implemented past Character yet. 2) Is there a place where I can learn these programming paradigms? I am already trying to take advantage of some good design patterns, like MVC architecture and Mediator objects. The whole point of this project is to write something in good style. It is difficult to tell what should become a subclass and what should become a state (i.e. Friendly boolean v. Friendly class). Having many states slows down code with if statements and makes classes long and unwieldy. On the other hand, having a class for everything isn't practical. 3) Are there good rules of thumb or resources to learn more about this? 4) Finally, where does templating come in to this? How should I coordinate templates into my class structure? I have never actually taken advantage of templating honestly, but I hear that it increases modularity, which means good code.

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• Call for Papers for both Devoxx UK and France now open!

  - by Yolande

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA 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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The two conferences are taking place the last week of March 2013 with London on March 26th and 27 and Paris on March 28th and 29th. Oracle fully supports "Devoxx UK" and "Devoxx France" as a European Platinum Partner. Submit proposals and participate in both conferences since they are a two-hour train ride away from one another. The Devoxx conferences are designed “for developers by developers.” The conference committees are looking for speakers who are passionate developers unafraid to share their knowledge of Java, mobile, web and beyond. The sessions are about frameworks, tools and development with in-depth conference sessions, short practical quickies, and bird-of-a-feather discussions. Those different formats allow speakers to choose the best way to present their topics and can be mentioned during the submission process Devoxx has proven its success under Stephan Janssen, organizer of Devoxx in Belgium for the past 11 years. Devoxx has been the biggest Java conference in Europe for many years. To organize those local conferences, Stephan has enrolled the top community leaders in the UK and France. Ben Evans and Martijn Verberg are the leaders of London Java User Group (JUG) and are also known internationally for starting the Adopt-a-JSR program. Antonio Goncalves is the leader of the Paris JUG. He organized last year’s Devoxx France, which was a big success with twice the size first expected. The organizers made sure to add the local character to the conferences. "The community energy has to feel right," said Ben Evans and for that he picked an "old Victoria hall" for the venue. Those leaders are part of very dynamic Java communities in France and in the UK. France has 22 JUGs; the Paris JUG alone has 2,000 members. The UK has over 50,000 developers working in London and its surroundings; a lot of them are Java developers working in the financial industry. The conference fee is kept as low as possible to encourage those developers to attend. Devoxx promises to be crowded and sold out in advance. Make sure to submit your talks to both Devoxx UK and France before January 31st, 2013. 

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• Paper-free Customer Engagement

  - by Michael Snow

  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Appropriate repost from our friends at the AIIM blog: Digital Landfill -- John Mancini, supporting our mission of enabling customer engagement through better technology choices.  ---------- My wife didn't even give me a card for #wpfd - and they say husbands are bad at remembering anniversaries Well, today is the third World Paper Free Day.  I just got off the Tweet Jam, and there was a host of ideas for getting rid of -- or at least reducing -- paper. When we first started talking about "paper-free" most of the reasons raised to pursue this direction were "green" reasons.  I'm glad to see that the thinking has moved on to questions about how getting rid of paper and digitizing processes helps improve customer engagement.  And the bottom line.  And process responsiveness.  Not that the "green" reasons have gone away, but it's nice to see a maturation in the BUSINESS reasons to get rid of paper. Our World Paper Free Handbook (do not, do not, do not print it!) looks at how less paper in the workplace delivers significant benefits. Key findings show eliminating paper from processes can improve the responsiveness of customer service by 300 percent. Removing paper from business processes and moving content to PCs and tablets has the added advantage of helping companies adopt mobile-enable processes and eliminate elapsed time, lost forms, poor data and re-keying. To effectively mobile-enable processes and reduce reliance on paper, data should be captured as close to the point of origination as possible, which makes information easily available to whomever needs it, wherever they are, in the shortest time possible. This handbook summarizes the value of automating manual, paper-based processes. It then goes a step beyond to provide actionable steps that will set you on the path to productivity, profitability, and, yes, less paper.  Get your copy today and send the link around to your peers and colleagues.  Here's the link; please share it! http://www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/Research/AIIM-White-Papers/WPFD-Revolution-Handbook And don't miss out on the real world discussions about increasing engagement with WebCenter in new webinars being offered over the next couple of weeks:  October 30, 2012:  ResCare Solves Content Lifecycle Challenges with Oracle WebCenter November 1, 2012: WebCenter Content for Applications: Streamline Processes with Oracle WebCenter Content Management for Human Resources Applications Available On-Demand:  Using Oracle WebCenter to Content-Enable Your Business Applications

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• Four Easy Ways to Save a Rocky CRM Relationship

  - by Divya Malik

   Today, I am pleased to introduce our guest blogger Luke Christianson. Luke is  an Application Sales rep based out of Minneapolis, MN.  You can find him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter. In any relationship, sooner or later, the excitement fades away.  The honeymoon period gives way to the old routines you had, before you committed to each other and you eventually begin doing things apart from one another.  I’m not talking about a marriage…  Well, I guess I am.Commitment to a CRM tool and building a deep and lasting relationship is not much different than the basics of a traditional love story.  After your controlled CRM pilot program, and maybe the National Sales Meeting where you couldn’t escape those three wonderful letters, CRM, you will soon find that if you haven’t designed an environment where it’s going to enable your reps to make more money, the relationship is doomed.   . If you’re currently in a dysfunctional CRM relationship, here are 4 simple tips to re-engaging users and getting that spark back. Shadow a Sales Rep:   Chances are you can find out exactly what is preventing your sales reps from using the application by simply watching how they go about their day.  Sales reps are driven by money, not by additional administrative duties.  Your system needs to be setup so that they can get the information they need quickly, facilitate making key updates and run their business out of one easy-to-use application.  Increase your sales team’s productivity by 5% automatically:    Cancel the weekly forecast calls with your reps and require them update their opportunities in CRM.  Something else that I’ve seen work extremely well, is when you do Monthly or Quarterly reviews, do not let your sales reps bring anything into the room with them; no spreadsheets, notebooks, or computers.  Everything they need to tell you should be able to be put into CRM and fully accessible by the Sales Manager at any time.  Tool time:      Make sure the tools that you have selected meet both your short-term goals and your long term goals.   You need tools that can adapt like your business does.  You probably can’t wait two months for an update to a picklist value or for the addition of a simple workflow rule.  Do you feel the tools that are in place can create the experience you want for your users? and finally, if all else fails... Keep It Simple, Stupid:     Do you really need to require 15 fields to create an Opportunity?  Do you need to clutter the interface with different reports that don’t add daily value?  Most CRM systems on the market today are flexible enough today that your admin could clean up most of the unnecessary interface ‘noise’ in a few hours.  If they're not, see #3. Every strong relationship can be tedious at times, you’ll fight and eventually make amends, you may even threaten to upgrade to a newer model…  But be patient and think about what you want to achieve and you’ll find a partner for life.

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• ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue> used with Lazy<T>

  - by Reed

  In a recent thread on the MSDN forum for the TPL, Stephen Toub suggested mixing ConcurrentDictionary<T,U> with Lazy<T>.  This provides a fantastic model for creating a thread safe dictionary of values where the construction of the value type is expensive.  This is an incredibly useful pattern for many operations, such as value caches. The ConcurrentDictionary<TKey, TValue> class was added in .NET 4, and provides a thread-safe, lock free collection of key value pairs.  While this is a fantastic replacement for Dictionary<TKey, TValue>, it has a potential flaw when used with values where construction of the value class is expensive. The typical way this is used is to call a method such as GetOrAdd to fetch or add a value to the dictionary.  It handles all of the thread safety for you, but as a result, if two threads call this simultaneously, two instances of TValue can easily be constructed. If TValue is very expensive to construct, or worse, has side effects if constructed too often, this is less than desirable.  While you can easily work around this with locking, Stephen Toub provided a very clever alternative – using Lazy<TValue> as the value in the dictionary instead. This looks like the following.  Instead of calling: MyValue value = dictionary.GetOrAdd( key, () => new MyValue(key)); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } We would instead use a ConcurrentDictionary<TKey, Lazy<TValue>>, and write: MyValue value = dictionary.GetOrAdd( key, () => new Lazy<MyValue>( () => new MyValue(key))) .Value; This simple change dramatically changes how the operation works.  Now, if two threads call this simultaneously, instead of constructing two MyValue instances, we construct two Lazy<MyValue> instances. However, the Lazy<T> class is very cheap to construct.  Unlike “MyValue”, we can safely afford to construct this twice and “throw away” one of the instances. We then call Lazy<T>.Value at the end to fetch our “MyValue” instance.  At this point, GetOrAdd will always return the same instance of Lazy<MyValue>.  Since Lazy<T> doesn’t construct the MyValue instance until requested, the actual MyClass instance returned is only constructed once.

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• Brazil is Hot for Social Media

  - by Mike Stiles

  Today’s guest blog is from Oracle SVP Product Development Reggie Bradford, fresh off a visit to Sao Paulo, Brazil where he spoke at the Dachis Social Business Summit and spent some time getting a personal taste for the astonishing growth of social in Brazil, both in terms of usage and engagement. I knew it was big, but I now have an all-new appreciation for why the Wall Street Journal branded Brazil the “social media capital of the universe.” Brazil has the world’s 5th largest economy, an expanding middle class, an active younger demo market, a connected & outgoing culture, and an ongoing embrace of the social media platforms. According to comScore's 2012 Brazil Digital Future in Focus report, 97% are using social media, and that’s not even taking mobile-only users into account. There were 65 million Facebook users in 2012, spending an average 535 minutes there, up 208%. It’s one of Twitter’s fastest growing markets and the 2nd biggest market for YouTube. Instagram usage has grown over 300% since last year. That by itself is exciting, but look at the opportunity for social marketing brands. 74% of Brazilian social users follow brands on Facebook, and 59% have praised a company on either Twitter or Facebook. A 2011 Oh! Panel study found 81% of social networkers there used social to research new products and 75% went there looking for discounts. B2C eCommerce sales in Brazil is projected to hit $26.9 billion by 2015. I bet I’m not the only one who sees great things ahead, and I was fortunate enough give a keynote ABRADI, an association of leading digital agencies in Brazil with 53 execs from 35 agencies attending. I was also afforded the opportunity to give my impressions of what’s going on in Brazil to Jornal Propoganda & Marketing, one of the most popular publications in Latin America for marketers. I conveyed that especially in an environment like Brazil, where social users are so willing to connect and engage brands, marketers need to back away from the heavy-handed, one-way messaging of old school advertising and move toward genuine relationships and trust-building. To aide in this, organizational and operation changes must be embraced inside the enterprise. We've talked often about the new, tighter partnership forming between the CIO and CMO. If this partnership is not encouraged, fostered and resourced, the increasing amount of time consumers spend on mobile and digital, and the efficiencies and integrations offered by cloud-based software cannot be exploited. These are the kinds of changes that can yield social data that, when combined with enterprise data, helps you come to know your social audiences intimately and predict their needs. Consumers are always connected and need your brand to be accessible at any time, be it for information or customer service. And, of course, all of this is happening quite publicly. The holistic, socially-enable enterprise connects social to customer service systems and all other customer touch points, facilitating the kind of immediate, real-time, gratifying response customers are coming to expect. Social users in Brazil are highly active and clearly willing to meet us as brands more than halfway. Empowering yourself with a social management technology platform will have you set up to maximize this booming social market…from listening & monitoring to engagement to analytics to workflow & automation to globalization & language support. Brands, it’s time to be as social as the great people of Brazil are. Obrigado! @reggiebradfordPhoto: Gualberto107, freedigitalphotos.net

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• News From EAP Testing

  - by Fatherjack

  There is a phrase that goes something like “Watch the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves”, meaning that if you pay attention to the small things then the larger things are going to fare well too. I am lucky enough to be a Friend of Red Gate and once in a while I get told about new features in their tools and have a test copy of the software to trial. I got one of those emails a week or so ago and I have been exploring the SQL Prompt 6 EAP since then. One really useful feature of long standing in SQL Prompt is the idea of a code snippet that is automatically pasted into the SSMS editor when you type a few key letters. For example I can type “ssf” and then press the tab key and the text is expanded to SELECT * FROM. There are lots of these combinations and it is possible to create your own really easily. To create your own you use the Snippet Manager interface to define the shortcut letters and the code that you want to have put in their place. Let’s look at an example. Say I am writing a blog about something and want to have the demo code create a temporary table. It might looks like this; The first time you run the code everything is fine, a lovely set of dates fill the results grid but run it a second time and this happens.   Yep, we didn’t destroy the temporary table so the CREATE statement fails when it finds the table already exists. No matter, I have a snippet created that takes care of this.   Nothing too technical here but you will see that in the Code section there is $CURSOR$, this isn’t a TSQL keyword but a marker for SQL Prompt to place the cursor in that position when the Code is pasted into the SSMS Editor. I just place my cursor above the CREATE statement and type “ifobj” – the shortcut for my code to DROP the temporary table – which has been defined in the Snippet Manager as below. This means I am right-away ready to type the name of the offending table. Pretty neat and it’s been very useful in saving me lots of time over many years.   The news for SQL Prompt 6 is that Red Gate have added a new Snippet Command of $PASTE$. Let’s alter our snippet to the following and try it out   Once again, we will type type “ifobj” in the SSMS Editor but first of all, highlight the name of the table #TestTable and copy it to your clipboard. Now type “ifobj” and press Tab… Wherever the string $PASTE$ is placed in the snippet, the contents of your clipboard are merged into the pasted TSQL. This means I don’t need to type the table name into the code snippet, it’s already there and I am seeing a fully functioning piece of TSQL ready to run. This means it is it even easier to write TSQL quickly and consistently. Attention to detail like this from Red Gate means that their developer tools stay on track to keep winning awards year after year and help take the hard work out of writing neat, accurate TSQL. If you want to try out SQL Prompt all the details are at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/.

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• broken upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04 on a VPS - recoverable?

  - by HorusKol

  I have a VPS hosted 1500 km away. It originally came with 9.10 - and this morning I decided that I really should get to an LTS release, and figured I'd jump to 12.04. Researching, I discovered that there is no direct path between 9.10 and 12.04, but that I could upgrade via 10.04. After backing up my data, I dove in. The upgrade to 10.04 was successful, and I proceeded to upgrade to 12.04. Things started to go wrong. First, I got an error with GLIBC - I retried and got the same error. That's when I stopped the upgrade. I then tried another round of apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and got a list of "unmet dependencies": apt: Depends: ubuntu-keyring but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.6) but 4.4.3-4ubuntu5.1 is to be installed PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2) but 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.6 is to be installed apt-utils: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 libapt-inst1.4: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed libapt-pkg4.12: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.6) but 4.4.3-4ubuntu5.1 is to be installed libc6: Depends: libc-bin (= 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.2 is to be installed libept0: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 libnih-dbus1: Depends: libnih1 (= 1.0.3-4ubuntu9) but 1.0.1-1 is to be installed I tried to see if I could do something about these - using apt-get -f install. This told me that I would need to upgrade my kernel. I found instructions on how to do this, but when I ran apt-get to install the new linux headers, I got the same dependency errors. I found another answer here where someone else had had an interruption in their upgrade - and tried the solution that worked for them: sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade This resulted in the error: E: Could not perform immediate configuration on 'python2.7-minimal'.Please see man 5 apt.conf under APT::Immediate-Configure for details. (2) I tried to resolve this by: apt-get install -o APT::Immediate-Configure=false -f apt python-minimal But this simply ended up with this last list of dependency errors: apt: Depends: ubuntu-keyring but it is not going to be installed Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.6) but 4.4.3-4ubuntu5.1 is to be installed PreDepends: dpkg (>= 1.15.7.2) but 1.15.5.6ubuntu4.6 is to be installed apt-utils: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 libapt-inst1.4: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed libapt-pkg4.12: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11 is to be installed Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.6) but 4.4.3-4ubuntu5.1 is to be installed libc6: Depends: libc-bin (= 2.11.1-0ubuntu7.11) but 2.15-0ubuntu10.2 is to be installed libept0: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 libnih-dbus1: Depends: libnih1 (= 1.0.3-4ubuntu9) but 1.0.1-1 is to be installed python: Depends: python-minimal (= 2.6.5-0ubuntu1) but 2.7.3-0ubuntu2 is to be installed python-apt: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 python-minimal: Depends: python2.7-minimal (>= 2.7.3) but it is not going to be installed Breaks: python-support (< 1.0.10ubuntu2) but 1.0.4ubuntu1 is to be installed synaptic: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.10-6-4.8 Any ideas on how to dig out of this hole?

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• JavaOne 2012: Nashorn Edition

  - by $utils.escapeXML($entry.author)

  As with my JavaOne 2012: OpenJDK Edition post a while back (now updated to reflect the schedule of the talks), I find it convenient to have my JavaOne schedule ordered by subjects of interest. Beside OpenJDK in all its flavors, another subject I find very exciting is Nashorn. I blogged about the various material on Nashorn in the past, and we interviewed Jim Laskey, the Project Lead on Project Nashorn in the Java Spotlight podcast. So without further ado, here are the JavaOne 2012 talks and BOFs with Nashorn in their title, or abstract:CON5390 - Nashorn: Optimizing JavaScript and Dynamic Language Execution on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 8:30 AM - 9:30 AMThere are many implementations of JavaScript, meant to run either on the JVM or standalone as native code. Both approaches have their respective pros and cons. The Oracle Nashorn JavaScript project is based on the former approach. This presentation goes through the performance work that has gone on in Oracle’s Nashorn JavaScript project to date in order to make JavaScript-to-bytecode generation for execution on the JVM feasible. It shows that the new invoke dynamic bytecode gets us part of the way there but may not quite be enough. What other tricks did the Nashorn project use? The presentation also discusses future directions for increased performance for dynamic languages on the JVM, covering proposed enhancements to both the JVM itself and to the bytecode compiler.CON4082 - Nashorn: JavaScript on the JVM - Monday, Oct 1, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PMThe JavaScript programming language has been experiencing a renaissance of late, driven by the interest in HTML5. Nashorn is a JavaScript engine implemented fully in Java on the JVM. It is based on the Da Vinci Machine (JSR 292) and will be available with JDK 8. This session describes the goals of Project Nashorn, gives a top-level view of how it all works, provides the current status, and demonstrates examples of JavaScript and Java working together.BOF4763 - Meet the Nashorn JavaScript Team - Tuesday, Oct 2, 4:30 PM - 5:15 PMCome to this session to meet the Oracle JavaScript (Project Nashorn) language teamBOF6661 - Nashorn, Node, and Java Persistence - Tuesday, Oct 2, 5:30 PM - 6:15 PMWith Project Nashorn, developers will have a full and modern JavaScript engine available on the JVM. In addition, they will have support for running Node applications with Node.jar. This unique combination of capabilities opens the door for best-of-breed applications combining Node with Java SE and Java EE. In this session, you’ll learn about Node.jar and how it can be combined with Java EE components such as EclipseLink JPA for rich Java persistence. You’ll also hear about all of Node.jar’s mapping, caching, querying, performance, and scaling features.CON10657 - The Polyglot Java VM and Java Middleware - Thursday, Oct 4, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PMIn this session, Red Hat and Oracle discuss the impact of polyglot programming from their own unique perspectives, examining non-Java languages that utilize Oracle’s Java HotSpot VM. You’ll hear a discussion of topics relating to Ruby, Lisp, and Clojure and the intersection of other languages where they may touch upon individual frameworks and projects, and you’ll get perspectives on JavaScript via the Nashorn Project, an upcoming JavaScript engine, developed fully in Java.CON5251 - Putting the Metaobject Protocol to Work: Nashorn’s Java Bindings - Thursday, Oct 4, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PMProject Nashorn is Oracle’s new JavaScript runtime in Java 8. Being a JavaScript runtime running on the JVM, it provides integration with the underlying runtime by enabling JavaScript objects to manipulate Java objects, implement Java interfaces, and extend Java classes. Nashorn is invokedynamic-based, and for its Java integration, it does away with the concept of wrapper objects in favor of direct virtual machine linking to Java objects’ methods provided by a metaobject protocol, providing much higher performance than what could be expected from a scripting runtime. This session looks at the details of the integration, a topic of interest to other language implementers on the JVM and a wider audience of developers who want to understand how Nashorn works.That's 6 sessions tooting the Nashorn this year at JavaOne, up from 2 last year.

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• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

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• Test Fest Pop Quiz!

  - by Kristin Rose

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Question: Where can partners go during OPN Exchange to take complementary certification testing, and upon completing it, receive the credentials of a Certified Specialist, while having it count towards their company’s Specialization and upgrade within the OPN program? Answer: A.) Test Fest B.) Test Fest C.) All of the Above You are right! Test Fest is back by popular demand, and has been included as one of the many partner benefits for attending OPN Exchange this year. Join us from October 1-4th in the Marriott Marquis, Juniper Room at Oracle OpenWorld and get recognized! For times and registration, visit the Oracle OpenWorld Test Fest page and be sure to “study up” by watching this short video on Test Fest at Oracle OpenWorld 2012 below! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} With over 100 exam titles and four days of sessions, you’re sure to walk away with an A+! Best of Luck, The OPN Communications Team

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• Drawing random smooth lines contained in a square [migrated]

  - by Doug Mercer

  I'm trying to write a matlab function that creates random, smooth trajectories in a square of finite side length. Here is my current attempt at such a procedure: function [] = drawroutes( SideLength, v, t) %DRAWROUTES Summary of this function goes here % Detailed explanation goes here %Some parameters intended to help help keep the particles in the box RandAccel=.01; ConservAccel=0; speedlimit=.1; G=10^(-8); % %Initialize Matrices Ax=zeros(v,10*t); Ay=Ax; vx=Ax; vy=Ax; x=Ax; y=Ax; sx=zeros(v,1); sy=zeros(v,1); % %Define initial position in square x(:,1)=SideLength*.15*ones(v,1)+(SideLength*.7)*rand(v,1); y(:,1)=SideLength*.15*ones(v,1)+(SideLength*.7)*rand(v,1); % for i=2:10*t %Measure minimum particle distance component wise from boundary %for each vehicle BorderGravX=[abs(SideLength*ones(v,1)-x(:,i-1)),abs(x(:,i-1))]'; BorderGravY=[abs(SideLength*ones(v,1)-y(:,i-1)),abs(y(:,i-1))]'; rx=min(BorderGravX)'; ry=min(BorderGravY)'; % %Set the sign of the repulsive force for k=1:v if x(k,i)<.5*SideLength sx(k)=1; else sx(k)=-1; end if y(k,i)<.5*SideLength sy(k)=1; else sy(k)=-1; end end % %Calculate Acceleration w/ random "nudge" and repulive force Ax(:,i)=ConservAccel*Ax(:,i-1)+RandAccel*(rand(v,1)-.5*ones(v,1))+sx*G./rx.^2; Ay(:,i)=ConservAccel*Ay(:,i-1)+RandAccel*(rand(v,1)-.5*ones(v,1))+sy*G./ry.^2; % %Ad hoc method of trying to slow down particles from jumping outside of %feasible region for h=1:v if abs(vx(h,i-1)+Ax(h,i))<speedlimit vx(h,i)=vx(h,i-1)+Ax(h,i); elseif (vx(h,i-1)+Ax(h,i))<-speedlimit vx(h,i)=-speedlimit; else vx(h,i)=speedlimit; end end for h=1:v if abs(vy(h,i-1)+Ay(h,i))<speedlimit vy(h,i)=vy(h,i-1)+Ay(h,i); elseif (vy(h,i-1)+Ay(h,i))<-speedlimit vy(h,i)=-speedlimit; else vy(h,i)=speedlimit; end end % %Update position x(:,i)=x(:,i-1)+(vx(:,i-1)+vx(:,i))/2; y(:,i)=y(:,i-1)+(vy(:,i-1)+vy(:,1))/2; % end %Plot position clf; hold on; axis([-100,SideLength+100,-100,SideLength+100]); cc=hsv(v); for j=1:v plot(x(j,1),y(j,1),'ko') plot(x(j,:),y(j,:),'color',cc(j,:)) end hold off; % end My original plan was to place particles within a square, and move them around by allowing their acceleration in the x and y direction to be governed by a uniformly distributed random variable. To keep the particles within the square, I tried to create a repulsive force that would push the particles away from the boundaries of the square. In practice, the particles tend to leave the desired "feasible" region after a relatively small number of time steps (say, 1000)." I'd love to hear your suggestions on either modifying my existing code or considering the problem from another perspective. When reading the code, please don't feel the need to get hung up on any of the ad hoc parameters at the very beginning of the script. They seem to help, but I don't believe any beside the "G" constant should truly be necessary to make this system work. Here is an example of the current output: Many of the vehicles have found their way outside of the desired square region, [0,400] X [0,400].

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• There are 2 jobs available - which one sounds better all round [closed]

  - by Steve Gates

  I am currently employed at a company where we scrape by each year breaking even, sometimes having a little profit. The development environment is very relaxed and we have a laugh. My colleagues are not interested in improving their knowledge unless they have to, so trying to get them to adopt things like TDD is a non-starter. My development manager is stuck in .Net 2 land and refuses to use things like LINQ. He over complicates architecture and writes very unreadable code, heres an example SortedList<int,<SortedList<int,SortedList<int, MyClass>>>> The MD of the company has no drive and lets the one sales guy bring in the contracts. We are not busy all the time and this allows me time to look at new technology and learn. In terms of using things like TDD, my development manager has no problem with it and can kind of see the purpose of it, he just wont use it himself. This means I am alone in learning new things and am often resorting to StackOverflow to make sure I get things right. The company has a lot of flexibility, I can work from home if needs be and when my daughter was born they let me work from home 1 day a week however they expect this flexibility in return often asking me to travel occasionally on a Friday afternoon for the following week. Sometimes its abroad. We are also pretty much on call 24/5 as we have engineers in various countries. Also we have no testers so most of the testing is done by us developers and some testing by engineers. Either way no-one likes testing! I have been offered a role at a company I worked at 5 years ago. They were quite Victorian in their working practices but it appears to have relaxed now although I suspect still reasonably formal. There is a new team of developers I don't know and they are about to move to new offices. The team lead is a guy that was there when I was and I get the impression he takes his role seriously and likes his formal procedures and documentation. I think some of the Victorian practices may have rubbed off on him. However he did say if things crop up then as long as I can trust the person they can work at home although he prefers people in the office. The team uses SCRUM, TDD and SOLID design principles so they are quite up to date in technology. They are reasonably Microsoft focused. It appears the Technical Director might be the R&D man and research new technology on his own not allowing developers to play with new technology. He possibly might be a super developer and makes all the decisions that no can argue with. They are currently moving to Entity Framework away from NHibernate based on issues that their queries seem to fail sometimes and they feel NHibernate is stagnant. They have analysts and a QA team. The MD is focused and they are an expanding company making profit each year. I'm not sure what the team morale is and whether they have a laugh. When I had a tour around the office they were there in dead silence. I'm really unsure which role is the best for me and going with my gut instinct is useless as I'm not sure what my gut is telling me. Based on the information above which role would you choose and why?

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• Collaborative Organizations build Organizational Culture

  “A Collaborative organization builds its culture based on the idea of the family or an athletic team.”(Hoefling, 2001) As I grew up, I participated in many different types of clubs, civic organizations, and sports teams.  Now looking back at the more successful undertakings, I can see three commonalities amongst them. They all shared a defined purpose or goal, defined functional roles, and a shared sense of responsibility to the group. Defined Purpose or Goal In order to unit people to work together, they must share a common goal or have a common purpose. An example of this would be the Lions Club International Foundation. There purpose is to help everyone to lead healthier and more productive lives, nurtures the potential of youth, promotes health, serves the elderly, empowers the disabled and helps victims of disasters. This organization holds localized meetings across the world and works in conjunction with other localized clubs within there organization along with other organizations to promote common goals. If there are no common goals for the group, then there is nothing that binds people to the group, and nothing will be done. Defined Functional Roles In order for an organization to work and function as a team, they must have defined roles and everyone must know how their roles are interdependent on each other. Lets shed light on this subject by looking at a football team’s offense.  Each player has an assigned role to play each time the ball is snapped. The offensive line blocks for the running back or quarterback, the quarterback passes the ball to the wide receiver or hands it off to the running back and the running back and wide receivers run with the ball towards the goal line. Each member of this team shares a common goal of scoring a touchdown, but if each team member does not fulfill their assigned roles the offences will collapse and the team will lose yards. This will provide a set back to the teams goal of scoring a touchdown because they potential are then farther away from the goal line.  In addition, if all the players do not know their roles and how they are part of a larger team then even larger yard losses can occur. Shared Sense of Personal Responsibility to the Group Shared responsibility comes with the shared common goals. Each person in the organization must do their part to promote the common shared goal or purpose based on their abilities. A prime example of this is a wrestling team competing in a match. Points are awarded to the team based on how many wins the team achieves in the meet and of that how many wins where won by decision or by pin. If a wrestler pins his opponent the teams will receive 2 points for the win, but if the wrestler wins by decision, then the team only gets one point for the win. So it is the responsibility of each person on the team to not get pinned if they are unable to win the match. If the team member gets pinned then the other team receives an additional point for the win. References: Hoefling, T. (2001). Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.

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