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• Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

  Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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• Emtel Knowledge Series - Q2/2014

  From Cyber Island to Smart Mauritius Cyber Island? Smart Mauritius? - What is Emtel talking about? "With the majority of the population living in urban environments today, the concept of "Smart Cities" has become an urgent necessity. "Smart Cities" refer to an urban transformation which, by using latest ICT technologies makes cities more efficient. Many Governments are setting out ambitious plans to build the cities of the future based on massive connectivity, high bandwidth communications, intelligent sensors and analysis of huge volumes of data. Various researches have shown four key enablers for smart city success - Government leadership, suitable technology infrastructure, solid public-private partnerships and engaged citizens. It is around these enabling factors that telecoms companies can play a vital role in assisting governments to deliver on the smart city vision." The Emtel Knowledge Series goes in compliance with Emtel's 25th anniversary celebrations throughout the year and the master of ceremony, Kim Andersen, mentioned that there will be more upcoming events on a quarterly base. As a representative of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) there was absolutely no hesitation to join in again. Following my visit to the first Emtel Knowledge Series workshop back in February this year, it was great to have another opportunity to meet and exchange with technology experts. But quite frankly what is it with those buzz words... As far as I remember and how it was mentioned "Cyber Island" is an old initiative from around 2005/2006 which has been refreshed in 2010. It implies the empowerment of Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) as an essential factor of growth by the government here in Mauritius. Actually, the first promotional period of Cyber Island brought me here but that's another story. The venue and its own problems Like last time the event was organised and held at the Conference Hall at Cyber Tower I in Ebene. As I've been working there for some years, I know about the frustrating situation of finding a proper parking. So, does Smart Island include better solutions for the search of parking spaces? Maybe, let's see whether I will be able to answer that question at the end of the article. Anyway, after circling around the tower almost two times, I finally got a decent space to put the car, without risking to get a ticket or damage actually. International speakers and their experience Once again, Emtel did a great job to get international expertise onto the stage to share their experience and vision on this kind of embarkment. Personally, I really appreciated the fact they were speakers of global reach and could provide own-experience knowledge. Johan Gott spoke about the fundamental change that the Swedish government ignited in order to move their society and workers' environment away from heavy industry towards a knowledge-based approach. Additionally, we spoke about the effort and transformation of New York City into a greener and more efficient Smart City. Given modern technology he also advised that any kind of available Big Data should be opened to the general public - this openness would provide a playground for anyone to garner new ideas and most probably solid solutions of which no one else thought about before. Emtel Knowledge Series on moving from Cyber Island to Smart Mauritus Later during the afternoon that exact statement regarding openness to and transparency of government-owned Big Data has been emphasised again by the Danish speaker Kim Andersen and his former colleague Mika Jantunen from Finland. Mika continued to underline the important role of the government to provide a solid foundation for a knowledge-based society and mentioned that Finnish citizens have a constitutional right to broadband connectivity. Next to free higher (tertiary) education Finland already produced a good number of innovations, among them are: First country to grant voting rights to women Free higher education Constitutional right to broadband connectivity Nokia Linux Angry Birds Sauna and others...  General access to internet via broadband and/or mobile connectivity is surely a key factor towards Smart Cities, or better said Smart Mauritius given the area dimensions and size of population. CTO Paul Valette gave the audience a brief overview of the essential role that Emtel will have to move Mauritius forward towards a knowledge-based and innovation-driven environment for its citizen. What I have seen looks really promising and with recently published information that Mauritians have 127% of mobile capacity - meaning more than 1 mobile, smartphone or tablet per person - it will be crucial to have the right infrastructure for these connected devices. How would it be possible to achieve a knowledge-based society? YouTube to the rescue!Seriously, gaining more knowledge will require to have fast access to educational course material as explained by Dr Kaviraj Sukon, General Director of the Open University of Mauritius. According to him a good number of high-profile universities in the world have opened their course libraries to the general public, among them EDX, Coursera and Open University. Nowadays, you're actually able and enabled to learn for and earn a BSc or even MSc certification on your own pace - no need to attend classed on campus. It was really impressive to see the number of available hours - more than enough for a life-long learning experience! {loadposition content_adsense} Networking in the name of MSCC As briefly mentioned above I was about to combine two approaches for this workshop. Of course, getting latest information and updates on Emtel services available, especially for my business here on the west coast of the island, but also to meet and greet new people for the MSCC. And I think it was very positive on both sides. Let me quickly describe some of the key aspects that happened during the day: Met with Arnaud Meslier and Kellie, both Microsoft to swap latest information on IT events. Hereby, I got an invite to Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 Dev Camp. Got in touch with Arvin Lockee, Emtel to check our options to meet with the data team, and seizing the opportunity to have a visiting tour at the Emtel Data Centre. Had a great chat with Avinash Meetoo, Knowledge 7, Kim Andersen and Mika Jantunen about the situation of teaching and learning in general and specifically in the private sector here in Mauritius. Additionally, a number of various other interesting chats... Once again, I'm catching up on a couple of business cards in order to provide more background information about the MSCC, and to create a better awareness of MSCC within the local IT businesses. There is more to come soon!  Resume of the day The number of attendees during this event has been doubled or even tripled this time. The whole organisation has been improved massively and the combination of presentation and summarizing panel discussions was better than during the previous workshop back in February. Overall, once again a well-organised workshop and I'm already looking forward to join the next workshop in Q3. Update End of July we finally managed to visit the Emtel Data Centre in Arsenal. It was an interesting opportunity for some of our MSCC members.

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• Dynamic character animation - Using the physics engine or not

  - by Lex Webb

  I'm planning on building a dynamic reactant animation engine for the characters in my 2D Game. I have already built templates for a skeleton based animation system using key frames and interpolation to specify a limbs position at any given moment in time. I am using Farseer physics (an extension of Box2D) in Monogame/XNA in C# My real question lies in how i go about tying this character animation into the physics engine. I have two options: Moving limbs using physics engine - applying a interpolated force to each limb (dynamic body) in order to attempt to get it to its position as donated by the skeleton animation. Moving limbs by simply changing the position of a fixed body - Updating the new position of each limb manually, attempting to take into account physics collisions. Then stepping the physics after the animation to allow for environment interaction. Each of these methods have their distinct advantages and disadvantages. Physics based movement Advantages: Possibly more natural/realistic movement Better interaction with game objects as force applying to objects colliding with characters would be calculated for me. No need to convert to dynamic bodies when reacting to projectiles/death/fighting. Disadvantages: Possible difficulty in calculating correct amount of force to move a limb a certain distance at a constant rate. Underlying character balance system would need to be created that would need to be robust enough to prevent characters falling over at the touch of a feather. Added code complexity and processing time for the above. Static Object movement Advantages: Easy to interpolate movement of limbs between game steps Moving limbs is as simple as applying a rotation to the skeleton bone. Greater control over limbs, wont need to worry about characters falling over as all animation would be pre-defined. Disadvantages: Possible unnatural movement (Depends entirely on my animation skills!) Bad physics collision reactions with physics engine (Dynamic bodies simply slide out of the way of static objects) Need to calculate collisions with physics objects and my limbs myself and apply directional forces to them. Hard to account for slopes/stairs/non standard planes when animating walking/running animations. Need to convert objects to dynamic when reacting to projectile/fighting/death physics objects. The Question! As you can see, i have thought about this extensively, i have also had Google into physics based animation and have found mostly dissertation papers! Which is filling me with sense that it may a lot more advanced than my mathematics skills. My question is mostly subjective based on my findings above/any experience you may have: Which of the above methods should i use when creating my game? I am willing to spend the time to get a physics solution working if you think it would be possible. In the end i want to provide the most satisfying experience for the gamer, as well as a robust and dynamic system i can use to animate pretty much anything i need.

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• ODI 11g - Cleaning control characters and User Functions

  - by David Allan

  In ODI user functions have a poor name really, they should be user expressions - a way of wrapping common expressions that you may wish to reuse many times - across many different technologies is an added bonus. To illustrate look at the problem of how to remove control characters from text. Users ask these types of questions over all technologies - Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and for many years - how do I clean a string, how do I tokenize a string and so on. After some searching around you will find a few ways of doing this, in Oracle there is a convenient way of using the TRANSLATE and REPLACE functions. So you can convert some text using the following SQL; replace( translate('This is my string'||chr(9)||' which has a control character', chr(3)||chr(4)||chr(5)||chr(9), chr(3) ), chr(3), '' ) If you had many columns to perform this kind of transformation on, in the Oracle database the natural solution you'd go to would be to code this as a PLSQL function since you don't want the code splattered everywhere. Someone tells you that there is another control character that needs added equals a maintenance headache. Coding it as a PLSQL function will incur a context switch between SQL and PLSQL which could prove costly. In ODI user functions let you capture this expression text and reference it many times across your mappings. This will protect the expression from being copy-pasted by developers and make maintenance much simpler - change the expression definition in one place. Firstly define a name and a syntax for the user function, I am calling it UF_STRIP_BAD_CHARACTERS and it has one parameter an input string;  We then can define an implementation for each technology we will use it, I will define Oracle's using the inputString parameter and the TRANSLATE and REPLACE functions with whatever control characters I want to replace; I can then use this inside mapping expressions in ODI, below I am cleaning the ENAME column - a fabricated example but you get the gist.  Note when I use the user function the function name remains in the text of the mapping, the actual expression is not substituted until I generate the scenario. If you generate the scenario and export the scenario you can have a peak at the code that is processed in the runtime - below you can see a snippet of my export scenario;  That's all for now, hopefully a useful snippet of info.

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• Solita Oy Achieves Oracle PartnerNetwork Specialization

  - by michaela.seika(at)oracle.com

  Helsinki, February 2, 2011 - Solita Oy, a member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork (OPN), is the first Finnish enterprise to achieve OPN Specialized status for customer-specific systems integration and software solutions.To achieve a Specialized status, Oracle partners are required to meet a stringent set of requirements that are based on the needs and priorities of the customer and partner community. By achieving a Specialized distinction, Solita Oy has been recognized by Oracle for its expertise in customer-specific systems integration and software solutions, achieved through competency development and demonstrated by the company's business results and proven success in implementing customer projects. "Solita and Oracle have cooperated for a long time, and we have been an Oracle partner for many years. We believe that the renewed partner program and the new partnership level that we have achieved will open up new opportunities for a closer collaboration with Oracle. Our increased focus on systems integration solutions and the stepping up of our specialized knowledge of SOA will enable us to provide even better solutions for our customers," said Jari Niska, Chief Executive Officer, Solita Oy. "Solita has shown trust and belief in Oracle's technology and in the business opportunities arising with it. They have contributed to building our cooperation in a consistent and systematic way. Achieving a Specialized status in our partner program is a natural further step in our close and committed cooperation. It strengthens our trust in our ability to be able to increase both turnover and profitability together," said Juha Kaskirinne, Alliances and Channel Leader, Oracle Finland Oy.  About Oracle PartnerNetwork Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners or connect with the Oracle Partner community at OPN on Twitter, OPN on Facebook, OPN on LinkedIn, and OPN on YouTube. About Solita Oy Solita Oy is a Finnish company dedicated to developing demanding information system solutions and IT professional services. Solita's customers include prominent Finnish companies and public organizations. Solita's turnover in 2010 was about 17 million euros. The company was founded in 1996 and has over 170 employees. Further information: www.solita.fiFurther information Jari Niska, CEO, Solita Oy, tel. +358 40 524 6400, [email protected] Kaskirinne, A&C Leader Finland, Oracle Finland Oy, tel. +358 40 506 3592, [email protected]

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• Get to Know a Candidate (11 of 25): Roseanne Barr&ndash;Peace &amp; Freedom Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Barr is an American actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, and director.  Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997. She won both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on the show. Barr had crafted a "fierce working-class domestic goddess" persona in the eight years preceding her sitcom and wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother who was not a victim of patriarchal consumerism. The granddaughter of immigrants from Europe and Russia, Barr was the oldest of four children in a working-class Jewish Salt Lake City family; she was also active in the LDS Church. In 1974 she married Bill Pentland, with whom she had three children, before divorcing in 1990 and marrying comedian Tom Arnold for four years. Controversy arose when she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key at a 1990 nationally aired baseball game, followed by grabbing her crotch and spitting. After her sitcom ended, she launched her own talk show, The Roseanne Show, which aired from 1998 to 2000. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she starred in an unscripted TV show, Roseanne's Nuts that lasted from July to September of that year, about her life on a Hawaiian farm. The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a nationally-organized political party with affiliates in more than a dozen states, including California, Florida, Colorado and Hawaii. Its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, but the Peace and Freedom Party of California was founded on June 23, 1967, after the LAPD riot in the wealthy Century City section of Los Angeles, and qualified for the ballot in January 1968.  The Peace and Freedom Party went national in 1968 as a left-wing organization opposed to the Vietnam War. From its inception, Peace and Freedom Party has been a left-wing political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates personal liberties and universal, high quality and free access to education and health care. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them. Barr is on the Ballot in: CA, CO, FL Learn more about Roseanne Barr and Peace and Freedom Party on Wikipedia.

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• Updates about Multidimensional vs Tabular #ssas #msbi

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I recently read the blog post from James Serra Tabular model: Not ready for prime time? (read also the comments because there are discussions about a few points raised by James) and the following post from Christian Wade Multidimensional or Tabular. In the last 2 years I worked with many companies adopting Tabular in different scenarios and I agree with some of the points expressed by James in his post (especially about missing features in Tabular if compared to Multidimensional), but I strongly disagree in others. In general, Tabular is a good choice for a new project when: the development team does not have a good knowledge of Multidimensional and MDX (DAX is faster to learn, not so easy as it is sold by MS, but definitely easier than MDX) you don’t need calculations based on hierarchies (common in certain financial applications, but not so common as it could seem) there are important calculations based on distinct count measures there are complex calculations based on many-to-many relationships Until now, I never suggested to migrate an existing Multidimensional model to a Tabular one. There should be very important reasons for that, such as performance issues in distinct count and many-to-many relationships that cannot be easily solved by optimizing the Multidimensional model, but I still never encountered this scenario. I would say that in 80% of the new projects, you might use either Multidimensional or Tabular and the real difference is the time-to-market depending on the skills of the development team. So it’s not strange that who is used to Multidimensional is not moving to Tabular, not getting a particular benefit from the new model unless specific requirements exist. The recent DAXMD feature that allows using SharePoint Power View on Multidimensional is a really important one, even if I’d like having also Excel Power View enabled for this scenario (this should be just a question of time). Another scenario in which I’m seeing a growing adoption of Tabular is in companies that creates models for their product/service and do that by using XMLA or Tabular AMO 2012. I am used to call them ISVs, even if those providing services cannot be really defined in this way. These companies are facing the multitenancy challenge with Tabular and even if this is a niche market, I see some potential here, because adopting Tabular seems a much more natural choice than Multidimensional in those scenario where an analytical engine has to be embedded to deliver one of the features of a larger product/service delivered to customers. I’d like to see other feedbacks in the comments: tell your story of choosing between Tabular and Multidimensional in a BI project you started with SQL Server 2012, thanks!

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• Token based Authentication and Claims for Restful Services

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  WIF as it exists today is optimized for web applications (passive/WS-Federation) and SOAP based services (active/WS-Trust). While there is limited support for WCF WebServiceHost based services (for standard credential types like Windows and Basic), there is no ready to use plumbing for RESTful services that do authentication based on tokens. This is not an oversight from the WIF team, but the REST services security world is currently rapidly changing – and that’s by design. There are a number of intermediate solutions, emerging protocols and token types, as well as some already deprecated ones. So it didn’t make sense to bake that into the core feature set of WIF. But after all, the F in WIF stands for Foundation. So just like the WIF APIs integrate tokens and claims into other hosts, this is also (easily) possible with RESTful services. Here’s how. HTTP Services and Authentication Unlike SOAP services, in the REST world there is no (over) specified security framework like WS-Security. Instead standard HTTP means are used to transmit credentials and SSL is used to secure the transport and data in transit. For most cases the HTTP Authorize header is used to transmit the security token (this can be as simple as a username/password up to issued tokens of some sort). The Authorize header consists of the actual credential (consider this opaque from a transport perspective) as well as a scheme. The scheme is some string that gives the service a hint what type of credential was used (e.g. Basic for basic authentication credentials). HTTP also includes a way to advertise the right credential type back to the client, for this the WWW-Authenticate response header is used. So for token based authentication, the service would simply need to read the incoming Authorization header, extract the token, parse and validate it. After the token has been validated, you also typically want some sort of client identity representation based on the incoming token. This is regardless of how technology-wise the actual service was built. In ASP.NET (MVC) you could use an HttpModule or an ActionFilter. In (todays) WCF, you would use the ServiceAuthorizationManager infrastructure. The nice thing about using WCF’ native extensibility points is that you get self-hosting for free. This is where WIF comes into play. WIF has ready to use infrastructure built-in that just need to be plugged into the corresponding hosting environment: Representation of identity based on claims. This is a very natural way of translating a security token (and again I mean this in the widest sense – could be also a username/password) into something our applications can work with. Infrastructure to convert tokens into claims (called security token handler) Claims transformation Claims-based authorization So much for the theory. In the next post I will show you how to implement that for WCF – including full source code and samples. (Wanna learn more about federation, WIF, claims, tokens etc.? Click here.)

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• links for 2010-12-22

  - by Bob Rhubart

  @hajonormann: BPM: Top Seven Architectural Topics in 2010 Oracle ACE Director Hajo Normann offers details on how to design a BPM/SOA solution including: modeling human interaction, improving BPM models, orchestrating composed services, central task management, new approaches for business-IT alignment, solutions for non-deterministic processes, and choreography. (tags: oracle otn soasymposium infoq soa bpm) InfoQ: Simplicity, The Way of the Unusual Architect Dan North talks about the tendency developers-becoming-architects have to create bigger and more complex systems. Without trying to be simplistic, North argues for simplicity, offering strategies to extract the simple essence from complex situations. (tags: ping.fm) Fun with Sun Ray, 3D, Oracle VM x86 and SRIOV (Wim Coekaerts Blog) "One of the things I like about my job is that I get to play around with stuff and make use of the technologies we work on in my teams. Sort of my own little playground." - Wim Coekaerts (tags: oracle otn virtualization oraclevm) Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0.0 Released! (Oracle's Virtualization Blog) And you were worried about what to get that special someone for Christmas... (tags: oracle otn virtualization virtualbox) Virtual Developer Day: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE (#OTNVDD) (Oracle Technology Network Blog (aka TechBlog)) "Virtual Developer Day is back with a vengeance! On Feb. 1, login to learn how Oracle WebLogic Server enables a whole new level of productivity for enterprise developers." Registration is open. (tags: oracle otn events webinar java) New Coherence 3.6 Oracle University Course (Cristóbal Soto's Blog) Cristóbal Soto shares information on the "Oracle Coherence 3.6: Share and Manage Data in Clusters" course now available through Oracle University. (tags: oracle otn grid coherence) The Aquarium: Oracle WebLogic Server & Java EE developer day "Oracle WebLogic is well on its way to contribute to the general Java EE 6 momentum and the OTN Blog has just announced a Virtual Developer Day for Oracle WebLogic." (tags: oracle otn weblogic java) Enterprise 2.0 Use Cases for Semantic Web (Reiser 2.0) "How can an enterprise improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their Knowledge and Community model leveraging semantic technologies and social networking dynamics?" - Peter Reiser (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 semanticweb) John Gøtze: European Interoperability Framework 2.0 "This week, the European Commission announced an updated interoperability policy in the EU. The Commission has committed itself to adopt a Communication that introduces the European Interoperability Strategy (EIS) and an update to the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)..." - John Gøtze (tags: entarch Interoperability) Andy Mulholland: Maybe Web 3.0 is quite understandable – and a natural result "The idea of Web 1.0 = content, Web 2.0 = people and Web 3.0 = services has a nice symmetrical feel to it, in fact it feels basically right as such a definition would include the two other major definitions as well. So if we put these things all together what picture do we see?" - Andy Mulholland (tags: web2.0 web3.0) Ken Downs: A Working Definition of Business Logic, with Implications for CRUD Code "The Wikipedia entry on 'Business Logic' has a wonderfully honest opening sentence stating that 'Business logic, or domain logic, is a non-technical term...'"  (tags: businesslogic crud)

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• Throwing exception from a property when my object state is invalid

  - by Rumi P.

  Microsoft guidelines say: "Avoid throwing exceptions from property getters", and I normally follow that. But my application uses Linq2SQL, and there is the case where my object can be in invalid state because somebody or something wrote nonsense into the database. Consider this toy example: [Table(Name="Rectangle")] public class Rectangle { [Column(Name="ID", IsPrimaryKey = true, IsDbGenerated = true)] public int ID {get; set;} [Column(Name="firstSide")] public double firstSide {get; set;} [Column(Name="secondSide")] public double secondSide {get; set;} public double sideRatio { get { return firstSide/secondSide; } } } Here, I could write code which ensures that my application never writes a Rectangle with a zero-length side into the database. But no matter how bulletproof I make my own code, somebody could open the database with a different application and create an invalid Rectangle, especially one with a 0 for secondSide. (For this example, please forget that it is possible to design the database in a way such that writing a side length of zero into the rectangle table is impossible; my domain model is very complex and there are constraints on model state which cannot be expressed in a relational database). So, the solution I am gravitating to is to change the getter to: get { if(firstSide > 0 && secondSide > 0) return firstSide/secondSide; else throw new System.InvalidOperationException("All rectangle sides should have a positive length"); } The reasoning behind not throwing exceptions from properties is that programmers should be able to use them without having to make precautions about catching and handling them them. But in this case, I think that it is OK to continue to use this property without such precautions: if the exception is thrown because my application wrote a non-zero rectangle side into the database, then this is a serious bug. It cannot and shouldn't be handled in the application, but there should be code which prevents it. It is good that the exception is visibly thrown, because that way the bug is caught. if the exception is thrown because a different application changed the data in the database, then handling it is outside of the scope of my application. So I can't do anything about it if I catch it. Is this a good enough reasoning to get over the "avoid" part of the guideline and throw the exception? Or should I turn it into a method after all? Note that in the real code, the properties which can have an invalid state feel less like the result of a calculation, so they are "natural" properties, not methods.

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• Need personal advice on how to get out of a company..

  - by SOfan

  Hi, I am an SO user since past 6 months and this is the first time I am turning to SO for personal help. I have asked technical questions before with my real ID. I am stuck inside a service based IT company for the past one year and haven't been able to decide if to leave it, when to leave it and how to leave it. I had taken 2 weeks LWP on medical reason roughly at end of 1 year and then soon after reporting, I applied for 2 months more LWP (on medical/personal ground) with the intention of working on my health,take up a hobby class to ward off depression,pessimism, to have some fun in life, and to look for a job which I really would be excited about - that interests me and which matches with my strength. My leave starts from this Monday. So in any case, I had hard set in mind that I will leave the company after I join them back hopefully with some job offer already in hand (after figuring out what I want do). Neither I can stand the past project,past colleagues,company, HR, pathetically low salary. But if I really listen to my heart, I don't want to have to go back to that office after my sabbatical and again have to see those people. I will have to resign it after my sabbatical ends. Then HR people perhaps wont like it, may even accuse me on face or behind back that primary purpose of my leave must have been to hunt for a better job and I lied about medical and person reasons. Also, if they get nasty and force me to serve 2 months notice period. There is no way I see myself after sabbatical resuming in old project or starting new work. It will be a pain. Since they have already approved 2 months leave and stuff, ideally if they want, they should be just able to relieve me right on the next day after I join back. But, I don't know if they want to get nasty, will they mention about my 2 months sabbatical leave in my experience letter or more scary, the term medical/personal reason. I have hard earned my experience here, have worked against my will, mostly it has been painful and slogged like anything, because I realize the importance of work experience in IT industry. I don't have greed to have those 2 months included extra in my experience letter, but I don't want to mess up with my experience letter in a way which makes my next employer ask question, get suspicious, or be wary if I have any medical reason going on. Being an emotional,moody person or somebody who can't be in an environment, once my mind and heart starts hating it. I think it perhaps is best, if I resign on Monday itself telling them (in polite manner) something that look I took sabbatical for some reason but I don't want to resume working in the company after my sabbatical ends. So please accept my resignation. Now tell me what you want to do about my leave request, my notice period and when you are willing to relieve me. What should I write and how? Some background: I am working in an IT company in India.I am overqualified in the company. It is grossly underpaying me. My education qualifications far exceed anyone's in the whole company being a CS undergrad as well as a CS grad. I joined this company after finishing the grad. I had self-doubts about my skills and interest as a programmer. I like doing research oriented work, though didn't have any particular success during grad. My life here has been very hectic. The project containing many many sub-projects has kept me on my toes and I have never really liked the work. I have been playing against my strength. Also the company strict internet usage policy (you can't read gmails, can't browse any non-work related sites not even news). When working for a client, from the machine we can't even check company related emails.For this one has to go to kiosk like 5 machines in a small room etc. Most of the times those machines are not available, so it was not unusual to keep making rounds to these kiosk machines to check company emails, browse company related emails etc.So it was not so easy to keep in touch with company related basic affairs for a not particular careful person. Things like this which are new to me, make me feel restricted. I am an undecisive person with a sense of failure, self-doubt, not meeting up unrealistic expectation. Somewhere at back of mind, I envy my classmates who make a smooth transition from company to company without causing any gap in their resume. I on other hand have gaps in resume. I get tired after working in a place for sometime. problem with colleagues in general. I am not particular great with people, have few friends, not known for a fun nature, rather serious, scholar. I am not a typical conventional female. I think females are usually more disciplined. But I am not so. I reach office late (though after informing manager). I don't want to blame them entirely, because from my past, it is not unusual for me to get undecisive on things. Also I had doubts about my ability as researched and to succeed there. of building a relationship in a group, to have something to talk about, newspaper. I get cut-off from people. peer pressure. I make blunders in coding, lose patience. Consciously or unconsciously I feel contempt for people here, work here, environment here. I have doubts that either I go to a place which does innovation, does research oriented work, product biggies, have great motivated people, have competent people passionate about products they are building. But then I also doubt my ability to survive there. I have identified that an idea job for me would be 4 days a week, a high salary job. When among people in company/team, I can't think much. I need some time at home to read good authentic books written in good style on what work I am doing.So that I am comfortable with my understanding of work. I get into pressure easily under deadline and need 5th day to cool myself off. I took for 2 weeks leave, because each day was hell for me. May be the depression phase of bipolar is on and also partially it could be that being a work centered person, who derives happiness,self-esteem from work, haven't been enjoying work and have been working for the sole person of proving stability, and ability to stick, against all odds, and facing what challenges I see, bonding with people, identifying opportunities to learn in given task etc.have been averaging one day LWP in 1 week or 10 days. or may be because of my nature,ADD,not being able to switch context,out of touch with news, don't have a circle of friends with who I enjoy. less knowledge in general to talk about, just some technical stuff.anyway, so due to emotional reason, some practical reason etc, I wanted to be very sure before leaving. So my leave starts from Monday and I should feel happy about it. I have taken the leave to for a few purposes - to take care of my health by regular yoga/exercise (with project on, I just can't do anything regular), reassess myself to see what I want to try next which work I might like, look for next job, take up a hobby which I like say singing. I am not clear on my career,job aspiration. I have tried my hands on research. During this year appraisal yesterday, I even had some conflict with my last manager. In meeting with me one on one, he would say all nice things about me, but in feedback to new manager, he hasn't given any excellent feedback. It is all only good. I am angry at this old Manager. Also new manager also scolded me as I didn't agree to his appraisal and waited to hear myself from old Manager. He kind of scolded me for wasting his time. Am I being unethical somewhere? I am always very conscious of if I am cheating anywhere. What advice I am seeking? How to resign and what to write in resignation letter

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• Synchronizing ODSEE and OUD

  - by Etienne Remillon

  When it comes to synchronizing between ODSEE and OUD, what should be the best options ? Couple  options are available - Use one of OUD internal capability called Replication Gateway - Use our synchronization tool called Directory Integration Platform part of Oracle Directory Services Plus - Manuel export and import Let's check pro and cons on each method. Replication Gateway is the natural, out of the box solution to perform the task. We created this as a feature of OUD because it works at our replication protocol level. The gateway perform the required adaptation between the ODSEE's replication protocol and OUD's one. The benefits of doing this is that it provide strong consistency between the to type of directories. This fully leverage conflict management implemented in the replication protocols to ensure that changes are applied in a coherent and ordered manner. It does not require specific modification on existing ODSEE production instances such as turning on "retro changelog". Changes are propagated at near speed of replication in both directions. Replication Gateway can also synchronize information that are stored internally in the directory server such as "xxxxx" account locking managed at ODSEE server level and not via the nsyyyy attribute. OUD replication gateway does no require any specific tools or installation specific procedure. It is manged like other OUD component with monitoring and configuration via the standard console. OUD Replication Gateway does not perform adaptation between ODSEE and OUD. Using Directory Integration Protocol as external component to OUD, brings flexibility in remapping and transformations between ODSEE and OUD. There is a price to pay in using DIP to perform the synchronization task. You will have to turn on the retro change log to get access to changes on the ODSEE side (this will impact disk and CPU usage and performances which could be a serious challenge for your existing ODSEE environment (if you have not provisioned additional hardware and instances). You will not benefits of conflict resolution management and this might have to be addressed at application level, which is not always possible to implement. Using export and import seams very simple, but this methodology cannot ensure an highly available deployment with up to date entries on booth sides. This solution can be used if full HA with up-to-date data is not needed (during synchronization time). It often used  if data-cleaning need to take place to avoid polluting a new environment with old un-necessary data.

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• NDepend 4.0 Released

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Last week version 4.0 of NDepend was released.  NDepend is a Visual Studio add-in designed for intense code analysis with the goal of high quality code.  A month ago I wrapped up my evaluation of the previous version of NDepend. The new version contains many minor changes, several bug fixes, and adds about 50 new code rules.  The version also adds support for Visual Studio 11, .NET Framework 4.5, and SilverLight 5.0.  But, the biggest change was the shift from CQL to CQLinq. Introducing CQLinq The latest version replaces the CQL rules language with CQLinq (CQL is still an option although the editor is buried).  As you might guess CQLinq is a flavor of Linq designed specifically for the code rules. The best way to illustrate the differences is with an example.  I used the following CQL example in Part 3 of my review: WARN IF Count > 0 IN SELECT TYPES WHERE IsInterface AND !NameLike “I” This same query looks like this when implemented in CQLinq: warnif count > 0 from t in Types where t.IsInterface == true && !t.NameLike(“I”) select t I like the syntax and it is a natural fit, but I found writing the queries frustrating in the Queries and Rules Edit window.  The Queries and Rules Edit window replaces the CQL Query Edit window.  The new editor has the same style of Intellisense as the previous editor.  However, it has a few annoyances.  The error indicator is a red block.  It has the tendency of obscuring your cursor.  Additionally, writing CQLing queries is like writing plain old Linq queries, so the fact that the editor uses Enter to select from Intellisense instead of Tab is jarring.  These issues can be an obstacle to writing queries quickly.CQLinq makes it possible to write rules that weren't possible before.  Additionally, a JustMyCode domain is now possible making it easy to eliminate generated code from the analysis.Should you Buy? I recommend NDepend overall.  It has some rough points for me that I have detailed in my earlier evaluation (starting here).  But, it’s definitely worth the money.  The bigger question is: should I pay for the upgrade to 4.0?  At this point I’m on the fence, but I would go for it if you need support for Visual Studio 2011, .NET Framework 4.5, or Silverlight 5.0; or if you need one of the many rules that weren't possible before CQLinq. Disclaimer: Patrick Smacchia contacted me about reviewing NDepend. I received a free license in return for sharing my experiences and talking about the capabilities of the add-in on this site. There is no expectation of a positive review elicited from the author of NDepend. Resources: NDepend Release Notes

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• Swiss Re increases data warehouse performance and deploys in record time

  - by KLaker

  Great information on yet another data warehouse deployment on Exadata. A little background on Swiss Re: In 2002, Swiss Re established a data warehouse for its client markets and products to gather reinsurance information across all organizational units into an integrated structure. The data warehouse provided the basis for reporting at the group level with drill-down capability to individual contracts, while facilitating application integration and data exchange by using common data standards. Initially focusing on property and casualty reinsurance information only, it now includes life and health reinsurance, insurance, and nonlife insurance information. Key highlights of the benefits that Swiss Re achieved by using Exadata: Reduced the time to feed the data warehouse and generate data marts by 58% Reduced average runtime by 24% for standard reports comfortably loading two data warehouse refreshes per day with incremental feeds Freed up technical experts by significantly minimizing time spent on tuning activities Most importantly this was one of the fastest project deployments in Swiss Re's history. They went from installation to production in just four months! What is truly surprising is the that it only took two weeks between power-on to testing the machine with full data volumes! Business teams at Swiss Re are now able to fully exploit up-to-date analytics across property, casualty, life, health insurance, and reinsurance lines to identify successful products. These points are highlighted in the following quotes from Dr. Stephan Gutzwiller, Head of Data Warehouse Services at Swiss Re:  "We were operating a complete Oracle stack, including servers, storage area network, operating systems, and databases that was well optimized and delivered very good performance over an extended period of time. When a hardware replacement was scheduled for 2012, Oracle Exadata was a natural choice—and the performance increase was impressive. It enabled us to deliver analytics to our internal customers faster, without hiring more IT staff" “The high quality data that is readily available with Oracle Exadata gives us the insight and agility we need to cater to client needs. We also can continue re-engineering to keep up with the increasing demand without having to grow the organization. This combination creates excellent business value.” Our full press release is available here: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/customers/customersearch/swiss-re-1-exadata-ss-2050409.html. If you want more information about how Exadata can increase the performance of your data warehouse visit our home page: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata-database-machine/overview/index.html

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• How to begin? Windows 8 Development

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Ok. I convinced you in my last post to do some Win8 development. You want a piece of that cake, or whatever your reasons may be. Good! Welcome to the club! Now let me ask you a question: what are you going to write? Ah. That’s the big one, isn’t it? What indeed? If you have been creating applications for computers before you’re in for quite a shock. The way people perceive apps on a tablet is quite different from what we know as applications. There’s a reason we call them apps instead of applications! Yes, technically they are applications but we don’t call them apps only because it sounds cool. The abbreviated form of the word applications itself is a pointer. Apps are small. Apps are focused. Apps are more lightweight. Apps do one thing but they do that one thing extremely good. In the ‘old’ days we wrote huge systems. We build ecosystems of services, screens, databases and more to create a system that provides value for the user. Think about it: what application do you use most at work? Can you in one sentence describe what it is, or what it does and yet still distinctively describe its purpose? I doubt you can. Let’s have a look at Outlouk. We all know it and we all love or hate it. But what is it? A mail program? No, there’s so much more there: calendar, contacts, RSS feeds and so on. Some call it a ‘collaboration’  application but that’s not really true as well. After all, why should a collaboration application give me my schedule for the day? I think the best way to describe Outlook is “client for Exchange”  although that isn’t accurate either. Anyway: Outlook is a great application but it’s not an ‘app’ and therefor not very suitable for WinRT. Ok. Disclaimer here: yes, you can write big applications for WinRT. Some will. But that’s not what 99.9% of the developers will do. So I am stating here that big applications are not meant for WinRT. If 0.01% of the developers think that this is nonsense then they are welcome to go ahead but for the majority here this is not what we’re talking about. So: Apps are small, lightweight and good at what they do but only at that. If you’re a Phone developer you already know that: Phone apps on any platform fit the description I have above. If you’ve ever worked in a large cooperation before you might have seen one of these before: the Mission Statement. It’s supposed to be a oneliner that sums up what the company is supposed to do. Funny enough: although this doesn’t work for large companies it does work for defining your app. A mission statement for an app describes what it does. If it doesn’t fit in the mission statement then your app is going to get to big and will fail. A statement like this should be in the following style “<your app name> is the best app to <describe single task>” Fill in the blanks, write it and go! Mmm.. not really. There are some things there we need to think about. But the statement is a very, very important one. If you cannot fit your app in that line you’re preparing to fail. Your app will become to big, its purpose will be unclear and it will be hard to use. People won’t download it and those who do will give it a bad rating therefor preventing that huge success you’ve been dreaming about. Stick to the statement! Ok, let’s give it a try: “PlanesAreCool” is the best app to do planespotting in the field. You might have seen these people along runways of airports: taking photographs of airplanes and noting down their numbers and arrival- and departure times. We are going to help them out with our great app! If you look at the statement, can you guess what it does? I bet you can. If you find out it isn’t clear enough of if it’s too broad, refine it. This is probably the most important step in the development of your app so give it enough time! So. We’ve got the statement. Print it out, stick it to the wall and look at it. What does it tell you? If you see this, what do you think the app does? Write that down. Sit down with some friends and talk about it. What do they expect from an app like this? Write that down as well. Brainstorm. Make a list of features. This is mine: Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. Now, I must make it clear that I am not a planespotter nor do I know what one does. So if the above list makes no sense, I apologize. There is a lesson: write apps for stuff you know about…. First of all, let’s look at our statement and then go through the list of features. Remove everything that has nothing to do with that statement! If you end up with an empty list, try again with both steps. Note planes Look up aircraft carriers Add pictures of that plane Look up airfields Notify friends of new spots Look up details of a type of plane Plot a graph with arrival and departure times Share new spots on social media Look up history of a particular aircraft Compare your spots with friends Write down arrival times Write down departure times Write down wind conditions Write down the runway they take Look up weather conditions for next spotting day Invite friends to join you for a day of spotting. That's better. The things I removed could be pretty useful to a plane spotter and could be fun to write. But do they match the statement? I said that the app is for spotting in the field, so “look up airfields” doesn’t belong there: I know where I am so why look it up? And the same goes for inviting friends or looking up the weather conditions for tomorrow. I am at the airfield right now, looking through my binoculars at the planes. I know the weather now and I don’t care about tomorrow. If you feel the items you’ve crossed out are valuable, then why not write another app? One that says “SpotNoter” is the best app for preparing a day of spotting with my friends. That’s a different app! Remember: Win8 apps are small and very good at doing ONE thing, and one thing only! If you have made that list, it’s time to prepare the navigation of your app. The navigation is how users see your app and how they use it. We’ll do that next time!

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• What economic books would you suggest for learning about economic valuation of goods and simulations thereof?

  - by Rushyo

  I'm looking to create an economic model for a game based on goods created procedurally. Every natural resource and produced good would be procedurally generated, with certain goods being assigned certain uses. Fakesium might be used for the production of Weapon A and produced from Fakesium factories which use Dilithium and Widgets as reagents, where Widgets are also the product of Foo and Bar The problem is not creating the resources and their various production utlities - but getting the game's AI empires and merchants to (Addendum: somewhat) correctly value the goods according to their scarcity, utility and production costs. I need to create a simulation of goods which allows the various game factions to assign a common value denominator (credits) to each resource, depending on how much its worth to that empire. I see the simulation being something like: "I have a high requirement for Weapon A. Since I don't have much of Fakesium, which is needed for Weapon A - I must have a high demand for Fakesium. If I can acquire Fakesium, devalue it. If not, increase its value - and also increase demand for Dilithium and Widgets too." This is very naive - because it may be much much cheaper for the empire to simply purchase Dilithium and Widgets directly rather than purchasing Fakesium, for example. Another example is two resources might allow the creation of Weapon A (Fakesium and Lieron), so we'd need to consider that. I've been scratching my head over the problem and it keeps growing. By the time the player joins the world, I'd expect enough iterations of this process to have occurred that prices would have largely normalised - and would then only trigger rarely to compensate for major changes (eg. if the player blows up the world's only Foo mine!) Could anyone suggest resources (books, largely) which outline this style of modelling, preferably in the context of simulations? Since this problem would never occur outside fantasy worlds, I figured this is probably the most likely place to find people who have encountered similar problems and I'm sure there's people who know of good places for Games Developers to start looking at less specific economic theory too. Additionally, does anyone know of any developers with blogs whose games or research applications perform similar modelling? EDIT: I think I should underline that I'm not looking for optimal solutions. I'm looking to make the actors impulsive - making rudimentary decisions based on fuzzy inputs about what they care about or don't. I'm aiming to understand the problem area better not derive answers. All the textbooks I've found seem to be about real-world economics or how to solve complex theoretical problems, neither of which are terribly relevant to the actor's decision making.

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• Webcast Q&A: ING on How to Scale Role Management and Compliance

  - by Tanu Sood

  Thanks to all who attended the live webcast we hosted on ING: Scaling Role Management and Access Certifications to Thousands of Applications on Wed, April 11th. Those of you who couldn’t join us, the webcast replay is now available. Many thanks to our guest speaker, Mark Robison, Enterprise Architect at ING for walking us through ING’s drivers and rationale for the platform approach, the phased implementation strategy, results & metrics, roadmap and recommendations. We greatly appreciate the insight he shared with us all on the deployment synergies between Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) and Oracle Identity Analytics (OIA) to enforce streamlined user and role management and scalable compliance. Mark was also kind enough to walk us through specific solutions features that helped ING manage the problem of role explosion and implement closed loop remediation. Our host speaker, Neil Gandhi, Principal Product Manager, Oracle rounded off the presentation by discussing common use cases and deployment scenarios we see organizations implement to automate user/identity administration and enforce closed-loop scalable compliance. Neil also called out the specific features in Oracle Identity Analytics 11gR1 that cater to expediting and streamlining compliance processes such as access certifications. While we tackled a few questions during the webcast, we have captured the responses to those that we weren’t able to get to here; our sincere thanks to Mark Robison for taking the time to respond to questions specific to ING’s implementation and strategy. Q. Did you include business friendly entitlment descriptions, or is the business seeing application descriptors A. We include very business friendly descriptions.  The OIA tool has the facility to allow this. Q. When doing attestation on job change, who is in the workflow to review and confirm that the employee should continue to have access? Is that a best practice?   A. The new and old manager  are in the workflow.  The tool can check for any Separation of Duties (SOD) violations with both having similiar accesses.  It may not be a best practice, but it is a reality of doing your old and new job for a transition period on a transfer. Q. What versions of OIM and OIA are being used at ING?   A. OIM 11gR1 and OIA 11gR1; the very latest versions available. Q. Are you using an entitlements / role catalog?   A. Yes. We use both roles and entitlements. Q. What specific unexpected benefits did the Identity Warehouse provide ING?   A. The most unanticipated was to help Legal Hold identify user ID's in the various applications.   Other benefits included providing a one stop shop for all aggregated ID information. Q. How fine grained are your application and entitlements? Did OIA, OIM support that level of granularity?   A. We have some very fine grained entitlements, but we role this up into approved Roles to allow for easier management.   For managing very fine grained entitlements, Oracle offers the Oracle Entitlement Server.  We currently do not own this software but are considering it. Q. Do you allow any individual access or is everything truly role based?   A. We are a hybrid environment with roles and individual positive and negative entitlements Q. Did you use an Agile methodology like scrum to deliver functionality during your project? A. We started with waterfall, but used an agile approach to provide benefits after the initial implementation Q. How did you handle rolling out the standard ID format to existing users? A. We just used the standard IDs for new users.  We have not taken on a project to address the existing nonstandard IDs. Q. To avoid role explosion, how do you deal with apps that require more than a couple of entitlement TYPES? For example, an app may have different levels of access and it may need to know the user's country/state to associate them with particular customers.   A. We focus on the functional user and craft the role around their daily job requirements.  The role captures the required application entitlements.  To keep role explosion down, we use role mining in OIA and also meet and interview the business.  It is an iterative process to get role consensus. Q. Great presentation! How many rounds of Certifications has ING performed so far?  A. Around 7 quarters and constant certifications on transfer. Q. Did you have executive support from the top down   A. Yes  The executive support was key to our success. Q. For your cloud instance are you using OIA or OIM as SaaS?  A. No.  We are just provisioning and deprovisioning to various Cloud providers.  (Service Now is an example) Q. How do you ensure a role owner does not get more priviliges as are intended and thus violates another role, e,g, a DBA Roles should not get tor rigt to run somethings as root, as this would affect the root role? A. We have SOD  checks.  Also all Roles are initially approved by external audit and the role owners have to certify the roles and any changes Q. What is your ratio of employees to roles?   A. We are still in process going through our various lines of business, so I do not have a final ratio.  From what we have seen, the ratio varies greatly depending on the Line of Business and the diversity of Job Functions.  For standardized lines of business such as call centers, the ratio is very good where we can have a single role that covers many employees.  For specialized lines of business like treasury, it can be one or two people per role. Q. Is ING using Oracle On Demand service ?   A. No Q. Do you have to implement or migrate to OIM in order to get the Identity Warehouse, or can OIA provide the identity warehouse as well if you haven't reached OIM yet? A. No, OIM deployment is not required to implement OIA’s Identity Warehouse but as you heard during the webcast, there are tremendous deployment synergies in deploying both OIA and OIM together. Q. When is the Security Governor product coming out? A. Oracle Security Governor for Healthcare is available today. Hope you enjoyed the webcast and we look forward to having you join us for the next webcast in the Customers Talk: Identity as a Platform webcast series: Toyota: Putting Customers First – Identity Platform as a Business Enabler Wednesday, May 16th at 10 am PST/ 1 pm EST Register Today You can also register for a live event at a city near you where Aberdeen’s Derek Brink will discuss the survey results from the recently published report “Analyzing Platform vs. Point Solution Approach in Identity”. And, you can do a quick (& free)  online assessment of your identity programs by benchmarking it against the 160 organizations surveyed  in the Aberdeen report, compliments of Oracle. Here’s the slide deck from our ING webcast: ING webcast platform View more presentations from OracleIDM

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• How do we provide valid time estimates during Sprint Planning without doing "too much" design?

  - by Michael Edenfield

  My team is getting up to speed with Scrum, but most of us are more familiar with non-agile or "pseudo-"agile methodologies. The part that is the biggest hurdle for us is running an efficient Sprint Planning meeting where we break our backlog items into tasks, and estimate hours. (I'm using the terminology from the VS2010 Scrum Template; apologies if I use the wrong word somewhere.) When we try to figure out how long a task is going to take, we often fall into the trap of designing the feature at the code level -- table layout, interfaces, etc -- in order to figure out how long that's going to take. I'm pretty sure this is not the appropriate place to be doing that kind of design. We should be scheduling tasks for these design meetings during the sprint. However, we are having trouble figuring out how else to come up with meaningful estimates for the tasks. Are there any practical habits/techniques/etc. for making a judgement call about how long a feature is going to take, without knowing how you plan to implement it? If our time estimates are going to change significantly once the design has been completed, how can we properly budget our Sprint backlog ahead of time? EDIT: Just to clarify, since some of the comments/answers are very valid but I think addressing the wrong question. We know that what we're doing is not right, and that we should be building time into the sprint for this design. Conceptually all of the developers understand that. We also also bringing in a team member with Scrum experience to keep us on track if we start going off into the weeds. The problem is that, without going through this design process, we are finding it difficult to provide concrete time estimates for anything. We are constantly saying things like "well if we design it this way it might take 8 hours but if we end up having to do this other way instead that will take about 32 but it might not be as bad once we start trying to write it...". I also assume that this process will get better once we have some historical velocity to work from, but many of the technologies and architectural patterns we are using are new to us. But if potentially-wildly-wrong estimates are just a natural part of adapting this process then we will just need to recondition ourselves to accept that :)

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• F# Project Euler Problem 1

  - by MarkPearl

  Every now and then I give project Euler a quick browse. Since I have been playing with F# I have found it a great way to learn the basics of the language. Today I thought I would give problem 1 an attempt… Problem 1 If we list all the natural numbers below 10 that are multiples of 3 or 5, we get 3, 5, 6 and 9. The sum of these multiples is 23. Find the sum of all the multiples of 3 or 5 below 1000. My F# Solution I broke this problem into two functions… 1) be able to generate a collection of numbers that are multiples of a number but but are smaller than another number. let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) I then needed something that generated collections for multiples of 3 & 5 and then removed any duplicates. Once this was done I would need to sum these all together to get a result. I found the Seq object to be extremely useful to achieve this… let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine My complete solution was … open System let GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY X Y = X |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> if (i<Y) then Some(i, i+X) else None) let Multiples = Seq.append (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 3 1000) (GenerateMultiplesOfXbelowY 5 1000) |> Seq.distinct |> Seq.fold(fun acc a -> acc + a) 0 |> Console.WriteLine |> Console.ReadLine   Which seemed to generate the correct result in a relatively short period of time although I am sure I will get some comments from the experts who know of some intrinsic method to achieve all of this in one method call.

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• Office lights on or off in programming department? How to decide? [closed]

  - by smp7d

  At my company, the programmers who sit in the same area are constantly fighting over whether the lights stay on or off. Because there is no official policy it makes it a particularly sticky situation. We are a typical cube-farm and we have those typical cube-farm fluorescent lights and smaller ones at our desks. With the lights off, it is difficult to read and you would probably need to turn on your desk light (which some people do anyway). All programmers in our department do most of their reading on their monitor because of the nature of our business. Some feel that we should have a vote to decide whether the lights stay on or off. A couple who prefer 'lights on' feel that the vote would need to be unanimous to turn them off as having them on is the more natural office setting. Those who want them off point out that all other departments keep their lights off. I have heard all of the arguments: -Fluorescent lights cause eye strain -Reading in dark causes eye strain -The desk lights can be used if light is needed -People from other departments feel uncomfortable approaching us in the "dark" -The monitors are harder to see in the light ... Right now, some of the developers turn off the lights and some turn them on. It really just depends who last walked by the switch. I am a bit sick of the controversy as it feels a bit childish at the moment. I'm tired of hearing about it and I'm tired of having to talk about it. I tried to help them decide but as I explained, voting wasn't enough. Do other programming departments have this same argument? What is the standard or traditionally accepted option in a programming area? Are there any good reasons for one way or the other outside of preference? How can we decide fairly? EDIT Just a little more info... We do not have clients/visitors come into our office. We do have windows and hall lights that make our environment plenty bearable with the lights off. It kind of resembles a meeting room that has the lights off during a powerpoint presentation.

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• while(true) and loop-breaking - anti-pattern?

  - by KeithS

  Consider the following code: public void doSomething(int input) { while(true) { TransformInSomeWay(input); if(ProcessingComplete(input)) break; DoSomethingElseTo(input); } } Assume that this process involves a finite but input-dependent number of steps; the loop is designed to terminate on its own as a result of the algorithm, and is not designed to run indefinitely (until cancelled by an outside event). Because the test to see if the loop should end is in the middle of a logical set of steps, the while loop itself currently doesn't check anything meaningful; the check is instead performed at the "proper" place within the conceptual algorithm. I was told that this is bad code, because it is more bug-prone due to the ending condition not being checked by the loop structure. It's more difficult to figure out how you'd exit the loop, and could invite bugs as the breaking condition might be bypassed or omitted accidentally given future changes. Now, the code could be structured as follows: public void doSomething(int input) { TransformInSomeWay(input); while(!ProcessingComplete(input)) { DoSomethingElseTo(input); TransformInSomeWay(input); } } However, this duplicates a call to a method in code, violating DRY; if TransformInSomeWay were later replaced with some other method, both calls would have to be found and changed (and the fact that there are two may be less obvious in a more complex piece of code). You could also write it like: public void doSomething(int input) { var complete = false; while(!complete) { TransformInSomeWay(input); complete = ProcessingComplete(input); if(!complete) { DoSomethingElseTo(input); } } } ... but you now have a variable whose only purpose is to shift the condition-checking to the loop structure, and also has to be checked multiple times to provide the same behavior as the original logic. For my part, I say that given the algorithm this code implements in the real world, the original code is the most readable. If you were going through it yourself, this is the way you'd think about it, and so it would be intuitive to people familiar with the algorithm. So, which is "better"? is it better to give the responsibility of condition checking to the while loop by structuring the logic around the loop? Or is it better to structure the logic in a "natural" way as indicated by requirements or a conceptual description of the algorithm, even though that may mean bypassing the loop's built-in capabilities?

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• Response: Agile's Second Chasm

  - by Malcolm Anderson

  William Pietri over at Agile Focus has written an interesting article entitled, "Agile’s Second Chasm (and how we fell in)" in which he talks about how agile development has fallen into a common trap where large companies are now spending a lot of money hiring agile (Scrum) consultants just so that they can say they are agile, but all the while avoiding any change that is required by Scrum.   It echoes the questions that I've been asking for a while, "Can a fortune 500 company actually do agile development?"  I'm starting to think that the answer is "usually not"   William ask 3 questions at the end of his article that I will answer here.   1) Have I seen agile development brought in and then preemptively customized (read: made into ScrummerFall)?   Yes, Scrum is hard and disruptive.  It's a spotlight on company dysfunction.  In a low trust environment like most fortune 500 companies Scrum will be subverted by anyone who has ever seen "transparency" translate into someone being laid off.   2) If I had to do it all over again, would I change anything?  No, this is a natural progression, but the agile principles are powerful enough, that the companies that don't adopt them will no longer be competitive and will start to fail.   3) Is this situation solvable?  I think it is.  I think that one of the issues is that you often see companies implementing Scrum, but avoiding the agile engineering practices.  I believe that you cannot do one without the other.  Scrum keeps the ship sailing in smooth deep waters.  The agile engineering practices keep the engine running smoothly and cleanly.  If you implement agile engineering practices without Scrum, you run the risk of ending up with a great running piece of software that is useful to no one.  On the other hand, implementing cargo-cult Scrum without the agile engineering practices and you end up (especially in a fortune 500 company) being steered in the right direction, but with your development practices coming to a dead halt because you have code that can not keep up with the changes in requirements.   If you are trying to do Scrum, make sure that you hire some agile engineering coaches, or else you may find your deveolpment engines grinding to a dead halt in the middle of the open ocean.

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• Is it dangerous for me to give some of my Model classes Control-like methods?

  - by Pureferret

  In my personal project I have tried to stick to MVC, but I've also been made aware that sticking to MVC too tightly can be a bad thing as it makes writing awkward and forces the flow of the program in odd ways (i.e. some simple functions can be performed by something that normally wouldn't, and avoid MVC related overheads). So I'm beginning to feel justified in this compromise: I have some 'manager programs' that 'own' data and have some way to manipulate it, as such I think they'd count as both part of the model, and part of the control, and to me this feels more natural than keepingthem separate. For instance: One of my Managers is the PlayerCharacterManager that has these methods: void buySkill(PlayerCharacter playerCharacter, Skill skill); void changeName(); void changeRole(); void restatCharacter(); void addCharacterToGame(); void createNewCharacter(); PlayerCharacter getPlayerCharacter(); List<PlayerCharacter> getPlayersCharacter(Player player); List<PlayerCharacter> getAllCharacters(); I hope the mothod names are transparent enough that they don't all need explaining. I've called it a manager because it will help manage all of the PlayerCharacter 'model' objects the code creates, and create and keep a map of these. I may also get it to store other information in the future. I plan to have another two similar classes for this sort of control, but I will orchestrate when and how this happens, and what to do with the returned data via a pure controller class. This splitting up control between informed managers and the controller, as opposed to operating just through a controller seems like it will simplify my code and make it flow more. My question is, is this a dangerous choice, in terms of making the code harder to follow/test/fix? Is this somethign established as good or bad or neutral? I oculdn't find anything similar except the idea of Actors but that's not quite why I'm trying to do. Edit: Perhaps an example is needed; I'm using the Controller to update the view and access the data, so when I click the 'Add new character to a player button' it'll call methods in the controller that then go and tell the PlayerCharacterManager class to create a new character instance, it'll call the PlayerManager class to add that new character to the player-character map, and then it'll add this information to the database, and tell the view to update any GUIs effected. That is the sort of 'control sequence' I'm hoping to create with these manager classes.

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• The term "interface" in C++

  - by Flexo

  Java makes a clear distinction between class and interface. (I believe C# does also, but I have no experience with it). When writing C++ however there is no language enforced distinction between class and interface. Consequently I've always viewed interface as a workaround for the lack of multiple inheritance in Java. Making such a distinction feels arbitrary and meaningless in C++. I've always tended to go with the "write things in the most obvious way" approach, so if in C++ I've got what might be called an interface in Java, e.g.: class Foo { public: virtual void doStuff() = 0; ~Foo() = 0; }; and I then decided that most implementers of Foo wanted to share some common functionality I would probably write: class Foo { public: virtual void doStuff() = 0; ~Foo() {} protected: // If it needs this to do its thing: int internalHelperThing(int); // Or if it doesn't need the this pointer: static int someOtherHelper(int); }; Which then makes this not an interface in the Java sense anymore. Instead C++ has two important concepts, related to the same underlying inheritance problem: virtual inhertiance Classes with no member variables can occupy no extra space when used as a base "Base class subobjects may have zero size" Reference Of those I try to avoid #1 wherever possible - it's rare to encounter a scenario where that genuinely is the "cleanest" design. #2 is however a subtle, but important difference between my understanding of the term "interface" and the C++ language features. As a result of this I currently (almost) never refer to things as "interfaces" in C++ and talk in terms of base classes and their sizes. I would say that in the context of C++ "interface" is a misnomer. It has come to my attention though that not many people make such a distinction. Do I stand to lose anything by allowing (e.g. protected) non-virtual functions to exist within an "interface" in C++? (My feeling is the exactly the opposite - a more natural location for shared code) Is the term "interface" meaningful in C++ - does it imply only pure virtual or would it be fair to call C++ classes with no member variables an interface still?

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• Development Approach: User Interface In or Domain Model Out?

  - by Berin Loritsch

  While I've never delivered anything using Smalltalk, my brief time playing with it has definitely left its mark. The only way to describe the experience is MVC the way it was meant to be. Essentially, all the heavy lifting for your application is done in the business objects (or domain model if you are so inclined). The standard controls are bound to the business objects in some way. For example, a text box is mapped to an object's field (the field itself is an object so it's easy to do). A button would mapped to a method. This is all done with a very simple and natural API. We don't have to think about binding objects, etc. It just works. Yet, in many newer languages and APIs you are forced to think from the outside in. First with C++ and MFC, and now with C# and WPF, Microsoft has gotten it's developer world hooked on GUI builders where you build your application by implementing event handlers. Java Swing development isn't so different, only you are writing the code to instantiate the controls on the form yourself. For some projects, there may never even be a domain model--just event handlers. I've been in and around this model for most of my carreer. Each way forces you to think differently. With the Smalltalk approach, your domain is smart while your GUI is dumb. With the default VisualStudio approach, your GUI is smart while your domain model (if it exists) is rather anemic. Many developers that I work with see value in the Smalltalk approach, and try to shoehorn that approach into the VisualStudio environment. WPF has some dynamic binding features that makes it possible; but there are limitations. Inevitably some code that belongs in the domain model ends up in the GUI classes. So, which way do you design/develop your code? Why? GUI first. User interaction is paramount. Domain first. I need to make sure the system is correct before we put a UI on it. There's pros and cons for either approach. Domain model fits in there with crystal cathedrals and pie in the sky. GUI fits in there with quick and dirty (sometimes really dirty). And for an added bonus: How do you make sure the code is maintainable?

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