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• Coming to a City Near You: Oracle Business Analytics Summits

  - by Rob Reynolds

  More and more organizations use analytics to identify new business opportunities, reduce costs, and optimize business processes. How? By making business information available throughout the enterprise—and making sure that it is relevant, actionable, and easy to access.Oracle invites you to join us for an information-packed event where you’ll learn about the latest trends, best practices, and innovations in business intelligence, analytic applications, and data warehousing.If you are an IT professional involved in BI strategy, program management, systems management, architecture, or deployment, this event is for you. You’ll find out about: New ways of deploying and delivering business intelligence on premise, in the cloud, and on mobile devices to a diverse base of business users New approaches for integrating, storing, managing, securing, and accessing your ever-growing volumes of structured and unstructured data The latest strategies for dramatically increasing the ROI of your ERP and CRM deployments Click here to view the presentation abstracts. Agenda 9:00 a.m. Registration 10:00 a.m. Keynote: Business Analytics—Be the First to Know 11:00 a.m. Break Breakout Sessions Technology and Architecture Strategy Track Business Insight and Analytic Delivery Track 11:15 a.m. Emerging Trends in Enterprise BI Platforms 11:15 a.m. Mobile BI—More than Dashboards on a Tablet 12:00 noon Networking Lunch 12:00 noon Networking Lunch 1:00 p.m. Is Your Business Intelligence Data at Risk? 1:00 p.m. Geospatial Intelligence—Location, Location, Location! 1:45 p.m. What Extreme Performance Means for Your Business 1:45 p.m. The Role of BI in Your ERP and Performance Management Initiatives 2:30 p.m. Become a BI Architect 2:30 p.m. BI Applications: Step 1 in Your ERP Upgrade or Expansion 3:00 p.m. Partner Spotlight Registration links for each city are below: New York , NY- July 26 Miami, FL - July 27 Reston, VA, July 27 Atlanta, GA - July 28 Boston, MA - July 28 Rochester, NY - Aug 2 (event link coming soon!) Menlo Park, CA - August 2 Charlotte, NC - August 3 Newport Beach, CA - August 3 Register online at the links above or call 1.800.820.5592 ext. 9218 to reserve your place.

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• SQL Saturday #162 Cambridge

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Despite the efforts of American Airlines, this past weekend I attended the first SQL Saturday in the UK!  Hosted by the SQLCambs Chapter of PASS and organized by Mark (b|t) & Lorraine Broadbent, ably assisted by John Martin (b|t), Mark Pryce-Maher (b|t) and other folks whose names I've unfortunately forgotten, it was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which is completely surrounded by Cambridge University. On Friday, they presented 3 pre-conference sessions given by the brilliant American Cloud & DBA Guru, Buck Woody (b|t), the brilliant Danish SQL Server Internals Guru, Mark Rasmussen (b|t), and the brilliant Scottish Business Intelligence Guru and recent Outstanding Pass Volunteer, Jen Stirrup (b|t).  While I would have loved to attend any of their pre-cons (having seen them present several times already), finances and American Airlines ultimately made that impossible.  But not to worry, I caught up with them during the regular sessions and at the speaker dinner.  And I got back the money they all owed me.  (Actually I owed Mark some money) The schedule was jam-packed even with only 4 tracks, there were 8 regular slots, a lunch session for sponsor presentations, and a 15 minute keynote given by Buck Woody, who besides giving an excellent history of SQL Server at Microsoft (and before), also explained the source of the "unknown contact" image that appears in Outlook.  Hint: it's not Buck himself. Amazingly, and against all better judgment, I even got to present at SQL Saturday 162!  I did a 5 minute Lightning Talk on Regular Expressions in SSMS.  I then did a regular 50 minute session on Constraints.  You can download the content for the regular session at that link, and for the regular expression presentation here. I had a great time and had a great audience for both of my sessions.  You would never have guessed this was the first event for the organizers, everything went very smoothly, especially for the number of attendees and the relative smallness of the space.  The event sponsors also deserve a lot of credit for making themselves fit in a small area and for staying through the entire event until the giveaways at the very end. Overall this was one of the best SQL Saturdays I've ever attended and I have to congratulate Mark B, Lorraine, John, Mark P-M, and all the volunteers and speakers for making this an astoundingly hard act to follow!  Well done!

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• Silverlight Cream for June 15, 2010 - 2 -- #883

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Vibor Cipan, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Kirupa, and Xianzhong Zhu. Shoutouts (thought I gave up on them, didn't you?): Jesse Liberty has the companion video to his WP7 OData post up: New Video: Master/Detail in WinPhone 7 with oData Michael Scherotter who made the first Ball Watch SL1 app back in the day, has a Virtual Event: Creating an Entry for the BALL Watch Silverlight Contest... sounds like the thing to do if you want in on this :) Even if you don't speak Portuguese, you can check this out: MSN Brazil Uses Silverlight to Showcase the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa Erik Mork and crew have their latest up: This Week in Silverlight – Teched and Quizes Michael Klucher has a post up to give you some relief if you're having Trouble Installing the Windows Phone Developer Tools Portuguese above and now French... Jeremy Alles has a post up about [WP7] Windows Phone 7 challenge for french readers ! Just a note, not that it makes any difference, but Adam Kinney turned @SilverlightNews over to me today. I am the only one that has ever posted on it, but still having it all to myself feels special :) From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4 tutorial: HOW TO use PathListBox and Sample Data Crank up that new version of Blend and follow along with Vibor Cipan's PathListBox tutorial ... oh, and sample data too. Cool INotifyPropertyChanged implementation Chris Klug shows off some INotifyPropertyChange goodness he is not implementing, and credits a blog by Manuel Felicio for some inspiration. Check out that post as well... I've tagged his blog... I needed *another* one :) Silverlight Tip: Using LINQ to Select the Largest Available Webcam Resolution With no Silverlight Tip of the Day today, Pete Brown stepped up with this tip for finding the largest available webcam resolution using LINQ ... and read the comment from Rene as well. Creating a Master-Detail UI in Blend Kirupa has a very nice Master/Detail UI post up with backrounder info and the code for the project. There's a running example in the post for you to get an idea what you're learning. Get started with Farseer Physics 2.1.3 in Silverlight 3 Xianzhong Zhu has a Silverlight 3 tutorial up for Farseer Physics 2.1.3 ... might track for Silverlight 4, but hey, WP7 is kinda/sort Silverlight 3, right? ... lots of code and external links. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Keep taking the tablets

  - by Roger Hart

  A guest editorial for the SimpleTalk newsletter. So why would Red Gate build an Ipad Game? Is it just because tablet devices are exciting and cool? Ok, maybe a little. Mostly, it was seeing that the best existing tablet and smartphone apps do simple, intuitive things, using simple intuitive interfaces to solve single problems. That's pretty close to what we call our own "intuitively simple" approach to software. Tablets and mobile could be fantastic for us, if we can identify those problems that a tablet device can solve. How do you create THE next tool for a completely new technology? We're glad we don't face that problem every day, but it's pretty exciting when we do. We figure we should learn by doing. We created "MobileFoo" (a Red Gate Company) , we picked up some shiny Apple tech, and got to grips with Objective C, and life in the App Store ecosystem. The result so far is an iPad game: Stacks and Heaps It's Rob and Marine's spin on Snakes and Ladders. Instead of snakes we have unhandled exceptions, a blue screen of death, and other hazards. We wanted something compellingly geeky on mobile, and we're pretty sure we've got it. It's trudging through App Store approval as we speak. but if you want to get an idea of what it is like to switch from .net to Objective C, take a look at Rob's post Android and iOS is quite a culture-change for Windows developers. So to give them a feel for the problems real users might have, we needed some real users - we offered our colleagues subsidised tablets. The only conditions were that they get used at work, and we get the feedback. Seeing tablets around the office is starting to give us some data points: Is typing the bottleneck? Will tablets ever cut it as text-entry devices, and could we fix it? Is mobile working held up by the pain of connecting to work LANs? How about security? Multi-tasking will let tablets do more. They're small, easy to use, almost instant to switch on, and connect by Wi Fi. There's plenty on that list to make a sysadmin twitchy. We'll find out as people spend more time working with these devices, and we'd love to hear what you think about tablet devices too. (comments are filtered, what with the spam)

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• Follow the How-To Geek Writers on Twitter

  - by The Geek

  Ever wonder what the How-To Geek writers are up to? If you’re a Twitter user, you can connect with us directly. We’ve also setup a new @howtogeeknews account if you just want to keep up with the latest articles. So if you want just the latest articles… click the image below and then click the Follow button. Otherwise, if you’d like to connect with the rest of us that actually use Twitter, you can follow each of us separately through  the links below. Note: Let’s try to stick to discussion, and leave the tech support questions for our forum. the How-To Geek (that’s me!) -  @howtogeek Matthew Guay – @maguay Trevor Bekolay – @TrevorBekolay Asian Angel – @asian_angel  Andrew Gehman – @andrewgehman Some of the HTG writers are not currently using Twitter… but I’m gonna list their accounts just in case you wanted to follow them. Mark Virtue – @markvirtue Mysticgeek – @mysticgeek  (He’s far too productive to waste time on Twitter!) Enjoy the conversation! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Got Awesome Geek Skills? The How-To Geek is Looking for WritersGot Awesome Skills? Why Not Write for How-To Geek?Integrate Twitter With Microsoft OutlookState of the Geek 2009: Behind the Scenes and Other GeekeryAnnouncing the How-To Geek Blogs TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Videos from Hulu Pixels invade Manhattan Convert PDF files to ePub to read on your iPad Hide Your Confidential Files Inside Images Get Wildlife Photography Tips at BBC’s PhotoMasterClasses Mashpedia is a Real-time Encyclopedia

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• It's intellisense for SQL Server

  - by Nick Harrison

  It's intellisense for SQL Server Anyone who has ever worked with me, heard me speak, or read any of writings knows that I am a HUGE fan of Reflector.    By extension,  I am a big fan of Red - Gate   I have recently begun exploring some of their other offerings and came across this jewel. SQL Prompt is a plug in for Visual Studio and SQL Server Management Studio.    It provides several tools to make dealing with SQL a little easier for your friendly neighborhood developer. When you a query window in a database, the plugin kicks in and gathers the metadata for the database that you are in.    As you type a query, you get handy feedback like a list of tables after you type select.    You can select one of the tables, specify * and then tab to expand the select clause to include all of the columns from the selected table.    As you are building up the where clause, you are prompted by the names of columns in the selected tables. If you spend any time writing ad hoc queries or building stored procedures by hand, this can save you substantial time. If you are learning a new data model, this can greatly cut down on your frustration level. The other really cool thing here is Format SQL.   I have searched all over the place for a really good SQL formatter.    Badly formatted  SQL is so much harder to read than well formatted SQL.   Unfortunately, management studio offers no support for keeping your SQL well formatted.    There are many tools available to format your SQL.   Some work better than others.    Some don't work that well at all.   Most will give you some measure of control over how the formatted SQL looks.    SQL Prompt produces good results and is easy to configure. Sadly no tool is perfect, and what would we be without a wish list.    There are some features that I would like to see: Make it easier to paste SQL in and out of code.    Strip off string builder, etc Automate replacing hard coded values with bind variables or parameters In addition to reformatting SQL, which is a huge refactor, support for other SQL refactors would be nice.    Convert join to sub query and vice versa come to mind Wish list a side, this is a wonderful tool that easily saves me an hour or more on most weeks.

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• I still think Twitter is dead &hellip; but

  - by Randy Walker

  Twitter finally hit the mainstream about 8 months ago, but I’ve been saying for a couple of years now, without a real way for the company to earn money, what’s the future fate of Twitter?  On the personal side, where is the real value for the users?  For the most part, Twitter has replaced most people’s IM (instant messaging), at least in the technology circles I run in.  It still has value for users as a communication tool.  But I see it more as a fad.  My prediction is over the next 6 months we’ll start seeing a usage drop (if we haven’t already started to see it). On the business side, how does Twitter make money?  It doesn’t.  If you use the text messaging capabilities, you see a few ads.  But most smart phone and PC users, won’t ever see them.  I still think Twitter has the best chance to make money by forcing the “collectors” to pay money.  You know what I mean by “collector”, those people that collect tons of followers or friends.  If Twitter caps the number of followers and makes you pay to have more, would you?  The normal twitter user doesn’t have that many followers, and this is where my title comes in … BUT The financial value for Twitter is really seen through businesses connecting with their customers.  I’ve seen 3 effective ways this has been accomplished. 1. Giving your customers a coupon or announcing a sale My favorite is @amazonmp3, Being a huge music lover, I get notified when they put music on sale. Various restaurants like @ruthschris_ARK will let their favorite customers know about certain specials @BluefinMemphis I was traveling through Memphis once looking for a sushi restaurant when they had %50 off if we mentioned we saw them on Twitter.  It was their first attempt at trying to encourage customers in the door, and after talking with the management, it was a huge success 2. Giveaways @namecheap Several companies have started huge marketing campaigns, but my favorite is watching companies post trivia questions, and the first person to respond wins a prize. 3. Responding to Customer Complaints I once posted a complaint about American Express (a company that I have slowly come to really dislike) but they actually had someone contact me to try and resolve the issue.  I give them credit for paying attention, but still dislike them for their horrible credit practices.

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• Array Multiplication and Division

  - by Narfanator

  I came across a question that (eventually) landed me wondering about array arithmetic. I'm thinking specifically in Ruby, but I think the concepts are language independent. So, addition and subtraction are defined, in Ruby, as such: [1,6,8,3,6] + [5,6,7] == [1,6,8,3,6,5,6,7] # All the elements of the first, then all the elements of the second [1,6,8,3,6] - [5,6,7] == [1,8,3] # From the first, remove anything found in the second and array * scalar is defined: [1,2,3] * 2 == [1,2,3,1,2,3] But What, conceptually, should the following be? None of these are (as far as I can find) defined: Array x Array: [1,2,3] * [1,2,3] #=> ? Array / Scalar: [1,2,3,4,5] / 2 #=> ? Array / Scalar: [1,2,3,4,5] % 2 #=> ? Array / Array: [1,2,3,4,5] / [1,2] #=> ? Array / Array: [1,2,3,4,5] % [1,2] #=> ? I've found some mathematical descriptions of these operations for set theory, but I couldn't really follow them, and sets don't have duplicates (arrays do). Edit: Note, I do not mean vector (matrix) arithmetic, which is completely defined. Edit2: If this is the wrong stack exchange, tell me which is the right one and I'll move it. Edit 3: Add mod operators to the list. Edit 4: I figure array / scalar is derivable from array * scalar: a * b = c => a = b / c [1,2,3] * 3 = [1,2,3]+[1,2,3]+[1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3] => [1,2,3] = [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3] / 3 Which, given that programmer's division ignore the remained and has modulus: [1,2,3,4,5] / 2 = [[1,2], [3,4]] [1,2,3,4,5] % 2 = [5] Except that these are pretty clearly non-reversible operations (not that modulus ever is), which is non-ideal. Edit: I asked a question over on Math that led me to Multisets. I think maybe extensible arrays are "multisets", but I'm not sure yet.

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• How to implement an email unsubscribe system for a site with many kinds of emails?

  - by Mike Liu

  I'm working on a website that features many different types of emails. Users have accounts, and when logged in they have access to a setting page that they can use to customize what types of emails they receive. However, I'd like to also give users an easy way to unsubscribe directly in the emails they receive. I've looked into list unsubscribe headers as well as creating some type of one click link that would unsubscribe a user from that type of email without requiring login or further action. The later would probably require me to break convention and make changes to the database in response to a GET on the link. However, am I incorrect in thinking that either of these would require me to generate and permanently store a unique identifier in my database for every email I ever send, really complicating email delivery? Without that, I'm not sure how I would be able to uniquely identify a user and a type of email in order to change their email preferences, and this identifier would need to be stored forever as a user could have an email sitting in their inbox for a long time before they decide to act on it. Alternatively, I was considering having a no-login page for managing email preferences. In contrast to above where I would need one of these identifiers for each email, this would only need one identifier per user, with no generation or other action required on sending an email. All of these raise security issues, and they could potentially be used by people to tamper with others' email preferences. This could be mitigated somewhat by ensuring that the identifier is really difficult to guess. For the once per user identifier approach, I was considering generating the identifier by passing a user's ID through some type of encryption algorithm, is this a sound approach? For the per-email identifiers, perhaps I could use a user's ID appended to the time. However, even this would not eliminate the problem entirely, as this would really just be security through obscurity, and anyone with the URL could tamper, and in the end the main defense would have to be that most people aren't so bored as to tamper with other people's email preferences. Are there any other alternatives I've missed, or issues or solutions with these that anyone can provide insight on? What are best practices in this area?

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• What do you do when you encounter an idiotic interview question?

  - by Senthil

  I was interviewing with a "too proud of my java skills"-looking person. He asked me "What is your knowledge on Java IO classes.. say.. hash maps?" He asked me to write a piece of java code on paper - instantiate a class and call one of the instance's methods. When I was done, he said my program wouldn't run. After 5 minutes of serious thinking, I gave up and asked why. He said I didn't write a main function so it wouldn't run. ON PAPER. [I am too furious to continue with the stupidity...] Believe me it wasn't trick questions or a psychic or anger management evaluation thing. I can tell from his face, he was proud of these questions. That "developer" was supposed to "judge" the candidates. I can think of several things: Hit him with a chair (which I so desperately wanted to) and walk out. Simply walk out. Ridicule him saying he didn't make sense. Politely let him know that he didn't make sense and go on to try and answer the questions. Don't tell him anything, but simply go on to try and answer the questions. So far, I have tried just 4 and 5. It hasn't helped. Unfortunately many candidates seem to do the same and remain polite but this lets these kind of "developers" just keep ascending up the corporate ladder, gradually getting the capacity to pi** off more and more people. How do you handle these interviewers without bursting your veins? What is the proper way to handle this, yet maintain your reputation if other potential employers were to ever get to know what happened here? Is there anything you can do or should you even try to fix this? P.S. Let me admit that my anger has been amplified many times by the facts: He was smiling like you wouldn't believe. I got so many (20 or so) calls from that company the day before, asking me to come to the interview, that I couldn't do any work that day. I wasted a paid day off.

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• The Spotlight is on You

  - by Claudia McDonald

  On the field or off the field, in ballet slippers or singing your heart out on stage, offering a stellar performance every time is key to holding the attention of your audience and having them come back hungry for more. Similarly, showing up to a new business meeting wearing pink tights and a tutu might be one way to holding the attention of your customer, but offering them an unmatched and ground-breaking software solution certainly will get their attention! Simply put, the Oracle Exastack program enables both ISV's and OEM's to rapidly build and deliver faster, more reliable applications. It comes as no surprise that the success of the Oracle Exastack program is centered on establishing Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud as the highest performance, lowest cost platforms available in the industry today.  But here is where the real standing-ovation-worthy facts come in. The Oracle Exadata Database Machine is the only database machine that provides extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) workloads, making it the ideal platform for consolidating onto private clouds. Whereas the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud is an engineered hardware and software system tested and tuned by Oracle to provide the best foundation for cloud computing, while allowing Java applications, Oracle Applications and other enterprise applications to run with extreme performance. – And the crowd goes wild, ladies and gentlemen! In just four months alone, our partners have already achieved over 150 Oracle Exastack Ready milestones for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server.  As Judson has said, “With the Oracle Exastack program, Oracle is helping partners test, tune and optimize their applications to deliver optimal performance and reliability, accelerating innovation and delivering superior value to customers." And get this, not only are their applications running faster and more efficiently, they are actually being delivered at a lower cost to customers than ever before – extreme performance well deserving of 3 consecutive arabesques! If you haven’t already, check out what some of our partners are saying about the Oracle Exastack program in this video, and find out all that is available to you today. By participating in the Oracle Exastack program, partners now have the ability to achieve Oracle Exadata Optimized, Oracle Exalogic Optimized, Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready status for their solutions. New Oracle Exastack labs, provide OPN members with access to Oracle technical resources, on-premise facilities and remote lab environments. With Oracle Exastack Optimized, partners experience faster and more reliable applications to run on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, as well as the long awaited Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Savvy OPN members are leveraging the Oracle Exastack Optimized program toward their advancement to Platinum or Diamond level in OPN. Partners are achieving Oracle Exadata Ready and Oracle Exalogic Ready giving them a competitive advantage and signaling to customers that their applications readily support Oracle Exadata Database Machine or Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to deliver extreme performance. Get your dancing shoes on, The OPN Communications Team

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• Why learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) when I can just use Flash Professional?

  - by Jason McKenna

  I want to learn Flash Builder 4 (Flex) because I see sooo many jobs requesting experience with it. i also just like knowing stuff. I am also very interested in focusing on RIA development now. BUT... can anyone tell me CLEARLY why the heck I would ever use FLEX over Flash Pro?? it is a time investment, so is it worth it? All I read are misguided posts about how Flash Pro is for games and banner ads, and Flex is for programmers and RIAs blah blah... this simply isn't so from my 9 years of contracting experience. I'm 99.9% certain that I can build anything a flex developer can build, but using Flash Pro. I can build powerful AS3-driven apps for the desktop, mobile device, or browser, and I can link to databases with XML and I can import text files and communicate with ColdFusion and everything. The advantage with Flash Pro is that I can also easily and clearly animate transitions and build custom elements that look the way I want/need them to look for my specific client. Why would I want to use a bunch of pre-built components that drive my file sizes to the moon?? Who is happy with a drag-n-drop button?? Is Flex just a thing made for programmer people with no artistic inclination? What is the advantage of using it?? It takes me back to Visual Basic class. Seems like a pain to have to use multiple tools to import crap from Flash Pro into Flex and yada yada... why when I can do it all nicely in Flash Pro to begin with. Am I clueless, or missing some major piece of the puzzle? Thanks for any clarity. PS, I couldn't care less about the code editors. It aint that bad people. They make it out like the thing doesn't even respond to keyboard input or something. Does everthing I need it do anyways. Please help out here. If I just dont need to learn it, I dont want to waste the time. Jase

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• How to convince my boss that quality is a good thing to have in code?

  - by Kristof Claes

  My boss came to me today to ask me if we could implement a certain feature in 1.5 days. I had a look at it and told him that 2 to 3 days would be more realistic. He then asked me: "And what if we do it quick and dirty?" I asked him to explain what he meant with "quick and dirty". It turns out, he wants us to write code as quickly as humanly possible by (for example) copying bits and pieces from other projects, putting all code in the code-behind of the WebForms pages, stop caring about DRY and SOLID and assuming that the code and functionalities will never ever have to be modified or changed. What's even worse, he doesn't want us do it for just this one feature, but for all the code we write. We can make more profit when we do things quick and dirty. Clients don't want to pay for you taking into account that something might change in the future. The profits for us are in delivering code as quick as possible. As long as the application does what it needs to do, the quality of the code doesn't matter. They never see the code. I have tried to convince him that this is a bad way to think as the manager of a software company, but he just wouldn't listen to my arguments: Developer motivation: I explained that it is hard to keep developers motivated when they are constantly under pressure of unrealistic deadlines and budget to write sloppy code very quickly. Readability: When a project gets passed on to another developer, cleaner and better structured code will be easier to read and understand. Maintainability: It is easier, safer and less time consuming to adapt, extend or change well written code. Testability: It is usually easier to test and find bugs in clean code. My co-workers are as baffled as I am by my boss' standpoint, but we can't seem to get to him. He keeps on saying that by making things more quickly, we can sell more projects, ask a lower price for them while still making a bigger profit. And in the end these projects pay the developer's salaries. What more can I say to make him see he is wrong? I want to buy him copies of Peopleware and The Mythical Man-Month, but I have a feeling they won't change his mind either. A lot of you will probably say something like "Run! Get out of there now!" or "I'd quit!", but that's not really an option since .NET web development jobs are rather rare in the region where I live...

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• Getting developers and support to work together

  - by Matt Watson

  Agile development has ushered in the norm of rapid iterations and change within products. One of the biggest challenges for agile development is educating the rest of the company. At my last company our biggest challenge was trying to continually train 100 employees in our customer support and training departments. It's easy to write release notes and email them to everyone. But for complex software products, release notes are not usually enough detail. You really have to educate your employees on the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, WHEN of every item. If you don't do this, you end up with customer service people who know less about your product than your users do. Ever call a company and feel like you know more about their product than their customer service people do? Yeah. I'm talking about that problem.WHO does the change effect?WHAT was the actual change?WHERE do I find the change in the product?WHY was the change made? (It's hard to support something if you don't know why it was done.)WHEN will the change be released?One thing I want to stress is the importance of the WHY something was done. For customer support people to be really good at their job, they need to understand the product and how people use it. Knowing how to enable a feature is one thing. Knowing why someone would want to enable it, is a whole different thing and the difference in good customer service. Another challenge is getting support people to better test and document potential bugs before escalating them to development. Trying to fix bugs without examples is always fun... NOT. They might as well say "The sky is falling, please fix it!"We need to over train the support staff about product changes and continually stress how they document and test potential product bugs. You also have to train the sales staff and the marketing team. Then there is updating sales materials, your website, product documentation and other items there are always out of date. Every product release causes this vicious circle of trying to educate the rest of the company about the changes.Do we need to record a simple video explaining the changes and email it to everyone? Maybe we should  use a simple online training type app to help with this problem. Ultimately the struggle is taking the time to do the training, but it is time well spent. It may save you a lot of time answering questions and fixing bugs later. How do we efficiently transfer key product knowledge from developers and product owners to the rest of the company? How have you solved these issues at your company?

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• Creating the Completely Customized World Just for YOU

  - by divya.malik

  OK so not a customized world, but do you know what goes into creating that customized web store front for you? How do you get those additional offers from vendors when you call in for service or when you are browsing a storefront. This is what is has been happening behind the scenes.  When a customer calls in a contact center for service, at the end of the conversation, they are offered a new product, or service. But what just transpired was that the CRM system that was in place had routed the call to the right agent, the agent got the pop up screen with the customer information, and the call request  was handled. Then came the decision point to cross-sell and up-sell, The agent got some recommended offers that were created based on analyzed data (this data had been put into a data warehouse, modeled, profiled and rules were implemented e.g.. People with profile X like product Y).  But with this system, what happens is that analytics can be applied to a very small subset. Now comes Real Time Decisioning (RTD), this helps companies make optimal decisions in the context of transactional systems. It enables companies to improve business processes with real time intelligence on every single transaction. RTD is like a service plug-in that you put at the back of your transactional systems and that you  ping to get a recommendation.  It listens to business process flows and data moving through the process, getting all that data, processes all that you can do with that data, and gives out out various offers. It takes a process centric view of analytics rather than just a data centric view. It continuously observes and learns from ever-changing customer behavior and applies those insights to providing real-time decisions and recommendations at any customer touch point. At Oracle we define Real Time Decisioning as “ The solution that addresses a business issue faced by all organizations : how to make accurate decisions, using the most up to date information, in real time…consistently and in large volumes”. Here is a video on recommendation engines that are benefiting from real time decisioning today and see how it is helping online vendors.

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• Viewing at Impossible Angles

  - by kemer

  The picture of the little screwdriver with the Allen wrench head to the right is bound to invoke a little nostalgia for those readers who were Sun customers in the late 80s. This tool was a very popular give-away: it was essential for installing and removing Multibus (you youngsters will have to look that up on Wikipedia…) cards in our systems. Back then our mid-sized systems were gargantuan: it was routine for us to schlep around a 200 lb. desk side box and 90 lb. monitor to demo a piece of software your smart phone will run better today. We were very close to the hardware, and the first thing a new field sales systems engineer had to learn was how put together a system. If you were lucky, a grizzled service engineer might run you through the process once, then threaten your health and existence should you ever screw it up so that he had to fix it. Nowadays we make it much easier to learn the ins and outs of our hardware with simulations–3D animations–that take you through the process of putting together or replacing pieces of a system. Most recently, we have posted three sophisticated PDFs that take advantage of Acrobat 9 features to provide a really intelligent approach to documenting hardware installation and repair: Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Chassis Components Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for Sub Assembly Module (SAM) Sun Fire X4800/X4800 M2 Animations for CMOD Download one of these documents and take a close look at it. You can view the hardware from any angle, including impossible ones. Each document has a number of procedures, that break down into steps. Click on a procedure, then a step and you will see it animated in the drawing. Of course hardware design has generally eliminated the need for things like our old giveaway tools: components snap and lock in. Often you can replace redundant units while the system is hot, but for heaven’s sake, you’ll want to verify that you can do that before you try it! Meanwhile, we can all look forward to a growing portfolio of these intelligent documents. We would love to hear what you think about them. –Kemer

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• Ed Burns' Servlet 4/HTTP 2 Session at JavaOne

  - by Yolande Poirier

  By Guest Blogger Reza Rahman For the Java EE track at JavaOne 2014 we are highlighting some key sessions and speakers to better inform you of what you can expect, right up until the start of the conference. To this end we recently interviewed Ed Burns. Ed is a veteran of Sun and now Oracle. He has been and is instrumental in pushing the JSF ecosystem forward as specification lead. Besides his specification lead work Ed is well regarded as an author and speaker on his own right. In addition to carrying the JSF torch Ed will be co-leading the key Servlet 4 specification for Java EE 8, along with Servlet specification guru Shing Wai Chan. The primary goal of Servlet 4 is to enable the fundamentally important changes in HTTP 2 for the entire server-side Java ecosystem. We wanted to talk to Ed about his Servlet 4 session at JavaOne 2014 and HTTP 2 generally: The details for the Servlet 4 session can be found here. Ed has several other key sessions on the track that we hope to talk to him about separately in the near future: What’s Next for JSF?: In this key session, Ed will be sharing the next steps for the continued evolution of the JSF specification in Java EE 8. Where’s My UI? The 2014 JavaOne Web App UI Smackdown: The UI space for web applications, especially in the Java ecosystem continues to be as hotly contested as ever. This is especially true with the (re)introduction of JavaScript based rich client frameworks like AngularJS. This lively panel brings together experts representing the diverse schools of thought for web UIs. Ed will be representing JSF of course. Neal Ford will moderate the panel as an independent and hopefully reasonably neutral party. Adopt-a-JSR for Java EE 7 and Java EE 8: Adopt-a-JSR has been a reasonable success for Java EE 7. With Java EE 8 we are planning to strengthen it far more as away of getting grassroots level participation in the specification efforts. This session will introduce Adopt-a-JSR, share how it worked for Java EE 7 and what we plan to do with it in Java EE 8. Ed will be sharing his perspectives on Adopt-a-JSR for both Java EE 7 and Java EE 8. Besides Ed's sessions, we have a very strong program for the Java EE track and JavaOne overall - just explore the content catalog. If you can't make it, you can be assured that we will make key content available after the conference just as we have always done.

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• Macbook (non-pro, late 2010) Power Management Issues relating to Nvidia-Current drivers

  - by gbvitaobscura

  I have tried many potential solutions but to no avail! (this is going to be a long post) Essentially, when I first install ubuntu (I have tested 10.11-12.04 beta) I can change the brightness of the macbook backlight. One of the first things I usually do once my machine finishes installing is enter "sudo apt-get install nvidia-current" into the terminal to get my Nvidia graphics card set up. Before I install nvidia-current power management works flawlessly. After installing nvidia-current my graphics driver works mostly properly (more on that later). When I press F1 or F2 notify osd pops up and shows icon for the backlight along with a meter which changes according to how much I press F1 or F2, but the backlight does not change brightness at all. Two supplementary facts: when I am running off of battery power the backlight does not dim ever, also changing the backlight brightness through the terminal does not work (it recognizes the command but changes nothing). Things which did not work: 1. editing xorg.conf 2. python script/hack 3. editing grub Things which did work: 1. removing Nvidia-Current Final piece of information: Although my graphics card works in every way but Power Management it can not be found through System Settings/Details (Graphics Unknown) I'm using the NVIDIA GeForce 320M. the output of lspci is: 00:00.0 Host bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 HOST Bridge (rev a1) 00:00.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 Memory Controller (rev a1) 00:01.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d6d (rev a1) 00:01.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d6e (rev a1) 00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d6f (rev a1) 00:01.3 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d70 (rev a1) 00:02.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d71 (rev a1) 00:02.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d72 (rev a1) 00:03.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 LPC Bridge (rev a2) 00:03.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 Memory Controller (rev a1) 00:03.2 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 SMBus (rev a1) 00:03.3 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 Memory Controller (rev a1) 00:03.4 Co-processor: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 Co-Processor (rev a1) 00:04.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1) 00:04.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2) 00:06.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev a1) 00:06.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev a2) 00:08.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 High Definition Audio (rev a2) 00:09.0 Ethernet controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 Ethernet (rev a1) 00:0a.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 SATA Controller (rev a2) 00:0b.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d75 (rev a1) 00:15.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0d9b (rev a1) 00:17.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1) 01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01) 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 08a0 (rev a2) There is a very similar bug on Launchpad which I have posted below. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers/+bug/764195

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• SQL SERVER – Script to Update a Specific Column in Entire Database

  - by Pinal Dave

  Last week, I have received a very interesting question and I find in email and I really liked the question as I had to play around with SQL Script for a while to come up with the answer he was looking for. Please read the question and I believe that all of us face this kind of situation. “Pinal, In our database we have recently introduced ModifiedDate column in all of the tables. Now onwards any update happens in the row, we are updating current date and time to that field. Now here is the issue, when we added that field we did not update it with a default value because we were not sure when we will go live with the system so we let it be NULL. Now modification to the application went live yesterday and we are now updating this field. Here is where I need your help. We need to update all the tables in our database where we have column created ModifiedDate and now want to update with current datetime. As our system is already live since yesterday there are several thousands of the rows which are already updated with real world value so we do not want to update those values. Essentially, in our entire database where ever there is a ModifiedDate column and if it is NULL we want to update that with current date time?  Do you have a script for it?” Honestly I did not have such a script. This is very specific required but I was able to come up with two different methods how he can use this method. Method 1 : Using INFORMATION_SCHEMA SELECT 'UPDATE ' + T.TABLE_SCHEMA + '.' + T.TABLE_NAME + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES T INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS C ON T.TABLE_NAME = C.TABLE_NAME AND c.COLUMN_NAME ='ModifiedDate' WHERE T.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE' ORDER BY T.TABLE_SCHEMA, T.TABLE_NAME; Method 2: Using DMV SELECT 'UPDATE ' + SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id) + '.' + t.name + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;' FROM sys.tables AS t INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_ID WHERE c.name ='ModifiedDate' ORDER BY SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id), t.name; Above scripts will create an UPDATE script which will do the task which is asked. We can pretty much the update script to any other SELECT statement and retrieve any other data as well. Click to Download Scripts Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)  Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Joins, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• links for 2010-03-24

  - by Bob Rhubart

  @dhinchcliffe: When online communities go to work "As we see a growing set of examples of successful online communities in the enterprise space (both internally and externally), the broad outlines are emerging of what is turning into a vital new channel for innovation, business agility, customer relationships, and productive output for most organizations: Online communities as one of the most potent new ways to achieve business objectives, both in terms of cost and quality." -- Dion Hinchcliffe (tags: enterprisearchitecture entarch enterprise2.0 socialmedia) Steven Chan: WebCenter 11g (11.1.1.2) Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12 Steven Chan shares information on WebCenter 11g's (11.1.1.2) certification with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, along with a list of certified EBS 12 Platforms (tags: oracle otn enterprise2.0 webcenter ebs) @oraclenerd: 1Z0-052 - Exploring the Oracle Database Architecture Oracle ACE Chet "Oraclenerd" Justice shares a list of resources/documentation covering Oracle Database Architecture. (tags: oracle otn oracleace dba certification architecture) @oraclenerd: 1Z0-052 - Books "I don't believe I have ever purchased a book on or about Oracle. The documentation provided, especially for the database, is top notch. There is so much information available out there if you just know how to find it. Reading AskTom for years didn't hurt either." -- Chet "@oraclenerd" Justice. (tags: otn oracle oracleace certification dba) Lucas Jellema: Castle in the clouds – Building the Connexys SaaS application with Fusion Middleware Oracle ACE Director Lucas Jellema shares the slides from the presentation he and colleague Arne van der Ing submitted for OBUG 2010. (tags: otn oracle oracleace cloud saas obug fusionmiddleware connexys) John Burke: Why Your ERP System Isn't Ready for the Next Evolution of the Enterprise "[ERP] has to become a stealthy modern app to help you quickly adapt to business changes while managing vital information. And through modern middleware it will connect to everything. So yes ERP as we've know it is dead, but long live ERP as a connected application member of the modern enterprise." -- John Burke, Group VP, Applications Business Unit, Oracle (tags: oracle otn entarch erp) Darwin-IT: Postfix for handling mail in your integration solution "It took me some time to understand Postfix. I was quite overwhelmed by the options. And it took me some time to figure out how to configure it for this particular usecase...But as with most other things..it turns out to be simple." -- Martien van den Akker (tags: oracle linux soa postfix) TheServerSide.com: Cameron Purdy at TSSJS 2010: If Java beats C++, what's next? ''It turns out that Java performance is much better on modern architecture. That is because of multicore processors and in-lining.'' -- Cameron Purdy, as quoted in an article by Jack Vaughn (tags: oracle java otn c++)

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• Repository/Updating/Upgrading Issue

  - by Jakob

  The other day I was asked to upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10, at the time I was busy and hit no. I can not upgrade/update at this point, I get (error -11) or a 404 in terminal. In the software updater I get 'failed to download repository information.' I have tried changing my "Download From" setting to "Best" to "Main" and even a few other countries. And in "Other Software" I have tried disabling packages, but doesn't seem to help what so ever. I have tried several of the other commands to try and fix it, such as -fix missing or sudo apt-get update clean. P.S. This has also affected my thunderbird client, I cannot send/receive emails. Here is my error log when trying to upgrade: jakob@Skeletor:~$ sudo update-manager -d gpg: /tmp/tmpvejqvl/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created gpg: /tmp/tmpnayby6/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/defer/__init__.py", line 483, in _inline_callbacks result = gen.throw(excep) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/UpdateManager/backend/InstallBackendAptdaemon.py", line 86, in commit True, close_on_done) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/defer/__init__.py", line 483, in _inline_callbacks result = gen.throw(excep) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/UpdateManager/backend/InstallBackendAptdaemon.py", line 158, in _run_in_dialog yield trans.run() aptdaemon.errors.TransactionFailed: Transaction failed: Package does not exist Package linux-headers-3.8.0-33 isn't available gpg: /tmp/tmp3kw_hl/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created. And let me throw in my sudo apt-get update too. Which this has been working variably too, but I don't know what to change my repositories to, and disabling does not effect: E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. This is the short version, but looks exactly like this fairly consistently. Sometimes it downloads, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it tells me I have an update, and doesn't do anything. If it helps, I have recently had issues trying to install Samba as well, and connecting to the office's NAS Drive. Which works now, but I had to edit /etc/fstab/ and a few other things trying to get that to work as well. I understand it could also be a DNS problem, but this has been going on for a few days, as well as I've already tried changing my DNS server via my computer, however I am not allowed to alter the DNS on our company's router.

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• Creative, busy Devoxx week

  - by JavaCecilia

  I got back from my first visit to the developer conference Devoxx in Antwerp. I can't describe the vibes of the conference, it was a developer amusement park, hackergartens, fact sessions, comic relief provided by Java Posse, James Bond and endless hallway discussions.All and all - I had a lot of fun, my main mission was to talk about Oracle's main focus for OpenJDK which besides development and bug fixing is making sure the infrastructure is working out for the full community. My focus was not to hang out at night club the Noxx, but that was came included in the package :)The London Java community leaders Ben Evans and Martijn Verburg are leading discussions in the community to lay out the necessary requirements for the infrastructure for build and test in the open. They called a first meeting at JavaOne gathering 25 people, including people from RedHat, IBM and Oracle. The second meeting at Devoxx included 14 participants and had representatives from Oracle and IBM. I hope we really can find a way to collaborate on this, making sure we deliver an efficient infrastructure for all engineers to contribute to OpenJDK with.My home in all of this was the BOF rooms and the sessions there meeting the JUG leaders, talking about OpenJDK infrastructure and celebrating the Duchess Duke Award together with the others. The restaurants in the area was slower than I've ever seen, so I missed out on Trisha Gee's brilliant replay of the workshop "The Problem with Women in IT - an Agile Approach" where she masterly leads the audience (a packed room, 50-50 gender distribution) to solve the problem of including more diversity in the developer community. A tough and sometimes sensitive topic where she manages to keep the discussion objective with a focus of improving the matter from a business perspective. Mattias Karlsson is organizing the Java developer conference Jfokus in Stockholm and was there talking to Andres Almires planning a Hackergarten with a possible inclusion of an OpenJDK bugathon. That would be really cool, especially as the Oracle Stockholm Java development office is just across the water from the Jfokus venue, some of the local JVM engineers will likely attend and assist, even though the bug smashing theme will likely be more starter level build warnings in Swing or langtools than fixing JVM bugs.I was really happy that I managed to catch a seat for the Java Posse live podcast "the Third Presidential Debate" a lot of nerd humor, a lot of beer, a lot of fun :) The new member Chet had a perfect dead pan delivery and now I just have to listen more to the podcasts! Can't get the most perfect joke out of my head, talking about beer "As my father always said: Better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" - hilarious :)I attended the sessions delivered by my Stockholm office colleagues Marcus Lagergren (on dynamic languages on the jvm, JavaScript in particular) and Joel Borggrén-Franck (Annotations) and was happy to see the packed room and all the questions raised at the end.There's loads of stuff to write about the event, but just have to pace myself for now. It was a fantastic event, captain Stephan Janssen with crew should be really proud to provide this forum to the developer community!

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• Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu

  - by Asian Angel

  Do you have certain folders that you access often each day but are only available through the Places Menu or Nautilus? See how easy it is to create shortcuts for your desktop and taskbar with our quick tutorial. To get started open Nautilus and locate the folders that you want to make new shortcuts for. For our example we chose Ubuntu One. Right click on the chosen folder and select Make Link. Your new shortcut will appear with the text Link to “Folder Name” and an Arrow Shortcut Marker attached. If you are happy with your new shortcut as is, then drag it to your desktop or taskbar as desired. We created the shortcut twice in our example…once for the desktop and once for the taskbar. For our example we decided to customize the taskbar shortcut a bit. To customize your shortcut right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Note: The desktop shortcut is limited on the amount you can customize it (name change and addition of up to four emblems to the folder). From here you can rename the shortcut and change the icon as desired. A quick name change and new icon made a huge improvement in how our taskbar shortcut looked. Note: The link for the icon we used is shown below. A little touch-up to our desktop shortcut and both are looking good. Download the Ubuntu Cloud Icon *Icon is 128*128 pixels and comes in .png format. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing The Journey to the Mystical Forest [Wallpaper] Trace Your Browser’s Roots on the Browser Family Tree [Infographic]

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• Make Firefox Show Google Results for Default Address Bar Searches

  - by The Geek

  Have you ever typed something incorrectly into the Firefox address bar, and then had it take you to a page you weren’t expecting? The reason is because Firefox uses Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search, but you can change it. Scratching your head? Let’s take a quick run through what we’re talking about… Normally, if you typed in something like just “howtogeek” in the address bar, and then hit enter… you’ll be taken directly to the How-To Geek site. But how? Very simple! It’s the same place you would have been taken to if you typed “howtogeek” into Google, and then clicked the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, which takes you to the first result. This is what Firefox does behind the scenes when you put something into the address bar that isn’t a URL. But what if you’d rather head to the search results page instead? Luckily, all you have to do is tweak an about:config parameter in Firefox. Just head into about:config in the address bar, and then filter for keyword.url like so: Double-click on the entry in the list, and then delete the &gfns=1 from the value. That’s the part of the URL that triggers Google to redirect to the first result. And now, the next time you type something into the address bar, either on purpose or because you typo’d it, you’ll be taken to the results page instead: About:Config tweaking is lots of fun. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Firefox Quick Search Use Google’s Beta Search KeysMake Firefox Built-In Search Box Use Google’s Experimental Search KeysCombine Wolfram Alpha & Google Search Results in FirefoxHow To Run 4 Different Google Searches at Once In the Same TabChange Default Feed Reader in Firefox TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems Icelandic Volcano Webcams Open Multiple Links At One Go

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• 3rd Party Tools: dbForge Studio for SQL Server

  - by Greg Low

  I've been taking a look at some of the 3rd party tools for SQL Server. Today, I looked at DBForge Studio for SQL Server from the team at DevArt. Installation was smooth. I did find it odd that it defaults to SQL authentication, not to Windows but either works fine. I like the way they have followed the SQL Server Management Studio visual layout. That will make the product familiar to existing SQL Server Management Studio users. I was keen to see what the database diagram tools are like. I found that the layouts generated where quite good, and certainly superior to the built-in SQL Server ones in SSMS. I didn't find any easy way to just add all tables to the diagram though. (That might just be me). One thing I did like was that it doesn't get confused when you have role playing dimensions. Multiple foreign key relationships between two tables display sensibly, unlike with the standard SQL Server version. It was pleasing to see a printing option in the diagramming tool. I found the database comparison tool worked quite well. There are a few UI things that surprised me (like when you add a new connection to a database, it doesn't select the one you just added by default) but generally it just worked as advertised, and the code that was generated looked ok. I used the SQL query editor and found the code formatting to be quite fast and while I didn't mind the style that it used by default, it wasn't obvious to me how to change the format. In Tools/Options I found things that talked about Profiles but I wasn't sure if that's what I needed. The help file pointed me in the right direction and I created a new profile. It's a bit odd that when you create a new profile, that it doesn't put you straight into editing the profile. At first I didn't know what I'd done. But as soon as I chose to edit it, I found that a very good range of options were available. When entering SQL code, the code completion options are quick but even though they are quite complete, one of the real challenges is in making them useful. Note in the following that while the options shown are correct, none are actually helpful: The Query Profiler seemed to work quite well. I keep wondering when the version supplied with SQL Server will ever have options like finding the most expensive operators, etc. Now that it's deprecated, perhaps never but it's great to see the third party options like this one and like SQL Sentry's Plan Explorer having this functionality. I didn't do much with the reporting options as I use SQL Server Reporting Services. Overall, I was quite impressed with this product and given they have a free trial available, I think it's worth your time taking a look at it.

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