3rd party - Page 176 - Developer IT

Monitoring the Application alongside SQL Server

- by Tony Davis

Sometimes, on Simple-Talk, it takes a while to spot strange and unexpected patterns of user activity, or small bugs. For example, one morning we spotted that an article’s comment count had leapt to 1485, but that only four were displayed. With some rooting around in Google Analytics, and the endlessly annoying Community Server admin-interface, we were able to work out that a few days previously the article had been subject to a spam attack and that the comment count was for some reason including both accepted and unaccepted comments (which in turn uncovered a bug in the SQL). This sort of incident made us a lot keener on monitoring Simple-talk website usage more effectively. However, the metrics we wanted are troublesome, because they are far too specific for Google Analytics to measure, and the SQL Server backend doesn’t keep sufficient information to enable us to plot trends. The latter could provide, for example, the total number of comments made on, or votes cast for, articles, over all time, but not the number that occur by hour over a set time. We lacked a baseline, in other words. We couldn’t alter the database, as it is a bought-in package. We had neither the resources nor inclination to build-in dedicated application monitoring. Possibly, we could investigate a third-party tool to do the job; but then it occurred to us that we were already using a monitoring tool (SQL Monitor) to keep an eye on the database. It stored data, made graphs and sent alerts. Could we get it to monitor some aspects of the application as well? Of course, SQL Monitor’s single purpose is to check and monitor SQL Server, over time, rather than to monitor applications that use SQL Server. However, how different is the business of gathering and plotting SQL Server Wait Stats, from gathering and plotting various aspects of user activity on the site? Not a lot, it turns out. The latest version allows us to write our own custom monitoring scripts, meaning that we could now monitor any metric in the application that returns an integer. It took little time to write a simple SQL Query that collects basic metrics of the total number of subscribers, votes cast, comments made, or views of articles, over time. The SQL Monitor database polls Simple-Talk every second or so in order to get the latest totals, and can then store and plot this information, or even correlate SQL Server usage to application usage. You can see the live data by visiting monitor.red-gate.com. Click the "Analysis" tab, and select one of the "Simple-talk:" entries in the "Show" box and an appropriate data range (e.g. last 30 days). It’s nascent, and we’re still working on it, but it’s already given us more confidence that we’ll spot quickly trends, bugs, or bursts of ‘abnormal’ activity. If there is a sudden rise in comments, we get an alert, and if it’s due to a spam attack, we can moderate or ban the perpetrator very quickly. We’ve often argued that a tool should perform a single job well rather than turn into a Swiss-army knife, but ironically we’ve rather appreciated being able to make best use of what’s there anyway for a slightly different purpose. Is this a good or common practice? What do you think? Cheers, Tony.

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Integrating Code Metrics in TFS 2010 Build

- by Jakob Ehn

The build process template and custom activity described in this post is available here: http://cid-ee034c9f620cd58d.office.live.com/self.aspx/BlogSamples/CodeMetricsSample.zip Running code metrics has been available since VS 2008, but only from inside the IDE. Yesterday Microsoft finally releases a Visual Studio Code Metrics Power Tool 10.0, a command line tool that lets you run code metrics on your applications. This means that it is now possible to perform code metrics analysis on the build server as part of your nightly/QA builds (for example). In this post I will show how you can run the metrics command line tool, and also a custom activity that reads the output and appends the results to the build log, and also fails he build if the metric values exceeds certain (configurable) treshold values. The code metrics tool analyzes all the methods in the assemblies, measuring cyclomatic complexity, class coupling, depth of inheritance and lines of code. Then it calculates a Maintainability Index from these values that is a measure f how maintanable this method is, between 0 (worst) and 100 (best). For information on hwo this value is calculated, see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codeanalysis/archive/2007/11/20/maintainability-index-range-and-meaning.aspx. After this it aggregates the information and present it at the class, namespace and module level as well. Running Metrics.exe in a build definition Running the actual tool is easy, just use a InvokeProcess activity last in the Compile the Project sequence, reference the metrics.exe file and pass the correct arguments and you will end up with a result XML file in the drop directory. Here is how it is done in the attached build process template: In the above sequence I first assign the path to the code metrics result file ([BinariesDirectory]\result.xml) to a variable called MetricsResultFile, which is then sent to the InvokeProcess activity in the Arguments property. Here are the arguments for the InvokeProcess activity: Note that we tell metrics.exe to analyze all assemblies located in the Binaries folder. You might want to do some more intelligent filtering here, you probably don’t want to analyze all 3rd party assemblies for example. Note also the path to the metrics.exe, this is the default location when you install the Code Metrics power tool. You must of course install the power tool on all build servers. Using the standard output logging (in the Handle Standard Output/Handle Error Output sections), we get the following output when running the build: Integrating Code Metrics into the build Having the results available next to the build result is nice, but we want to have results integrated in the build result itself, and also to affect the outcome of the build. The point of having QA builds that measure, for example, code metrics is to make it very clear how the code being built measures up to the standards of the project/company. Just having a XML file available in the drop location will not cause the developers to improve their code, but a (partially) failing build will! To do this, we need to write a custom activity that parses the metrics result file, logs it to the build log and fails the build if the values frfom the metrics is below/above some predefined treshold values. The custom activity performs the following steps Parses the XML. I’m using Linq 2 XSD for this, since the XML schema for the result file is available, it is vey easy to generate code that lets you query the structure using standard Linq operators. Runs through the metric result hierarchy and logs the metrics for each level and also verifies maintainability index and the cyclomatic complexity with the treshold values. The treshold values are defined in the build process template are are sent in as arguments to the custom activity If the treshold values are exceeded, the activity either fails or partially fails the current build. For more information about the structure of the code metrics result file, read Cameron Skinner's post about it. It is very simpe and easy to understand. I won’t go through the code of the custom activity here, since there is nothing special about it and it is available for download so you can look at it and play with it yourself. The treshold values for Maintainability Index and Cyclomatic Complexity is defined in the build process template, and can be modified per build definition: I have taken the default value for these settings from my colleague Terje Sandström post on Code Metrics - suggestions for approriate limits. You’ll notice that this is quite an improvement compared to using code metrics inside the IDE, where Red/Yellow/Green limits are fixed (and the default values are somewaht strange, see Terjes post for a discussion on this) This is the first version of the code metrics integration with TFS 2010 Build, I will proabably enhance the functionality and the logging (the “tree view” structure in the log becomes quite hard to read) soon. I will also consider adding it to the Community TFS Build Extensions site when it becomes a bit more mature. Another obvious improvement is to extend the data warehouse of TFS and push the metric results back to the warehouse and make it visible in the reports.

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What Did You Do? is a Bad Question

- by Ajarn Mark Caldwell

Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions. One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions. Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce. And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past. I’ll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian’s presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it. For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers. And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not. One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, “What did you do?” This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future. I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper. However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, “Nothing!” For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I’m in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true. They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself. But no, they always stuck with “Nothing”. At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into. After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. Now, after hearing Brian’s talk, I understand what the problem was. Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, “What did YOU do?” have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad. Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it. So, if “What did you do” is a bad question, what would have been better? Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” or “what was happening on the computer right before this came up?” It’s subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view. With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them. They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions. And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions. So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions. Excellent topic Brian! Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning! (Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)

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Editor's Notebook - Social Aura: Insights from the Oracle Social Media Summit

- by user462779

Panelists talk social marketing at the Oracle Social Media Summit On November 14, I traveled to Las Vegas for the first-ever Oracle Social Media Summit. The two day event featured an impressive collection of social media luminaries including: David Kirkpatrick (founder and CEO of Techonomy Media and author of The Facebook Effect), John Yi (Head of Marketing Partnerships, Facebook), Matt Dickman (EVP of Social Business Innovation, Weber Shandwick), and Lyndsay Iorio (Social Media & Communications Manager, NBC Sports Group) among others. It was also a great opportunity to talk shop with some of our new Vitrue and Involver colleagues who have been returning great social media results even before their companies were acquired by Oracle. I was live tweeting the event from @OracleProfit which was great for those who wanted to follow along with the proceedings from the comfort of their office or blackjack table. But I've also found over the years that live tweeting an event is a handy way to take notes: I can sift back through my record of what people said or thoughts I had at the time and organize the Twitter messages into some kind of summary account of the proceedings. I've had nearly a month to reflect on the presentations and conversations at the event and a few key topics have emerged: David Kirkpatrick's comment during the opening presentation really set the stage for the conversations that followed. Especially if you are a marketer or publisher, the idea that you are in a one-way broadcast relationship with your audience is a thing of the past. "Rising above the noise" does not mean reaching for a megaphone, ALL CAPS, or exclamation marks. Hype will not motivate social media denizens to do anything but unfollow and tune you out. But knowing your audience, creating quality content and/or offers for them, treating them with respect, and making an authentic effort to please them: that's what I believe is now necessary. And Kirkpatrick's comment early in the day really made the point. Later in the day, our friends @Vitrue demonstrated this point by elaborating on a comment by Facebook's John Yi. If a social strategy is comprised of nothing more than cutting/pasting the same message into different social media properties, you're missing the opportunity to have an actual conversation. That's not shouting at your audience, but it does feel like an empty gesture. Walter Benjamin, perplexed by auraless Twitter messages Not to get too far afield, but 20th century cultural critic Walter Benjamin has a concept that is useful for understanding the dynamics of the empty social media gesture: Aura. In his work The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Benjamin struggled to understand the difference he percieved between the value of a hand-made art object (a painting, wood cutting, sculpture, etc.) and a photograph. For Benjamin, aura is similar to the "soul" of an artwork--the intangible essence that is created when an artist picks up a tool and puts creative energy and effort into a work. I'll defer to Wikipedia: "He argues that the "sphere of authenticity is outside the technical" so that the original artwork is independent of the copy, yet through the act of reproduction something is taken from the original by changing its context. He also introduces the idea of the "aura" of a work and its absence in a reproduction." So make sure you put aura into your social interactions. Don't just mechanically reproduce them. Keeping aura in your interactions requires the intervention of an actual human being. That's why @NoahHorton's comment about content curation struck me as incredibly important. Maybe it's just my own prejudice, being in the content curation business myself. And it's not to totally discount machine-aided content management systems, content recommendation engines, and other tech-driven tools for building an exceptional content experience. It's just that without that human interaction--that editor who reviews the analytics and responds to user feedback--interactions over social media feel a bit empty. It is SOCIAL media, right? (We'll leave the conversation about social machines for another day). At the end of the day, experimentation is key. Just like trying to find that right joke to tell at the beginning of your presentation or that good opening like at a cocktail party, social media messages and interactions can take some trial and error. Don't be afraid to try things, tinker with incomplete ideas, abandon things that don't work, and engage in the conversation. And make sure your heart is in it, otherwise your audience can tell. And finally:

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Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

- by Fatherjack

So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc ** What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing. * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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Review: A Quick Look at Reflector

- by James Michael Hare

I, like many, was disappointed when I heard that Reflector 7 was not free, and perhaps that’s why I waited so long to try it and just kept using my version 6 (which continues to be free). But though I resisted for so long, I longed for the better features that were being developed, and began to wonder if I should upgrade. Thus, I began to look into the features being offered in Reflector 7.5 to see what was new. Multiple Editions Reflector 7.5 comes in three flavors, each building on the features of the previous version: Standard – Contains just the Standalone application ($70) VS – Same as Standard but adds Reflector Object Browser for Visual Studio ($130) VSPro – Same as VS but adds ability to set breakpoints and step into decompiled code ($190) So let’s examine each of these features. The Standalone Application (Standard, VS, VSPro editions) Popping open Reflector 7.5 and looking at the GUI, we see much of the same familiar features, with a few new ones as well: Most notably, the disassembler window now has a tabbed window with navigation buttons. This makes it much easier to back out of a deep-dive into many layers of decompiled code back to a previous point. Also, there is now an analyzer which can be used to determine dependencies for a given method, property, type, etc. For example, if we select System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient and hit the Analyze button, we’d see a window with the following nodes we could expand: This gives us the ability to see what a given type uses, what uses it, who exposes it, and who instantiates it. Now obviously, for low-level types (like DateTime) this list would be enormous, but this can give a lot of information on how a given type is connected to the larger code ecosystem. One of the other things I like about using Reflector 7.5 is that it does a much better job of displaying iterator blocks than Reflector 6 did. For example, if you were to take a look at the Enumerable.Cast() extension method in System.Linq, and dive into the CastIterator in Reflector 6, you’d see this: But now, in Reflector 7.5, we see the iterator logic much more clearly: This is a big improvement in the quality of their code disassembler and for me was one of the main reasons I decided to take the plunge and get version 7.5. The Reflector Object Browser (VS, VSPro editions) If you have the .NET Reflector VS or VSPro editions, you’ll find you have in Visual Studio a Reflector Object Browser window available where you can select and decompile any assembly right in Visual Studio. For example, if you want to take a peek at how System.Collections.Generic.List<T> works, you can either select List<T> in the Reflector Object Browser, or even simpler just select a usage of it in your code and CTRL + Click to dive in. – And it takes you right to a source window with the decompiled source: Setting Breakpoints and Stepping Into Decompiled Code (VSPro) If you have the VSPro edition, in addition to all the things said above, you also get the additional ability to set breakpoints in this decompiled code and step through it as if it were your own code: This can be a handy feature when you need to see why your code’s use of a BCL or other third-party library isn’t working as you expect. Summary Yes, Reflector is no longer free, and yes, that’s a bit of a bummer. But it always was and still is a very fine tool. If you still have Reflector 6, you aren’t forced to upgrade any longer, but getting the nicer disassembler (especially for iterator blocks) and the handy VS integration is worth at least considering upgrading for. So I leave it up to you, these are some of the features of Reflector 7.5, what’s your thoughts? Technorati Tags: .NET,Reflector

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Getting to grips with the stack in nasm

- by MarkPearl

Today I spent a good part of my day getting to grips with the stack and nasm. After looking at my notes on nasm I think this is one area for the course I am doing they could focus more on… So here are some snippets I have put together that have helped me understand a little bit about the stack… Simplest example of the stack You will probably see examples like the following in circulation… these demonstrate the simplest use of the stack… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main main: push 42h push 43h push 44h mov ah,2h ;set to display characters pop dx ;get the first value int 21h ;and display it pop dx ;get 2nd value int 21h ;and display it pop dx ;get 3rd value int 21h ;and display it int 20h The output from above code would be… DCB Decoupling code using “call” and “ret” This is great, but it oversimplifies what I want to use the stack for… I do not know if this goes against the grain of assembly programmers or not, but I want to write loosely coupled assembly code – and I want to use the stack as a mechanism for passing values into my decoupled code. In nasm we have the call and return instructions, which provides a mechanism for decoupling code, for example the following could be done… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov ah,2h mov dx,41h int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: call displayChar int 20h This would output the following to the console A So, it would seem that call and ret allow us to jump to segments of our code and then return back to the calling position – a form of segmenting the code into what we would called in higher order languages “functions” or “methods”. The only issue is, in higher order languages there is a way to pass parameters into the functions and return results. Because of the primitive nature of the call and ret instructions, this does not seem to be obvious. We could of course use the registers to pass values into the subroutine and set values coming out, but the problem with this is we… Have a limited number of registers Are threading our code with tight coupling (it would be hard to migrate methods outside of their intended use in a particular program to another one) With that in mind, I turn to the stack to provide a loosely coupled way of calling subroutines… First attempt with the Stack Initially I thought this would be simple… we could use code that looks as follows to achieve what I want… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov ah,2h pop dx int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h call displayChar int 20h However running this application does not give the desired result, I want an ‘A’ to be returned, and I am getting something totally different (you will to). Reading up on the call and ret instructions a discovery is made… they are pushing and popping things onto and off the stack as well… When the call instruction is executed, the current value of IP (the address of the instruction to follow) is pushed onto the stack, when ret is called, the last value on the stack is popped off into the IP register. In effect what the above code is doing is as follows with the stack… push 41h push current value of ip pop current value of ip to dx pop 41h to ip This is not what I want, I need to access the 41h that I pushed onto the stack, but the call value (which is necessary) is putting something in my way. So, what to do? Remember we have other registers we can use as well as a thing called indirect addressing… So, after some reading around, I came up with the following approach using indirect addressing… org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov bp,sp mov ah,2h mov dx,[bp+2] int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h call displayChar int 20h In essence, what I have done here is used a trick with the stack pointer… it goes as follows… Push 41 onto the stack Make the call to the function, which will push the IP register onto the stack and then jump to the displayChar label Move the value in the stack point to the bp register (sp currently points at IP register) Move the at the location of bp minus 2 bytes to dx (this is now the value 41h) display it, execute the ret instruction, which pops the ip value off the stack and goes back to the calling point This approach is still very raw, some further reading around shows that I should be pushing the value of bp onto the stack before replacing it with sp, but it is the starting thread to getting loosely coupled subroutines. Let’s see if you get what the following output would be? org 0x100 bits 16 jmp main ;---------------------------------------- displayChar: mov bp,sp mov ah,2h mov dx,[bp+4] int 21h mov dx,[bp+2] int 21h ret ;---------------------------------------- main: push 41h push 42h call displayChar int 20h The output is… AB Where to from here? If by any luck some assembly programmer comes along and see this code and notices that I have made some fundamental flaw in my logic… I would like to know, so please leave a comment… appreciate any feedback!

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Silverlight Cream for January 11, 2011 -- #1024

- by Dave Campbell

1,000 blogposts is quite a few, but to die-hard geeks, 1000 isn't the number... 1K is the number, and today is my 1K blogpost! I've been working up to this for at least 11 months. Way back at MIX10, I approached some vendors about an idea I had. A month ago I contacted them and others, and everyone I contacted was very generous and supportive of my idea. My idea was not to run a contest, but blog as normal, and whoever ended up on my 1K post would get some swag... and I set a cut-off at 13 posts. So... blogging normally, I had some submittals, and then ran my normal process to pick up the next posts until I hit a total of 13. To provide a distribution channel for the swag, everyone on the list, please send me your snail mail (T-shirts) and email (licenses) addresses as soon as possible. I'd like to thank the following generous sponsors for their contributions to my fun (in alphabetic order): and Rachel Hawley for contributing 4 Silverlight control sets First Floor Software and Koen Zwikstra for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Spy and Sara Faatz/Jason Beres for contributing 13 licenses for Silverlight Data Visualization controls and Svetla Stoycheva for contributing T-Shirts for everyone on the post and Ina Tontcheva for contributing 13 licenses for RadControls for Silverlight + RadControls for Windows Phone and Charlene Kozlan for contributing 1 combopack standard, 2 DataGrid for Silverlight, and 2 Listbox for Silverlight Standard And now finally...in this Issue: Nigel Sampson, Jeremy Likness, Dan Wahlin, Kunal Chowdhurry, Alex Knight, Wei-Meng Lee, Michael Crump, Jesse Liberty, Peter Kuhn, Michael Washington, Tau Sick, Max Paulousky, Damian Schenkelman Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties" Dan Wahlin WP7: "Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers" Nigel Sampson Expression Blend: "PathListBox: making data look cool" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Using Windows Phone Gestures as Triggers Nigel Sampson blogged about WP7 Gestures, the Toolkit, and using Gestures as Triggers, and actually makes it looks simple :) Jounce Part 9: Static and Dynamic Module Management Jeremy Likness has episode 9 of his explanation of his MVVM framework, Jounce, up... and a big discussion of Modules and Module Management from a Jounce perspective. Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties Dan Wahlin takes a page from one of his teaching opportunities, and shares his knowledge of Dependency Properties with us... beginning with what they are, defining them in code, and demonstrating their use. Customizing Silverlight ChildWindow Style using Blend Kunal Chowdhurry has a great post up about getting your Child Windows to match the look & feel of the rest of youra app... plus a bunch of Blend goodness thrown in. PathListBox: making data look cool File this post by Alex Knight in the 'holy crap' file along with the others in this series! ... just check out that cool Ticker Style Path ListBox at the top of the blog... too cool! Web Access in Windows Phone 7 Apps Wei-Meng Lee has the 3rd part of his series on WP7 development up and in this one is discussing Web Access... I mean *discussing* it... tons of detail, code, and explanation... great post. Prevent your Silverlight XAP file from caching in your browser. Michael Crump helps relieve stress on Silverlight developers everywhere by exploring how to avoid caching of your XAP in the browser... (WPFS) MVVM Light Toolkit: Soup To Nuts Part I Jesse Liberty continues his Windows Phone from Scratch series with a new segment exploring Laurent Bugnion's MVVMLight Toolkit beginning with acquiring and installing the toolkit, then proceeds to discuss linking the View and ViewModel, the ViewModel Locator, and page navigation. Silverlight: Making a DateTimePicker Peter Kuhn attacks a problem that crops up on the forums a lot -- a DateTimePicker control for Silverlight... following the "It's so simple to build one yourself" advice, he did so, and provides the code for all of us! Windows Phone 7 Animated Button Press Michael Washington took exception to button presses that gave no visual feedback and produced a behavior that does just that. Using TweetSharp in a Windows Phone 7 app Tau Sick demonstrates using TweetSharp to put a twitter feed into a WP7 app, as he did in "Hangover Helper"... all the instructions from getting Tweeetshaprt to the code necessary. Bindable Application Bar Extensions for Windows Phone 7 Max Paulousky has a post discussing some real extensions to the ApplicationBar for WP7.. he begins with a bindable application bar by Nicolas Humann that I've missed, probably because his blog is in French... and extends it to allow using DelegateCommand. How to: Load Prism modules packaged in a separate XAP file in an OOB application Damian Schenkelman posts about Prism, AppModules in separate XAPs and running OOB... if you've tried this, you know it's a hassle.. Damian has the solution. 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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Bridging the Gap in Cloud, Big Data, and Real-time

- by Dain C. Hansen

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} With all the buzz of around big data and cloud computing, it is easy to overlook one of your most precious commodities—your data. Today’s businesses cannot stand still when it comes to data. Market success now depends on speed, volume, complexity, and keeping pace with the latest data integration breakthroughs. Are you up to speed with big data, cloud integration, real-time analytics? Join us in this three part blog series where we’ll look at each component in more detail. Meet us online on October 24th where we’ll take your questions about what issues you are facing in this brave new world of integration. Let’s start first with Cloud. What happens with your data when you decide to implement a private cloud architecture? Or public cloud? Data integration solutions play a vital role migrating data simply, efficiently, and reliably to the cloud; they are a necessary ingredient of any platform as a service strategy because they support cloud deployments with data-layer application integration between on-premise and cloud environments of all kinds. For private cloud architectures, consolidation of your databases and data stores is an important step to take to be able to receive the full benefits of cloud computing. Private cloud integration requires bidirectional replication between heterogeneous systems to allow you to perform data consolidation without interrupting your business operations. In addition, integrating data requires bulk load and transformation into and out of your private cloud is a crucial step for those companies moving to private cloud. In addition, the need for managing data services as part of SOA/BPM solutions that enable agile application delivery and help build shared data services for organizations. But what about public Cloud? If you have moved your data to a public cloud application, you may also need to connect your on-premise enterprise systems and the cloud environment by moving data in bulk or as real-time transactions across geographies. For public and private cloud architectures both, Oracle offers a complete and extensible set of integration options that span not only data integration but also service and process integration, security, and management. For those companies investing in Oracle Cloud, you can move your data through Oracle SOA Suite using REST APIs to Oracle Messaging Cloud Service —a new service that lets applications deployed in Oracle Cloud securely and reliably communicate over Java Messaging Service . As an example of loading and transforming data into other public clouds, Oracle Data Integrator supports a knowledge module for Salesforce.com—now available on AppExchange. Other third-party knowledge modules are being developed by customers and partners every day. To learn more about how to leverage Oracle’s Data Integration products for Cloud, join us live: Data Integration Breakthroughs Webcast on October 24th 10 AM PST.

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Silverlight Cream for November 13, 2011 -- #1166

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Pontus Wittenmark, Jeff Blankenburg(-2-), Colin Eberhardt, Charles Petzold, Dhananjay Kumar, Igor, Beth Massi, Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), Shawn Wildermuth, XAMLNinja, and Peter Kuhn(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Page Navigation Framework - Learn about UriMapper" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "31 Days of Mango" Jeff Blankenburg WinRT/Metro/W8: "An Introduction to Semantic Zoom in Windows 8 Metro" Colin Eberhardt LightSwitch: "Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Michael Palermo's latest Desert Mountain Developers is up Michael Washington's latest Visual Studio #LightSwitch Daily is up From SilverlightCream.com: 10 tips about porting Silverlight apps to WinRT/Metro style apps (Part 1) Pontus Wittenmark spent some time porting his Silverlight game to WinRT and says it was easier than expected. He has posted 10 tips for porting... and promises more 31 Days of Mango Looks like Jeff Blankenburg started another 31 days series... this one on Mango dev... and looks like I'm late to the party, but that's ok, gives me more stuff to blog about... this time you can get the posts by email, and he has a hashtag for discussion too 31 Days of Mango | Day #1: The New Windows Phone Emulator Tools Day 1 of Jeff Blankenburg's journey is this post on what's new in the emulator tools. An Introduction to Semantic Zoom in Windows 8 Metro This is Colin Eberhardt's latest ... getting familiar with semantic zoom oin Metro by creating a WP7-stylke jumplist experience.... check out the video on his blogpost for a better idea of what he's up to .NET Streams and Windows 8 IStreams In his first real post on his new series writing an EPUB viewer for W8, Charles Petzold described using IInputStream to get the contents of a disk file... and source for the project in progress Video on How to work with Page Navigation and Back Button in Windows Phone 7 Dhananjay Kumar has a video tutorial up on Page Navigation and Back Button usage in WP7 Screen capture to media library instead of isolated storage Igor discusses a class that lets you save screen captures for use in your application and also saving them to the media library on the phone Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications Beth Massi's latest is this LightSwitch post on Validation rules... showing how to define declarative rules and also write custom validation code. Silverlight Page Navigation Framework - Learn about UriMapper Kunal Chowdhury continues his Page Navigation discussion with this post on the UriMapper, and how to hide the actual URL of the page you're navigating to How to use PlaySoundAction Behavior in WP7 Application? Kunal Chowdhury also has this post up on using the PlaySoundAction Behavior in WP7 ... nice tutorial on using Blend to get the job done What Win8 Should Learn from Windows Phone After spending time with Windows 8, Shawn Wildermuth has this post up about features from WP7 that should be brought over to Windows 8, and finishes with features that WP8 (?) could learn from Win8 too WP7Contrib – FindaPad and the fastest list in the west XAMLNinja discusses the WP7 App FindaPad which spawned the creation of WP7Contrib and uses the app to describe some nuances that may not be readily obvious. Windows Phone 7: The kind of bug you don't want to discover Peter Kuhn discusses a problem he came across while programming WP7, interestingly enough, only in the emulator, and has to do with a Uint64 cast. He does offer a workaround. Announcing: Your Last About Dialog (YLAD) Peter Kuhn also has this post up that's a take-off on a post by Jeff Wilcox about a generic About Dialog. Peter has some great additions.. and he's right... it may be your last About Dialog... get it via NuGet, too! 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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ATG Live Webcast June 14: Technical Preview of EBS 12.2 Online Patching

- by BillSawyer

Online Patching is is one of the cornerstone new features in our upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 release. This ground-breaking feature is based upon Edition-Based Redefinition, a new 11gR2 Database feature that was built to Oracle Applications division specifications to allow the E-Business Suite's database tier to be patched while the environment is running. Online Patching combines the use of Edition-Based Redefinition and new E-Business Suite technologies to allow patching to the E-Business Suite's database and application tier servers while the environment is being actively used by its end-users. This webcast provides a detailed technical preview of: How this new feature works How it affects E-Business Suite end-users How it affects E-Business Suite database administrators and patching lifecycles How it affects developers and third-party software vendors responsible for E-Business Suite customizations and extensions The presenter for this event is Kevin Hudson, Senior Director and one of the Online Patching architects. There will be a special extended Q&A Session at the end of this presentation, given the nature of the materials and the questions that we expect from you. ATG Development staff supporting the Q&A session will include Elke Phelps, Santiago Bastidas, Max Arderius, and other ATG architects. Date: Thursday, June 14, 2012Time: 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (Special 2-hour Time)Presenter: Kevin Hudson, Senior Director, Applications Technology IntegrationWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged) To hear the audio feed: Domestic Participant Dial-In Number: 877-697-8128 International Participant Dial-In Number: 706-634-9568 Dial-In Passcode: 100815To see the presentation: The Direct Access Web Conference details are: Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com Meeting Number: 597470987If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University. You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here. When will Oracle E-Business Suite 12.2 be released? Oracle's Revenue Recognition rules prohibit us from discussing certification and release dates, but you're welcome to monitor or subscribe to this blog. We'll post updates here as soon as soon as they're available.

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BizTalk 2009 - Pipeline Component Wizard

- by Stuart Brierley

Recently I decided to try out the BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard when creating a new pipeline component for BizTalk 2009. There are different versions of the wizard available, so be sure to download the appropriate version for the BizTalk environment that you are working with. Following the download and expansion of the zip file, you should be left with a Visual Studio solution. Open this solution and build the project. Following this installation is straight foward - locate and run the built setup.exe file in the PipelineComponentWizard Setup project and click through the small number of installation screens. Once you have completed installation you will be ready to use the wizard in Visual Studio to create your BizTalk Pipeline Component. Start by creating a new project, selecting BizTalk Projects then BizTalk Server Pipeline Component. You will then be presented with the splash screen. The next step is General Setup, where you will detail the classname, namespace, pipeline and component types, and the implementation language for your Pipeline Component. The options for pipeline type are Receive, Send or Any. Depending on the pipeline type chosen there are different options presented for the component type, matching those available within the BizTalk Pipelines themselves: Receive - Decoder, Disassembling Parser, Validate, Party Resolver, Any. Send - Encoder, Assembling Serializer, Any. Any - Any. The options for implementation language are C# or VB.Net Next you must set up the UI settings - these are the settings that affect the appearance of the pipeline component within Visual Studio. You must detail the component name, version, description and icon. Next is the definition of the variables that the pipeline component will use. The values for these variables will be defined in Visual Studio when creating a pipeline. The options for each variable you require are: Designer Property - The name of the variable. Data Type - String, Boolean, Integer, Long, Short, Schema List, Schema With None Clicking finish now will complete the wizard stage of the creation of your pipeline component. Once the wizard has completed you will be left with a BizTalk Server Pipeline Component project containing a skeleton code file for you to complete. Within this code file you will mainly be interested in the execute method, which is left mostly empty ready for you to implement your custom pipeline code: #region IComponent members /// <summary> /// Implements IComponent.Execute method. /// </summary> /// <param name="pc">Pipeline context</param> /// <param name="inmsg">Input message</param> /// <returns>Original input message</returns> /// <remarks> /// IComponent.Execute method is used to initiate /// the processing of the message in this pipeline component. /// </remarks> public Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage Execute(Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop.IPipelineContext pc, Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage inmsg) { // // TODO: implement component logic // // this way, it's a passthrough pipeline component return inmsg; } #endregion Once you have implemented your custom code, build and compile your Custom Pipeline Component then add the compiled .dll to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Pipeline Components . When creating a new pipeline, in Visual Studio reset the toolbox and the custom pipeline component should appear ready for you to use in your Biztalk Pipeline. Drop the pipeline component into the relevant pipeline stage and configure the component properties (the variables defined in the wizard). You can now deploy and use the pipeline as you would any other custom pipeline.

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Welcome Oracle Data Integration 12c: Simplified, Future-Ready Solutions with Extreme Performance

- by Irem Radzik

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The big day for the Oracle Data Integration team has finally arrived! It is my honor to introduce you to Oracle Data Integration 12c. Today we announced the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. With the 12c release Oracle becomes the new leader in the data integration and replication technologies as no other vendor offers such a complete set of data integration capabilities for pervasive, continuous access to trusted data across Oracle platforms as well as third-party systems and applications. Oracle Data Integration 12c release addresses data-driven organizations’ critical and evolving data integration requirements under 3 key themes: Future-Ready Solutions Extreme Performance Fast Time-to-Value There are many new features that support these key differentiators for Oracle Data Integrator 12c and for Oracle GoldenGate 12c. In this first 12c blog post, I will highlight only a few:·Future-Ready Solutions to Support Current and Emerging Initiatives: Oracle Data Integration offer robust and reliable solutions for key technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence and continuous data availability. Via the tight integration with Oracle’s database, middleware, and application offerings Oracle Data Integration will continue to support the new features and capabilities right away as these products evolve and provide advance features. E Extreme Performance: Both GoldenGate and Data Integrator are known for their high performance. The new release widens the gap even further against competition. Oracle GoldenGate 12c’s Integrated Delivery feature enables higher throughput via a special application programming interface into Oracle Database. As mentioned in the press release, customers already report up to 5X higher performance compared to earlier versions of GoldenGate. Oracle Data Integrator 12c introduces parallelism that significantly increases its performance as well. Fast Time-to-Value via Higher IT Productivity and Simplified Solutions: Oracle Data Integrator 12c’s new flow-based declarative UI brings superior developer productivity, ease of use, and ultimately fast time to market for end users. It also gives the ability to seamlessly reuse mapping logic speeds development.Oracle GoldenGate 12c ‘s Integrated Delivery feature automatically optimally tunes the process, saving time while improving performance. This is just a quick glimpse into Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. On November 12th we will reveal much more about the new release in our video webcast "Introducing 12c for Oracle Data Integration". Our customer and partner speakers, including SolarWorld, BT, Rittman Mead will join us in launching the new release. Please join us at this free event to learn more from our executives about the 12c release, hear our customers’ perspectives on the new features, and ask your questions to our experts in the live Q&A. Also, please continue to follow our blogs, tweets, and Facebook updates as we unveil more about the new features of the latest release. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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SUPINFO International University in Mauritius

Since a while I'm considering to pick up my activities as a student and I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science. Personal motivation I mean after all this years as a professional software (and database) developer I have the personal urge to complete this part of my education. Having various certifications by Microsoft and being awarded as an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) twice looks pretty awesome on a resume but having a "proper" degree would just complete my package. During the last couple of years I already got in touch with C-SAC (local business school with degree courses), the University of Mauritius and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT to check the options to enroll as an experienced software developer. Quite frankly, it was kind of alienating to receive that feedback: Start from scratch! No seriously? Spending x amount of years to sit for courses that might be outdated and form part of your daily routine? Probably being in an awkward situation in which your professional expertise might exceed the lecturers knowledge? I don't know... but if that's path to walk... Well, then I might have to go for it. SUPINFO International University Some weeks ago I was contacted by the General Manager, Education Recruitment and Development of Medine Education Village, Yamal Matabudul, to have a chat on how the local IT scene, namely the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC), could assist in their plans to promote their upcoming campus. Medine went into partnership with the French-based SUPINFO International University and Mauritius will be the 36th location world-wide for SUPINFO. Actually, the concept of SUPINFO is very likely to the common understanding of an apprenticeship in Germany. Not only does a student enroll into the programme but will also be placed into various internships as part of the curriculum. It's a big advantage in my opinion as the person stays in touch with the daily procedures and workflows in the real world of IT. Statements like "We just received a 'crash course' of information and learned new technology which is equivalent to 1.5 months of lectures at the university" wouldn't form part of the experience of such an education. Open Day at the Medine Education Village Last Saturday, Medine organised their Open Day and it was the official inauguration of the SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. It's now listed on their website, too - but be warned, the site is mainly in French language although the courses are all done in English. Not only was it a big opportunity to "hang out" on the campus of Medine but it was great to see the first professional partners for their internship programme, too. Oh, just for the records, IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. will also be among the future employers for SUPINFO students. More about that in an upcoming blog entry. Open Day at Medine Education Village - SUPINFO International University in Mauritius Mr Alick Mouriesse, President of SUPINFO, arrived the previous day and he gave all attendees a great overview of the roots of SUPINFO, the general development of the educational syllabus and their high emphasis on their partnerships with local IT companies in order to assist their students to get future jobs but also feel the heartbeat of technology live. Something which is completely missing in classic institutions of tertiary education in Computer Science. And since I was on tour with my children, as usual during weekends, he also talked about the outlook of having a SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. Apart from the close connection to IT companies and providing internships to students, SUPINFO clearly works on an international level. Meaning students of SUPINFO can move around the globe and can continue their studies seamlessly. For example, you might enroll for your first year in France, then continue to do 2nd and 3rd year in Canada or any other country with a SUPINFO campus to earn your bachelor degree, and then live and study in Mauritius for the next 2 years to achieve a Master degree. Having a chat with Dale Smith, Expand Technologies, after his interesting session on Technological Entrepreneurship - TechPreneur More questions by other craftsmen of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community And of course, this concept works in any direction, giving Mauritian students a huge (!) opportunity to live, study and work abroad. And thanks to this, Medine already announced that there will be new facilities near Cascavelle to provide dormitories and other facilities to international students coming to our island. Awesome! Okay, but why SUPINFO? Well, coming back to my original statement - I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science - SUPINFO has a process called Validation of Acquired Experience (VAE) which is tailor-made for employees in the field of IT, and allows you to enroll in their course programme. I already got in touch with their online support chat but was only redirected to some FAQs on their website, unfortunately. So, during the Open Day I seized the opportunity to have an one-on-one conversation with Alick Mouriesse, and he clearly encouraged me to gather my certifications and working experience. SUPINFO does an individual evaluation prior to their assignment regarding course level, and hopefully my chances of getting some modules ahead of studies are looking better than compared to the other institutes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go down the easy route but why should someone sit for "Database 101" or "Principles of OOP" when applying and preaching database normalisation and practicing Clean Code Developer are like flesh and blood? Anyway, I'll be off to get my transcripts of certificates together with my course assignments from the old days at the university. Yes, I studied Applied Chemistry for a couple of years before intersecting into IT and software development particularly... ;-)

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Becoming A Great Developer

- by Lee Brandt

Image via Wikipedia I’ve been doing the whole programming thing for awhile and reading and watching some of the best in the business. I have come to notice that the really great developers do a few things that (I think) makes them great. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am one of these few. I still struggle with doing some of the things that makes one great at development. Coincidently, many of these things also make you a better person period. Believe That Guidance Is Better Than Answers This is one I have no problem with. I prefer guidance any time I am learning from another developer. Answers may get you going, but guidance will leave you stranded. At some point, you will come across a problem that can only be solved by thinking for yourself and this is where that guidance will really come in handy. You can use that guidance and extrapolate whatever technology to salve that problem (if it’s the right tool for solving that problem). The problem is, lots of developers simply want someone to tell them, “Do this, then this, then set that, and write this.” Favor thinking and learn the guidance of doing X and don’t ask someone to show you how to do X, if that makes sense. Read, Read and Read If you don’t like reading, you’re probably NOT going to make it into the Great Developer group. Great developers read books, they read magazines and they read code. Open source playgrounds like SourceForge, CodePlex and GitHub, have made it extremely easy to download code from developers you admire and see how they do stuff. Chances are, if you read their blog too, they’ll even explain WHY they did what they did (see “Guidance” above). MSDN and Code Magazine have not only code samples, but explanations of how to use certain technologies and sometimes even when NOT to use that same technology. Books are also out on just about every topic. I still favor the less technology centric books. For instance, I generally don’t buy books like, “Getting Started with Jiminy Jappets”. I look for titles like, “How To Write More Effective Code” (again, see guidance). The Addison-Wesley Signature Series is a great example of these types of books. They teach technology-agnostic concepts. Head First Design Patterns is another great guidance book. It teaches the "Gang Of Four" Design Patterns in a very easy-to-understand, picture-heavy way (I LIKE pictures). Hang Your Balls Out There Even though the advice came from a 3rd-shift Kinko’s attendant, doesn’t mean it’s not sound advice. Write some code and put it out for others to read, criticize and castigate you for. Understand that there are some real jerks out there who are absolute geniuses. Don’t be afraid to get some great advice wrapped in some really nasty language. Try to take what’s good about it and leave what’s not. I have a tough time with this myself. I don’t really have any code out there that is available for review (other than my demo code). It takes some guts to do, but in the end, there is no substitute for getting a community of developers to critique your code and give you ways to improve. Get Involved Speaking of community, the local and online user groups and discussion forums are a great place to hear about technologies and techniques you might never come across otherwise. Mostly because you might not know to look. But, once you sit down with a bunch of other developers and start discussing what you’re interested in, you may open up a whole new perspective on it. Don’t just go to the UG meetings and watch the presentations either, get out there and talk, socialize. I realize geeks weren’t meant to necessarily be social creatures, but if you’re amongst other geeks, it’s much easier. I’ve learned more in the last 3-4 years that I have been involved in the community that I did in my previous 8 years of coding without it. Socializing works, even if socialism doesn’t. Continuous Improvement Lean proponents might call this “Kaizen”, but I call it progress. We all know, especially in the technology realm, if you’re not moving ahead, you’re falling behind. It may seem like drinking from a fire hose, but step back and pick out the technologies that speak to you. The ones that may you’re little heart go pitter-patter. Concentrate on those. If you’re still overloaded, pick the best of the best. Just know that if you’re not looking at the code you wrote last week or at least last year with some embarrassment, you’re probably stagnating. That’s about all I can say about that, cause I am all out of clichés to throw at it. :0) Write Code Great painters paint, great writers write, and great developers write code. The most sure-fire way to improve your coding ability is to continue writing code. Don’t just write code that your work throws on you, pick that technology you love or are curious to know more about and walk through some blog demo examples. Take the language you use everyday and try to get it to do something crazy. Who knows, you might create the next Google search algorithm! All in all, being a great developer is about finding yourself in all this code. If it is just a job to you, you will probably never be one of the “Great Developers”, but you’re probably okay with that. If, on the other hand, you do aspire to greatness, get out there and GET it. No one’s going hand it to you.

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A Case for Oracle Fusion Middleware by Lucas Jellema

- by JuergenKress

An in-depth look at the interaction of people, processes, and technologies in the transition to a service-oriented architecture. Author's Note This article presents a profile of a fictitious organization, NOPERU. The story of NOPERU as told in this article is actually a collage of the events at some dozen organizations that I have been involved with over the past few years. None of these organizations sport all the characteristics of NOPERU - but all of them have gone through or are going through a similar transition as described here and all aspects of this article were taken from real life at one or usually many of these organizations. Background NOPERU (National Organization for Permits for Emissions and Resource Usage) is a public organization that continues to transform in terms of its business, organization and technology. Changing business requirements; new interaction channels; and increasing demands for more flexibility, faster throughput and lower costs drive these transformations, while technological evolution and new architecture patterns enable the change. NOPERU chose Oracle Fusion Middleware as the technology platform to implement the new architecture and required applications. This article takes a close look at NOPERU's journey from its origins in the early 1990s as a largely paper-based entity with regional databases and client-server Oracle Forms applications. Its upcoming business objectives are introduced: what is required of the organization and what the higher goals behind these requirements are. The architecture roadmap is described at a high level as well as drilled down to a service oriented design. Based on the architecture roadmap and the business requirements and NOPERU went through a technology selection to determine the technology stack with which the future would be realized in terms of IT. The article discusses that selection and details the projects subsequently planned (and executed to date). The new architecture and technology as well as the introduction of an Agile development method have had substantial consequences for the IT organization, the processes and individual staff members. The approach NOPERU has adopted with regard to the people and the organization is portrayed. Finally, the article discusses many conclusions that NOPERU has drawn that may benefit itself and other organizations. Introducing NOPERU NOPERU is a national organization charged with issuing permits for excessive emissions (i.e., carbon dioxide) and disproportionate usage of such resources as energy or water. Anyone-whether a commercial enterprise, government agency or private person--who emits or consumes more than what is considered "fair usage" requires such a permit. When someone builds an outdoor heated swimming pool, for example, or open-air terrace heating, such a permit needs to be obtained. When a company installs new, energy-intensive equipment, such as water boilers or deep freezers, it too needs to get a NOPERU permit. Government-sponsored projects at every level that involve consumption of large quantities of fresh water or production of high volumes of emissions must turn to NOPERU for a permit. Without the required license, any interested party can get a court to immediately put a stop to the disputed activity. Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: Lucas Jellema,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Reduce ERP Consolidation Risks with Oracle Master Data Management

- by Dain C. Hansen

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Reducing the Risk of ERP Consolidation starts first and foremost with your Data.This is nothing new; companies with multiple misaligned ERP systems are often putting inordinate risk on their business. It can translate to too much inventory, long lead times, and shipping issues from poorly organized and specified goods. And don’t forget the finance side! When goods are shipped and promises are kept/not kept there’s the issue of accounts. No single chart of counts translates to no accountability. So – I’ve decided. I need to consolidate! Well, you can’t consolidate ERP applications [for that matter any of your applications] without first considering your data. This means looking at how your data is being integrated by these ERP systems, how it is being synchronized, what information is being shared, or not being shared. Most importantly, making sure that the data is mastered. What is the best way to do this? In the recent webcast: Reduce ERP consolidation Risks with Oracle Master Data Management we outlined 3 key guidelines: #1: Consolidate your Product Data#2: Consolidate your Customer, Supplier (Party Data) #3: Consolidate your Financial Data Together these help customers achieve reduced risk, better customer intimacy, reducing inventory levels, elimination of product variations, and finally a single master chart of accounts. In the case of Oracle's customer Zebra Technologies, they were able to consolidate over 140 applications by mastering their data. Ultimately this gave them 60% cost savings for the year on IT spend. Oracle’s Solution for ERP Consolidation: Master Data Management Oracle's enterprise master data management (MDM) can play a big role in ERP consolidation. It includes a set of products that consolidates and maintains complete, accurate, and authoritative master data across the enterprise and distributes this master information to all operational and analytical applications as a shared service. It’s optimized to work with any application source (not just Oracle’s) and can integrate using technology from Oracle Fusion Middleware (i.e. GoldenGate for data synchronization and real-time replication or ODI with its E-LT optimized bulk data and transformation capability). In addition especially for ERP consolidation use cases it’s important to leverage the AIA and SOA capabilities as part of Fusion Middleware to connect these multiple applications together and relay the data into the correct hub. Oracle’s MDM strategy is a unique offering in the industry, one that has common elements across the top and bottom in Middleware, BI/DW, Engineered systems combined with Enterprise Data Quality to enable comprehensive Data Governance at all levels. In addition, Oracle MDM provides the best-in-class capabilities to master all variations of data, including customer, supplier, product, financial data. But ultimately at the center of Oracle MDM is your data, making it more trusted, making it secure and accessible as part of a role-based approach, and getting it to make sense to you in any situation, whether it’s a specific ERP process like we talked about or something that is custom to your organization. To learn more about these techniques in ERP consolidation watch our webcast or goto our Oracle MDM website at www.oracle.com/goto/mdm

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Silverlight Cream for December 18, 2010 -- #1012

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Mark Monster, Kevin Dockx, Jeremy Likness(-2-,-3-), Timmy Kokke, Den Delimarsky, Mike Snow, Samuel Jack(-2-), and Renuka Prasad(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Trigger a Storyboard on ViewModel changes" Mark Monster WP7: "Microsoft Push Notification in Windows Phone 7" Renuka Prasad Shoutouts: SilverlightGal sent me the link to The Silverlight Dossier ... I think it's a pretty good start... additions I'd like to see are ways to submit to the various areas. Michael Crump put up a contest that runs from now to January 1st... Win a set of Infragistics Silverlight Controls with Data Visualization!... pretty cool, Michael! If you visit WynApse.com, you'll see I have a subscription to LearnVisualStudio.net... and now they have posted a batch of WP7 videos... 64 of them to be exact... wow!: New video series From SilverlightCream.com: Trigger a Storyboard on ViewModel changes Mark Monster has a great post up about triggering Storyboard on ViewModel changes using the DataTrigger from Blend... cool stuff, and you can also do GoToStateAction or other actions or build yourowndang Trigger Action... fun awaits! ... sorry it took a while to post, Mark... been a tad overloaded here! Working with the Silverlight Rich Text Box control Kevin Dockx has had a post up for a while at SilverlightShow where he takes a good look at the RichText control and it's various capabilities, including source so you can give it a dance yourself. Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 3: Custom Panel and Listbox Jeremy Likness's part 3 of his Personal Web Page lessons learned is covering the tres-cool 3D Panel he did... and he's got it all explained out... building from scratch via a custom panel and a Listbox control... A Silverlight MVVM Feed Reader from Scratch in 30 Minutes Jeremy Likness has a video tutorial showing building an MVVM/Silverlight feedreader in 30 minutes ... plus a couple mods that he noticed after the fact... beat that HTML5 :) Jounce Part 8: Raising Property Changed In Jeremy Likness's latest post, he has number 8 in his series on his MVVM platform, Jounce. This time he's explaining the property changed notification, has a very cool way of doing it, and some interesting comments from readers. Dependency Injection, MVVM, Ninject and Silverlight Timmy Kokke has a great tutorial up with associated demo project on Dependency Injection in MVVM and Silverlight. Some hidden features in the Windows Phone 7 emulator Den Delimarsky shows how to get some of the hidden features on your WP7 emulator like the Call History, Call Settings, and Details about the numbers. Playing sound effects on Windows Phone 7 Mike Snow's latest tip is playing sound effects on your WP7 ... a little bit of XNA here and there, and badabing, badaboom, you got sound! Day 3 of my “Build a Windows Phone 7 game in 3 days” Challenge Samuel Jack has a couple more posts up about his 'Build a WP7 game in 3 Days' challenge... first up is Day 3 from 8:50 to 22:30 ... wow... long day! ... but he's got something good going now... some good external links also Day 3.5 of my “Build a Windows Phone 7 game in 3 days” Challenge Samuel Jack's 3rd day ended with another half-day added on to put on some finishing touches... again, some good external links... and he finished with this Say hello to Simon Squared, my 3.5 day old WP7 Game Microsoft Push Notification in Windows Phone 7 Renuka Prasad has a bunch of material up that I've not been aware of (how did that happen, people??) ... here's the first of a couple of his posts on Code Project ... a very nice tutorial on the Push Notification process... great diagrams and external links. Windows Phone 7 – Toast Notification Using Windows Azure Cloud Service Renuka Prasad has another WP7 post on CodeProject... this one on Toast Notification... and he's using Azure and WCF all rolled into it as well... great diagrams, descriptions and all the code. 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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Using Live Data in Database Development Work

- by Phil Factor

Guest Editorial for Simple-Talk Newsletter... in which Phil Factor reacts with some exasperation when coming across a report that a majority of companies were still using financial and personal data for both developing and testing database applications. If you routinely test your development work using real production data that contains personal or financial information, you are probably being irresponsible, and at worst, risking a heavy financial penalty for your company. Surprisingly, over 80% of financial companies still do this. Plenty of data breaches and fraud have happened from the use of real data for testing, and a data breach is a nightmare for any organisation that suffers one. The cost of each data breach averages out at around $7.2 million in the US in notification, escalation, credit monitoring, fines, litigation, legal costs, and lost business due to customer churn, £1.9 million in the UK. 70% of data breaches are done from within the organisation. Real data can be exploited in a number of ways for malicious or criminal purposes. It isn't just the obvious use of items such as name and address, date of birth, social security number, and credit card and bank account numbers: Data can be exploited in many subtle ways, so there are excellent reasons to ensure that a high priority is given to the detection and prevention of any data breaches. You'll never successfully guess all the ways that real data can be exploited maliciously, or the ease with which it can be accessed. It would be silly to argue that developers never need access to a copy of the database containing live data. Developers sometimes need to track a bug that can only be replicated on the data from the live database. However, it has to be done in a very restrictive harness. The law makes no distinction between development and production databases when a data breach occurs, so the data has to be held with all appropriate security measures in place. In Europe, the use of personal data for testing requires the explicit consent of the people whose data is being held. There are federal standards such as GLBA, PCI DSS and HIPAA, and most US States have privacy legislation. The task of ensuring compliance and tight security in such circumstances is an expensive and time-consuming overhead. The developer is likely to suffer investigation if a data breach occurs, even if the company manages to stay in business. Ironically, the use of copies of live data isn't usually the most effective way to develop or test your data. Data is usually time-specific and isn't usually current by the time it is used for testing, Existing data doesn't help much for new functionality, and every time the data is refreshed from production, any test data is likely to be overwritten. Also, it is not always going to test all the 'edge' conditions that are likely to flush out bugs. You still have the task of simulating the dynamics of actual usage of the database, and here you have no alternative to creating 'spoofed' data. Because of the complexities of relational data, It used to be that there was no realistic alternative to developing and testing with live data. However, this is no longer the case. Real data can be obfuscated, or it can be created entirely from scratch. The latter process used to be impractical, now that there are plenty of third-party tools to choose from. The process of obfuscation isn't risk free. The process must access the live data, and the success of the obfuscation process has to be carefully monitored. Database data security isn't an exciting topic to you or I, but to a hacker it can be an all-consuming obsession, especially if there is financial or political gain involved. This is not the sort of adversary one would wish for and it is far better to accept, and work with, security restrictions that exist for using live data in database development work, especially when the tools exist to create large realistic database test data that can be better for several aspects of testing.

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.NET 4: “Slim”-style performance boost!

- by Vitus

RTM version of .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 is available, and now we can do some test with it. Parallel Extensions is one of the most valuable part of .NET 4.0. It’s a set of good tools for easily consuming multicore hardware power. And it also contains some “upgraded” sync primitives – Slim-version. For example, it include updated variant of widely known ManualResetEvent. For people, who don’t know about it: you can sync concurrency execution of some pieces of code with this sync primitive. Instance of ManualResetEvent can be in 2 states: signaled and non-signaled. Transition between it possible by Set() and Reset() methods call. Some shortly explanation: Thread 1 Thread 2 Time mre.Reset(); mre.WaitOne(); //code execution 0 //wating //code execution 1 //wating //code execution 2 //wating //code execution 3 //wating mre.Set(); 4 //code execution //… 5 Upgraded version of this primitive is ManualResetEventSlim. The idea in decreasing performance cost in case, when only 1 thread use it. Main concept in the “hybrid sync schema”, which can be done as following: internal sealed class SimpleHybridLock : IDisposable { private Int32 m_waiters = 0; private AutoResetEvent m_waiterLock = new AutoResetEvent(false); public void Enter() { if (Interlocked.Increment(ref m_waiters) == 1) return; m_waiterLock.WaitOne(); } public void Leave() { if (Interlocked.Decrement(ref m_waiters) == 0) return; m_waiterLock.Set(); } public void Dispose() { m_waiterLock.Dispose(); } } It’s a sample from Jeffry Richter’s book “CLR via C#”, 3rd edition. Primitive SimpleHybridLock have two public methods: Enter() and Leave(). You can put your concurrency-critical code between calls of these methods, and it would executed in only one thread at the moment. Code is really simple: first thread, called Enter(), increase counter. Second thread also increase counter, and suspend while m_waiterLock is not signaled. So, if we don’t have concurrent access to our lock, “heavy” methods WaitOne() and Set() will not called. It’s can give some performance bonus. ManualResetEvent use the similar idea. Of course, it have more “smart” technics inside, like a checking of recursive calls, and so on. I want to know a real difference between classic ManualResetEvent realization, and new –Slim. I wrote a simple “benchmark”: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { ManualResetEventSlim mres = new ManualResetEventSlim(false); ManualResetEventSlim mres2 = new ManualResetEventSlim(false); ManualResetEvent mre = new ManualResetEvent(false); long total = 0; int COUNT = 50; for (int i = 0; i < COUNT; i++) { mres2.Reset(); Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem((obj) => { //Method(mres, true); Method2(mre, true); mres2.Set(); }); //Method(mres, false); Method2(mre, false); mres2.Wait(); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Pass {0}: {1} ms", i, sw.ElapsedMilliseconds); total += sw.ElapsedMilliseconds; } Console.WriteLine(); Console.WriteLine("==============================="); Console.WriteLine("Done in average=" + total / (double)COUNT); Console.ReadLine(); } private static void Method(ManualResetEventSlim mre, bool value) { for (int i = 0; i < 9000000; i++) { if (value) { mre.Set(); } else { mre.Reset(); } } } private static void Method2(ManualResetEvent mre, bool value) { for (int i = 0; i < 9000000; i++) { if (value) { mre.Set(); } else { mre.Reset(); } } } } I use 2 concurrent thread (the main thread and one from thread pool) for setting and resetting ManualResetEvents, and try to run test COUNT times, and calculate average execution time. Here is the results (I get it on my dual core notebook with T7250 CPU and Windows 7 x64): ManualResetEvent ManualResetEventSlim Difference is obvious and serious – in 10 times! So, I think preferable way is using ManualResetEventSlim, because not always on calling Set() and Reset() will be called “heavy” methods for working with Windows kernel-mode objects. It’s a small and nice improvement! ;)

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Java 6 Certified with Forms and Reports 10g for EBS 12

- by John Abraham

Java 6 is now certified with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms and Reports with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (12.0.6, 12.1.1 and higher). What? Wasn't this already certified? No, but a little background might be useful in understanding why this is a new announcement. We previously certified the use of Java 6 with E-Business Suite Release 12 -- with the sole exception of Oracle Application Server 10g components in the E-Business Suite technology stack. Oracle Application Server 10g originally included Java 1.4.2 as part of its distribution. E-Business Suite 12 uses, amongst other things, the Oracle Forms and Reports 10g components running on Java 1.4. Java 1.4 in the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME is used exclusively by AS 10g Forms and Reports' for Java functionality. This version of Java is separate from the Java distribution used by other parts of EBS such as Oracle Containers for Java (OC4J). What's new about this certification? You can now upgrade the older Java 1.4 libraries used by Oracle Forms & Reports 10g to Java 6. This allows you to upgrade the Java releases within the Oracle Application Server 10g ORACLE_HOME to the the same level as the rest of your E-Business Suite technology stack components. Why upgrade? This becomes particularly important for customers as individual vendors' support lifecycle for Java 1.4 reaches End of Life: Oracle's Sun JDK Release 1.4.2's End of Extended Support: February 2013 (Sustaining Support indefinitely after) IBM SDK and JRE 1.4.2's End of Service: September 2013 HP-UX Java 1.4.2's End-of-Life : May 2012 Along with Oracle Forms, Java lies at the heart of the Oracle E-Business Suite. Small improvements in Java can have significant effects on the performance and stability of the E-Business Suite. As a notable side-benefit, later versions of Java have improved built-in and third-party tools for JVM performance monitoring and tuning.Our standing recommendation is that you always stay current with the latest available Java update provided by your operating system vendor. Don't forget to upgrade Forms & Reports to 10.1.2.3 E-Business Suite 12 originally shipped with Oracle Application Server 10g Forms & Reports 10.1.2.0.2. That version is no longer eligible for Error Correction Support. New Forms and Reports 10g patches are now being released with Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 as the prerequisite. Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 was certified for EBS 12 environments in November 2008. If you haven't upgraded your EBS 12 environment to Forms & Reports 10.1.2.3, this is a good opportunity to do so. References Using Latest Update of Java 6.0 with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 455492.1) Overview of Using Java with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (My Oracle Support Document 418664.1) Oracle Lifetime Support Policy (Oracle Fusion Middleware) IBM Developer Kit Lifecycle Dates HP-UX Java - End of Life Policy & Release Naming Terminology Related Articles OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports 10.1.2.3 Certified With EBS R12 Java 6 Certified with E-Business Suite Release 12

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apt-get 403 Forbidden

- by Lerp

I've start a new job today and I am trying to set up my machine to run through their Windows server. I've managed to get a internet connection through the server now but now I can't run apt-get update as I get a "403 Forbidden" error. This is for every repo under my source list, apart from translations(?). I do have a proxy in apt.conf, if I don't have it I get a 407 Permission Denied error. Here's my apt.conf file (I have omitted my username and password) Acquire::http::proxy "http://username:[email protected]:8080/"; Here's my sources.list #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20130213)]/ dists/precise/main/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20130213)]/ dists/precise/restricted/binary-i386/ #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20130213)]/ precise main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise universe deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise universe deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise multiverse deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates multiverse ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main I can sort-of fix this by changing all the http in sources.list to ftp but I still have issues with ppas

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Interrupted Upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04

- by Tamil

My upgrade using alternative iso from 11.10 to 12.04 got interrupted and I had to hard restart my machine. Now I feel that everything is recovered except my already installed packages like vim. How do I backup my home folder for fresh installation of ubuntu? Following are the errors I'm facing I couldn't mark any package for re-installation in synaptic or remove and install too. output of sudo apt-get install vim Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package vim is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source E: Package 'vim' has no installation candidate If I try installing it from synaptic I get apache2.2-common: Package apache2.2-common has no available version, but exists in the database. This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents of sources.list my sources.list file # added by the release upgrader # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120822.4)]/ precise main restricted # added by the release upgrader # # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release amd64 (20120822.4)]/ precise main restricted # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 11.04 _Natty Narwhal_ - Release amd64 (20110427.1)]/ natty main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise universe deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-updates multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. # deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse # deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security universe deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu precise partner # deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu natty partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main # deb http://tamil.3758_gmail.com:[email protected]/free unstable main # disabled on upgrade to oneiric # deb http://debian.datastax.com/natty oneiric main # disabled on upgrade to oneiric sudo apt-get update Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise InRelease Err http://archive.canonical.com precise InRelease Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise-updates InRelease Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise-security InRelease Err http://extras.ubuntu.com precise InRelease Err http://archive.canonical.com precise Release.gpg Unable to connect to 172.16.140.249:3142: Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise Release.gpg Unable to connect to 172.16.140.249:3142: Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise-updates Release.gpg Unable to connect to 172.16.140.249:3142: Err http://extras.ubuntu.com precise Release.gpg Unable to connect to 172.16.140.249:3142: Err http://archive.ubuntu.com precise-security Release.gpg Unable to connect to 172.16.140.249:3142: W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/InRelease

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#iPad at One Week: A Great Device Made with a Heavy Hand

- by andrewbrust

I have now had my iPad for a little over a week. In that time, Apple introduced the world to its iPhone OS 4 (and the SDK agreement’s draconian new section 3.3.1), HP introduced is Slate, and Microsoft got ready to launch Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. And through it all I have used my iPad. I've used it for email, calendar, controlling my Sonos, and writing an essay. I've used it for getting on TripIt and Twitter, and surfing the Web. I've used it for online banking, and online ordering and delivery of food. And the verdict? Honestly? I think it's a great device and I thoroughly enjoy using it. The screen is bright and vibrant. I am surprisingly fast and accurate when I type on it. The touch screen's responsiveness is nearly flawless. The software, including a number of third party applications, include pleasing animations and use of color that make it fun to get work done. And speaking of work, the Exchange integration is, dare I say it, robust. Not as full-featured as on a PC or Windows Mobile device, but still offering core functionality and, so far at least, without bugs. The UI is intuitive, not just to me, but also to my 5 1/2 year old, and also to my nearly-3-year-old son. They picked it up and, with just just a few pointers from me, they almost immediately knew what to do, whether they were looking at photos (and swiping/flicking along as they did so), using a drawing program, playing a game, or watching YouTube videos. The younger of the two of them even tried to get up on a chair and grab the thing today. He dropped it, from about 4 feet off the ground. And it's still fine. (Meanwhile, I'll be keeping it on a higher shelf.) I cannot fully describe yet what makes this form factor and this product so appealing. Maybe it's that it's an always-on device. Maybe it's just being able to hold such a nice, relatively large display so close. Maybe it's the design sensibility, that seems to pervade throughout the app ecosystem. Or maybe it's that one's fingers, and not pens or mice, are the software's preferred input device. Whatever the attraction, it's strong. And no matter how much I tend to root for Microsoft and against Apple, Cupertino has, in my mind, scored big, Can Microsoft compete? Yes, but not with the Windows 7 standard UI (nor with individual OEMs’ own UIs on top). I hope Microsoft builds a variant of the Windows Phone 7 specifically for tablet devices. And I hope they make it clear that all developers, and programming languages, are welcome to the platform. Once that’s established, the OEMs have to build great hardware with fast, responsive touch screens, under Microsoft's watchful eye. That may be the hardest part of getting this right. No matter what, Microsoft's got a fight on its hands. I don't know if it can count on winning that fight, either. But Silverlight and Live Tiles could certainly help. And so can treating developers like adults. Apple seems intent on treating their devs like kids, and then giving the kids a curfew. For that, dev-friendly Microsoft may one day give thanks.

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Upgrades in 5 Easy Pieces

- by Anne R.

Even though there are a few select tasks that I have to do once or twice a year, I can’t remember how to do them! Or where to find the bits and pieces to complete the task. So I love it when someone consolidates everything under one spot. That’s what the CRM On Demand team has done with the upgrade information. Specifically, they have: Provided a “one-stop” area for managing upgrades at your company. Broken down the upgrade process into 5 (yes, 5) steps. Explained when and how to perform each step with dates specific to your pod. Included details about each step, visible by expanding the step. Translated the steps into 11 languages. Added a list of release-specific resources with links from the page. Now, just head for the Training and Support portal, click the Release Info tab, and walk through the “5 Essential Steps to a Successful Upgrade.” Before you continue, though, select your language from the drop-down list on the Release Info page. CRM On Demand now has the upgrade steps translated into 11 languages. On the Step page, you can expand each section in sequence and follow the more detailed instructions that appear. This will ensure that you’ve covered all your bases for each upgrade. Here’s a shortened version of the information that you’ll find: 1. Verify your Primary Contact Information. Have you checked your primary contact information to make sure you’re being notified of all upgrade information? Or do you want more users to receive upgrade announcements? This section provides you with the navigation path to do that in CRM On Demand. 2. Review your Key Upgrade Dates. If you expand this step, a nice table appears with your critical dates for the various milestones. IMPORTANT: When your CRM On Demand pod has been officially added to the upgrade schedule, closer to the release date itself, this table will display your specific timetable. 3. Migrate your Customizations from the Staging Environment before the Snapshot Date. Oracle refreshes the Staging data with a copy of your Production data made on the Production Snapshot Date. So this section lists considerations relevant to this step. It also reminds you of the 2-week period when you should not be making any changes in your Staging environment. 4. Conduct your Upgrade Validation on the Staging Environment. When the Customer Validation Testing period begins, you need to log in to your Staging Environment to validate that your key business processes and customizations continue to behave as expected. If your company utilizes Web Services, Web Links, Web Applets or Workflow, focus on testing these first. You generally have about two weeks for testing. If you run into problems during this time, follow the instructions shown in this section for logging a service request. It describes exactly how to fill out the fields in the SR for the fastest resolution. 5. Conduct "White Glove" Testing in your Upgraded Production Environment. Before users start using the upgrade, you should access a few tabs and reports. Doing this actually warms up the cache so that frequently used pages and reports will come up at normal speed on Monday morning, when users log in to the upgraded system. Resources listed under this step help you in further preparing for the upgrade. Now there’s also a new Documentation section on the right with links to these release-specific resources. Very nice, I commented, when discussing these improvements with the “responsible party.” She confirmed that, yes, they tried to consolidate the upgrade information, translate it for better communication, simplify it into 5 easy pieces, and drive admins responsible for handling upgrades to this one site instead of sending out elaborate emails. Yes, I just love it when someone practically reaches out and holds my hand through a process. Next best thing to a wizard!

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