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• How to do role-based access control for a franchise business?

  - by FreshCode

  I'm building the 2nd iteration of a web-based CRM+CMS for a franchise service business in ASP.NET MVC 2. I need to control access to each franchise's services based on the roles a user is assigned for that franchise. 4 examples: Receptionist should be able to book service jobs in for her "Atlantic Seaboard" franchise, but not do any reporting. Technician should be able to alter service jobs, but not modify invoices. Managers should be able to apply discount to invoices for jobs within their stores. Owner should be able to pull reports for any franchises he owns. Where should franchise-level access control fit in between the Data - Services - Web layer? If it belongs in my Controllers, how should I best implement it? Partial Schema Roles class int ID { get; set; } // primary key for Role string Name { get; set; } Partial Franchises class short ID { get; set; } // primary key for Franchise string Slug { get; set; } // unique key for URL access, eg /{franchise}/{job} string Name { get; set; } UserRoles mapping short FranchiseID; // related to franchises table Guid UserID; // related to Users table int RoleID; // related to Roles table DateTime ValidFrom; DateTime ValidUntil; Background I built the previous CRM in classic ASP and it runs the business well, but it's time for an upgrade to speed up workflow and leave less room for error. For the sake of proper testing and better separation between data and presentation, I decided to implement the repository pattern as seen in Rob Conery's MVC Storefront series. Controller Implementation Access Control with [Authorize] attribute If there was just one franchise involved, I could simply limit access to a controller action like so: [Authorize(Roles="Receptionist, Technician, Manager, Owner")] public ActionResult CreateJob(Job job) { ... } And since franchises don't just pop up over night, perhaps this is a strong case to use the new Areas feature in ASP.NET MVC 2? Or would this lead to duplicate Views? Controllers, URL Routing & Areas Assuming Areas aren't used, what would be the best way to determine which franchise's data is being accessed? I thought of this: {franchise}/{controller}/{action}/{id} or is it better to determine a job's franchise in a Details(...) action and limit a user's action with [Authorize]: {job}/{id}/{action}/{subaction} {invoice}/{id}/{action}/{subaction} which makes more sense if any user could potentially have access to more than one franchise without cluttering the URL with a {franchise} parameter. Any input is appreciated.

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• Slow Memcached: Average 10ms memcached `get`

  - by Chris W.

  We're using Newrelic to measure our Python/Django application performance. Newrelic is reporting that across our system "Memcached" is taking an average of 12ms to respond to commands. Drilling down into the top dozen or so web views (by # of requests) I can see that some Memcache get take up to 30ms; I can't find a single use of Memcache get that returns in less than 10ms. More details on the system architecture: Currently we have four application servers each of which has a memcached member. All four memcached members participate in a memcache cluster. We're running on a cloud hosting provider and all traffic is running across the "internal" network (via "internal" IPs) When I ping from one application server to another the responses are in ~0.5ms Isn't 10ms a slow response time for Memcached? As far as I understand if you think "Memcache is too slow" then "you're doing it wrong". So am I doing it wrong? Here's the output of the memcache-top command: memcache-top v0.7 (default port: 11211, color: on, refresh: 3 seconds) INSTANCE USAGE HIT % CONN TIME EVICT/s GETS/s SETS/s READ/s WRITE/s cache1:11211 37.1% 62.7% 10 5.3ms 0.0 73 9 3958 84.6K cache2:11211 42.4% 60.8% 11 4.4ms 0.0 46 12 3848 62.2K cache3:11211 37.5% 66.5% 12 4.2ms 0.0 75 17 6056 170.4K AVERAGE: 39.0% 63.3% 11 4.6ms 0.0 64 13 4620 105.7K TOTAL: 0.1GB/ 0.4GB 33 13.9ms 0.0 193 38 13.5K 317.2K (ctrl-c to quit.) ** Here is the output of the top command on one machine: ** (Roughly the same on all cluster machines. As you can see there is very low CPU utilization, because these machines only run memcache.) top - 21:48:56 up 1 day, 4:56, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.06, 0.05 Tasks: 70 total, 1 running, 69 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 99.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.3%st Mem: 501392k total, 424940k used, 76452k free, 66416k buffers Swap: 499996k total, 13064k used, 486932k free, 181168k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 6519 nobody 20 0 384m 74m 880 S 1.0 15.3 18:22.97 memcached 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:38.03 ksoftirqd/0 1 root 20 0 24332 1552 776 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.56 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0 5 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kworker/u:0 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.62 watchdog/0 8 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset 9 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper ...output truncated...

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• How do I reward my developers for the little things they get right?

  - by Nat

  I am in a tech lead role and my developers get stuff right most of the time. How do I communicate to them thier value to me? (I.e. they have value because I do not have to go through and point out mistakes which means I do not have to watch them like a hawk which frees me to do more useful things). In summary For doing the mundane well on a day to day basis, it is good to recognise the developers effort verbally to them. An honest thankyou that mentions the specific behaviour and its positive repercussions to you personally will be well received, adjust the language to suite each individual. (Note that other developers within earshot may also respond to this by increasing their efforts in this specific activity.) Other things that should be done regularly are: Team drinks In many cultures this is an entirely worthy way of giving the team some time to socialise and relax. Be sure that you do not exclude people who do not drink or are not keen on pub culture. Shared meals are another option. Formal written (email) acknowledgment and praise to senior managers of the teams efforts and successes. (Note that acknowledging individuals alone may damage team spirit) Work the hours you expect your team to do. If they absolutely must work late for a deadline, be there in support Go to bat for the team. Refuse to let them be forced to work long periods of overtime without compensation. Protect them from level politics and stress. Give your team the best equipment you can afford. Good tools show respect and improve productivity. Small or large team rewards where appropriate can consist of many interesting activities/ items. If it allows the team to get together in a fun and even lightly competitive manner it will work (foosball table, go-karting, darts board, video game console etc). Don’t forget to listen to what the team wants, each team will have different ideas. Ensure they are getting a fair deal financially from the company. While different people may have different expectations of their pay, someone being paid unfairly will rot morale for the entire team

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• Using Hibernate to do a query involving two tables

  - by Nathan Spears

  I'm inexperienced with sql in general, so using Hibernate is like looking for an answer before I know exactly what the question is. Please feel free to correct any misunderstandings I have. I am on a project where I have to use Hibernate. Most of what I am doing is pretty basic and I could copy and modify. Now I would like to do something different and I'm not sure how configuration and syntax need to come together. Let's say I have two tables. Table A has two (relevant) columns, user GUID and manager GUID. Obviously managers can have more than one user under them, so queries on manager can return more than one row. Additionally, a manager can be managing the same user on multiple projects, so the same user can be returned multiple times for the same manager query. Table B has two columns, user GUID and user full name. One-to-one mapping there. I want to do a query on manager GUID from Table A, group them by unique User GUID (so the same User isn't in the results twice), then return those users' full names from Table B. I could do this in sql without too much trouble but I want to use Hibernate so I don't have to parse the sql results by hand. That's one of the points of using Hibernate, isn't it? Right now I have Hibernate mappings that map each column in Table A to a field (well the get/set methods I guess) in a DAO object that I wrote just to hold that Table's data. I could also use the Hibernate DAOs I have to access each table separately and do each of the things I mentioned above in separate steps, but that would be less efficient (I assume) that doing one query. I wrote a Service object to hold the data that gets returned from the query (my example is simplified - I'm going to keep some other data from Table A and get multiple columns from Table B) but I'm at a loss for how to write a DAO that can do the join, or use the DAOs I have to do the join. FYI, here is a sample of my hibernate config file (simplified to match my example): <hibernate-mapping package="com.my.dao"> <class name="TableA" table="table_a"> <id name="pkIndex" column="pk_index" /> <property name="userGuid" column="user_guid" /> <property name="managerGuid" column="manager_guid" /> </class> </hibernate-mapping> So then I have a DAOImplementation class that does queries and returns lists like public List<TableA> findByHQL(String hql, Map<String, String> params) etc. I'm not sure how "best practice" that is either.

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• Setting up nginx as proxy to apache; All good, but nginx doesn't serve media

  - by becomingGuru

  I have set it up such that nginx proxies request and sends django requests to apache and serves media itself. Following documents my setup: Nginx Configuration: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf user www-data; worker_processes 1; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; #keepalive_timeout 0; keepalive_timeout 65; tcp_nodelay on; gzip on; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } ===== ngnix proxy /etc/nginx/proxy.conf ============ proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; client_max_body_size 10m; client_body_buffer_size 128k; proxy_connect_timeout 90; proxy_send_timeout 90; proxy_read_timeout 90; proxy_buffer_size 4k; proxy_buffers 4 32k; proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k; proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k; =========== Nginx server file: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/some-name.txt ========== server { listen 208.109.252.110:80; server_name netconf; autoindex on; access_log /home/site/server_logs/nginx_access.log; error_log /home/site/server_logs/nginx_error.log; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80/; include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf; } location /site_media/ { root /home/site/folder/static; } } ========== Nginx very well proxies the request and passes to apache, the required requests, but doesn't serve the media. In the last server file, location site_media is not served, at all. :( Everything seems perfect to me. What is wrong? Thanks in advance.

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• How to make freelance clients understand the costs of developing and maintaining mature products?

  - by John

  I have a freelance web application project where the client requests new features every two weeks or so. I am unable to anticipate the requirements of upcoming features. So when the client requests a new feature, one of several things may happen: I implement the feature with ease because it is compatible with the existing platform I implement the feature with difficulty because I have to rewrite a significant portion of the platform's foundation Client withdraws request because it costs too much to implement against existing platform At the beginning of the project, for about six months, all feature requests fell under category 1) because the system was small and agile. But for the past six months, most feature implementation fell under category 2). The system is mature, forcing me to refactor and test everytime I want to add new modules. Additionally, I find myself breaking things that use to work, and fixing it (I don't get paid for this). The client is starting to express frustration at the time and cost for me to implement new features. To them, many of the feature requests are of the same scale as the features they requested six months ago. For example, a client would ask, "If it took you 1 week to build a ticketing system last year, why does it take you 1 month to build an event registration system today? An event registration system is much simpler than a ticketing system. It should only take you 1 week!" Because of this scenario, I fear feature requests will soon land in category 3). In fact, I'm already eating a lot of the cost myself because I volunteer many hours to support the project. The client is often shocked when I tell him honestly the time it takes to do something. The client always compares my estimates against the early months of a project. I don't think they're prepared for what it really costs to develop, maintain and support a mature web application. When working on a salary for a full time company, managers were more receptive of my estimates and even encouraged me to pad my numbers to prepare for the unexpected. Is there a way to condition my clients to think the same way? Can anyone offer advice on how I can continue to work on this web project without eating too much of the cost myself? Additional info - I've only been freelancing full time for 1 year. I don't yet have the high end clients, but I'm slowly getting there. I'm getting better quality clients as time goes by.

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• Objects not loading on second request in Restkit

  - by Holger Edward Wardlow Sindbæk

  I'm sending off 2 requests simultaneously with Restkit and I receive a response back from both of them, but only one of the requests receives any objects. If I send them off one by one, then my objectloader receives all objects. First request: self.firstObjectManager = [RKObjectManager sharedManager]; [self.firstObjectManager loadObjectsAtResourcePath:[NSString stringWithFormat: @"/%@.json", subUrl] usingBlock:^(RKObjectLoader *loader){ [loader.mappingProvider setObjectMapping:designArrayMapping forKeyPath:@""]; loader.userData = @"design"; loader.delegate = self; [loader sendAsynchronously]; }]; Second request: self.secondObjectManager = [RKObjectManager sharedManager]; [self.secondObjectManager loadObjectsAtResourcePath:[NSString stringWithFormat: @"/%@.json", subUrl] usingBlock:^(RKObjectLoader *loader){ [loader.mappingProvider setObjectMapping:designerMapping forKeyPath:@""]; loader.userData = @"designer"; loader.delegate = self; [loader sendAsynchronously]; }]; My objecloader: -(void)objectLoader:(RKObjectLoader *)objectLoader didLoadObjects:(NSArray *)objects { //NSLog(@"This happened: %@", objectLoader.userData); if (objectLoader.userData == @"design") { NSLog(@"Design happened: %i", objects.count); }else if(objectLoader.userData == @"designer"){ NSLog(@"designer: %@", [objects objectAtIndex:0]); } } My response: 2012-11-18 14:36:19.607 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] Started loading of request: designer 2012-11-18 14:36:22.575 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] I restkit.network:RKRequest.m:680:-[RKRequest updateInternalCacheDate] Updating cache date for request <RKObjectLoader: 0x95c3160> to 2012-11-18 19:36:22 +0000 2012-11-18 14:36:22.576 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] response code: 200 2012-11-18 14:36:22.584 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] Design happened: 0 2012-11-18 14:36:22.603 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] I restkit.network:RKRequest.m:680:-[RKRequest updateInternalCacheDate] Updating cache date for request <RKObjectLoader: 0xa589b50> to 2012-11-18 19:36:22 +0000 2012-11-18 14:36:22.605 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] response code: 200 2012-11-18 14:36:22.606 RestKitTest5[14220:c07] designer: <DesignerData: 0xa269fc0> Update: Setting my base url RKURL *baseURL = [RKURL URLWithBaseURLString:@"http://iphone.meer.li"]; [RKObjectManager setSharedManager:[RKObjectManager managerWithBaseURL:baseURL]]; Solution Problem was that I used the shared manager for both object managers, so I ended up doing: RKURL *baseURL = [RKURL URLWithBaseURLString:@"http://iphone.meer.li"]; RKObjectManager *myObjectManager = [[RKObjectManager alloc] initWithBaseURL:baseURL]; self.firstObjectManager = myObjectManager; and: RKURL *baseURL = [RKURL URLWithBaseURLString:@"http://iphone.meer.li"]; RKObjectManager *myObjectManager = [[RKObjectManager alloc] initWithBaseURL:baseURL]; self.secondObjectManager = myObjectManager;

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• Advice on software / database design to avoid using cursors when updating database

  - by Remnant

  I have a database that logs when an employee has attended a course and when they are next due to attend the course (courses tend to be annual). As an example, the following employee attended course '1' on 1st Jan 2010 and, as the course is annual, is due to attend next on the 1st Jan 2011. As today is 20th May 2010 the course status reads as 'Complete' i.e. they have done the course and do not need to do it again until next year: EmployeeID CourseID AttendanceDate DueDate Status 123456 1 01/01/2010 01/01/2011 Complete In terms of the DueDate I calculate this in SQL when I update the employee's record e.g. DueDate = AttendanceDate + CourseFrequency (I pull course frequency this from a separate table). In my web based app (asp.net mvc) I pull back this data for all employees and display it in a grid like format for HR managers to review. This allows HR to work out who needs to go on courses. The issue I have is as follows. Taking the example above, suppose today is 2nd Jan 2011. In this case, employee 123456 is now overdue for the course and I would like to set the Status to Incomplete so that the HR manager can see that they need to action this i.e. get employee on the course. I could build a trigger in the database to run overnight to update the Status field for all employees based on the current date. From what I have read I would need to use cursors to loop over each row to amend the status and this is considered bad practice / inefficient or at least something to avoid if you can??? Alternatively, I could compute the Status in my C# code after I have pulled back the data from the database and before I display it on screen. The issue with this is that the Status in the database would not necessarily match what is shown on screen which just feels plain wrong to me. Does anybody have any advice on the best practice approach to such an issue? It helps, if I did use a cursor I doubt I would be looping over more than 1000 records at any given time. Maybe this is such small volume that using cursors is okay?

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• Silverlight? WPF? or Windows Form?

  - by Amit

  After Silverlight 4.0 has been released with new WPF, I am kind of confused with these technologies: Silverlight? WPF? Windows Form? The main motive that we want to achieve for BIG business project is following: Performance Security And platform independent** If I consider all above three points then only Silverlight is the option as I don’t want people buying emulator on MacOS for WPF or Windows Form. Now how good the Silverlight is for Business applications, I was completely against when Silverlight 2.0 was in the market but now it is Silverlight 4.0 and they have provided many new features (but still basics) that is required in any challenging business applications. Comparing Silverlight and WPF -* Silverlight and WPF are very new technology and if I'd to compare from these two then I'd prefer WPF because it can be considered stable and mature. But it is not same as Windows Form. -* If I go with Silverlight then I am sure about keep updating to the latest version of Silverlight. I remembered when we were developing software for version 2.0 then we'd to create our own framework with dynamic loading DLL, and then Navigation concept. But everything was got changed once Silverlight 3.0 came. I don't want this to be happening with this new product. -* If we go with WPF then we don't get the platform independence. Now, why not we just focus on making WPF and then move to Silverlght. As someone (Tim?) from Microsoft has said that the idea is to make Silverlight as close as WPF. But if that is the case then why XAML structure is different; I will not be convinced with by saying that .Net framework for SL is too small.. well the difference is coming from the namespace ? I was searching on this subject and found "Microsoft WPF-Silverlight Comparison Whitepaper v1.1.pdf". This guide is very good that gives you ins-outs about how can we build common apps that runs on both. But again, it is comparing Silverlight 2 and not 4. I am sure many architect/ developers/ project managers must be facing similar kind of questions in their premises and wants to initiate this discussion, if it has not been :). We've still got 2 weeks to make this decision, so I'm expecting everyone to participate, gurus?

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• Apache server completely freezes until it gets restarted

  - by nbv4

  My server does this every few days. What sucks is that it always seems to do this right after I go to bed, so when I wake up, I'm greeted with the fact that my server has been down for the past 6 or 7 hours. When I first noticed this, I added a cronjob that tries to restart the server every 15 minutes, but I guess that didn't fix it. Once I noticed the server was down, I can this command: /etc/init.d/apache2 restart * Restarting web server apache2 apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName ... waiting ...........................................................apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName httpd (pid 17597) already running ...which is odd, because a restart should restart the server, even if it's already running, correct? I eventually had to "stop" then "start" to get it working again. I then looked through the logs, and found something very weird. It seems that around the time the server crashed, the logs have entries that are wildly out of order. It looks a little like this: xx.xxx.xxx.x - - [21/Apr/2010:06:32:05 -0400] "GET / blah" xx.xxx.xxx.x - - [21/Apr/2010:06:51:25 -0400] "GET / blah" x.xx.xxx.xxx - - [21/Apr/2010:06:38:23 -0400] "GET / blah" xxx.xx.xx.xx - - [21/Apr/2010:06:31:56 -0400] "GET / blah" xxx.xx.xx.xx - - [21/Apr/2010:06:51:49 -0400] "GET / blah" xx.xx.xxx.xx - - [21/Apr/2010:06:33:20 -0400] "GET / blah" I don't think the problem is memory, because this: tells me that right before the crash, memory usage is fine. I'm running apache with the worker mpm, here are the settings for that: <IfModule mpm_worker_module> StartServers 1 MaxClients 100 MinSpareThreads 5 MaxSpareThreads 10 ThreadsPerChild 10 MaxRequestsPerChild 3000 </IfModule> This apache server is running a bunch of stuff, but most of the traffic comes from a django project I'm hosting, that uses mod_wsgi. There also is a simple machines forum that is running off of mod_fcgid. Those setting are below: <IfModule mod_fcgid.c> MaxRequestsPerProcess 500 MaxProcessCount 3 AddHandler fcgid-script .php .fcgi AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl FCGIWrapper "/usr/bin/php-cgi" .php </IfModule> Anyone know of anything else I can check? I've just about tweaked every single setting I can think of, yet these freezes still happen.

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• SQL efficiency argument, add a column or solvable by query?

  - by theTurk

  I am a recent college graduate and a new hire for software development. Things have been a little slow lately so I was given a db task. My db skills are limited to pet projects with Rails and Django. So, I was a little surprised with my latest task. I have been asked by my manager to subclass Person with a 'Parent' table and add a reference to their custodian in the Person table. This is to facilitate going from Parent to Form when the custodian, not the Parent, is the FormContact. Here is a simplified, mock structure of a sql-db I am working with. I would have drawn the relationship tables if I had access to Visio. We have a table 'Person' and we have a table 'Form'. There is a table, 'FormContact', that relates a Person to a Form, not all Persons are related to a Form. There is a relationship table for Person to Person relationships (Employer, Parent, etc.) I've asked, "Why this couldn't be handled by a query?" Response, Inefficient. (Really!?!) So, I ask, "Why not have a reference to the Form? That would be more efficient since you wouldn't be querying the FormContacts table with the reference from child/custodian." Response, this would essentially make the Parent is a FormContact. (Fair enough.) I went ahead an wrote a query to get from non-FormContact Parent to Form, and tested on the production server. The response time was instantaneous. *SOME_VALUE* is the Parent's fk ID. SELECT FormID FROM FormContact WHERE FormContact.ContactID IN (SELECT SourceContactID FROM ContactRelationship WHERE (ContactRelationship.RelatedContactID = *SOME_VALUE*) AND (ContactRelationship.Relationship = 'Parent')); If I am right, "This is an unnecessary change." What should I do, defend my position or should I concede to the managers request? If I am wrong. What is my error? Is there a better solution than the manager's?

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• How to handle environment-specific application configuration organization-wide?

  - by Stuart Lange

  Problem Your organization has many separate applications, some of which interact with each other (to form "systems"). You need to deploy these applications to separate environments to facilitate staged testing (for example, DEV, QA, UAT, PROD). A given application needs to be configured slightly differently in each environment (each environment has a separate database, for example). You want this re-configuration to be handled by some sort of automated mechanism so that your release managers don't have to manually configure each application every time it is deployed to a different environment. Desired Features I would like to design an organization-wide configuration solution with the following properties (ideally): Supports "one click" deployments (only the environment needs to be specified, and no manual re-configuration during/after deployment should be necessary). There should be a single "system of record" where a shared environment-dependent property is specified (such as a database connection string that is shared by many applications). Supports re-configuration of deployed applications (in the event that an environment-specific property needs to change), ideally without requiring a re-deployment of the application. Allows an application to be run on the same machine, but in different environments (run a PROD instance and a DEV instance simultaneously). Possible Solutions I see two basic directions in which a solution could go: Make all applications "environment aware". You would pass the environment name (DEV, QA, etc) at the command line to the app, and then the app is "smart" enough to figure out the environment-specific configuration values at run-time. The app could fetch the values from flat files deployed along with the app, or from a central configuration service. Applications are not "smart" as they are in #1, and simply fetch configuration by property name from config files deployed with the app. The values of these properties are injected into the config files at deploy-time by the install program/script. That install script takes the environment name and fetches all relevant configuration values from a central configuration service. Question How would/have you achieved a configuration solution that solves these problems and supports these desired features? Am I on target with the two possible solutions? Do you have a preference between those solutions? Also, please feel free to tell me that I'm thinking about the problem all wrong. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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• Varnish server in front of nginx server with multiple virtualhosts

  - by Garreth 00

  I have tried to search for a solution for this, but can't find any documentation/tips on my specific setup. My setup: Backendserver: ngnix: 2 different websites (2 top domains) in virtualenv, running gunicorn/python/django Backendserver hardware(VPS) 2gb ram, 8 CPU Databaseserver: postgresql - pg_bouncer Backendserver hardware (VPS) 1gb ram, 8 CPU Varnishserver: only running varnish Varnishserver hardware (VPS) 1gb ram, 8 CPU I'm trying to set up a varnish server to handle rare spike in traffic (20 000 unique req/s) The spike happens when a tv program mention one of the sites. What do I need to do, to make the varnish server cache both sites/domains on my backendserver? My /etc/varnish/default.vcl : backend django_backend { .host = "local.backendserver.com"; .port = "8080"; } My /usr/local/nginx/site-avaible/domain1.com upstream gunicorn_domain1 { server unix:/home/<USER>/.virtualenvs/<DOMAIN1>/<APP1>/run/gunicorn.sock fail_timeout=0; } server { listen 80; listen 8080; server_name domain1.com; rewrite ^ http://www.domains.com$request_uri? permanent; } server { listen 80 default_server; listen 8080; client_max_body_size 4G; server_name www.domain1.com; keepalive_timeout 5; # path for static files root /home/<USER>/<APP>-media/; location / { proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_redirect off; if (!-f $request_filename) { proxy_pass http://gunicorn_domain1; break; } } } My /usr/local/nginx/site-avaible/domain2.com upstream gunicorn_domain2 { server unix:/home/<USER>/.virtualenvs/<DOMAIN2>/<APP2>/run/gunicorn.sock fail_timeout=0; } server { listen 80; listen 8080; server_name domain2.com; rewrite ^ http://www.domains.com$request_uri? permanent; } server { listen 80; listen 8080; client_max_body_size 4G; server_name www.domain2.com; keepalive_timeout 5; # path for static files root /home/<USER>/<APP>-media/; location / { proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_redirect off; if (!-f $request_filename) { proxy_pass http://gunicorn_domain2; break; } } } Right now, If I try the Ip of the varnishserver I only get served domain1.com. Would everything be correct if I change the DNS of the two domain to point to the varnishserver, or is there extra setup before it would work? Question 2: Do I need a dedicated server for varnish, or could I just install varnish on my backendserver, or would the server run out of memory quick?

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• Serving protected files using Nginx's X-Accel-Redirect header

  - by andybak

  I'm trying to serve protected files using this directive in my nginx.conf: location /secure/ { internal; alias /home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/secure/; } I'm passing in paths in the form: "/myfile.doc" and the file's path would be: /home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/secure/myfile.doc I just get 404's when I access "http: //myserver/secure/myfile.doc" (space inserted after http to stop ServerFault converting it to a link) I've tried taking the trailing / off the location directive and that makes no difference. Two questions: How do I fix it! How can I debug problems like this myself? How can I get Nginx to report which path it's looking for? error.log shows nothing and access.log just tells me which url is being requested - this is the bit I already know! It's no fun trying things randomly without any feedback. Here's my entire nginx.conf: daemon off; worker_processes 2; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; server { listen 21534; server_name my.server.com; client_max_body_size 5m; location /media/ { alias /home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/media/; } location / { proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; fastcgi_pass unix:/home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/myproject/django.sock; fastcgi_pass_header Authorization; fastcgi_hide_header X-Accel-Redirect; fastcgi_hide_header X-Sendfile; fastcgi_intercept_errors off; include fastcgi_params; } location /secure { internal; alias /home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/secure/; } } } EDIT: I'm trying some of the suggestions here So I've tried: location /secure/ { internal; alias /home/ldr/webapps/nginx/app/; } both with and without the trailing slash on location. I've also tried moving this block before the "location /" directive. The page I linked to has ^~ after 'location' giving: location ^~ /secure/ { ...etc... Not sure what that signifies but it didn't work either!

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• Tips for maximizing Nginx requests/sec?

  - by linkedlinked

  I'm building an analytics package, and project requirements state that I need to support 1 billion hits per day. Yep, "billion". In other words, no less than 12,000 hits per second sustained, and preferably some room to burst. I know I'll need multiple servers for this, but I'm trying to get maximum performance out of each node before "throwing more hardware at it". Right now, I have the hits-tracking portion completed, and well optimized. I pretty much just save the requests straight into Redis (for later processing with Hadoop). The application is Python/Django with a gunicorn for the gateway. My 2GB Ubuntu 10.04 Rackspace server (not a production machine) can serve about 1200 static files per second (benchmarked using Apache AB against a single static asset). To compare, if I swap out the static file link with my tracking link, I still get about 600 requests per second -- I think this means my tracker is well optimized, because it's only a factor of 2 slower than serving static assets. However, when I benchmark with millions of hits, I notice a few things -- No disk usage -- this is expected, because I've turned off all Nginx logs, and my custom code doesn't do anything but save the request details into Redis. Non-constant memory usage -- Presumably due to Redis' memory managing, my memory usage will gradually climb up and then drop back down, but it's never once been my bottleneck. System load hovers around 2-4, the system is still responsive during even my heaviest benchmarks, and I can still manually view http://mysite.com/tracking/pixel with little visible delay while my (other) server performs 600 requests per second. If I run a short test, say 50,000 hits (takes about 2m), I get a steady, reliable 600 requests per second. If I run a longer test (tried up to 3.5m so far), my r/s degrades to about 250. My questions -- a. Does it look like I'm maxing out this server yet? Is 1,200/s static files nginx performance comparable to what others have experienced? b. Are there common nginx tunings for such high-volume applications? I have worker threads set to 64, and gunicorn worker threads set to 8, but tweaking these values doesn't seem to help or harm me much. c. Are there any linux-level settings that could be limiting my incoming connections? d. What could cause my performance to degrade to 250r/s on long-running tests? Again, the memory is not maxing out during these tests, and HDD use is nil. Thanks in advance, all :)

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• MySQL Database Query - Codeigniter

  - by user2450349

  I am building an application with Codeigniter and need some help with a DB query. I have a table called users with the following fields: user_id, user_name, user_password, user_email, user_role, user_manager_id In my app, I pull all records from the user table using the following: function get_clients() { $this->db->select('*'); $this->db->where('user_role', 'client'); $this->db->order_by("user_name", "Asc"); $query = $this->db->get("users"); return $query->result_array(); } This works as expected, however when I display the results in the view, I also want to display a new column called Manager which will display the managers user_name field. The user_manager_id is the id of the user from the same table. Im guessing you can create an outer join on the same table but not sure. In the view, I am displaying the returned info as follows: <table class="table table-striped" id="zero-configuration"> <thead> <tr> <th>Name</th> <th>Email</th> <th>Manager</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <?php foreach($clients as $row) { ?> <tr> <td><?php echo $row['user_name']; ?> (<?php echo $row['user_username']; ?>)</td> <td><?php echo $row['user_email']; ?></td> <td><?php echo $row['???']; ?></td> </tr> <?php } ?> </tbody> </table> Any idea of how I can form the query and display the manager name is the view? Example: user_id user_name user_password user_email user_role user_manager_id 1 Ollie adjjk34jcd [email protected] client null 2 James djklsdfsdjk [email protected] client 1 When i query the database, i want to display results like this: Ollie [email protected] James [email protected] Ollie

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• I have a very long and repetitive python path, where do I look to correct this?

  - by ninja123

  I know it is probably not necessary to paste the whole path, but just for the record I have done so below. Whenever I run a python command, it takes a long time to load this path I suppose. I have checked in .bash_profile and only have these two lines: export PATH=/Users/username/bin:/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH export PYTHONPATH=/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ And my python path as outputed by Django's debug is: Python path : ['/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/ipython-0.10-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/South-0.6.1-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/django_markitup-0.5.2-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/DateTime-2.12.0-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/Markdown-2.0.3-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/PIL-1.1.7-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/djangorecipe-0.20-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/zc.recipe.egg-1.2.3b2-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/zc.buildout-1.5.0b2-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/pytz-2010h-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/zope.interface-3.6.1-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/eggs/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/parts/django', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster', '/Users/username/Sites/videocluster/bin', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools_git-0.3.3-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pysqlite-2.5.5-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/CouchDB-0.5-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/httplib2-0.4.0-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/PyYAML-3.08-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/simple_db_migrate-1.2.8-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/PyDispatcher-2.0.1-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pyOpenSSL-0.9-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/greenlet-0.2-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Supay-0.0.2-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/configobj-4.6.0-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Fabric-0.9b1-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/fudge-0.9.3-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/pydelicious-0.5.3-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/feedparser-4.1-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/github_cli-0.2.5.2-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/simplejson-2.0.9-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', ......(repeating)....... 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'/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/zc.buildout-1.4.1-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/zc.buildout-1.4.1-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python25.zip', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-darwin', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-tk', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Numeric', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/PIL', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/PIL', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', ......(repeating)....... '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0', '/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-2.0'] Someone, please tell me where I can go to correct this. Thanks

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• Conversation as User Assistance

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Agile Awakenings and the Rules of Agile

  - by Robert May

  For those that care, you can read my history of management and technology to understand why I think I’m qualified to talk about this at all.  It’s boring, so feel free to skip it. Awakenings I first started to play around with the idea of “agile” in 2004 or 2005.  I found a book on the Rational Unified Process that I thought was good, and attempted to implement parts of it.  I thought I was agile, but really, it wasn’t.   I still didn’t understand the concept of a team.  I still wanted to tell the team what to do and how to get it done.  I still thought I was smarter than the team. After that job, I started work on another project and began helping that team.  The first few months were really rough.  We were implementing Scrum, which was relatively new to everyone on the team, and, quite frankly, I was doing a poor job of it.  I was trying to micro-manage every aspect of the teams work, and we were all miserable. The moment of change came when the senior architect bailed on the project.  His comment to me was: “This isn’t Agile.  Where are the stand-ups?  Where are the stories?”  He was dead on, and I finally woke up.  I finally realized that I was the problem!  I wasn’t trusting the team.  I wasn’t helping the team.  I was being a manager. Like many (most?), I was claiming to be Agile and use Scrum, but I wasn’t in fact following the rules Scrum.  Since then, I’ve done a lot of studying, hands on practice, coaching of many different teams, and other learning around Scrum, and I have discovered that Scrum has some rules that must be followed for success, even though the process is about continuous improvement. I’ve been practicing Scrum right for about 4 years now and have helped multiple teams implement it successfully, so what you’re about to get is based on experience, rather than just theory. The Rules of Scrum In my experience, what I’ve found is that most companies that claim to be doing Scrum or Agile are actually NOT doing either.  This stems largely because they think that they can “adopt the rules of Agile that fit their organization.”  Sadly, many of them think that this means they can adopt iterations (sprints) and not much else.  Either that, or they think they can do whatever they want, or were doing before, and call it Scrum.  This is simply not true. Here are some rules that must be followed for you to really be doing Scrum.  I’ll go into detail on each one of these posts in future blog posts and update links here.  My intent is that this will help other teams implementing scrum to see more success. Agile does not allow you to do whatever you want A Product Owner is required A ScrumMaster is required The team must function as a Team, and QA must be part of the team Support from upper management is required A prioritized product backlog is required A prioritized sprint backlog is required Release planning is required Complete spring planning is required Showcases are required Velocity must be measured Retrospectives are required Daily stand-ups are required Visibility is absolutely required For now, I think that’s enough, although I reserve the right to add more.  If you’re breaking any of these rules, you’re probably not doing Scrum.  There are exceptions to these rules, but until you have practiced Scrum for a while, you don’t know what those exceptions are. Breaking the Rules Many teams break these rules because they are the ones that expose the most pain.  Scrum is not Advil.  It’s not intended to mask the pain, its intended to cure it.  Let me explain that analogy a bit more.  Recently, my 7 year old son broke his arm, quite severely (see the X-Ray to the right).  That caused him a great deal of pain.  We went first to one doctor, and after viewing the X-Ray, they determined that there was no way that they’d cast the arm at their location.  It was simply too bad of a break for them to deal with.  They did, however, give him some Advil for the pain and put a splint on his arm to stabilize the broken bones.  Within minutes, he was feeling much better.  Had we been stupid, we could have gone home and he’d have been just as happy as ever . . . until the pain medication wore off or one of his siblings touched the splint.  Then, all of that pain would come right back to the top.  Sure, he could make it go away by just taking more Advil and moving the splint out of the way, but that wasn’t going to fix the problem permanently. We ended up in an emergency room with a doctor who could fix his arm.  However, we were warned that the fix was going to be VERY painful, and it was.  Even with heavy sedation (Propofol), my son was in enough pain that he squirmed and wiggled trying to get his arm away from the doctor.  He had to endure this pain in order to have a functional arm. But the setting wasn’t the end.  He had to have several casts, had to have it re-broken once, since the first setting didn’t take and finally was given a clean bill of health. Agile implementation is much like this story.  Agile was developed as a result of people recognizing that the development methodologies that were currently in place simply were ineffective.  However, the fix to the broken development that’s been festering for many years is not painless.  Many people start Agile thinking that things will be wonderful.  They won’t!  Agile is about visibility, and often, it brings great pain to surface.  It causes all of the missed deadlines, the cowboy coders, the coasters, the micro-managers, the lazy, and all of the other problems that are really part of your development process now to become painfully visible to EVERYONE.  Many people don’t like this exposure.  Agile will make the pain better, but not if you remove the cast (the rules above) prematurely and start breaking the rules that expose the most pain.  The healing will take time and is not instant (like Advil).  Figuring out what the true source of pain and fixing it is very valuable to you, your team, and your company.  Remember as you’re doing this that Agile isn’t the source of the pain, it’s really just exposing it.  Find the source. My recommendation is that ALL of these rules are followed for a minimum of six months, and preferably for an entire year, before you decide to break any of these rules.  Get a few good releases under your belt.  Figure out what your velocity is and start firing as a team.  Chances are, after you see agile really in action, you won’t want to break the rules because you’ll see their value. More Reading Jean Tabaka recently published a list of 78 Things I Have Learned in 6 Years of Agile Coaching.  Highly recommended. Technorati Tags: Agile,Scrum,Rules

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• Win a place at a SQL Server Masterclass with Kimberly Tripp and Paul Randal

  - by Testas

  The top things YOU need to know about managing SQL Server - in one place, on one day - presented by two of the best SQL Server industry trainers!And you could be there courtesy of UK SQL Server User Group and SQL Server Magazine! This week the UK SQL Server User Group will provide you with details of how to win a place at this must see seminar   You can also register for the seminar yourself at:www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql More information about the seminar   Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, London When: Thursday 17th June 2010 This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance. The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will:·         Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour   ·         Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data   ·         Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database ·         Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Please Note: Agenda may be subject to changeSessions AbstractsKEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production  Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don't realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there's no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.  SESSION ONE: SQL Server MythbustersIt's amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption? Can you override the server's MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained. SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered - demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted! SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and "tuner" has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen - it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it's even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I'm not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys! SESSION 4: Essential Database MaintenanceIn this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we'll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well.    Speaker Biographies     Paul S.Randal  Kimberley L. Tripp Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog (SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.  

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• Community Conversation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Webb, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison (left) with Anne Gentle at the User Assistance Europe Conference In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: * Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help * The Microsoft Development Network Community Center * ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. * Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches * The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes are reaching out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• So, how is the Oracle HCM Cloud User Experience? In a word, smokin’!

  - by Edith Mireles-Oracle

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle unveiled its game-changing cloud user experience strategy at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 (remember that?) with a new simplified user interface (UI) paradigm.  The Oracle HCM cloud user experience is about light-weight interaction, tailored to the task you are trying to accomplish, on the device you are comfortable working with. A key theme for the Oracle user experience is being able to move from smartphone to tablet to desktop, with all of your data in the cloud. The Oracle HCM Cloud user experience provides designs for better productivity, no matter when and how your employees need to work. Release 8  Oracle recently demonstrated how fast it is moving development forward for our cloud applications, with the availability of release 8.  In release 8, users will see expanded simplicity in the HCM cloud user experience, such as filling out a time card and succession planning. Oracle has also expanded its mobile capabilities with task flows for payslips, managing absences, and advanced analytics. In addition, users will see expanded extensibility with the new structures editor for simplified pages, and the with the user interface text editor, which allows you to update language throughout the UI from one place. If you don’t like calling people who work for you “employees,” you can use this tool to create a term that is suited to your business.  Take a look yourself at what’s available now. What are people saying?Debra Lilley (@debralilley), an Oracle ACE Director who has a long history with Oracle Applications, recently gave her perspective on release 8: “Having had the privilege of seeing a preview of release 8, I am again impressed with the enhancements around simplified UI. Even more so, at a user group event in London this week, an existing Cloud HCM customer speaking publically about his implementation said he was very excited about release 8 as the absence functionality was so superior and simple to use.”  In an interview with Lilley for a blog post by Dennis Howlett  (@dahowlett), we probably couldn’t have asked for a more even-handed look at the Oracle Applications Cloud and the impact of user experience. Take the time to watch all three videos and get the full picture.  In closing, Howlett’s said: “There is always the caveat that getting from the past to Fusion [from the editor: Fusion is now called the Oracle Applications Cloud] is not quite as simple as may be painted, but the outcomes are much better than anticipated in large measure because the user experience is so much better than what went before.” Herman Slange, Technical Manager with Oracle Applications partner Profource, agrees with that comment. “We use on-premise Financials & HCM for internal use. Having a simple user interface that works on a desktop as well as a tablet for (very) non-technical users is a big relief. Coming from E-Business Suite, there is less training (none) required to access HCM content.  From a technical point of view, having the abilities to tailor the simplified UI very easy makes it very efficient for us to adjust to specific customer needs.  When we have a conversation about simplified UI, we just hand over a tablet and ask the customer to just use it. No training and no explanation required.” Finally, in a story by Computer Weekly  about Oracle customer BG Group, a natural gas exploration and production company based in the UK and with a presence in 20 countries, the author states: “The new HR platform has proved to be easier and more intuitive for HR staff to use than the previous SAP-based technology.” What’s Next for Oracle’s Applications Cloud User Experiences? This is the question that Steve Miranda, Oracle Executive Vice President, Applications Development, asks the Applications User Experience team, and we’ve been hard at work for some time now on “what’s next.”  I can’t say too much about it, but I can tell you that we’ve started talking to customers and partners, under non-disclosure agreements, about user experience concepts that we are working on in order to get their feedback. We recently had a chance to talk about possibilities for the Oracle HCM Cloud user experience at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit. This was a fantastic event, hosted by Shane Bliss and Vance Morossi of the Oracle Client Success Team. We got to use the uber-slick facilities of Allergan, our hosts (of Botox fame), headquartered in Irvine, Calif., with a presence in more than 100 countries. Photo by Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User Experience Vance Morossi, left, and Shane Bliss, of the Oracle Client Success Team, at an Oracle HCM Southern California Customer Success Summit.  We were treated to a few really excellent talks around human resources (HR). Alice White, VP Human Resources, discussed Allergan's process for global talent acquisition -- how Allergan has designed and deployed a global process, and global tools, along with Oracle and Cognizant, and are now at the end of a global implementation. She shared a couple of insights about the journey for Allergan: “One of the major areas for improvement was on role clarification within the company.” She said the company is “empowering managers and deputizing them as recruiters. Now it is a global process that is nimble and efficient."  Deepak Rammohan, VP Product Management, HCM Cloud, Oracle, also took the stage to talk about pioneering modern HR. He reflected modern HR problems of getting the right data about the workforce, the importance of getting the right talent as a key strategic initiative, and other workforce insights. "How do we design systems to deal with all of this?” he asked. “Make sure the systems are talent-centric. The next piece is collaborative, engaging, and mobile. A lot of this is influenced by what users see today. The last thing is around insight; insight at the point of decision-making." Rammohan showed off some killer HCM Cloud talent demos focused on simplicity and mobility that his team has been cooking up, and closed with a great line about the nature of modern recruiting: "Recruiting is a team sport." Deepak Rammohan, left, and Jake Kuramoto, both of Oracle, debate the merits of a Google Glass concept demo for recruiters on-the-go. Later, in an expo-style format, the Apps UX team showed several concepts for next-generation HCM Cloud user experiences, including demos shown by Jake Kuramoto (@jkuramoto) of The AppsLab, and Aylin Uysal (@aylinuysal), Director, HCM Cloud user experience. We even hauled out our eye-tracker, a research tool used to show where the eye is looking at a particular screen, thanks to teammate Michael LaDuke. Dionne Healy, HCM Client Executive, and Aylin Uysal, Director, HCM Cloud user experiences, Oracle, take a look at new HCM Cloud UX concepts. We closed the day with Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), VP, Applications User Experience, who brought it all back together by talking about the big picture for applications cloud user experiences. He covered the trends we are paying attention to now, what users will be expecting of their modern enterprise apps, and what Oracle’s design strategy is around these ideas.   We closed with an excellent reception hosted by ADP Payroll services at Bistango. Want to read more?Want to see where our cloud user experience is going next? Read more on the UsableApps web site about our latest design initiative: “Glance, Scan, Commit.” Or catch up on the back story by looking over our Applications Cloud user experience content on the UsableApps web site.  You can also find out where we’ll be next at the Events page on UsableApps.

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• User Experience Highlights in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools: Direct from Jeff Robbins

  - by mvaughan

  By Kathy Miedema, Oracle Applications User Experience  This is the fifth in a series of blog posts on the user experience (UX) highlights in various Oracle product families. The last posted interview was with Nadia Bendjedou, Senior Director, Product Strategy on upcoming Oracle E-Business Suite user experience highlights. You’ll see themes around productivity and efficiency, and get an early look at the latest mobile offerings coming through these product lines. Today’s post is on the user experience in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. To learn more about what’s ahead, attend PeopleSoft or PeopleTools OpenWorld presentations.This interview is with Jeff Robbins, Senior Director, PeopleSoft Development. Jeff Robbins Q: How would you describe the vision you have for the user experience of PeopleSoft?A: Intuitive – Specifically, customers use PeopleSoft to help their employees do their day-to-day work, and the UI (user interface) has been helpful and assistive in that effort. If it’s not obvious what they need to do a task, then the UI isn’t working. So the application needs to make it simple for users to find information they need, complete a task, do all the things they are responsible for, and it really helps when the UI just makes sense. Productive – PeopleSoft is a tool used to support people to do their work, and a lot of users are measured by how much work they’re able to get done per hour, per day, etc. The UI needs to help them be as productive as possible, and can’t make them waste time or energy. The UI needs to reflect the type of work necessary for a task -- if it's data entry, the UI needs to assist the user to get information into the system. For analysts, the UI needs help users assess or analyze information in a particular way. Innovative – The concept of the UI being innovative is something we’ve been working on for years. It’s not just that we want to be seen as innovative, the fact is that companies are asking their employees to do more than they’ve ever asked before. More often companies want to roll out processes as employee or manager self-service, where an employee is responsible to review and maintain their own data. So we’ve had to reinvent, and ask,  “How can we modify the ways an employee interacts with our applications so that they can be more productive and efficient – even with tasks that are entirely unfamiliar?”  Our focus on innovation has forced us to design new ways for users to interact with the entire application.Q: How are the UX features you have delivered so far resonating with customers?  A: Resonating very well. We’re hearing tremendous responses from users, managers, decision-makers -- who are very happy with the improved user experience. Many of the individual features resonate well. Some have really hit home, others are better than they used to be but show us that there’s still room for improvement.A couple innovations really stand out; features that have a significant effect on how users interact with PeopleSoft.First, the deployment of PeopleSoft in a way that’s more like a consumer website with the PeopleSoft Home page and Dashboards.  This new approach is very web-centric, where users feel they’re coming to a website rather than logging into an enterprise application.  There’s lots of information from all around the organization collected in a way that feels very familiar to users. In order to do your job, you can come to this web site rather than having to learn how to log into an application and figure out a complicated menu. Companies can host these really rich web sites for employees that are home pages for accessing critical tasks and information. The UI elements of incorporating search into the whole navigation process is another hit. Rather than having to log in and choose a task from a menu, users come to the web site and begin a task by simply searching for data: themselves, another employee, a customer record, whatever.  The search results include the data along with a set of actions the user might take, completely eliminating the need to hunt through a complicated system menu. Search-centric navigation is really sitting well with customers who are trying to deploy an intuitive set of systems. Q: Are any UX highlights more popular than you expected them to be?  A: We introduced a feature called Pivot Grid in the last release, which is a combination of an interactive grid, like an Excel Pivot Table, along with a dynamic visual chart that automatically graphs the data. I wasn’t certain at first how extensively this would be used. It looked like an innovative tool, but it wasn’t clear how it would be incorporated in business process applications. The fact is that everyone who sees Pivot Grids is thrilled with that kind of interactivity.  It reflects the amount of analytical thinking customers are asking employees to do. Employees can’t just enter data any more. They must interact with it, analyze it, and make decisions. Pivot Grids fit into this way of working. Q: What can you tell us about PeopleSoft’s mobile offerings?A: A lot of customers are finding that mobile is the chief priority in their organization.  They tell us they want their employees to be able to access company information from their mobile devices.  Of course, not everyone has the same requirements, so we’re working to make sure we can help our customers accomplish what they’re trying to do.  We’ve already delivered a number of mobile features.  For instance, PeopleSoft home pages, dashboards and workcenters all work well on an iPad, straight out of the box.  We’ve delivered a number of key functions and tasks for mobile workers – those who are responsible for using a mobile device to manage inventory, for example.  Customers tell us they also need a holistic strategy, one that allows their employees to access nearly every task from a mobile device.  While we don’t expect users to do extensive data entry from their smartphone, it makes sense that they have access to company information and systems while away from their desk.  That’s where our strategy is going now.  We plan to unveil a number of new mobile offerings at OpenWorld.  Some will be available then, some shortly after. Q: What else are you working on now that you think is going to be exciting to customers at Oracle OpenWorld?A: Our next release -- the big thing is PeopleSoft 9.2, and we’ll be talking about the huge amount of work that’s gone into the next versions. A new toolset, 8.53, will be coming, and there’s a lot to talk about there, and the next generation of PeopleSoft 9.2.  We have a ton of new stuff coming.Q: What do you want PeopleSoft customers to know? A: We have been focusing on the user experience in PeopleSoft as a very high priority for the last 4 years, and it’s had interesting effects. One thing is that the application is better, more usable.  We’ve made visible improvements. Another aspect is that in customers’ minds, the PeopleSoft brand is being reinvigorated. Customers invested in PeopleSoft years ago, and then they weren’t sure where PeopleSoft was going.  This investment in the UI and overall user experience keeps PeopleSoft current, innovative and fresh.  Customers  are able to take advantage of a lot of new features, even on the older applications, simply by upgrading their PeopleTools. The interest in that ability has been tremendous. Knowing they have a lot of these features available -- right now, that’s pretty huge. There’s been a tremendous amount of positive response, just on the fact that we’re focusing on the user experience. Editor’s note: For more on PeopleSoft and PeopleTools user experience highlights, visit the Usable Apps web site.To find out more about these enhancements at Openworld, be sure to check out these sessions: GEN8928     General Session: PeopleSoft Update and Product RoadmapCON9183     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Technology Roadmap CON8932     New Functional PeopleSoft PeopleTools Capabilities for the Line-of-Business UserCON9196     PeopleSoft PeopleTools Roadmap: Mobile ApplicationsCON9186     Case Study: Delivering a Groundbreaking User Interface with PeopleSoft PeopleTools

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• SQL Server Master class winner

  - by Testas

   The winner of the SQL Server MasterClass competition courtesy of the UK SQL Server User Group and SQL Server Magazine!    Steve Hindmarsh     There is still time to register for the seminar yourself at:  www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql     More information about the seminar     Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, London  When: Thursday 17th June 2010  This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance. The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will: Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour    Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data    Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Please Note: Agenda may be subject to change  Sessions Abstracts  KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production    Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don't realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there's no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.   SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters  It's amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption? Can you override the server's MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.   SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest  Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered - demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!   SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward   Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and "tuner" has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen - it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it's even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I'm not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!   SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance  In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we'll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well. Speaker Biographies     Kimberley L. Tripp Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog (SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.   Speaker Testimonials  "To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process." "These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely, utterly professional." "When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to." "You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... They simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient." "The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot more information and things to watch out for than you'd ever get from documentation alone." “Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW....amazing tips delivered in an exciting way!  Thanks again” 

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• LightDM will not start after stopping it

  - by Sweeters

  I am running Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot", and in trying to install the nvidia CUDA developer drivers I switched to a virtual terminal (Ctrl-Alt-F5) and stopped lightdm (installation required that no X server instance be running) through sudo service lightdm stop. Re-starting lightdm with sudo service lightdm start did not work: A couple of * Starting [...] lines where displayed, but the process hanged. (I do not remember at which point, but I think it was * Starting System V runlevel compatibility. I manually rebooted my laptop, and ever since booting seems to hang, usually around the * Starting anac(h)ronistic cron [OK] log line (not consistently at that point, though). From that point on, I seem to be able to interact with my system only through a tty session (Ctrl-Alt-F1). I've tried purging and reinstalling both lightdm and gdm, as well as selecting both as the default display managers (through sudo dpkg-reconfigure [lightdm / gdm] or by manually editing /etc/X11/default-display-manager) through both apt-get and aptitude (that shouldn't make a difference anyway) after updating the packages, but the problem persists. Some of the responses I'm getting are the following: After running sudo dpkg-reconfigure lightdm (but not ... gdm) I get the following message: dpkg-maintscript-helper:warning: environment variable DPKG_MATINSCRIPT_NAME missing dpkg-maintscript-helper:warning: environment variable DPKG_MATINSCRIPT_PACKAGE missing After trying sudo service lightdm start or sudo start lightdm I get to see the boot loading screen again but nothing changes. If I go back to the tty shell I see lightdm start/running, process <num> but ps -e | grep lightdm gives no output. After trying sudo service gdm start or sudo starg gdm I get the gdm start/running, process <num> message, and gdm-binary is supposedly an active process, but all that happens is that the screen blinks a couple of times and nothing else. Other candidate solutions that I'd found on the web included running startx but when I try that I get an error output [...] Fatal server error: no screens found [...]. Moreover, I made sure that lightdm-gtk-greeter is installed but that did not help either. Please excuse my not including complete outputs/logs; I am writing this post from another computer and it's hard to manually copy the complete logs. Also, I've seen several posts that had to do with similar problems, but either there was no fix, or the one suggested did not work for me. In closing: Please help! I very much hope to avoid re-installing Ubuntu from scratch! :) Alex @mosi I did not manage to fix the NVIDIA kernel driver as per your instructions. I should perhaps mention that I'm on a Dell XPS15 laptop with an NVIDIA Optimus graphics card, and that I have bumblebee installed (which installs nvidia drivers during its installation, I believe). Issuing the mentioned commands I get the following: ~$uname -r 3.0.0-12-generic ~$lsmod | grep -i nvidia nvidia 11713772 0 ~$dmesg | grep -i nvidia [ 8.980041] nvidia: module license 'NVIDIA' taints kernel. [ 9.354860] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0 [ 9.354864] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0 [ 9.354868] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: enabling device (0006 -> 0007) [ 9.354873] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 [ 9.354879] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 [ 9.355052] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 280.13 Wed Jul 27 16:53:56 PDT 2011 Also, running aptitude search nvidia gives me the following: p nvidia-173 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-173-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-173-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-173-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-96 - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-96-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-96-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-96-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file p nvidia-cg-toolkit - Cg Toolkit - GPU Shader Authoring Language p nvidia-common - Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers i nvidia-current - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-current-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file c nvidia-current-updates - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module a p nvidia-current-updates-dev - NVIDIA binary Xorg driver development file i nvidia-settings - Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics dr p nvidia-settings-updates - Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics dr v nvidia-va-driver - v nvidia-va-driver - I've tried manually installing (sudo aptitude install <package>) packages nvidia-common and nvidia-settings-updates but to no avail. For example, sudo aptitude install nvidia-settings-updates returns the following log: Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Reading extended state information... Initializing package states... Writing extended state information... No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 83 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used. Writing extended state information... Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... Reading extended state information... Initializing package states... Writing extended state information... The same happens with the Linux headers (i.e. I cannot seem to be able to install linux-headers-3.0.0-12-generic). The output of aptitude search linux-headers is as follows: v linux-headers - v linux-headers - v linux-headers-2.6 - i linux-headers-2.6.38-11 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i linux-headers-2.6.38-11-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 2.6.38 on i A linux-headers-2.6.38-8 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi i A linux-headers-2.6.38-8-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 2.6.38 on v linux-headers-3 - v linux-headers-3.0 - v linux-headers-3.0 - i A linux-headers-3.0.0-12 - Header files related to Linux kernel versi p linux-headers-3.0.0-12-generic - Linux kernel headers for version 3.0.0 on p linux-headers-3.0.0-12-generic- - Linux kernel headers for version 3.0.0 on p linux-headers-3.0.0-12-server - Linux kernel headers for version 3.0.0 on p linux-headers-3.0.0-12-virtual - Linux kernel headers for version 3.0.0 on p linux-headers-generic - Generic Linux kernel headers p linux-headers-generic-pae - Generic Linux kernel headers v linux-headers-lbm - v linux-headers-lbm - v linux-headers-lbm-2.6 - v linux-headers-lbm-2.6 - p linux-headers-lbm-3.0.0-12-gene - Header files related to linux-backports-mo p linux-headers-lbm-3.0.0-12-gene - Header files related to linux-backports-mo p linux-headers-lbm-3.0.0-12-serv - Header files related to linux-backports-mo p linux-headers-server - Linux kernel headers on Server Equipment. p linux-headers-virtual - Linux kernel headers for virtual machines @heartsmagic I did try purging and reinstalling any nvidia driver packages, but it did not seem to make a difference, My xorg.conf file contains the following: # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 280.13 ([email protected]) Wed Jul 27 17:15:58 PDT 2011 Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Unknown" HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0 VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection

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