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  • Hide email adress with JavaScript

    - by Martin Aleksander
    I read somewhere that hiding email address behind JavaScript code, could reduce spam bots harvesting the email address. <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> var a = "Red"; var t = "no"; var doc = document; var b = "ITpro"; var ad = a; ad += "@"; ad += b; ad += "."; ad += t; var mt = "ma"; mt += "il"; mt += "to"; var text = ""; if (text == null || text.length == 0) text = ad; doc.write("<"+"a hr"+"ef=\""+mt+":"+ad+"\">"+text+"</"+"a>"); </script> This will not display the actual email-address in the sourcecode of the page, but it will display and work like a normal link for human users. Is it any point of doing this? Will it reduce spam bots, or is it just nonsense that might slow down performance of the page because of the JavaScript?

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  • Access Control and Accessibility in Oracle IRM 11g

    - by martin.abrahams
    A recurring theme you'll find throughout this blog is that IRM needs to balance security with usability and manageability. One of the innovations in Oracle IRM 11g typifies this, as we have introduced a new right that may be included in any role - Accessibility. When creating or modifying a role, you simply select Accessibility along with Open, Print, Edit or whatever rights you want to include in the role. You might, for example, have parallel roles of Reader and Reader with Accessibility and Contributor and Contributor with Accessibility. The effect of the Accessibility right is to relax some of the protection of content in use such that selected users can use accessibility tools. For example, a user with the Accessibility right would be able to use the screen magnification tool, which IRM would ordinarily prevent because it involves screen capture. This new right makes it easy for you to apply security to documents yet, subject to suitable approval processes, cater for the fact that a subset of users might be disproportionately inconvenienced by some of the normal usage constraints. Rather than make those users put up with the restrictions, or perhaps exempt them from using sealed documents altogether, this new right allows you to accommodate them in a controlled manner, and to balance security with corporate accessibility goals.

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  • Highly SEO optimised forum posts

    - by Tom Gullen
    Given the following forum post: Basics of how internals of Construct work I've used GameMaker in the past. And I know some C++ and have used a few 3d engines with it. I have also looked at Unity, though I didn't get too much into it. So I know my way around programming etc... My question is, how does construct work internally? I know it allows python scripting, which itself is "technically" interpreted, though python is pretty fast as far as being interpreted goes. But what about the rest? Is the executable that gets cre... The forum software will take the first 150 chars of the first post as the page meta description, and the title will be the thread title. All ok. So in Google it will appear as: Basics of how internals of Construct work I've used GameMaker in the past. And I know some C++ and have used a few 3d engines with it. I have also looked at Unity, though I didn't get too much... http://www.domain.com/forum/basics-of-how-internals-of-construct-work.html Now the problem is (not so much with this thread, but other ones) is the first 150 chars don't always create the best meta description. Is it worth my time to cherry pick threads and manually set their description/title tags so they read like: Internal workings of Construct 2 Events aren't converted to any other language. The runtime is a standalone compiled EXE application, which is optimised and actually very fast. Your events... http://www.domain.com/forum/basics-of-how-internals-of-construct-work.html The H1 on the page is still the original title, but we have overridden the title and description to look more friendly on search results. Is this advantageous forgetting the obvious time cost?

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  • What do I do if a user uploads child pornography?

    - by Tom Marthenal
    If my website allows uploading images (which are not moderated), what action do I take if a user uploads child pornography? I already make it easy to report images, and have never had this problem before, but am wondering what the appropriate response is. My initial thought is to: Immediately delete (not just make inaccessible) the image File a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children with all information I have on the user (IP, URL, user-agent, etc.), identifying myself as the website operator and providing contact information Check any other images uploaded by that IP user and prevent them from uploading in the future (this is impossible, but I can at least block their account). This seems like a good way to be responsible in reporting, but does this satisfy all of my legal and moral responsibilities? Would it be better not to delete the image and to just make it inaccessible, so that it can be sent to the National Center for Missing & Exploted Children, the police, FBI, etc?

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  • Obtaining a HBITMAP/HICON from D2D Bitmap

    - by Tom
    Is there any way to obtain a HBITMAP or HICON from a ID2D1Bitmap* using Direct2D? I am using the following function to load a bitmap: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd756686%28v=vs.85%29.aspx The reason I ask is because I am creating my level editor tool and would like to draw a PNG image on a standard button control. I know that you can do this using GDI+: HBITMAP hBitmap; Gdiplus::Bitmap b(L"a.png"); b.GetHBITMAP(NULL, &hBitmap); SendMessage(GetDlgItem(hDlg, IDC_BUTTON1), BM_SETIMAGE, IMAGE_BITMAP, (LPARAM)hBitmap); Is there any equivalent, simple solution using Direct2D? If possible, I would like to render multiple PNG files (some with transparency) on a single button.

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  • Web developer has become uncooperative, what should we do to rescue our site? [closed]

    - by TOM
    What can an individual or a company do if the web designer who has designed their website becomes completely uncooperative? In our case He refuses to meet with us for discussions. He refuses to give us training on the effective use and management of the website he has designed for us (and has been paid in full for) despite this training being part of the original contract. Last year he disappeared for a number of months ,refused to answer emails or phobe calls and was totally unavailable to help us He refuses to give us the details of the hosting of our website. We have totally lost faith in this arrogant and unreasonable guy and would like to break off all relationships with him but ,it appears, he's got us over a barell

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  • Is shipping a Clojure desktop app realistic?

    - by Cedric Martin
    I'm currently shipping a desktop Java application. It is a plain old Java 5 Java / Swing app and so far everything worked nicely. Java 5 was targetted because some users were on OS X version / computers that shall never have Java 6 (we may lift this limitation soon and switch to a newer Java and simply abandoning my users stuck with Java 5). I'm quickly getting up to speed with Clojure but I haven't really done lots of Clojure-to-Java and Java-to-Clojure yet and I was wondering if it was realistic to ship a Clojure desktop application instead of a Java application? The application I'm shipping is currently about 12 MB with all the .jar so adding Clojure doesn't seen to be too much of an issue. My plan would be to have Clojure call Java APIs: my application is already divided in several independent jars. If I understand correctly calling Clojure from Java is harder than calling Java code from Clojure which is why I'd basically rewrite all the UI (part of the UI, mixing Swing components and self-made BufferedImages needs to be rewritten anyway due to the rise of retina display), and do all the 'wiring' from Clojure. So that's the problem I'm facing: is it realistic to ship a Clojure desktop app? (it certainly doesn't seem to be very widespread but then shipping plain Java desktop apps ain't that common either and I'm doing it anyway) Technically, what would need to be done? (compared to shipping a Java app)

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  • Allocating Entities within an Entity System

    - by miguel.martin
    I'm quite unsure how I should allocate/resemble my entities within my entity system. I have various options, but most of them seem to have cons associated with them. In all cases entities are resembled by an ID (integer), and possibly has a wrapper class associated with it. This wrapper class has methods to add/remove components to/from the entity. Before I mention the options, here is the basic structure of my entity system: Entity An object that describes an object within the game Component Used to store data for the entity System Contains entities with specific components Used to update entities with specific components World Contains entities and systems for the entity system Can create/destroy entites and have systems added/removed from/to it Here are my options, that I have thought of: Option 1: Do not store the Entity wrapper classes, and just store the next ID/deleted IDs. In other words, entities will be returned by value, like so: Entity entity = world.createEntity(); This is much like entityx, except I see some flaws in this design. Cons There can be duplicate entity wrapper classes (as the copy-ctor has to be implemented, and systems need to contain entities) If an Entity is destroyed, the duplicate entity wrapper classes will not have an updated value Option 2: Store the entity wrapper classes within an object pool. i.e. Entities will be return by pointer/reference, like so: Entity& e = world.createEntity(); Cons If there is duplicate entities, then when an entity is destroyed, the same entity object may be re-used to allocate another entity. Option 3: Use raw IDs, and forget about the wrapper entity classes. The downfall to this, I think, is the syntax that will be required for it. I'm thinking about doing thisas it seems the most simple & easy to implement it. I'm quite unsure about it, because of the syntax. i.e. To add a component with this design, it would look like: Entity e = world.createEntity(); world.addComponent<Position>(e, 0, 3); As apposed to this: Entity e = world.createEntity(); e.addComponent<Position>(0, 3); Cons Syntax Duplicate IDs

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  • Unable to install Apache 2.2.22 in Ubuntu 12.04

    - by Martin Betz
    I am not able to install Apache 2.2 in Ubuntu 12.04. Here is a snippet from my console log (sorry, it is in German): apache2 : Hängt ab von: apache2-mpm-worker (= 2.2.22-1ubuntu1) soll aber nicht installiert werden oder apache2-mpm-prefork (= 2.2.22-1ubuntu1) aber 2.2.22-1ubuntu1.1 soll installiert werden ... That means like: apache2 depends from apa..worker, but that should not get installed OR from ap...prefork..ubuntu1, but ap...prefork..ubuntu1.1 should get installed. I have no idea how to tackle that issue..

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  • Parallelism implies concurrency but not the other way round right?

    - by Cedric Martin
    I often read that parallelism and concurrency are different things. Very often the answerers/commenters go as far as writing that they're two entirely different things. Yet in my view they're related but I'd like some clarification on that. For example if I'm on a multi-core CPU and manage to divide the computation into x smaller computation (say using fork/join) each running in its own thread, I'll have a program that is both doing parallel computation (because supposedly at any point in time several threads are going to run on several cores) and being concurrent right? While if I'm simply using, say, Java and dealing with UI events and repaints on the Event Dispatch Thread plus running the only thread I created myself, I'll have a program that is concurrent (EDT + GC thread + my main thread etc.) but not parallel. I'd like to know if I'm getting this right and if parallelism (on a "single but multi-cores" system) always implies concurrency or not? Also, are multi-threaded programs running on multi-cores CPU but where the different threads are doing totally different computation considered to be using "parallelism"?

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  • PHP may be executing as a "privileged" group and user, which could be a serious security vulnerability

    - by Martin
    I ran some security tests on a Ubuntu 12.04 Server, and I've got these warnings : PHP may be executing as a "privileged" group, which could be a serious security vulnerability. PHP may be executing as a "privileged" user, which could be a serious security vulnerability. In /etc/apache2/envvars, I have this: export APACHE_RUN_USER=www-data export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=www-data And all files in /var/www are having these user/group: www-data:www-data Am I setting this correctly? What should I do to fix this problem?

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  • What naughty ways are there of driving traffic?

    - by Tom Wright
    OK, so this is purely for my intellectual curiosity and I'm not interested in illegal methods (no botnets please). But say, for instance, that some organisation incentivised link sharing in a bid to drive publicity. How could I drive traffic to my link? Obviously I could spam all my friends on social networking sites, which is what they want me to do, but that doesn't sound as fun as trying to game the system. (Not that I necessarily dispute the merit of this particular campaign.) The ideas I've come up with so far (in order of increasing deviousness) include: Link-dropping - This is too close to what they want me to do to be devious, but I've done it here (sorry) and I've done it on Twitter. I'm subverting it slightly by focusing on the game aspects rather than their desired message. AdWords - Not very devious at all, but effectively free with the vouchers I've accrued. That said, I must be pretty poor at choosing keywords, because I've seen very few hits (~5) so far. Browser testing websites - The target has a robots txt which prevents browsershots from processing it, but I got around this by including it in an iframe on a page that I hosted. But my creative juices have run dry I'm afraid. Does anyone have any cheeky/devious/cunning/all-of-the-above idea for driving traffic to my page?

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  • Can the Clojure set and maps syntax be added to other Lisp dialects?

    - by Cedric Martin
    In addition to create list using parentheses, Clojure allows to create vectors using [ ], maps using { } and sets using #{ }. Lisp is always said to be a very extensible language in which you can easily create DSLs etc. But is Lisp so extensible that you can take any Lisp dialect and relatively easily add support for Clojure's vectors, maps and sets (which are all functions in Clojure)? I'm not necessarily asking about cons or similar actually working on these functions: what I'd like to know is if the other could be modified so that the source code would look like Clojure's source code (that is: using matching [ ], { } and #{ } in addition to ( )). Note that if it cannot be done this is not a criticism of Lisp: what I'd like to know is, technically, what should be done or what cannot be done if one were to add such a thing.

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  • Is there a language between C and C++?

    - by Robert Martin
    I really like the simple and transparent nature of C: when I write C code I feel unencumbered by "leaky abstractions" and can almost always make a shrewd guess as to the assembly I'm producing. I also like the simple, familiar syntax for C. However, C doesn't have these simple, helpful doodads that C++ offers like classes, simplified non-cstring handling, etc. I know that it's all possible to implement in C using jump tables and the like, but that's a bit wordy at times, and not very type-safe for various reasons. I'm not a fan of the over-emphasis on objects in C++, though, and I'm gun shy of the 'new' operator and the like. C++ seems to have just a few too many hiccups to, for instance, be used as a system programming language. Does there exist a language that sits between C and C++ on the scale of widgets and doodads? Disclaimer: I mean this as purely a factual question. I do not intend to anger you because I don't share your view that C{,++} is good enough to do whatever I'm planning.

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  • How do you turn a cube into a sphere?

    - by Tom Dalling
    I'm trying to make a quad sphere based on an article, which shows results like this: I can generate a cube correctly: But when I convert all the points according to this formula (from the page linked above): x = x * sqrtf(1.0 - (y*y/2.0) - (z*z/2.0) + (y*y*z*z/3.0)); y = y * sqrtf(1.0 - (z*z/2.0) - (x*x/2.0) + (z*z*x*x/3.0)); z = z * sqrtf(1.0 - (x*x/2.0) - (y*y/2.0) + (x*x*y*y/3.0)); My sphere looks like this: As you can see, the edges of the cube still poke out too far. The cube ranges from -1 to +1 on all axes, like the article says. Any ideas what is wrong?

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  • How to select display to record in recordmydesktop

    - by Tom
    I have a dual monitor setup and wish to only record the 1st monitor with recordmydesktop, but I am unsure of the settings when doing it via the command line, so far I have this: recordmydesktop --display=1 --width=1920 height=1080 --fps=15 --no-sound --delay=10 But I get this error message: Cannot connect to X server 1 How do I find the right X server to connect to and are the rest of my settings correct? I'm using 11.04, cheers.

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  • Google not indexing new forum

    - by Tom Gullen
    We installed a new forum a few months ago now. The URL is: https://www.scirra.com/forum I've 301'd the old topics/threads, as well as included all the new URLs in the sitemap. Yet they still are not appearing. Webmaster tools is showing: 139,512 URLs submitted 50,544 URLs indexed And has been stuck there for quite some time. A massive drop in indexed pages since we updated the forum as well: Any help much appreciated

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  • How does one set up a MIDI keyboard

    - by Martin Owens -doctormo-
    I would like to set up my keyboard via my midi-sport 2x2, I've plugged everything in and even installed the midisport-firmware package which was not automatically installed for some reason. The goal is to have the computer produce a piano sound when keys of the keyboard are hit. If you can make this work without jack, that would be good too. Step by step instructions, the less complexity the better.

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  • Validating allowed characters or validating disallowed characters

    - by Tom
    I've always validated my user input based on a list of valid/allowed characters, rather than a list of invalid/disallowed characters (or simply no validation). It's just a habit I picked up, probably on this site and I've never really questioned it until now. It makes sense if you wish to, say, validate a phone number, or validate an area code, however recently I've realised I'm also validating input such as Bio Text fields, User Comments, etc. for which the input has no solid syntax. The main advantage has always seemed to be: Validating allowed chars reduces the risk of you missing a potentially malicious character, but increases the risk the of you not allowing a character which the user may want to use. The former is more important. But, providing I am correctly preventing SQL Injection (with prepared statements) and also escaping output, is there any need for this extra barrier of protection? It seems to me as if I am just allowing practically every character on the keyboard, and am forgetting to allow some common characters. Is there an accepted practice for this situation? Or am I missing something obvious? Thanks.

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  • Configuring UCM content cache invalidation for a custom portal application

    - by Martin Deh
    Recently, I had blogged about enabling the UCM content cache invalidator for Spaces (found here).  This can also be enabled for a WebCenter Custom Portal application as well.  The much overlooked setting is done through the Content Repository connection definition in the JDeveloper Application Resources section.   Enabling the cache invalidator "sweeper" can be invaluable, where UCM content is being updated from within UCM (console) and not within the portal.

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  • Advantages of Hudson and Sonar over manual process or homegrown scripts.

    - by Tom G
    My coworker and I recently got into a debate over a proposed plan at our workplace. We've more or less finished transitioning our Java codebase into one managed and built with Maven. Now, I'd like for us to integrate with Hudson and Sonar or something similar. My reasons for this are that it'll provide a 'zero-click' build step to provide testers with new experimental builds, that it will let us deploy applications to a server more easily, that tools such as Sonar will provide us with well-needed metrics on code coverage, Javadoc, package dependencies and the like. He thinks that the overhead of getting up to speed with two new frameworks is unacceptable, and that we should simply double down on documentation and create our own scripts for deployment. Since we plan on some aggressive rewrites to pay down the technical debt previous developers incurred (gratuitous use of Java's Serializable interface as a file storage mechanism that has predictably bit us in the ass) he argues that we can document as we go, and that we'll end up changing a large swath of code in the process anyways. I contend that having accurate metrics that Sonar (or fill in your favorite similar tool) provide gives us a good place to start for any refactoring efforts, not to mention general maintenance -- after all, knowing which classes are the most poorly documented, even if it's just a starting point, is better than seat-of-the-pants guessing. Am I wrong, and trying to introduce more overhead than we really need? Some more background: an alumni of our company is working at a Navy research lab now and suggested these two tools in particular as one they've had great success with using. My coworker and I have also had our share of friendly disagreements before -- he's more of the "CLI for all, compiles Gentoo in his spare time and uses Git" and I'm more of a "Give me an intuitive GUI, plays with XNA and is fine with SVN" type, so there's definitely some element of culture clash here.

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  • Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!   Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already: Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program  So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then.. Enquire at [email protected] Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on Visual Studio Team System that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key. The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects. Job Requirements Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred). Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained).  This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office. Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience. Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment. Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team System and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio Team System solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress. Engagement Responsibilities: · Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business. · Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization. · Have strong verbal and written communication skills. · Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills. · Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment. Enquire at [email protected]

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  • Has anyone else read "Programming video games for the Evil Genius"

    - by Martin
    I bought this book called "Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius" by Ian Cinnamon. If there is anyone who has read or is familiar with this book I am wondering if they think it is worth reading. I am interested in making video games. I have already taken intro courses in C++, Java and Python and got through okay. I've been going through this book for about a month now(SLOWLY). All I have to do is type the code exactly in the book, BUT a lot of the code is not clearly explained. I do some research online but I usually still have some trouble answering my questions. Then I found stack overflow. It's been a ton of help. Right now I am trying to make a racing game right out of this book and I got to a point where the author left a bunch of errors in his code. One of the members of this website fixed it up for me, but added some stuff that I'm having trouble understanding. I spend more time trying to figure out the authors errors and fix them or get someone to help me fix them than I actually do learning code. I REALLY want to learn how to do this and I am ready and willing to put in the time, but I'm not sure if my time would be better spent learning from a different source. Are there any veterans out there that are familiar with this book and think it's worth it/not worth it? Should I try to move onto another book? Any advice for a fresh start for someone who wants to learn some video game programming?

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  • IRM and Consumerization

    - by martin.abrahams
    As the season of rampant consumerism draws to its official close on 12th Night, it seems a fitting time to discuss consumerization - whereby technologies from the consumer market, such as the Android and iPad, are adopted by business organizations. I expect many of you will have received a shiny new mobile gadget for Christmas - and will be expecting to use it for work as well as leisure in 2011. In my case, I'm just getting to grips with my first Android phone. This trend developed so much during 2010 that a number of my customers have officially changed their stance on consumer devices - accepting consumerization as something to embrace rather than resist. Clearly, consumerization has significant implications for information control, as corporate data is distributed to consumer devices whether the organization is aware of it or not. I daresay that some DLP solutions can limit distribution to some extent, but this creates a conflict between accepting consumerization and frustrating it. So what does Oracle IRM have to offer the consumerized enterprise? First and foremost, consumerization does not automatically represent great additional risk - if an enterprise seals its sensitive information. Sealed files are encrypted, and that fundamental protection is not affected by copying files to consumer devices. A device might be lost or stolen, and the user might not think to report the loss of a personally owned device, but the data and the enterprise that owns it are protected. Indeed, the consumerization trend is another strong reason for enterprises to deploy IRM - to protect against this expansion of channels by which data might be accidentally exposed. It also enables encryption requirements to be met even though the enterprise does not own the device and cannot enforce device encryption. Moving on to the usage of sealed content on such devices, some of our customers are using virtual desktop solutions such that, in truth, the sealed content is being opened and used on a PC in the normal way, and the user is simply using their device for display purposes. This has several advantages: The sensitive documents are not actually on the devices, so device loss and theft are even less of a worry The enterprise has another layer of control over how and where content is used, as access to the virtual solution involves another layer of authentication and authorization - defence in depth It is a generic solution that means the enterprise does not need to actively support the ever expanding variety of consumer devices - the enterprise just manages some virtual access to traditional systems using something like Citrix or Remote Desktop services. It is a tried and tested way of accessing sealed documents. People have being using Oracle IRM in conjunction with Citrix and Remote Desktop for several years. For some scenarios, we also have the "IRM wrapper" option that provides a simple app for sealing and unsealing content on a range of operating systems. We are busy working on other ways to support the explosion of consumer devices, but this blog is not a proper forum for talking about them at this time. If you are an Oracle IRM customer, we will be pleased to discuss our plans and your requirements with you directly on request. You can be sure that the blog will cover the new capabilities as soon as possible.

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  • How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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