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• What was missing from the Content Strategy Forum?

  - by Roger Hart

  In April, Paris hosted the first ever Content Strategy Forum. The event's website proudly proclaims: 170 attendees, 18 nationalities, 17 speakers, 1 volcano... Content Strategy Forum 2010 rocked the world! The volcano was in Iceland, and the closest we came to rocking the world was a cursory mention in the Huffington Post, but I'll grant the event was awesome. One thing missing from that list, however, is "94 companies" (Plus a couple of universities and freelancers, and what have you). A glance through the attendees directory reveals a fairly wide organisational turnout - 24 students from two Parisian universities, countless design and marketing agencies, a series of tech firms, small and large. Two delegates from IBM, two from ARM, an appearance from RIM, Skype, and Facebook; twelve from the various bits of eBay. Oh, and, err, nobody from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Play, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, the BBC, no banks I noticed, and I didn't spot a newspaper. You get the idea. Facebook notwithstanding, you have to scroll through a few pages to Alexa rankings to find company names from the attendee list. I find this interesting, and I'm not wholly sure what to make of it. Of the large, web-centric, content-rich organizations conspicuously absent, at least one of two things is true: They didn't know about the event They didn't care about the event Maybe these guys all have content strategy completely sorted, and it's an utterly naturalised part of their business process. Maybe nobody at say, Apple or Play.com ever publishes a single piece of content that isn't neatly tailored to their (clearly defined, of course) user and business goals. Wouldn't that be lovely? The thing is, in that rosy and beatific world, there's still a case for those folks to join the community. There are bound to be other perspectives, and things to learn. You see, the other thing achingly conspicuous by its absence was case studies. In her keynote address, Kristina Halvorson made the point that what content strategy really needs is some big, loud success stories. A point I'd firmly second as a content strategist working within an organisation. Sarah Cancilla's presentation on content strategy at Facebook included some very neat, specific examples, and was richer for it. It didn't hurt that the example was Facebook - you're getting impressively big numbers off base. What about the other big boys? Is there anybody out there with a perspective? Do we all just look very silly to you, fretting away over text and images and users and purposes? Is content validation and maintenance so accustomed a part of your business that calling attention to it is like sniffing the air and saying "Hmm, a lot of nitrogen about today."? And if it is, do you have any wisdom to share?

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• New regular expression features in PCRE 8.34 and 8.35

  - by Jan Goyvaerts

  PCRE 8.34 adds some new regex features and changes the behavior of a few to make it better compatible with the latest versions of Perl. There are no changes to the regex syntax in PCRE 8.35. \o{377} is now an octal escape just like \377. This syntax was first introduced in Perl 5.12. It avoids any confusion between octal escapes and backreferences. It also allows octal numbers beyond 377 to be used. E.g. \o{400} is the same as \x{100}. If you have any reason to use octal escapes instead of hexadecimal escapes then you should definitely use the new syntax. Because of this change, \o is now an error when it doesn’t form a valid octal escape. Previously \o was a literal o and \o{377} was a sequence of 337 o‘s. In free-spacing mode, whitespace between a quantifier and the ? that makes it lazy or the + that makes it possessive is now ignored. In Perl this has always been the case. In PCRE 8.33 and prior, whitespace ended a quantifier and any following ? or + was seen as a second quantifier and thus an error. The shorthand \s now matches the vertical tab character in addition to the other whitespace characters it previously matched. Perl 5.18 made the same change. Many other regex flavors have always included the vertical tab in \s, just like POSIX has always included it in [[:space:]]. Names of capturing groups are no longer allowed to start with a digit. This has always been the case in Perl since named groups were added to Perl 5.10. PCRE 8.33 and prior even allowed group names to consist entirely of digits. [[:<:]] and [[::]] are now treated as POSIX-style word boundaries. They match at the start and the end of a word. Though they use similar syntax, these have nothing to do with POSIX character classes and cannot be used inside character classes. Perl does not support POSIX word boundaries. The same changes affect PHP 5.5.10 (and later) and R 3.0.3 (and later) as they have been updated to use PCRE 8.34. RegexBuddy and RegexMagic have been updated to support the latest versions of PCRE, PHP, and R. Older versions that were previously supported are still supported, so you can compare or convert your regular expressions between the latest versions of PCRE, PHP, and R and whichever version you were using previously.

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• New Themes New Benefits (WinForms)

  We believe that working hard on something can be great fun at the end when everything is done and the seeds have resulted in the sweetest fruits. This is the case with the new Theming Mechanism and the new Visual Style Builder which we introduced as of Q1 2010.   I am not going to dive into any details on the new concepts behind all this stuff, but will simply focus on the numbers: both in terms of loading speed and memory usage. As you may already know, the new approach we use to style our controls uses the so called Style Repository which stores style settings that can be reused throughout the whole theme. As a result, we have estimated that the size of our themes has been significantly reduced. For instance, the size of all XML files of the Desert theme sums up to 1.83 MB. The case with the new version of the Desert theme is drastically different. Despite the fact that the new theme consists of more XML files compared to the old, its size is only 707 KB!   Furthermore, we have performed a simple performance test since the common sense tells us that such a great improvement in terms of memory footprint should be followed by a great improvement in terms of speed. We have estimated that loading and applying the new Desert theme to a form containing all RadControls for WinForms takes roughly 30% less time compared to the same operation with the old version of the Desert theme. The following screenshots briefly demonstrate the scenario which we used to estimate the loading time difference between the old and the new Desert theme:     Here, the old Desert theme is applied to all controls on the Form which takes almost 1,3 seconds.     Applying the new Desert theme (based on the new Theming Mechanism) takes about 0,78 seconds.   On top of all these great improvements, we can add the fact that the new Visual Style Builder significantly reduces the time needed to style a control by entirely changing the approach compared to the old version of this tool. You can be sure that we have already prepared some great new stuff for Q1 2010 SP1 that will simplify things further so that designing themes with the new VSB will become more fun than ever!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• New Themes New Benefits (WinForms)

  We believe that working hard on something can be great fun at the end when everything is done and the seeds have resulted in the sweetest fruits. This is the case with the new Theming Mechanism and the new Visual Style Builder which we introduced as of Q1 2010.   I am not going to dive into any details on the new concepts behind all this stuff, but will simply focus on the numbers: both in terms of loading speed and memory usage. As you may already know, the new approach we use to style our controls uses the so called Style Repository which stores style settings that can be reused throughout the whole theme. As a result, we have estimated that the size of our themes has been significantly reduced. For instance, the size of all XML files of the Desert theme sums up to 1.83 MB. The case with the new version of the Desert theme is drastically different. Despite the fact that the new theme consists of more XML files compared to the old, its size is only 707 KB!   Furthermore, we have performed a simple performance test since the common sense tells us that such a great improvement in terms of memory footprint should be followed by a great improvement in terms of speed. We have estimated that loading and applying the new Desert theme to a form containing all RadControls for WinForms takes roughly 30% less time compared to the same operation with the old version of the Desert theme. The following screenshots briefly demonstrate the scenario which we used to estimate the loading time difference between the old and the new Desert theme:     Here, the old Desert theme is applied to all controls on the Form which takes almost 1,3 seconds.     Applying the new Desert theme (based on the new Theming Mechanism) takes about 0,78 seconds.   On top of all these great improvements, we can add the fact that the new Visual Style Builder significantly reduces the time needed to style a control by entirely changing the approach compared to the old version of this tool. You can be sure that we have already prepared some great new stuff for Q1 2010 SP1 that will simplify things further so that designing themes with the new VSB will become more fun than ever!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Multicast delegates in c#

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  In yesterday’s post We learn about Delegates and how we can use delegates in C#. In today’s blog post we are going to learn about Multicast delegates. What is Multicast Delegates? As we all know we can assign methods as object to delegate and later on we can call that method with the help delegates. We can also assign more then methods to delegates that is called Multicast delegates. It’s provide functionality to execute more then method at a time. It’s maintain delegates as invocation list (linked list). Let’s understands that via a example. We are going to use yesterday’s example and then we will extend that code multicast delegates. Following code I have written to demonstrate the multicast delegates. using System; namespace Delegates { class Program { public delegate void CalculateNumber(int a, int b); static void Main(string[] args) { int a = 5; int b = 5; CalculateNumber addNumber = new CalculateNumber(AddNumber); CalculateNumber multiplyNumber = new CalculateNumber(MultiplyNumber); CalculateNumber multiCast = (CalculateNumber)Delegate.Combine (addNumber, multiplyNumber); multiCast.Invoke(a,b); Console.ReadLine(); } public static void AddNumber(int a, int b) { Console.WriteLine("Adding Number"); Console.WriteLine(5 + 6); } public static void MultiplyNumber(int a, int b) { Console.WriteLine("Multiply Number"); Console.WriteLine(5 + 6); } } } As you can see in the above code I have created two method one for adding two numbers and another for multiply two number. After that I have created two same CalculateNumber delegates addNumber and multiplyNumber then I have create a multicast delegates multiCast with combining two delegates. Now I want to call this both method so I have used Invoke method to call this delegates. As now our code is let’s run the application. Following is a output as expected. As you can we can execute multiple methods with multicast delegates the only thing you need to take care is that we need to type for both delegates. That’s it. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more.. Till then happy programming.

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• How Microsoft listens

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit. My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?” There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on. MVPs MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx Evangelists Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx Microsoft Connect This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same. https://connect.microsoft.com   Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP,Feedback,Connect

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• ATG Live Webcast April 5: Managing Your Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise Manager

  - by BillSawyer

  The next ATG Live Webcast covers one of the hottest topic areas in E-Business Suite Tools and Technology: Lifecycle Management. Angelo Rosado, Product Manager, ATG Development will lead you through using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c and the latest E-Business Suite Plug-in to manage E-Business Suite systems. You can register for the Apr. 5, 2012 event at: Managing Your Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Enterprise Manager The topics covered in this webcast will be: Manage your EBS system configurations Monitor your EBS environment's performance and uptime Keep multiple EBS environments in sync with their patches and configurations Create patches for your EBS customizations and apply them with Oracle's own patching tools Date:               Thursday, April 5, 2012Time:              8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenter:    Angelo Rosado, Product Manager, ATG DevelopmentWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:   Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:            877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              99342To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  597073984If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com. 

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• SQL SERVER – Public Training and Private Training – Differences and Similarities

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this year, I was on Road SQL Server Seminars. I did many SQL Server Performance Trainings and SQL Server Performance Consultations throughout the year but I feel the most rewarding exercise is always the one when instructor learns something from students, too. I was just talking to my wife, Nupur – she manages my logistics and administration related activities – and she pointed out that this year I have done 62% consultations and 38% trainings. I was bit surprised as I thought the numbers would be reversed. Every time I review the year, I think of training done at organizations. Well, I cannot argue with reality, I have done more consultations (some would call them projects) than training. I told my wife that I enjoy consultations more than training. She promptly asked me a question which was not directly related but made me think for long time, and in the end resulted in this blog post. Nupur asked me: what do I enjoy the most, public training or private training? I had a long conversation with her on this subject. I am not going to write long blog post which can change your life here. This is rather a small post condensing my one hour discussion into 200 words. Public Training is fun because… There are lots of different kinds of attendees There are always vivid questions Lots of questions on questions Less interest in theory and more interest in demos Good opportunity of future business Private Training is fun because… There is a focused interest One question is discussed deeply because of existing company issues More interest in “how it happened” concepts – under the hood operations Good connection with attendees This is also a good opportunity of future business Here I will stop my monologue and I want to open up this question to all of you: Question to Attendees - Which one do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Question to Trainers - What do you enjoy the most – Public Training or Private Training? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Maintaining Revision Levels

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  A question that came up on an earlier blog post was how to limit the number of revisions on a piece of content. UCM does not inherently enforce any sort of limit on how many revisions you can have. It's unlimited. In some cases, there may be content that goes through lots of changes, but there just simply isn't a need to keep all of its revisions around. Deleting those revisions through the content information screen can be very cumbersome. And going through the Repository Manager applet can take time as well to filter and find the revisions to get rid of. But there is an easier way through the Archiver. The Export Query criteria in Archiver includes a very handy field called 'Revision Rank'. With revision labels, they typically go up as new revisions come in (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc...). But you can't really use this field to tell it to keep the top 5 revisions. Those top 5 revision numbers are always going up. But revision rank goes the opposite direction. The very latest revision is always 0. The previous revision to that is 1. Previous revision to that is 2. And so on and so forth. With revision rank, you can set your query to look for any Revision Rank greater or equal to 5. Now as older revisions move down the line, their revision rank gets higher and higher until they reach that threshold. Then when you run that archive export, you can choose to delete and remove those revisions. Running that export in Archiver is normally a manual process. But with Idc Command, you can script the process and have it run automatically from the server. Idc Command is a utility that allows you to run any of the content server services via the command line. You basically feed it a text file with the services and parameters defined along with the user to run it as. The Idc Command executable is located within the \bin\ directory: $ ./IdcCommand -f DeleteOlderRevisions.txt -u sysadmin -l delete_revisions.log In this example, our IdcCommand file to run the export and do the deletions would look like: IdcService=EXPORT_ARCHIVE aArchiveName=DeleteOlderRevisions aDoDelete=1 IDC_Name=idc dataSource=RevisionIDs <<EOD>> You can then use automated scheduling routines in the OS to run the command and command file at the frequency needed. Remember that you are deleting the revisions from within UCM, but they are still getting placed within the archive. So you will need to delete those batches to have them fully removed (or re-import if you need to recover them). For more information about Idc Command, you can find that in the Idc Command Reference Guide.

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• Gawker Passwords

  - by Nick Harrison

  There has been much news about the hack of the Gawker web sites. There has even been an analysis of the common passwords found. This list is embarrassing in many ways. The most common password was "123456". The second most common password was "password". Much has also been written providing advice on how to create good passwords. This article provides some interesting advice, none of which should be taken. Anyone reading my blog, probably already knows the importance of strong passwords, so I am not going to reiterate the reasons here. My target audience is more the folks defining password complexity requirements. A user cannot come up with a strong password, if we have complexity requirements that don't make sense. With that in mind, here are a few guidelines:  Long Passwords Insist on long passwords. In some cases, you may need to change to allow a long password. I have seen many places that cap passwords at 8 characters. Passwords need to be at least 8 characters minimal. Consider how much stronger the passwords would be if you double the length. Passwords that are 15-20 characters will be that much harder to crack. There is no need to have limit passwords to 8 characters. Don't Require Special Characters Many complexity rules will require that your password include a capital letter, a lower case letter, a number, and one of the "special" characters, the shits above the number keys. The problem with such rules is that the resulting passwords are harder to remember. It also means that you will have a smaller set of characters in the resulting passwords. If you must include one of the 9 digits and one of the 9 "special" characters, then you have dramatically reduced the character set that will make up the final password. Two characters will be one of 10 possible values instead of one of 70. Two additional characters will be one of 26 possible characters instead of a 70 character potential character set. If you limit passwords to 8 characters, you are left with only 7 characters having the full set of 70 potential values. With these character restrictions in place, there are 1.6 x1012 possible passwords. Without these special character restrictions, but allowing numbers and special characters, you get a total of 5.76x1014 possible passwords. Even if you only allowed upper and lower case characters, you will still have 2.18X1014 passwords. You can do the math any number of ways, requiring special characters will always weaken passwords. Now imagine the number of passwords when you require more than 8 characters.  If you are responsible for defining complexity rules, I urge you to take these guidelines into account. What other guidelines do you follow?

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• Project Euler 18: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 18.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 18 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=18 # By starting at the top of the triangle below and moving # to adjacent numbers on the row below, the maximum total # from top to bottom is 23. # # 3 # 7 4 # 2 4 6 # 8 5 9 3 # # That is, 3 + 7 + 4 + 9 = 23. # Find the maximum total from top to bottom of the triangle below: # 75 # 95 64 # 17 47 82 # 18 35 87 10 # 20 04 82 47 65 # 19 01 23 75 03 34 # 88 02 77 73 07 63 67 # 99 65 04 28 06 16 70 92 # 41 41 26 56 83 40 80 70 33 # 41 48 72 33 47 32 37 16 94 29 # 53 71 44 65 25 43 91 52 97 51 14 # 70 11 33 28 77 73 17 78 39 68 17 57 # 91 71 52 38 17 14 91 43 58 50 27 29 48 # 63 66 04 68 89 53 67 30 73 16 69 87 40 31 # 04 62 98 27 23 09 70 98 73 93 38 53 60 04 23 # NOTE: As there are only 16384 routes, it is possible to solve # this problem by trying every route. However, Problem 67, is the # same challenge with a triangle containing one-hundred rows; it # cannot be solved by brute force, and requires a clever method! ;o) import time start = time.time() triangle = [ [75], [95, 64], [17, 47, 82], [18, 35, 87, 10], [20, 04, 82, 47, 65], [19, 01, 23, 75, 03, 34], [88, 02, 77, 73, 07, 63, 67], [99, 65, 04, 28, 06, 16, 70, 92], [41, 41, 26, 56, 83, 40, 80, 70, 33], [41, 48, 72, 33, 47, 32, 37, 16, 94, 29], [53, 71, 44, 65, 25, 43, 91, 52, 97, 51, 14], [70, 11, 33, 28, 77, 73, 17, 78, 39, 68, 17, 57], [91, 71, 52, 38, 17, 14, 91, 43, 58, 50, 27, 29, 48], [63, 66, 04, 68, 89, 53, 67, 30, 73, 16, 69, 87, 40, 31], [04, 62, 98, 27, 23, 9, 70, 98, 73, 93, 38, 53, 60, 04, 23]] # Loop through each row of the triangle starting at the base. for a in range(len(triangle) - 1, -1, -1): for b in range(0, a): # Get the maximum value for adjacent cells in current row. # Update the cell which would be one step prior in the path # with the new total. For example, compare the first two # elements in row 15. Add the max of 04 and 62 to the first # position of row 14.This provides the max total from row 14 # to 15 starting at the first position. Continue to work up # the triangle until the maximum total emerges at the # triangle's apex. triangle [a-1][b] += max(triangle [a][b], triangle [a][b+1]) print triangle [0][0] print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• VS.NET 2010 SP1, Win 7, Parallels, and a MBP&ndash;Hell, my friends&hellip;HELL!

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  LightSwitch Beta 2 is out. That’s how all this started. All I wanted was to install it on my MBP’s Win7 Parallels VM. But as I’m finding with running a Win7 VM on a MBP, nothing is as easy as it should be. First my MBP froze during the SP1 installation. Not my VM crashing, the entire machine freezing…no mouse, nothing. Had to do a hard reset. BLECH. Then we’re back and I try to re-install SP1 (since the first try obviously failed). I get met with a dialog asking me where silverlight_sdk.msi was. It was *nowhere*! So I hit the net and download it from Microsoft’s site. Unfortunately, it only downloads an exe and not the individual files which would include the msi. Here’s what I did: - Download the tools for Silverlight 4 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b3deb194-ca86-4fb6-a716-b67c2604a139&displaylang=en) - Run it, but don’t hit the install or next button when the dialog comes up - Look in your file structure for a folder with a weird name…bunch of numbers and letters. This is a temp folder that the exe creates and dumps all the necessary setup files into, and clears away after its done. - Inside this folder you’ll find the silverlight_sdk.msi (hooray!). Just copy it to a different location on the C drive. You can then cancel installation. Ok, so that takes care of that…but then running the SP1 installer I get hit with *another* dialog asking for the WCF RIA Services SP1 msi. Now it looks like this MSI is part of the Silverlight Tools package because you’ll see the MSI, but the VS.NET 2010 SP1 installer will thumb its nose at this unworthy msi…for whatever reason. So instead, go here: http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/riaservices/ …and click on the “Install WCF Ria Services Sp1…” option. This downloads the msi, which you should save to your C drive and direct the VS.NET 2010 SP1 installer to. Then, if you’ve done all that, been good all year, and not made any little children cry, you *might* just be able to install VS.NET 2010 SP1 on your Parallels VM. If you were playing that “Take a shot every time he writes VS.NET 2010 Sp1” drinking game, then you’re drunk…which is a better place to be than where I am right now: watching the installation progress bar slowly creep to completion, hoping there’s no more surprises in store. D

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• Simple tips to design a Customer Journey Map

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  “A model can abstract to a level that is comprehensible to humans, without getting lost in details.” -The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. Inception using Post-it, StoryBoards, Lego or Mindmaping Techniques The first step in a Customer Experience project is to describe customer interactions creating a customer journey map. Modeling is never easy, so to succeed on this effort, it is very convenient that your CX´s team have some “abstract thinking” skills. Besides is very helpful to consult a Business Service Design offered by an Interactive Agency to lead your inception process. Initially, you may start by a free discussion using post-it cards; storyboards; even lego or any other brainstorming technique you like. This will help you to get your mind into the path followed by the customer to purchase your product or to consume any business service you actually offer to your customers, or plan to offer in the near future. (from www.servicedesigntools.org) Colorful Mind Maps are very useful to document and share meeting ideas. Some Mind Maps software providers as ThinkBuzzan provide trial versions, and you will find more mindmapping options on this post by Mashable. Finally to produce a quick one, I do recommend Wise, an entirely online mindmaping service. On my view the best results in terms of communication will always come for an artistic hand-made drawing. Customer Experience Mind Map Example Making your first Customer Journey Map To add some more formalization to your thoughts, there is a wide offering for designing Customer Journey Maps. A Customer Map can be represented as an oriented graph in which another follows each step. The one below is the most simple Customer Journey you can draw. Nothing more than a couple of pictures, numbers and lines to design the customer steps sequence in the purchase process. Very simple Customer Journey for Social Mobile Shopping There are a lot of Customer Journey templates much more sophisticated available  in the Web using a variety of styles, as per example this one with a focus on underlining emotional experience, or this other worksheet template. Representing different interaction devices on the vertical axis, and touchpoints / requirements and existing gaps horizontally  is today´s most common format for Customer Journeys. From Customer Journey Maps to CX Technology Adoption Plans Once you have your map ready, you can start to identify the IT infrastructure requirements for your CXProject. By analyzing customer problems and improvement opportunities with maps, you will then identify the technology gaps and the new investment requirements in your IT infrastructure. Deeping step by step from the more abstract to the more concrete is the best guarantee to take the right IT investment decisions.  ¡Remember to keep your initial customer journey safe on your pocket in every one of your CX´s project meetings- that´s you map to success!

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• JCP EC Nominations and Meet the Candidates Call

  - by heathervc

  The Nominations period for the 2012 JCP EC Elections closes tomorrow, 11 October at midnight pacific time.  Eligible JCP Members (all current JSPA 2 signers) may nominate themselves.  You will need your Elections credentials to complete the nomination, which were sent to the primary contacts of all eligible JCP Members via email last week. This year all ratified (there are 4 proposed ratified candidates) and elected (there are 7 candidates so far) will appear on one ballot; the top 2 candidates will win elected seats. This year, the selected EC Members will serve a single year term.  Following the 2012 Elections, there will be one merged EC (approved through JSR 355), and a new JCP version, JCP 2.9 will be in effect.  In 2013, all EC members will stand for election to complete the merge process described in the JCP 2.9 process document. All of the candidates' nominations materials are now available. The ratified candidates are:  Cinterion, Credit Suisse, Fujitsu and HP.The elected candidates are:  Cisco Systems, CloudBees, Giuseppe Dell'Abate, London Java Community, MoroccoJUG, Software AG, and Zero Turnaround. Next week, 18 October, we will hold an open teleconference for the Java Community to meet the candidates and ask questions regarding their nomination.  We hope you will be able to participate in the call.  Should the time be inconvenient, a recording will be made available for download, and candidate questions may be posted on this blog entry or sent to [email protected]. Topic: Meet the EC Candidates Date: Thursday, October 18, 2012 Time: 9:30 am, Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00) Meeting Number: 807 818 225 Meeting Password: MeetEC ------------------------------------------------------- To join the online meeting (Now from mobile devices) ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://jcp.webex.com/jcp/j.php?ED=186721592&UID=0&PW=NMmUzNjY5ZTMw&RT=MiM0 2. If requested, enter your name and email address. 3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: MeetEC 4. Click "Join". To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://jcp.webex.com/jcp/j.php?ED=186721592&UID=0&PW=NMmUzNjY5ZTMw&ORT=MiM0 ------------------------------------------------------- To join the audio conference only -------------------------------------------------------     +1 (866) 682-4770     Outside the US: global access numbers  https://www.intercallonline.com/portlets/scheduling/viewNumbers/listNumbersByCode.do?confCode=6279803 or +1 (408) 774-4073     Conference code: 9454597     Security code: JCPEC (52732)------------------------------------------------------- For assistance ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Go to https://jcp.webex.com/jcp/mc 2. On the left navigation bar, click "Support".

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• More details on America's Cup use of Oracle Data Mining

  - by charlie.berger

  BMW Oracle Racing's America's Cup: A Victory for Database Technology BMW Oracle Racing's victory in the 33rd America's Cup yacht race in February showcased the crew's extraordinary sailing expertise. But to hear them talk, the real stars weren't actually human. "The story of this race is in the technology," says Ian Burns, design coordinator for BMW Oracle Racing. Gathering and Mining Sailing DataFrom the drag-resistant hull to its 23-story wing sail, the BMW Oracle USA trimaran is a technological marvel. But to learn to sail it well, the crew needed to review enormous amounts of reliable data every time they took the boat for a test run. Burns and his team collected performance data from 250 sensors throughout the trimaran at the rate of 10 times per second. An hour of sailing alone generates 90 million data points.BMW Oracle Racing turned to Oracle Data Mining in Oracle Database 11g to extract maximum value from the data. Burns and his team reviewed and shared raw data with crew members daily using a Web application built in Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX). "Someone would say, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could look at some new combination of numbers?' We could quickly build an Oracle Application Express application and share the information during the same meeting," says Burns. Analyzing Wind and Other Environmental ConditionsBurns then streamed the data to the Oracle Austin Data Center, where a dedicated team tackled deeper analysis. Because the data was collected in an Oracle Database, the Data Center team could dive straight into the analytics problems without having to do any extract, transform, and load processes or data conversion. And the many advanced data mining algorithms in Oracle Data Mining allowed the analytics team to build vital performance analytics. For example, the technology team could remove masking elements such as environmental conditions to give accurate data on the best mast rotation for certain wind conditions. Without the data mining, Burns says the boat wouldn't have run as fast. "The design of the boat was important, but once you've got it designed, the whole race is down to how the guys can use it," he says. "With Oracle database technology we could compare the incremental improvements in our performance from the first day of sailing to the very last day. With data mining we could check data against the things we saw, and we could find things that weren't otherwise easily observable and findable."

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• Presentations & Training material OFM Summer Camps & Impressions & Feedback

  - by JuergenKress

  Thanks to all attendees who invested their time and utilized the opportunity to attend the Summer Camps! Due to high demand of our most of the trainings, we had a long waiting list with more numbers of partners who are keen to attend it. We would like to give our special thanks to all trainers, who delivered excellent workshops! Most of the presentations and course material have been posted on our SOA Community Workspace and WebLogic Community Workspace. You can access the content only if you are a registered community member. To register for the SOA Community please click here. You can register for the WebLogic Community here. To find out the first impressions of the event please visit our Facebook pages: www.facebook.com/WebLogicCommunity & www.facebook.com/soacommunity or Picasa Album Thanks for the excellent blog posts from AMIS Technology Blog & Middleware by Link Consulting. Let us know if you published a twitter blog on @soacommunity & @wlscommunity. We will be pleased to publish it in our Newsletters. WebLogic Course Quotes “Oracle trainings are the best” - Pedro Neto Novobas “Excellent training, well organized” - Pedro Antunh, Capgemini “This course dives you into Oracle WebLogic giving you a quick start on benefiting from Fusion Apps” - Leonardo Fernandes, Outsystems Additional Quotes “Thanks a lot again for organizing such a great and informative Summer Camp. Both training and networking were organized very professionally. I have gained tons of very useful Info, which will definitely help to increase quality of our future projects.” - Daniel Fasko fss-group.com “I didn’t get the chance yesterday to thank you for a most enjoyable and thoroughly educational time I had in Munich over the last few days.” - Jeroen Bakker Ordina “Just to congratulate you on a great event, not only today but also in the previous days of training. As we know, a very good organization and, as a native Portuguese that knows Lisbon very good, a nice choice of places to visit. Looking forward to come again next year.” Pedro Miguel Neto, Novobase. WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: OFM Summer Camps,eduction,training,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• Looking for best practice for version numbering of dependent software components

  - by bit-pirate

  We are trying to decide on a good way to do version numbering for software components, which are depending on each other. Let's be more specific: Software component A is a firmware running on an embedded device and component B is its respective driver for a normal PC (Linux/Windows machine). They are communicating with each other using a custom protocol. Since, our product is also targeted at developers, we will offer stable and unstable (experimental) versions of both components (the firmware is closed-source, while the driver is open-source). Our biggest difficulty is how to handle API changes in the communication protocol. While we were implementing a compatibility check in the driver - it checks if the firmware version is compatible to the driver's version - we started to discuss multiple ways of version numbering. We came up with one solution, but we also felt like reinventing the wheel. That is why I'd like to get some feedback from the programmer/software developer community, since we think this is a common problem. So here is our solution: We plan to follow the widely used major.minor.patch version numbering and to use even/odd minor numbers for the stable/unstable versions. If we introduce changes in the API, we will increase the minor number. This convention will lead to the following example situation: Current stable branch is 1.2.1 and unstable is 1.3.7. Now, a new patch for unstable changes the API, what will cause the new unstable version number to become 1.5.0. Once, the unstable branch is considered stable, let's say in 1.5.3, we will release it as 1.4.0. I would be happy about an answer to any of the related questions below: Can you suggest a best practice for handling the issues described above? Do you think our "custom" convention is good? What changes would you apply to the described convention? Thanks a lot for your feedback! PS: Since I'm new here, I can't create new tags (e.g. best-practice). So, I'm wondering if best-pactice is just misspelled or I don't get its meaning.

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• SQL SERVER – Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Let us recap the puzzles here quickly. Puzzle 1: Why following code when executed in SSMS displays result as a * (Star)? SELECT CAST(634 AS VARCHAR(2)) Puzzle 2: Write the shortest code that produces results as 1 without using any numbers in the select statement. Bonus Q: How many different Operating System (OS) NuoDB support? As I mentioned earlier the participation was nothing but Amazing. I will write about the winners and the best answers in short time. Meanwhile I will give to the point answers to above puzzles. Solution 1: When you convert character or binary expressions (char, nchar, nvarchar, varchar,binary, or varbinary) to an expression of a different data type, data can be truncated, only partially displayed, or an error is returned because the result is too short to display. Conversions to char, varchar, nchar, nvarchar, binary, and varbinary are truncated, except for the conversions shown in the following table. Reference of the text and table from MSDN. Solution 2: The shortest code to produce answer 1 : SELECT EXP($) or SELECT COS($) or SELECT DAY($) When SELECT $ it gives us the result as 0.00 and the EXP of the same is 1. I believe it is pretty neat. There were plenty other answers but this was the shortest. Another shorter answer would be PRINT EXP($) but no one has proposed that as in original Question I have explicitly mentioned SELECT in the original question. Bonus Answer: 5 OS: Windows, MacOS, Linux, Solaris, Joyent SmartOS Reference Please do read every single comment here. Do leave a comment which one do you think is the best comment out of all the comments. Meanwhile if there is a better solution and I have missed it do let me know as we still have time to correct it. I will be selecting the winner before the weekend as I am going through each and every of 350 comment. I will be selecting the best comments along with the winning comment. If our selection matches – one of you may still win something cool.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Listen to Local FM Radio in Windows 7 Media Center

  - by DigitalGeekery

  If you have a supported tuner card and connected FM antenna, you can listen to your favorite local over-the-air FM stations in Windows 7 Media Center. Before the FM radio option will be available in Windows Media Center, you’ll need to have a TV or Radio tuner card installed and configured. If you have a TV tuner card installed, you may already have a Radio tuner as well. Many TV tuner cards also have built in FM tuners. Open Windows Media Center, scroll the “Music” and over to “Radio.” Click on “FM Radio.”   The radio will turn on and you’ll see the current station number listed in the white box. Just below are standard “Seek” and “Tune” buttons, as well as “Preset” options. Tuning works just like a typical FM radio. Click on the (-) or (+) buttons to “Tune” or “Seek” up and down the dial. If you already know the frequency of the station, enter the numbers using the numeric keypad on the remote control or keyboard. To save the current station you’re listening to as a preset, click on the “Save as Preset” button. Type in a custom name for your preset station and click “Save.”   Once you set your presets, they will also be available on the main FM Radio screen. The transport controls at the bottom of the screen also allow you to control Volume, Pause, Play, Skip back, and Skip forward. Fast Forward and Rewind, however, are not supported.   This is a nice option if you’d like to listen to your local FM favorites on your computer, especially if those stations aren’t available online. If you don’t have an FM tuner and want to listen to thousands of online radio streams, check out our article on RadioTime in WMC. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media CenterListen To XM Radio with Windows Media Center in Windows 7Using Netflix Watchnow in Windows Vista Media Center (Gmedia)Schedule Updates for Windows Media CenterIntegrate Hulu Desktop and Windows Media Center in Windows 7 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements Own a cell phone, or does a cell phone own you? Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier

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• SQL SERVER – Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. The step here is to change the format of Excel Cell to Text from Numbers and that will preserve the value of the with leading or trailing Zeros in Excel. However, I assume this is done for display purpose only because once you convert column to Text you may find it difficult to do numeric operations over the column for example Aggregation, Average etc. If you need to do the same you should either convert the columns back to Numeric in Excel or do the process in Database and export the same value as along with it as well. However, I have seen in requirement in the real world where the user has to have a numeric value with leading Zero values in it for display purpose. Here is my suggestion, instead of manipulating numeric value in the database and converting it to character value the ideal thing to do is to store it as a numeric value only in the database. Whatever changes you want to do for display purpose should be handled at the time of the display using the format function of SQL or Application Language. Honestly, database is data layer and presentation is presentation layer – they are two different things and if possible they should not be mixed. If due to any reason you cannot follow above advise and you need is to have append leading zeros in the database only here are two of my previous articles I suggest you to refer them. I am open to learn new tricks as these articles are almost three years old. Please share your opinion and suggestions in the comments area. SQL SERVER – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display SQL SERVER – UDF – Pad Ride Side of Number with 0 – Fixed Width Number Display Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Excel

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• Freshen the RTS genre

  - by William Michael Thorley

  This isn't really a question, but a request for feedback. RPS (Rock, Paper, Scissors) RTS (Real Time Strategy) Demo version is out: The game is simple. It is an RTS. Why has it been made? Many if not most RTS’s are about economy and large numbers of unit types. The genre hasn’t actually developed the gameplay drastically from the very first RTS’s produced, some lesson have been learned, but the games are really very similar to how they have always been. RPS brings new gameplay to the RTS genre. Through three means: • New combat mechanics: RPS has two unique modes (as well as the old favourite) of resolving weapon fire. These change how combat happens, and make application of the correct units vital to success. From this comes the requirement to run Intel on your enemies. • Fixed Resource Economy: Each player has a fixed amount of energy, This means that there is a definite end to the game. You can attrition your enemy and try to outlast them, or try to outspend your opponent and destroy them. There is a limit to how fast ships can be built, through the generation of construction blocks, but energy is the fast limit on economy. • Game Modes: Game modes add victory conditions and new game pieces. The game is overseen by a controller which literally runs the game. Games are no longer line them up, gun them down. This means that new tactics must be played making skirmish games fresh with novel tactics without adding huge amounts of new game units to learn. I’ve produced RPS from the ground. I will be running a kickstarter in the near future, but right now I want feedback and input from the game developing community. Regarding the concepts, where RPS is going, the game modes, the combat mechanics. How it plays. RPS will give fresh gameplay to the genre so it must be right. It works over the internet or a LAN and supports single player games. Get it. Play it. Tell me about your games. Thank you Demo: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPS%20Playtest.zip Tutorials: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/51850113/RPSGamePlay.zip

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• ATG Live Webcast March 29: Diagnosing E-Business Suite JVM and Forms Performance Issues (Performance Series Part 4 of 4)

  - by BillSawyer

  The next webcast in our popular EBS series on performance management is going to be a showstopper.  Dave Suri, Project Lead, Applications Performance and Gustavo Jimenez, Senior Development Manager will discuss some of the steps involved in triaging and diagnosing E-Business Suite systems related to JVM and Forms components. Please join us for our next ATG Live Webcast on Mar. 29, 2012: Triage and Diagnostics for E-Business Suite JVM and Forms The topics covered in this webcast will be: Overall Menu/Sections Architecture Patches/Certified browsers/jdk versions JVM Tuning JVM Tools (jstat,eclipse mat, ibm tda) Forms Tools (strace/FRD) Java Concurrent Program options location Case studies Case Studies JVM Thread dump case for Oracle Advanced Product Catalog Forms FRD trace relating to Saving an SR Java Concurrent Program for BT Date:               Thursday, March 29, 2012Time:              8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenters:  Dave Suri, Project Lead, Applications Performance                        Gustavo Jimenez, Senior Development ManagerWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:   Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:            877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              99342To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  597073984 If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training here.If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com. 

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• ATG Live Webcast: Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to 12.1 and Beyond

  - by BillSawyer

  I am pleased to announce the next ATG Live Webcast event on December 1, 2011. Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to 12.1 and Beyond Are you still on 11i and wondering about your next steps in the E-Business Suite lifecycle? Are you wondering what the upgrade considerations are going to be for 12.2? Do you want to know the best practices for upgrading E-Business Suite regardless of your version? If so, this is the webcast for you. Join Anne Carlson, Senior Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product Strategy for this one-hour webcast with Q&A. This session will give you a framework to make informed upgrade decisions for your E-Business Suite environment. This event is targeted to functional managers, EBS project planners, and implementers. The agenda for the Planning Your Oracle E-Business Suite Upgrade from 11i to 12.1 and Beyond includes the following topics: Business Value of the Upgrade Starting Your Upgrade Project Planning Your Upgrade Approach Preparing for Your Upgrade Execution Extended Support for 11i Additional Resources Date:            Thursday, December 1, 2011Time:           8:00 AM - 9:00 AM Pacific Standard TimePresenter:  Anne Carlson, Senior Director, Oracle E-Business Suite Product StrategyWebcast Registration Link (Preregistration is optional but encouraged)To hear the audio feed:    Domestic Participant Dial-In Number:           877-697-8128    International Participant Dial-In Number:      706-634-9568    Additional International Dial-In Numbers Link:    Dial-In Passcode:                                              98515To see the presentation:    The Direct Access Web Conference details are:    Website URL: https://ouweb.webex.com    Meeting Number:  271378459 If you miss the webcast, or you have missed any webcast, don't worry -- we'll post links to the recording as soon as it's available from Oracle University.  You can monitor this blog for pointers to the replay. And, you can find our archive of our past webcasts and training at http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/e_business_suite_technology_learningIf you have any questions or comments, feel free to email Bill Sawyer (Senior Manager, Applications Technology Curriculum) at BilldotSawyer-AT-Oracle-DOT-com.

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• Automated build platform for .NET portfolio - best choice?

  - by jkohlhepp

  I am involved with maintaining a fairly large portfolio of .NET applications. Also in the portfolio are legacy applications built on top of other platforms - native C++, ECLIPS Forms, etc. I have a complex build framework on top of NAnt right now that manages the builds for all of these applications. The build framework uses NAnt to do a number of different things: Pull code out of Subversion, as well as create tags in Subversion Build the code, using MSBuild for .NET or other compilers for other platforms Peek inside AssemblyInfo files to increment version numbers Do deletes of certain files that shouldn't be included in builds / releases Releases code to deployment folders Zips code up for backup purposes Deploy Windows services; start and stop them Etc. Most of those things can be done with just NAnt by itself, but we did build a couple of extension tasks for NAnt to do some things that were specific to our environment. Also, most of those processes above are genericized and reused across a lot of our different application build scripts, so that we don't repeat logic. So it is not simple NAnt code, and not simple build scripts. There are dozens of NAnt files that come together to execute a build. Lately I've been dissatisfied with NAnt for a couple reasons: (1) it's syntax is just awful - programming languages on top of XML are really horrific to maintain, (2) the project seems to have died on the vine; there haven't been a ton of updates lately and it seems like no one is really at the helm. Trying to get it working with .NET 4 has cause some pain points due to this lack of activity. So, with all of that background out of the way, here's my question. Given some of the things that I want to accomplish based on that list above, and given that I am primarily in a .NET shop, but I also need to build non-.NET projects, is there an alternative to NAnt that I should consider switching to? Things on my radar include Powershell (with or without psake), MSBuild by itself, and rake. These all have pros and cons. For example, is MSBuild powerful enough? I remember using it years ago and it didn't seem to have as much power as NAnt. Do I really want to have my team learn Ruby just to do builds using rake? Is psake really mature enough of a project to pin my portfolio to? Is Powershell "too close to the metal" and I'll end up having to write my own build library akin to psake to use it on its own? Are there other tools that I should consider? If you were involved with maintaining a .NET portfolio of significant complexity, what build tool would you be looking at? What does your team currently use?

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• SQL SERVER – Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement,there were more than 50 solutions proposed in the comment. There were many creative solutions. I have mentioned my personal favorite (different ones) here: Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. However, I received lots of questions regarding one of the Solution by SIJIN KUMAR V P. He has used the function SOUNDEX in his solution. The request was to explain how SOUNDEX and DIFFERENCE works. Well, there are pretty decent documentations provided over here SOUNDEX function and DIFFERENCE over on MSDN and if I attempt to explain this function I will end up writing the same details which are available on MSDN. Instead of writing theory, we will try to learn this function by using a couple of simple puzzles. You try to solve the puzzles using the MSDN and see if you can learn something very quickly. In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. The first character of the code is the first character of character_expression and the second through fourth characters of the code are numbers that represent the letters in the expression. Vowels incharacter_expression are ignored unless they are the first letter of the string. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. The return value ranges from 0 through 4: 0 indicates weak or no similarity, and 4 indicates strong similarity or the same values. Learning Puzzle 1: Now let us run following four queries and observe its output. SELECT SOUNDEX('SQLAuthority') SdxValue SELECT SOUNDEX('SLTR') SdxValue SELECT SOUNDEX('SaLaTaRa') SdxValue SELECT SOUNDEX('SaLaTaRaM') SdxValue When you look at the result set all the four values are same. The reason for all the values to be same is as for SQL Server SOUNDEX function all the four strings are similarly sounding string. Learning Puzzle 2: Now let us run following five queries and observe its output. SELECT DIFFERENCE (SOUNDEX('SLTR'),SOUNDEX('SQLAuthority')) SELECT DIFFERENCE (SOUNDEX('TH'),SOUNDEX('SQLAuthority')) SELECT DIFFERENCE ('SQLAuthority',SOUNDEX('SQLAuthority')) SELECT DIFFERENCE ('SLTR',SOUNDEX('SQLAuthority')) SELECT DIFFERENCE ('SLTR','SQLAuthority') When you look at the result set you will get the result in the ranges from 1 to 4. Here is how it works if your result is 0 which means absolutely not relevant to each other and if your result is 1 which means the results are relevant to each other. Have you ever used above two functions in your business need or on production server? If yes, would you please leave a comment with use cases. I believe it will be beneficial to everyone. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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