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  • BigData and Customer Experience: Happy Together

    - by Isabel F. Peñuelas
    The two big buzzes of the year may lay closer than it appears. Both concepts intersect at various points: BigData and Return of Investment of Marketing Campaigns On a recent post Big Data Is The Future Of Marketing Jeff Dachis explains very clearly how “Big data analytics finally allows marketers to identify, measure, and manage what is positively impacting their Brand”. Regression analysis applied to big data volumes coming from social media will substitute the failed attempts to justify marketing investments on social media in terms of followers and likes, he continues, “the measurement models applied by marketers on TV Campaigns don´t work on social”, we need to study the data with fresh eyes and maybe then we will start understanding and measuring brand engagemet. Social CRM and BigData The real value of Social CRM start by analyzing mass of big data from social media in order of applying social intelligence techniques that allow us to classify new customer niches and communities and define appropriated strategies to contact potential customers. Gartner Says that the Market for Social CRM is on pace to surpass $1 Billion in Revenue by Year-End 2012 but in words of Zach Hofer-Shall, Analyst at Forrester Research “Social customer relationship management is hard” (The Social CRM Arms Race Heats ). To succeed brands need three things: Investing in new social tools, investing in consultancy and investing in infrastructure for massive data storage and analysis. Neither CeX or BigData are easy and cheap wins. But what are the customer benefits of such investments? Big Data and Brand Engagement Time is the most valuable asset of todays consumers: tired of information overload, exhausted by the terabytes of offering, anxious because of not having the same fast multichannel experience with their services’ marketers or preferred goods providers than the one they found on their social media. Yes, I know you have read this before- me too. But is real. The motto of the Customer Experience philosophy of providing a consistent experience through multiple touchpoints that makes the relationship customer/brand easier and valuable finds it basis on understanding customer/s preferences and context for which BigData analysis is another imperative. In summary, I believe that using BigData Analysis in combination with appropriated CeX strategies and technologies is a promising direction for achieving: efficiency and marketing cost-savings; growing the customer base; and increasing customer conversion and retention. In a world: The Direction of Future Marketing.

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  • Go Big or Go Special

    - by Ajarn Mark Caldwell
    Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities.  <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler>  In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O’Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn’t take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work.  I don’t doubt he knows exactly what he’s talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I’ll call “Go Big”.  But there’s a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue. As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin’s approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin.  But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special).  This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail.  One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog.  I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach. Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O’Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn’t mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there.  I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!

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  • Rapid Planning: Next Generation MRP

    - by john.bermudez
    MRP has been a mainstay of manufacturing systems for 40 years. MRP evolved from simple inventory planning systems to become the heart of the MRPII systems which eventually became ERP. While the applications surrounding it have become broader, more sophisticated and web-based, MRP continues to operate in the loneliness of the Saturday night batch window quietly exploding bills of materials and logging exceptions for hours. During this same 40 years, manufacturing business processes have seen countless changes and improvements including JIT, TQM, Six Sigma, Flow Manufacturing, Lean Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management. Although much logic has been added to MRP to deal with new manufacturing processes, it has not been able to keep up with the real-time pace of today's supply chain. As a result, planners have devised ingenious ways to trick MRP to handle new processes but often need to dump the output into spreadsheets of their own design in the hope of wrestling thousands of exceptions to ground. Oracle's new Rapid Planning application is just what companies still running MRP have been waiting for! The newest member of the Value Chain Planning product line, Rapid Planning is designed to empower planners with comprehensive supply planning that runs online in minutes, not hours. It enables a planner simulate the incremental impact of a new order or re-run an entire plan in a separate sandbox. Rapid Planning does a complete multi-level bill of material explosion like MRP but plans orders considering material and capacity constraints. Considering material and capacity constraints in planning can help you quickly reduce inventory and improve on-time shipments. Rapid Planning is an APS application that leverages years of Oracle development experience and customer feedback. Rather than rely exclusively on black-box heuristics, Rapid Planning is designed to give planners the computing power to use their industry experience and business knowledge to improve MRP. For example, Rapid Planning has a powerful worksheet user interface with built-in query capability that allows the planner to locate the orders she is interested in and use a mass update function to make quick work of large changes. The planner can save these queries and unique user interface to personalize their planning environment. Most importantly, Rapid Planning is designed to do supply planning in today's dynamic supply chain environment. It can be used to supplement MRP or replace MRP entirely. It generates plans that provide order-by-order details with aggregate key performance indicators that enable planners to quickly assess the overall business impact of a plan. To find out more about how Rapid Planning can help improve your MRP, please contact me at [email protected] or your Oracle Account Manager.

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  • Character Stats and Power

    - by Stephen Furlani
    I'm making an RPG game system and I'm having a hard time deciding on doing detailed or abstract character statistics. These statistics define the character's natural - not learned - abilities. For example: Mass Effect: 0 (None that I can see) X20 (Xtreme Dungeon Mastery): 1 "STAT" Diablo: 4 "Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Vitality" Pendragon: 5 "SIZ, STR, DEX, CON, APP" Dungeons & Dragons (3.x, 4e): 6 "Str, Dex, Con, Wis, Int, Cha" Fallout 3: 7 "S.P.E.C.I.A.L." RIFTS: 8 "IQ, ME, MA, PS, PP, PE, PB, Spd" Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st ed?): 12-ish "WS, BS, S, T, Ag, Int, WP, Fel, A, Mag, IP, FP" HERO (5th ed): 14 "Str, Dex, Con, Body, Int, Ego, Pre, Com, PD, ED, Spd, Rec, END, STUN" The more stats, the more complex and detailed your character becomes. This comes with a trade-off however, because you usually only have limited resources to describe your character. D&D made this infamous with the whole min/max-ing thing where strong characters were typically not also smart. But also, a character with a high Str typically also has high Con, Defenses, Hit Points/Health. Without high numbers in all those other stats, they might as well not be strong since they wouldn't hold up well in hand-to-hand combat. So things like that force trade-offs within the category of strength. So my original (now rejected) idea was to force players into deciding between offensive and defensive stats: Might / Body Dexterity / Speed Wit / Wisdom Heart Soul But this left some stat's without "opposites" (or opposites that were easily defined). I'm leaning more towards the following: Body (Physical Prowess) Mind (Mental Prowess) Heart (Social Prowess) Soul (Spiritual Prowess) This will define a character with just 4 numbers. Everything else gets based off of these numbers, which means they're pretty important. There won't, however, be ways of describing characters who are fast, but not strong or smart, but absent minded. Instead of defining the character with these numbers, they'll be detailing their character by buying skills and powers like these: Quickness Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Dodging. for a character that wants to be faster, or the following for a big, tough character Body Building Add a +2 Bonus to Body Rolls when Lifting, Pushing, or Throwing objects. [EDIT - removed subjectiveness] So my actual questions is what are some pitfalls with a small stat list and a large amount of descriptive powers? Is this more difficult to port cross-platform (pen&paper, PC) for example? Are there examples of this being done well/poorly? Thanks,

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  • Where are my sub templates?

    - by Tim Dexter
    This one is for standalone/BIEE uses of Publisher. All the ERP/CRM/HCM folks are already catered for and can tuck into a nut cutlet and arugala salad. Sorry, I have just watched Food Inc and even if only half of it is true; Im still on a crusade in my house against mass produced food. Wake up World! If you have ventured into the world of sub templating, you'll be reaping some development benefit. In terms of shared report components and calculations they are very useful. Just exporting all of your report headers and footers to a single sub template can potentially save you hours and hours of work and make you look like a star. If someone in management gets it into their head that they would like Comic San Serif font rather than Arial in their report headers, its a 10 min job rather than 100 hours! What about the rest of the report content? I hear you cry. Its coming in 11g, full master template support. Your management wants bright blue borders with yellow backgrounds for all the tables in your reports, 5 minute job! Getting back to sub templates and my comment about all the ERP/CRM/HCM folks be catered for. In the standalone release there is no out of the box directory for you to drop your sub templates. Dropping them into the main report directory would make sense but they are not accessible there via a URL. An oversight on our part and something that will be addressed in 11g. Sub templates are now a first class citizen in the world of BIP, you can upload them and BIP will know what to do with them. But what do you do right now? The easiest place to put them where BIP can 'see' them is to create a directory under the xmlpserver install directory in the J2EE container e.g. $J2EE_HOME/xmlpserver/xmlpserver/subtemplates You can call it whatever you want but when the server is started up, that directory is accessible via a URL i.e. http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf. You can therefore put it into the top of your main templates and call the sub template. <?import: http://tdexter:9704/xmlpserver/subtemplates/mysub.rtf?> Of course, you can drop them anywhere you want, they just need to be in a web server mountable directory. Enjoy the arugala!

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  • The Social Business Thought Leaders - Ray Wang

    - by kellsey.ruppel
    It seems both consumers and businesses are at the peak of the social hype. Overwhelmed by social media channels, platforms, and processes both in their private and professional life, many early adopters are starting to feel the social fatigue. Mirroring what happened with email and web sites during the late 1990's - early 2000's, more and more managers are looking to move from ubiquitous social media tactics to the most appropriate business use case and processes. This step becomes even more important considering the year over year contraction in IT budgets and the consequent need to maximize return on every dollar spent in new technologies. Ray Wang, CEO and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, suggests engagement through collaborative technologies both as a conceptual model and a transformational tool for enterprises to reap business value. Without participation - the reasoning goes - there is no value and good technology alone is not enough to guarantee employee and customer adoption. Enterprise gamification is a new lever to succeed with Social Business by directing a critical mass of participation towards desired outcomes. What kind of outcomes? A recent study from Constellation Research (see 2012 Q1 Gamification Early Adopters Best Practices) highlights how Marketing, Customer Service and HR are leading the pack with gamification in processes such as: Sustaining long term customer loyalty (76.4%) Improving response in campaign to lead (74.5%) Right channeling incidents for resolution in social media (67.3%) Growing the number service and support incidents resolved by the community (63.6%) Improving employee referral rates and effective recruiting (43.6%) Driving on-boarding success with new hires (20%) More than simply adding badges, points and leaderboards to existing processes, enterprise gamification should be holistically embedded into employee and customer experience to stimulate specific behaviors. According to Ray Wang this can be done at three core levels: Measurable actions. The behaviors we want to facilitate consist of granular actions (i.e likes, comments, posts, recommendations, etc) and more complex actions (i.e projects, initiatives, programmes) attributed to individuals, groups and/or external actors  Reputation. The reputation an individual has earned through his actions is a key factor in building motivation among others and it is determined by its identity, social standing status and competitiveness Incentives or the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that motivate behaviors and drive actions Listen to Ray Wang's video-interview to learn more about the dynamics that are shaping the future of collaboration and how gamification can help organizations attain new levels of engagement.

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  • Tips On Using The Service Contracts Import Program

    - by LuciaC
    Prior to release 12.1 there was no supported way to import contracts into the EBS Service Contracts application - there were no public APIs nor contract load programs provided.  From release 12.1 onwards the 'Service Contracts Import Program' is provided to load service contracts into the application. The Service Contracts Import functionality is explained in How to Use the Service Contracts Import Program - Scope and Limitations (Doc ID 1057242.1).  This note includes an attached document which explains the program architecture, shows the Entity Relationship Diagram and details the interface table definitions. The Import program takes data from the interface tables listed below and populates the contracts schema tables:  OKS_USAGE_COUNTERS_INTERFACE OKS_SALES_CREDITS_INTERFACEOKS_NOTES_INTERFACEOKS_LINES_INTERFACEOKS_HEADERS_INTERFACEOKS_COVERED_LEVELS_INTERFACEThese interface tables must be loaded via a custom load program.The Service Contracts Import concurrent request is then submitted to create contracts from this legacy data. The parameters to run the Import program are:  Parameter Description  Mode Validate only, Import  Batch Number Batch_Id (unique id populated into the OKS_HEADERS_INTERFACE table)  Number of Workers Number of workers required (these are spawned as separate sub-requests)  Commit size Represents number of successfully processed contracts commited to database The program spawns sub-requests for the import worker(s) and the 'Service Contracts Import Report'.  The data is validated prior to import and into the Contracts tables and will report errors in the Service Contracts Import Report program output file (Import Execution Report).  Troubleshooting tips are provided in R12.1 - Common Service Contract Import Errors (Doc ID 762545.1); this document lists some, but not all, import errors.  The document will be updated over time.  Additional help is given in Debugging Tip for Service Contracts Import Errors (Doc ID 971426.1).After you successfully import contracts, you can purge the records from the interface tables by running the Service Contracts Import Purge concurrent program. Note that there is no supported way to mass delete data from the Contracts schema tables once they are populated, so data loaded by the Import program must be fully tested and verified before the program is run to load data into a Production system.A Service Contracts Import Test program has been provided which will take an existing contract in the application and load the interface tables using the data from that contract.  This can be used as an example for guidance on how to load the interface tables.  The Test program functionality is explained in How to Use the Service Contracts Test Import Program Provided in Release 12.1 (Doc ID 761209.1).  Note that the Test program has some limitations which do not apply to the full Import program and is not a supported program, it is simply a testing tool.  

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  • Physics/Graphics Components

    - by Brett Powell
    I have spent the last 48 hours reading up on Object Component systems, and feel I am ready enough to start implementing it. I got the base Object and Component classes created, but now that I need to start creating the actual components I am a bit confused. When I think of them in terms of HealthComponent or something that would basically just be a property, it makes perfect sense. When it is something more general as a Physics/Graphics component, I get a bit confused. My Object class looks like this so far (If you notice any changes I should make please let me know, still new to this)... typedef unsigned int ID; class GameObject { public: GameObject(ID id, Ogre::String name = ""); ~GameObject(); ID &getID(); Ogre::String &getName(); virtual void update() = 0; // Component Functions void addComponent(Component *component); void removeComponent(Ogre::String familyName); template<typename T> T* getComponent(Ogre::String familyName) { return dynamic_cast<T*>(m_components[familyName]); } protected: // Properties ID m_ID; Ogre::String m_Name; float m_flVelocity; Ogre::Vector3 m_vecPosition; // Components std::map<std::string,Component*> m_components; std::map<std::string,Component*>::iterator m_componentItr; }; Now the problem I am running into is what would the general population put into Components such as Physics/Graphics? For Ogre (my rendering engine) the visible Objects will consist of multiple Ogre::SceneNode (possibly multiple) to attach it to the scene, Ogre::Entity (possibly multiple) to show the visible meshes, and so on. Would it be best to just add multiple GraphicComponent's to the Object and let each GraphicComponent handle one SceneNode/Entity or is the idea to have one of each Component needed? For Physics I am even more confused. I suppose maybe creating a RigidBody and keeping track of mass/interia/etc. would make sense. But I am having trouble thinking of how to actually putting specifics into a Component. Once I get a couple of these "Required" components done, I think it will make a lot more sense. As of right now though I am still a bit stumped.

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  • Leveraging Social Networks for Retail

    - by David Dorf
    For retailers, social media is all about B2C2C. That is, Business to Consumer to Consumer, or more specifically, retailer to influencer to consumer. Traditional marketing targeted mass media, trying to expose the message to as many people as possible. While effective, this approach has never been very efficient, with high costs for relatively low penetration. Then it was thought that marketers should focus their efforts on a relative few super-influencers that would then sway the masses. History shows a few successes with this approach but lacked any consistency or predictability. After all, if super-influencers were easy to find, most campaigns would easily go viral. Alas, research shows that most wide-spread trends were the result of several fortunate events, including some luck. So do people exert influence over each other when it comes to purchase decisions? Of course they do, all the time. But that influence is usually limited to a small set of friends and specific specialization. For instance, although I have 165 friends on Facebook, I am only able to influence my close friends and family on PC purchases, and I have no sway at all for fashion purchases. People trust my knowledge on technology, but nobody asks my advice on shoes. How then should retailers leverage social networks in order to reinforce brand image and push promotions? Two obvious ways are Like and Share. Online advertisements or wall-postings receive more clicks when the viewer sees that friends have "liked" the posting. That's our modern-day version of word-of-mouth advertising. Statistics show that endorsements from friends make it more likely a person will engage. If my friends and I liked it, then I might also "share" (or "retweet" in the case of Twitter) it with other friends. In that case the retailer has paid for X showings of the advertisement, but sharing has pushed it to an additional Y people at no cost. And further, the implicit endorsement by the sharer makes it more likely the recipient will engage. So a good first step is to find people active in social networks that will Like and Share in order to exert influence. Its still tough to go viral, but doubling engagement is still a big step in the right direction. More complex social graph analysis would be a second step, but I'll leave that topic for another day. If you're interested in the academic side of social dynamics, I suggest reading Duncan Watts' work.

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  • To Serve Man?

    - by Dave Convery
    Since the announcement of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface, the .NET community has wondered if the skills they've spent so long developing might be swept aside,in favour of HTML5 and JavaScript. Mercifully, that only seems to be true of SilverLight (as Simon Cooper points out), but it did leave me thinking how easy it is to impose a technology upon people without directly serving their needs. Case in point: QR codes. Once, probably, benign in purpose, they seem to have become a marketer's tool for determining when someone has engaged with an advert in the real world, with the same certainty as is possible online. Nobody really wants to use QR codes - it's far too much hassle. But advertisers want that data - they want to know that someone actually read their billboard / poster / cereal box, and so this flawed technology is suddenly everywhere, providing little to no value to the people who are actually meant to use it. What about 3D cinema? Profits from the film industry have been steadily increasing throughout the period that digital piracy and mass sharing has been possible, yet the industry cinema chains have forced 3D films upon a broadly uninterested audience, as a way of providing more purpose to going to a cinema, rather than watching it at home. Despite advances in digital projection, 3D cinema is scarcely more immersive to us than were William Castle's hoary old tricks of skeletons on wires and buzzing chairs were to our grandparents. iTunes - originally just a piece of software that catalogued and ripped music for you, but which is now multi-purpose bloatware; a massive, system-hogging behemoth. If it was being built for the people that used it, it would have been split into three or more separate pieces of software long ago. But as bloatware, it serves Apple primarily rather than us, stuffed with Music, Video, Various stores and phone / iPad management all bolted into one. Why? It's because, that way, you're more likely to bump into something you want to buy. You can't even buy a new laptop without finding that a significant chunk of your hard drive has been sold to 'select partners' - advertisers, suppliers of virus-busting software, and endless bloatware-flogging pop-ups that make using a new laptop without reformatting the hard drive like stepping back in time. The product you want is not the one you paid for. This is without even looking at services like Facebook and Klout, who provide a notional service with the intention of slurping up as much data about you as possible (in Klout's case, whether you create an account with them or not). What technologies do you find annoying or intrusive, and who benefits from keeping them around?

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  • SharePoint 2010 Hosting :: Sending SMS Alerts in SharePoint 2010 Over Office Mobile Service Protocol (OMS)

    - by mbridge
    In this post, I want to share the exciting news of SharePoint's 2010 new feature. Finally it's possible to send SMS directly from SharePoint to mobile phones. The advantages of sending SMS instead of Email messages are obvious: SMS alerts or reminders that are received on mobile phones are more preferred than Email messages that can be lost in the mass of spam. The interface is standard as it's very similar to previous versions of the product. Adjustments are easy to do, simply enter the address of the Office Mobile Service (OMS) web-service which you want to use for sending messages, then specify the connection parameters. Further details on Office Mobile Service is available below. The Test Service button checks if OMS web-service is accessible using provided URL (user name and password are not verified). This check is needed because OMS web-service URL depends on the mobile operator and country. It's now possible to select the method of sending alerts in alerts settings. Email option is selected by default. Alerts delivery method is displayed in the list of existing alerts. Office Mobile Service (OMS) SharePoint 2010 uses exterior servers similar to SMTP servers for sending SMS alerts. However, Microsoft started development and promotion of their own protocol instead of using existing ones. That is how Office Mobile Service (OMS) appeared. This open protocol enables clients to send text and multimedia messages (mobile messages) remotely to the server which processes these messages and delivers them to mobile phones.  Typical scenario of utilizing this protocol is data transfer between computer application and mobile phone. The recipient can answer messages and the server in return will deliver the answer by SMTP protocol, i.e. by email.  Key quality of this protocol is that it's built on base of HTPP(S) and SOAP protocols.     This means that in fact SMS gateway must support typified web-service. What do you get from web-service? What you get is the ability to send SMS from any platform you want.  The protocol is being developed at the moment and version 0.2 from 08/28/2009 was available when the article was published.  For promotion of their protocol and simplifying server search, Microsoft represented web-service http://messaging.office.microsoft.com/HostingProviders.aspx that helps to receive the list of providers, which supports OMS protocol and message delivery to your operator.  All you need to do is decide which provider to use, complete the agreement, then adjust the SharePoint connection parameters and start working.  Some providers advertise themselves not only for clients but for mobile operators as well. They offer automatic adding to the list of the Office Mobile Service Providers.  To view the full specifications of OMS, please go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd774103.aspx.

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  • The value of money

    - by ambreesh
    A dictionary definition of money is "any circulating medium of exchange, including coins, paper money, anddemand deposits". If you ask an economist for a definition of money, you will be introduced to terms like M1, M2, M3, all of which denote tangible assets - currency, and anything that is liquid enough to be used as currency; checks, stamps and now mobile minutes being examples. The macroeconomic theory of money is fascinating - the effect of money supply on exchange rates and interest rates, the concept of the "money multiplier" (if I deposit $10 into a bank, the bank will likely loan $8 of it to someone else, who will then give it to someone else in exchange for goods and services, who will then likely deposit it again, which will result in the bank loaning it again and so on - making that $10 of money supply worth a lot more ($10+$8+$x+...)).  But all this depends on money supply - in other words, money that is printed by the mint. The Treasury Department spends a lot of time figuring out how much money to print, there is lot being written on QE2 now-a-days, which is intended to increase the money supply. Money is used to purchase goods and services, and yes it is saved too but that is so one can purchase goods and services later. Completely unrelated, there is a sea change occurring in the web world, dominated by, I believe, Facebook. With 500M active users and growing, FB has the ability to introduce a "money supply" which is completely unrelated to today's "money". Using today's money, a FB user can buy a certain number of FB$s, and then use the FB$s within FB to purchase goods and services - with the money multiplier kicking in. I remember talking with a colleague about this a few years ago, the true way to monetize the web is to introduce an alternative system to the existing, and FB has the ability to do just that. There is enough momentum, enough mass for FB to start to monetize its user base. And completely screw up the economists at the Treasury, not to mention disintermediating the banks completely. The only other ubiquitous asset is mobile minutes. People exchanging mobile minutes for tangible goods and services happens today, the big difference however is the demographic. While Safaricom offers this ability in Kenya today, FB has the 15-40 year middle class user as their user. And the next generation is growing up with FB as a standard channel for communicating with their peers. Virtual flowers when going in for the kill? If your target is an avid FB user, why not? It certainly is a lot more green - no pun intended!

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  • Arrive steering behavior

    - by dbostream
    I bought a book called Programming game AI by example and I am trying to implement the arrive steering behavior. The problem I am having is that my objects oscillate around the target position; after oscillating less and less for awhile they finally come to a stop at the target position. Does anyone have any idea why this oscillating behavior occur? Since the examples accompanying the book are written in C++ I had to rewrite the code into C#. Below is the relevant parts of the steering behavior: private enum Deceleration { Fast = 1, Normal = 2, Slow = 3 } public MovingEntity Entity { get; private set; } public Vector2 SteeringForce { get; private set; } public Vector2 Target { get; set; } public Vector2 Calculate() { SteeringForce.Zero(); SteeringForce = SumForces(); SteeringForce.Truncate(Entity.MaxForce); return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 SumForces() { Vector2 force = new Vector2(); if (Activated(BehaviorTypes.Arrive)) { force += Arrive(Target, Deceleration.Slow); if (!AccumulateForce(force)) return SteeringForce; } return SteeringForce; } private Vector2 Arrive(Vector2 target, Deceleration deceleration) { Vector2 toTarget = target - Entity.Position; double distance = toTarget.Length(); if (distance > 0) { //because Deceleration is enumerated as an int, this value is required //to provide fine tweaking of the deceleration.. double decelerationTweaker = 0.3; double speed = distance / ((double)deceleration * decelerationTweaker); speed = Math.Min(speed, Entity.MaxSpeed); Vector2 desiredVelocity = toTarget * speed / distance; return desiredVelocity - Entity.Velocity; } return new Vector2(); } private bool AccumulateForce(Vector2 forceToAdd) { double magnitudeRemaining = Entity.MaxForce - SteeringForce.Length(); if (magnitudeRemaining <= 0) return false; double magnitudeToAdd = forceToAdd.Length(); if (magnitudeToAdd > magnitudeRemaining) magnitudeToAdd = magnitudeRemaining; SteeringForce += Vector2.NormalizeRet(forceToAdd) * magnitudeToAdd; return true; } This is the update method of my objects: public void Update(double deltaTime) { Vector2 steeringForce = Steering.Calculate(); Vector2 acceleration = steeringForce / Mass; Velocity = Velocity + acceleration * deltaTime; Velocity.Truncate(MaxSpeed); Position = Position + Velocity * deltaTime; } If you want to see the problem with your own eyes you can download a minimal example here. Thanks in advance.

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  • Is Infiniband going to get squeezed by iWARP and external QPI?

    - by andy.grover
    The Inquirer certainly thinks so.However, I'm not so sure it makes sense to compare Infiniband to an as-yet-unannounced optical external QPI. QPI is currently a processor interconnect. CPUs, RAM, and devices connected by it are conceptually part of the same machine -- they run a single OS, for example. They are both "networks" or "fabrics" but they have very different design trade-offs.Another widely-used bus in the system is closer to Infiniband than QPI -- PCI Express. Isn't it more likely that PCIe could take on IB? There are companies already who have solutions that use external PCI Express for cluster interconnect, but these have not gained significant market share. Why would QPI, a technology whose sweet spot is even further from Infiniband's than PCIe, be able to challenge Infiniband? It's hard to speculate without much information, but right now it doesn't seem likely to me.The other prediction made in the article is that Intel's 10GbE iWARP card could squeeze IB on the low end, due to its greater compatibility and lower cost.It's definitely never a good idea to bet against Ethernet when it comes to mass-market, commodity networking. Ethernet will win. 10GbE will win. But, there are now two competing ways to implement the low-latency RDMA Verbs interface on top of Ethernet. iWARP is essentially RDMA over TCP/IP over Ethernet. The new alternative is IBoE (Infiniband over Ethernet, aka RoCEE, aka "Rocky"). This encapsulates the IB packet protocol directly in the Ethernet frame. It loses the layer 3 routability of iWARP, but better maintains software compatibility with existing apps that use IB, and is simpler to implement in both software and hardware. iWARP has a substantial head start, but I believe that IBoE silicon will eventually be cheaper, and more likely to be implemented in commodity Ethernet hardware.I think IBoE is going to take low-end market share from traditional IB, but I think this is a situation IB hardware vendors have no problem accepting. Commoditized IBoE NICs invite greater use of RDMA features, and when higher performance is needed, customers can upgrade to "real" IB, maintaining IB's justification for higher prices. (IB max interconnect speeds have historically been 2-4x higher than Ethernet, and I don't see that changing.)(ObDisclosure: My current employer now sells IB hardware. I previously also worked at Intel. My opinions are my own, duh.)

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  • Get to Know a Candidate (2 of 25): Merlin Miller&ndash;American Third Position Party

    - by Brian Lanham
    DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Meet Merlin Miller of American Third Position Party In addition to being American Third Position Party nominee, Miller is an independent film maker.  He is a graduate of West Point and has commanded two units in the United States Army.  After military service he worked as an industrial engineering manager for Michelin Tire.  He learned about film making by earning an MFA from the University of Southern California. Mr. Miller is on the ballot in: CO, NJ, and TN. In the 2000’s, Miller began taking an increasingly paleoconservative political stance.  He claimed that Hollywood “ surreptitiously seeks to destroy our European-American heritage and our Christian-based traditional values, and replace them with values that debase these traditional values and elevate minorities as paragons of virtue and wisdom....Today’s motion pictures, in concert with other forms of mass media entertainment, are the greatest enemies to the well-being of our progeny and the future of our country.” Miller states that he "doesn't like" interracial marriage; however, he does not support outlawing interracial marriage, either.  Miller has denied being anti-Semitic, instead claiming that he merely opposes "favoritism" granted to Jews in the film industry.  He also opposes illegal immigration and what he refers to as "wide open borders" in the United States. The American Third Position Party (A3P) is a third positionist American political party which promotes white supremacy.  It was officially launched in January 2010 (although in November 2009 it filed papers to get on a ballot in California) partially to channel the right-wing populist resentment engendered by the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and the policies of the Obama administration and defines its principal mission as representing the political interests of white Americans. The party takes a strong stand against immigration and globalization, and strongly supports an anti-interventionist foreign policy. Although the party does not support labor unions, they do strongly support the labor rights of the American working class on a platform of placing American workers first over illegal immigrant workers and banning of overseas corporate relocation of American industry and technology Third Position or Third Alternative refers to a revolutionary nationalist political position that emphasizes its opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right", instead claiming to syncretize radical ideas from both ends of the political spectrum Learn more about Merlin Miller and American Third Position Party on Wikipedia.

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  • Automate RAC Cluster Upgrades using EM12c

    - by HariSrinivasan
    One of the most arduous processes  in DB maintenance is upgrading Databases across major versions, especially for complex RAC Clusters.With the release of Database Plug-in  (12.1.0.5.0), EM12c Rel 3 (12.1.0.3.0)  now supports automated upgrading of RAC Clusters in addition to Standalone Databases. This automation includes: Upgrade of the complete Cluster across the nodes. ( Example: 11.1.0.7 CRS, ASM, RAC DB  ->   11.2.0.4 or 12.1.0.1 GI, RAC DB)  Best practices in tune with your operations, where you can automate upgrade in steps: Step 1: Upgrade the Clusterware to Grid Infrastructure (Allowing you to wait, test and then move to DBs). Step 2: Upgrade RAC DBs either separately or in group (Mass upgrade of RAC DB's in the cluster). Standard pre-requisite checks like Cluster Verification Utility (CVU) and RAC checks Division of Upgrade process into Non-downtime activities (like laying down the new Oracle Homes (OH), running checks) to Downtime Activities (like Upgrading Clusterware to GI, Upgrading RAC) there by lowering the downtime required. Ability to configure Back up and Restore options as a part of this upgrade process. You can choose to : a. Take Backup via this process (either Guaranteed Restore Point (GRP) or RMAN) b. Set the procedure to pause just before the upgrade step to allow you to take a custom backup c. Ignore backup completely, if there are external mechanisms already in place.  High Level Steps: Select the Procedure "Upgrade Database" from Database Provisioning Home page. Choose the Target Type for upgrade and the Destination version Pick and choose the Cluster, it picks up the complete topology since the clusterware/GI isn't upgraded already Select the Gold Image of the destination version for deploying both the GI and RAC OHs Specify new OH patch, credentials, choose the Restore and Backup options, if required provide additional pre and post scripts Set the Break points in the procedure execution to isolate Downtime activities Submit and track the procedure's execution status.  The animation below captures the steps in the wizard.  For step by step process and to understand the support matrix check this documentation link. Explore the functionality!! In the next blog, will talk about automating rolling Upgrades of Databases in Physical Standby Data Guard environment using Transient Logical Standby.

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  • What is the best way to implement collision detection using Bullet physics engine and a track generated from a curve?

    - by tigrou
    I am developing a small racing game were the track is generated from a curve. As said above, the track is generated, but not infinite. The track of one level could fit with no problem in memory and will contain a reasonably small amount of triangles. For collisions, I would like to use Bullet physics engine and know what is the best way to handle collisions with the track efficiently. NOTE : The track will be stored as a static rigid body (mass = 0). The player will be represented by a sphere shape for collisions. Here is some possibilities i have in mind : Create one rigid body, then, put all triangles of the track (except non collidable stuff) into it. Result : 1 body with many triangles (eg : 30000 triangles) Split the track into several sections (eg: 10 sections). Then, for each section, create a rigid body and put corresponding triangles in it. Result : small amount of bodies with relatively small amount of triangles (eg : 1500 triangles per section). Split the track into many sub-sections (eg : 1200 sections). Here one subsection = very small step when generating the curve. Again for each sub-section, create a body and put triangles in it. Result : many bodies with very small amount of triangles (eg : 20 triangles). Advantage : it could be possible to "extra data" to each of the subsection, that could be used when handling collisions. Same as 2, but only put sections N and N+1 in physics engine (where N = current section where the player is). When player reach section N+1, unload section N and load section N+2 and so on... Issue : harder to implement, problems if the player suddenly "jump" from one section to another (eg : player fly away from section N, and fall on section N + 4 that was underneath : no collision handled, player will fall into void ) Same as 4, but with many sub-sections. Issues : since subsections are very small there will be constantly new bodies added and removed to physics engine at runtime. Possibilities for player to accidently skip some sections and fall into the void are higher than 4.

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  • Unable to find good parameters for behavior of a puck in Farseer

    - by Krumelur
    EDIT: I have tried all kinds of variations now. The last one was to adjust the linear velocity in each step: newVel = oldVel * 0.9f - all of this including your proposals kind of work, however in the end if the velocity is little enough, the puck sticks to the wall and slides either vertically or horizontally. I can't get rid of this behavior. I want it to bounce, no matter how slow it is. Retitution is 1 for all objects, Friction is 0 for all. There is no gravity. What am I possibly doing wrong? In my battle to learn and understand Farseer I'm trying to setup a simple Air Hockey like table with a puck on it. The table's border body is made up from: Vertices aBorders = new Vertices( 4 ); aBorders.Add( new Vector2( -fHalfWidth, fHalfHeight ) ); aBorders.Add( new Vector2( fHalfWidth, fHalfHeight ) ); aBorders.Add( new Vector2( fHalfWidth, -fHalfHeight ) ); aBorders.Add( new Vector2( -fHalfWidth, -fHalfHeight ) ); FixtureFactory.AttachLoopShape( aBorders, this ); this.CollisionCategories = Category.All; this.CollidesWith = Category.All; this.Position = Vector2.Zero; this.Restitution = 1f; this.Friction = 0f; The puck body is defined with: FixtureFactory.AttachCircle( DIAMETER_PHYSIC_UNITS / 2f, 0.5f, this ); this.Restitution = 0.1f; this.Friction = 0.5f; this.BodyType = FarseerPhysics.Dynamics.BodyType.Dynamic; this.LinearDamping = 0.5f; this.Mass = 0.2f; I'm applying a linear force to the puck: this.oPuck.ApplyLinearImpulse( new Vector2( 1f, 1f ) ); The problem is that the puck and the walls appear to be sticky. This means that the puck's velocity drops to zero to quickly below a certain velocity. The puck gets reflected by the walls a couple of times and then just sticks to the left wall and continues sliding downwards the left wall. This looks very unrealistic. What I'm really looking for is that a puck-wall-collision does slow down the puck only a tiny little bit. After tweaking all values left and right I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong. Maybe some expert can comment on the parameters?

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  • How can I be prepared to join a company?

    - by Aerovistae
    There's more to it than that, but this title was the best way I could think of to sum it up. I'm a senior in a good computer science program, and I'm graduating early. About to start interviews and all whatnot. I'm not a super-experienced programmer, not one of those people who started in middle school. I'm decent at this, but I'm not among the best, not nearly. I have to do an awful lot of googling. So today I'm meeting some fellow for lunch at a campus cafe to discuss some front-end details when this tall, good-looking guy begs pardon, says he's new to campus, says he's wondering if we know where he can go to sign up for recruiting developers. Quickly evolves into long conversation: he's the CEO of a seems-to-be-doing-well start-up. Hiring passionate interns and full-times. Sounds great! I take one look at his site on my own computer later, immediately spot a major bug. No idea how to fix it, but I see it. I go over to the page code, and good god. It's the standard amount of code you would expect from a full-scale web application, a couple dozen pages of HTML and scripts. I don't even know where to start reading it. I've built sites from scratch, but obviously never on that scale, nor have I ever worked on one of that scale. I have no idea which bit might generate the bug. But that sets me thinking: How could someone like me possibly settle into an environment like that? A start-up is a very high-pressure working environment. I don't know if I can work at that pace under those constraints-- I would hate to let people down. And with only 10 employees, it's not like anyone has much time to help you get your bearings. Somewhere in there is a question. Can you see it? I'm asking for general advice here. Maybe even anecdotal advice. Is joining a start-up right out of college a scary process? Am I overestimating what it would take to figure out the mass of code behind this site? What's the likelihood a decent but only moderately-experienced coder could earn his pay at such a place? For instance, I know nothing of server-side/back-end programming. Never touched it. That scares me.

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  • New grad; To overcome complete lack of experience, should I ditch a creative pet project in lieu of one that would demonstrate more applicable skills?

    - by Hart Simha
    I am currently working on a project on github that I think would be a good demonstration of my initiative, creativity and enthusiasm. It is an educational game I am developing in pygame that enables the user to learn to improve their development productivity by using vim, specifically with python, though learning to code faster with vim should be transferable to any language. I think this is something that might have a mass appeal and benefit to a lot of people in a measurable way. -However- I am graduating from college in a month (my degree is computer science with a minor in English), with no experience that is relevant to helping me get any kind of job in the field, and a gpa that doesn't tout my merits. I could pursue a career in game development, but it's not necessarily what I'm most interested in, and see myself applying to startups around the country. To the places I am looking at applying, showing that I have experience with pygame is going to be largely irrelevant, except in demonstration of my ability to code, period. A lot of skills that ARE more marketable, such a data modeling, GIS, mobile application, development, javascript, .net framework, and various web development technologies, are not going to be showcased by this project (on the upside, employers do like to see familiarity with git and python). I'm wondering if I should sink all my free time in the next couple of months into this project, since I'm motivated and interested in it, and if the value of being able to demonstrate ambition and 'good ideas' (for lack of a better term, and in my own opinion) will compensate for the absence of demonstrating more sought-after skills. I am probably at a point where I should either commit fully to this project now, or put it on the backburner in favor of something else, and I am leaning towards continuing with what I am already working on, because I think it's a great idea, and something achievable to me with enough dedication over the next couple months. But the most important thing to me is being able to get a job out of college, which I am exceedingly concerned about as the professional landscape which I am navigating for the first time is a lot more intimidating than I could have anticipated, with almost every job (even short-term contract positions) requiring years of experience which I lack. So in brief, the common denominator to answering the question "How can I overcome experience requirements for a job" seems to be "Show off your own project." I want to know WHICH project I should work on to best increase my chances of getting a job out of college, keeping in mind that I have no experience. I believe this question is applicable to any new grad that lacks demonstrable experience.

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  • How far should an entity take care of its properties values by itself?

    - by Kharlos Dominguez
    Let's consider the following example of a class, which is an entity that I'm using through Entity Framework. - InvoiceHeader - BilledAmount (property, decimal) - PaidAmount (property, decimal) - Balance (property, decimal) I'm trying to find the best approach to keep Balance updated, based on the values of the two other properties (BilledAmount and PaidAmount). I'm torn between two practices here: Updating the balance amount every time BilledAmount and PaidAmount are updated (through their setters) Having a UpdateBalance() method that the callers would run on the object when appropriate. I am aware that I can just calculate the Balance in its getter. However, it isn't really possible because this is an entity field that needs to be saved back to the database, where it has an actual column, and where the calculated amount should be persisted to. My other worry about the automatically updating approach is that the calculated values might be a little bit different from what was originally saved to the database, due to rounding values (an older version of the software, was using floats, but now decimals). So, loading, let's say 2000 entities from the database could change their status and make the ORM believe that they have changed and be persisted back to the database the next time the SaveChanges() method is called on the context. It would trigger a mass of updates that I am not really interested in, or could cause problems, if the calculation methods changed (the entities fetched would lose their old values to be replaced by freshly recalculated ones, simply by being loaded). Then, let's take the example even further. Each invoice has some related invoice details, which also have BilledAmount, PaidAmount and Balance (I'm simplifying my actual business case for the sake of the example, so let's assume the customer can pay each item of the invoice separately rather than as a whole). If we consider the entity should take care of itself, any change of the child details should cause the Invoice totals to change as well. In a fully automated approach, a simple implementation would be looping through each detail of the invoice to recalculate the header totals, every time one the property changes. It probably would be fine for just a record, but if a lot of entities were fetched at once, it could create a significant overhead, as it would perform this process every time a new invoice detail record is fetched. Possibly worse, if the details are not already loaded, it could cause the ORM to lazy-load them, just to recalculate the balances. So far, I went with the Update() method-way, mainly for the reasons I explained above, but I wonder if it was right. I'm noticing I have to keep calling these methods quite often and at different places in my code and it is potential source of bugs. It also has a detrimental effect on data-binding because when the properties of the detail or header changes, the other properties are left out of date and the method has no way to be called. What is the recommended approach in this case?

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  • June 2013 release of SSDT contains a minor bug that you should be aware of

    - by jamiet
    I have discovered what seems, to me, like a bug in the June 2013 release of SSDT and given the problems that it created yesterday on my current gig I thought it prudent to write this blog post to inform people of it. I’ve built a very simple SSDT project to reproduce the problem that has just two tables, [Table1] and [Table2], and also a procedure [Procedure1]: The two tables have exactly the same definition, both a have a single column called [Id] of type integer. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Table1] (     [Id] INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY ) My stored procedure simply joins the two together, orders them by the column used in the join predicate, and returns the results: CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[Procedure1] AS     SELECT t1.*     FROM    Table1 t1     INNER JOIN Table2 t2         ON    t1.Id = t2.Id     ORDER BY Id Now if I create those three objects manually and then execute the stored procedure, it works fine: So we know that the code works. Unfortunately, SSDT thinks that there is an error here: The text of that error is: Procedure: [dbo].[Procedure1] contains an unresolved reference to an object. Either the object does not exist or the reference is ambiguous because it could refer to any of the following objects: [dbo].[Table1].[Id] or [dbo].[Table2].[Id]. Its complaining that the [Id] field in the ORDER BY clause is ambiguous. Now you may well be thinking at this point “OK, just stick a table alias into the ORDER BY predicate and everything will be fine!” Well that’s true, but there’s a bigger problem here. One of the developers at my current client installed this drop of SSDT and all of a sudden all the builds started failing on his machine – he had errors left right and centre because, as it transpires, we have a fair bit of code that exhibits this scenario.  Worse, previous installations of SSDT do not flag this code as erroneous and therein lies the rub. We immediately had a mass panic where we had to run around the department to our developers (of which there are many) ensuring that none of them should upgrade their SSDT installation if they wanted to carry on being productive for the rest of the day. Also bear in mind that as soon as a new drop of SSDT comes out then the previous version is instantly unavailable so rolling back is going to be impossible unless you have created an administrative install of SSDT for that previous version. Just thought you should know! In the grand schema of things this isn’t a big deal as the bug can be worked around with a simple code modification but forewarned is forearmed so they say! Last thing to say, if you want to know which version of SSDT you are running check my blog post Which version of SSDT Database Projects do I have installed? @Jamiet

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  • Physics Engine [Collision Response, 2-dimensional] experts, help!! My stack is unstable!

    - by Register Sole
    Previously, I struggle with the sequential impulse-based method I developed. Thanks to jedediah referring me to this paper, I managed to rebuild the codes and implement the simultaneous impulse based method with Projected-Gauss-Seidel (PGS) iterative solver as described by Erin Catto (mentioned in the reference of the paper as [Catt05]). So here's how it currently is: The simulation handles 2-dimensional rotating convex polygons. Detection is using separating-axis test, with a SKIN, meaning closest points between two polygons is detected and determined if their distance is less than SKIN. To resolve collision, simultaneous impulse-based method is used. It is solved using iterative solver (PGS-solver) as in Erin Catto's paper. Error-correction is implemented using Baumgarte's stabilization (you can refer to either paper for this) using J V = beta/dt*overlap, J is the Jacobian for the constraints, V the matrix containing the velocities of the bodies, beta an error-correction parameter that is better be < 1, dt the time-step taken by the engine, and overlap, the overlap between the bodies (true overlap, so SKIN is ignored). However, it is still less stable than I expected :s I tried to stack hexagons (or squares, doesn't really matter), and even with only 4 to 5 of them, they hardly stand still! Also note that I am not looking for a sleeping scheme. But I would settle if you have any explicit scheme to handle resting contacts. That said, I would be more than happy if you have a way of treating it generally (as continuous collision, instead of explicitly as a special state). Ideas I have: I would try adding a damping term (proportional to velocity) to the Baumgarte. Is this a good idea in general? If not I would not want to waste my time trying to tune the parameter hoping it magically works. Ideas I have tried: Using simultaneous position based error correction as described in the paper in section 5.3.2, turned out to be worse than the current scheme. If you want to know the parameters I used: Hexagons, side 50 (pixels) gravity 2400 (pixels/sec^2) time-step 1/60 (sec) beta 0.1 restitution 0 to 0.2 coeff. of friction 0.2 PGS iteration 10 initial separation 10 (pixels) mass 1 (unit is irrelevant for now, i modified velocity directly<-impulse method) inertia 1/1000 Thanks in advance! I really appreciate any help from you guys!! :)

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  • ADF Real World Developers Guide Book Review

    - by Grant Ronald
    I'm half way through my review of "Oracle ADF Real World Developer's Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman - unfortunately some work deadlines de-railed me from having completed my review by now but here goes.  First thing, Jobinesh works in the Oracle Product Management team with me, so is a colleague. That declaration aside, its clear that this is someone who has done the "real world" side of ADF development and that comes out in the book. In this book he addresses both the newbies and the experience developers alike.  He introduces the ADF building blocks like entity objects and view obejcts, but also goes into some of the nitty gritty details as well.  There is a pro and con to this approach; having only just learned about an entity or view object, you might then be blown away by some of the lower details of coding or lifecycle.  In that respect, you might consider this a book which you could read 3 or 4 times; maybe skipping some elements in the first read but on the next read you have a better grounding to learn the more advanced topics. One of the key issues he addresses is breaking down what happens behind the scenes.  At first, this may not seem important since you trust the framework to do everything for you - but having an understanding of what goes on is essential as you move through development.  For example, page 58 he explains the full lifecycle of what happens when you execute a query.  I think this is a great feature of his book. You see this elsewhere, for example he explains the full lifecycle of what goes on when a page is accessed : which files are involved,the JSF lifecycle etc. He also sprinkes the book with some best practices and advice which go beyond the standard features of ADF and really hits the mark in terms of "real world" advice. So in summary, this is a great ADF book, well written and covering a mass of information.  If you are brand new to ADF its still valid given it does start with the basics.  But you might want to read the book 2 or 3 times, skipping the advanced stuff on the first read.  For those who have some basics already then its going to be an awesome way to cement your knowledge and take it to the next levels.  And for the ADF experts, you are still going to pick up some great ADF nuggets.  Advice: every ADF developer should have one!

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  • How to stop Excel 2003 from loading a Gazillion files

    - by Gary M. Mugford
    One of my soon-to-be-ex-friends got an Excel file from another friend of his and decided to click on it. It started opening all kinds of files from within Excel. Over 200 and still counting when he called me. I told him to go to task manager, which showed a LOT of files in the applications tab, but only one Excel.exe in the processes tab. Closing it down there, closed down Excel. I then CrossLooped in to see if I could give him a helping hand. Each time Excel was re-opened, the mass influx of files started. They were all kinds of files, PDFs, Docs, JPGs, even some spreadsheets. It looked like the end of solitaire, with multiple windows opening (XP) and the counter on the lone Excel button on the task bar counting off the files. I did the task manager exit routine and went looking for temp files. I CrapCleaned out the system. Made sure I went through the files created in the last hour and deleted anything with a temp anywhere in it. I also deleted the crappy infected/corrupted file from it's place on the desktop (yeah, I know, I yelled for 15 minutes on THAT subject). Despite a delousing, the restart of Excel, which complained of a deactivated add-in, would start the cascading windows, whether I answered yes or no to that question. Yes, it knew it had a serious crash, but why would it just keep on trying to load the bad file, even when I got rid of it? But here's the real question. WHERE was it loading from? I went through the backup folder and NOTHING was there! So what's the process for starting Excel WITHOUT it trying to do a crash recovery? Sort of makes me feel stupid at times. Thanks for any light you can shed on this issue. GM

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