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  • apache+mod_wsgi configuration for django project(s) on a quad core

    - by Stefano
    I've been experiment quite some time with a "typical" django setting upon nginx+apache2+mod_wsgi+memcached(+postgresql) (reading the doc and some questions on SO and SF, see comments) Since I'm still unsatisfied with the behavior (definitely because of some bad misconfiguration on my part) I would like to know what a good configuration would look like with these hypotesis: Quad-Core Xeon 2.8GHz 8 gigs memory several django projects (anything special related to this?) These are excerpts form my current confs: apache2 SetEnv VHOST null #WSGIPythonOptimize 2 <VirtualHost *:8082> ServerName subdomain.domain.com ServerAlias www.domain.com SetEnv VHOST subdomain.domain AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 ServerSignature Off LogFormat "%{X-Real-IP}i %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\"" custom ErrorLog /home/project1/var/logs/apache_error.log CustomLog /home/project1/var/logs/apache_access.log custom AllowEncodedSlashes On WSGIDaemonProcess subdomain.domain user=www-data group=www-data threads=25 WSGIScriptAlias / /home/project1/project/wsgi.py WSGIProcessGroup %{ENV:VHOST} </VirtualHost> wsgi.py import os import sys # setting all the right paths.... _realpath = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__)) _public_html = os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_realpath, '../')) sys.path.append(_realpath) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_realpath, 'apps'))) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(_public_html)) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_public_html, 'libs'))) sys.path.append(os.path.normpath(os.path.join(_public_html, 'django'))) os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'settings' import django.core.handlers.wsgi _application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler() def application(environ, start_response): """ Launches django passing over some environment (domain name) settings """ application_group = environ['mod_wsgi.application_group'] """ wsgi application group is required. It's also used to generate the HOST.DOMAIN.TLD:PORT parameters to pass over """ assert application_group fields = application_group.replace('|', '').split(':') server_name = fields[0] os.environ['WSGI_APPLICATION_GROUP'] = application_group os.environ['WSGI_SERVER_NAME'] = server_name if len(fields) > 1 : os.environ['WSGI_PORT'] = fields[1] splitted = server_name.rsplit('.', 2) assert splitted >= 2 splited.reverse() if len(splitted) > 0 : os.environ['WSGI_TLD'] = splitted[0] if len(splitted) > 1 : os.environ['WSGI_DOMAIN'] = splitted[1] if len(splitted) > 2 : os.environ['WSGI_HOST'] = splitted[2] return _application(environ, start_response)` folder structure in case it matters (slightly shortened actually) /home/www-data/projectN/var/logs /project (contains manage.py, wsgi.py, settings.py) /project/apps (all the project ups are here) /django /libs Please forgive me in advance if I overlooked something obvious. My main question is about the apache2 wsgi settings. Are those fine? Is 25 threads an /ok/ number with a quad core for one only django project? Is it still ok with several django projects on different virtual hosts? Should I specify 'process'? Any other directive which I should add? Is there anything really bad in the wsgi.py file? I've been reading about potential issues with the standard wsgi.py file, should I switch to that? Or.. should this conf just be running fine, and I should look for issues somewhere else? So, what do I mean by "unsatisfied": well, I often get quite high CPU WAIT; but what is worse, is that relatively often apache2 gets stuck. It just does not answer anymore, and has to be restarted. I have setup a monit to take care of that, but it ain't a real solution. I have been wondering if it's an issue with the database access (postgresql) under heavy load, but even if it was, why would the apache2 processes get stuck? Beside these two issues, performance is overall great. I even tried New Relic and got very good average results.

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  • Lessons from rewriting POP Forums for MVC, open source-like

    - by Jeff
    It has been a ton of work, interrupted over the last two years by unemployment, moving, a baby, failing to sell houses and other life events, but it's really exciting to see POP Forums v9 coming together. I'm not even sure when I decided to really commit to it as an open source project, but working on the same team as the CodePlex folks probably had something to do with it. Moving along the roadmap I set for myself, the app is now running on a quasi-production site... we launched MouseZoom last weekend. (That's a post-beta 1 build of the forum. There's also some nifty Silverlight DeepZoom goodness on that site.)I have to make a point to illustrate just how important starting over was for me. I started this forum thing for my sites in old ASP more than ten years ago. What a mess that stuff was, including SQL injection vulnerabilities and all kinds of crap. It went to ASP.NET in 2002, but even then, it felt a little too much like script. More than a year later, in 2003, I did an honest to goodness rewrite. If you've been in this business of writing code for any amount of time, you know how much you hate what you wrote a month ago, so just imagine that with seven years in between. The subsequent versions still carried a fair amount of crap, and that's why I had to start over, to make a clean break. Mind you, much of that crap is still running on some of my production sites in a stable manner, but it's a pain in the ass to maintain.So with that clean break, there is much that I have learned. These are a few of those lessons, in no particular order...Avoid shiny object syndromeOver the years, I've embraced new things without bothering to ask myself why. I remember spending the better part of a year trying to adapt this app to use the membership and profile API's in ASP.NET, just because they were there. They didn't solve any known problem. Early on in this version, I dabbled in exotic ORM's, even though I already had the fundamental SQL that I knew worked. I bloated up the client side code with all kinds of jQuery UI and plugins just because, and it got in the way. All the new shiny can be distracting, and I've come to realize that I've allowed it to be a distraction most of my professional life.Just query what you needI've spent a lot of time over-thinking how to query data. In the SQL world, this means exotic joins, special caches, the read-update-commit loop of ORM's, etc. There are times when you have to remind yourself that you aren't Facebook, you'll never be Facebook, and that databases are in fact intended to serve data. In a lot of projects, back in the day, I used to have these big, rich data objects and pass them all over the place, through various application tiers, when in reality, all I needed was some ID from the entity. I try to be mindful of how many queries hit the database on a given request, but I don't obsess over it. I just get what I need.Don't spend too much time worrying about your unit testsIf you've looked at any of the tests for POP Forums, you might offer an audible WTF. That's OK. There's a whole lot of mocking going on. In some cases, it points out where you're doing too much, and that's good for improving your design. In other cases it shows where your design sucks. But the biggest trap of unit testing is that you worry it should be prettier. That's a waste of time. When you write a test, in many cases before the production code, the important part is that you're testing the right thing. If you have to mock up a bunch of stuff to test the outcome, so be it, but it's not wasted time. You're still doing up the typical arrange-action-assert deal, and you'll be able to read that later if you need to.Get back to your HTTP rootsASP.NET Webforms did a reasonably decent job at abstracting us away from the stateless nature of the Web. A lot of people criticize it, but I think it all worked pretty well. These days, with MVC, jQuery, REST services, and what not, we've gone back to thinking about the wire. The nuts and bolts passing between our Web browser and server matters. This doesn't make things harder, in my opinion, it makes them easier. There is something incredibly freeing about how we approach development of Web apps now. HTTP is a really simple protocol, and the stuff we push through it, in particular HTML and JSON, are pretty simple too. The debugging points are really easy to trap and trace.Premature optimization is prematureI'll go back to the data thing for a moment. I've been known to look at a particular action or use case and stress about the number of calls that are made to the database. I'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing to keep these in mind, but if you worry about it outside of the context of the actual impact, you're wasting time. For example, I query the database for last read times in a forum separately of the user and the list of forums. The impact on performance barely exists. If I put it under load, exceeding the kind of load I expect, it still barely has an impact. Then consider it only counts for logged in users. The context of this "inefficient" action is that it doesn't matter. Did I mention I won't be Facebook?Solve your own problems firstThis is another trap I've fallen into. I've often thought about what other people might need for some feature or aspect of the app. In other words, I was willing to make design decisions based on non-existent data. How stupid is that? When I decided to truly open source this thing, building for myself first was a stated design goal. This app has to server the audiences of CoasterBuzz, MouseZoom and other sites first. In this development scenario, you don't have access to mountains of usability studies or user focus groups. You have to start with what you know.I'm sure there are other points I could make too. It has been a lot of fun to work on, and I look forward to evolving the UI as time goes on. That's where I hope to see more magic in the future.

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  • No device file for partition on logical volume (Linux LVM)

    - by Brian
    I created a logical volume (scandata) containing a single ext3 partition. It is the only logical volume in its volume group (case4t). Said volume group is comprised by 3 physical volumes, which are three primary partitions on a single block device (/dev/sdb). When I created it, I could mount the partition via the block device /dev/mapper/case4t-scandatap1. Since last reboot the aforementioned block device file has disappeared. It may be of note -- I'm not sure -- that my superior (a college professor) had prompted this reboot by running sudo chmod -R [his name] /usr/bin, which obliterated all suid in its path, preventing the both of us from sudo-ing. That issue has been (temporarily) rectified via this operation. Now I'll cut the chatter and get started with the terminal dumps: $ sudo pvs; sudo vgs; sudo lvs Logging initialised at Sat Jan 8 11:42:34 2011 Set umask to 0077 Scanning for physical volume names PV VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree /dev/sdb1 case4t lvm2 a- 819.32G 0 /dev/sdb2 case4t lvm2 a- 866.40G 0 /dev/sdb3 case4t lvm2 a- 47.09G 0 Wiping internal VG cache Logging initialised at Sat Jan 8 11:42:34 2011 Set umask to 0077 Finding all volume groups Finding volume group "case4t" VG #PV #LV #SN Attr VSize VFree case4t 3 1 0 wz--n- 1.69T 0 Wiping internal VG cache Logging initialised at Sat Jan 8 11:42:34 2011 Set umask to 0077 Finding all logical volumes LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy% Convert scandata case4t -wi-a- 1.69T Wiping internal VG cache $ sudo vgchange -a y Logging initialised at Sat Jan 8 11:43:14 2011 Set umask to 0077 Finding all volume groups Finding volume group "case4t" 1 logical volume(s) in volume group "case4t" already active 1 existing logical volume(s) in volume group "case4t" monitored Found volume group "case4t" Activated logical volumes in volume group "case4t" 1 logical volume(s) in volume group "case4t" now active Wiping internal VG cache $ ls /dev | grep case4t case4t $ ls /dev/mapper case4t-scandata control $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/case4t/scandata Disk /dev/case4t/scandata: 1860.5 GB, 1860584865792 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 226203 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00049bf5 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/case4t/scandata1 1 226203 1816975566 83 Linux $ sudo parted /dev/case4t/scandata print Model: Linux device-mapper (linear) (dm) Disk /dev/mapper/case4t-scandata: 1861GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 32.3kB 1861GB 1861GB primary ext3 $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 1860.5 GB, 1860593254400 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 226204 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000081 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 106955 859116006 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 113103 226204 908491815 83 Linux /dev/sdb3 106956 113102 49375777+ 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order $ sudo parted /dev/sdb print Model: DELL PERC 6/i (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 1861GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 32.3kB 880GB 880GB primary reiserfs 3 880GB 930GB 50.6GB primary 2 930GB 1861GB 930GB primary I find it a bit strange that partition one above is said to be reiserfs, or if it matters -- it was previously reiserfs, but LVM recognizes it as a PV. To reiterate, neither /dev/mapper/case4t-scandatap1 (which I had used previously) nor /dev/case4t/scandata1 (as printed by fdisk) exists. And /dev/case4t/scandata (no partition number) cannot be mounted: $sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/case4t/scandata /mnt/new mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/case4t-scandata, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try dmesg | tail or so All I get on syslog is: [170059.538137] VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev dm-0. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer, Brian P.S. I am on Ubuntu GNU/Linux 2.6.28-11-server (Jaunty) (out of date, I know -- that's on the laundry list).

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  • A Good Developer is So Hard to Find

    - by James Michael Hare
    Let me start out by saying I want to damn the writers of the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever – 2. It is eating every last shred of my free time! But as I've been churning through each puzzle and marvelling at the brain teasers and trivia within, I began to think about interviewing developers and why it seems to be so hard to find good ones.  The problem is, it seems like no matter how hard we try to find the perfect way to separate the chaff from the wheat, inevitably someone will get hired who falls far short of expectations or someone will get passed over for missing a piece of trivia or a tricky brain teaser that could have been an excellent team member.   In shops that are primarily software-producing businesses or other heavily IT-oriented businesses (Microsoft, Amazon, etc) there often exists a much tighter bond between HR and the hiring development staff because development is their life-blood. Unfortunately, many of us work in places where IT is viewed as a cost or just a means to an end. In these shops, too often, HR and development staff may work against each other due to differences in opinion as to what a good developer is or what one is worth.  It seems that if you ask two different people what makes a good developer, often you will get three different opinions.   With the exception of those shops that are purely development-centric (you guys have it much easier!), most other shops have management who have very little knowledge about the development process.  Their view can often be that development is simply a skill that one learns and then once aquired, that developer can produce widgets as good as the next like workers on an assembly-line floor.  On the other side, you have many developers that feel that software development is an art unto itself and that the ability to create the most pure design or know the most obscure of keywords or write the shortest-possible obfuscated piece of code is a good coder.  So is it a skill?  An Art?  Or something entirely in between?   Saying that software is merely a skill and one just needs to learn the syntax and tools would be akin to saying anyone who knows English and can use Word can write a 300 page book that is accurate, meaningful, and stays true to the point.  This just isn't so.  It takes more than mere skill to take words and form a sentence, join those sentences into paragraphs, and those paragraphs into a document.  I've interviewed candidates who could answer obscure syntax and keyword questions and once they were hired could not code effectively at all.  So development must be more than a skill.   But on the other end, we have art.  Is development an art?  Is our end result to produce art?  I can marvel at a piece of code -- see it as concise and beautiful -- and yet that code most perform some stated function with accuracy and efficiency and maintainability.  None of these three things have anything to do with art, per se.  Art is beauty for its own sake and is a wonderful thing.  But if you apply that same though to development it just doesn't hold.  I've had developers tell me that all that matters is the end result and how you code it is entirely part of the art and I couldn't disagree more.  Yes, the end result, the accuracy, is the prime criteria to be met.  But if code is not maintainable and efficient, it would be just as useless as a beautiful car that breaks down once a week or that gets 2 miles to the gallon.  Yes, it may work in that it moves you from point A to point B and is pretty as hell, but if it can't be maintained or is not efficient, it's not a good solution.  So development must be something less than art.   In the end, I think I feel like development is a matter of craftsmanship.  We use our tools and we use our skills and set about to construct something that satisfies a purpose and yet is also elegant and efficient.  There is skill involved, and there is an art, but really it boils down to being able to craft code.  Crafting code is far more than writing code.  Anyone can write code if they know the syntax, but so few people can actually craft code that solves a purpose and craft it well.  So this is what I want to find, I want to find code craftsman!  But how?   I used to ask coding-trivia questions a long time ago and many people still fall back on this.  The thought is that if you ask the candidate some piece of coding trivia and they know the answer it must follow that they can craft good code.  For example:   What C++ keyword can be applied to a class/struct field to allow it to be changed even from a const-instance of that class/struct?  (answer: mutable)   So what do we prove if a candidate can answer this?  Only that they know what mutable means.  One would hope that this would infer that they'd know how to use it, and more importantly when and if it should ever be used!  But it rarely does!  The problem with triva questions is that you will either: Approve a really good developer who knows what some obscure keyword is (good) Reject a really good developer who never needed to use that keyword or is too inexperienced to know how to use it (bad) Approve a really bad developer who googled "C++ Interview Questions" and studied like hell but can't craft (very bad) Many HR departments love these kind of tests because they are short and easy to defend if a legal issue arrises on hiring decisions.  After all it's easy to say a person wasn't hired because they scored 30 out of 100 on some trivia test.  But unfortunately, you've eliminated a large part of your potential developer pool and possibly hired a few duds.  There are times I've hired candidates who knew every trivia question I could throw out them and couldn't craft.  And then there are times I've interviewed candidates who failed all my trivia but who I took a chance on who were my best finds ever.    So if not trivia, then what?  Brain teasers?  The thought is, these type of questions measure the thinking power of a candidate.  The problem is, once again, you will either: Approve a good candidate who has never heard the problem and can solve it (good) Reject a good candidate who just happens not to see the "catch" because they're nervous or it may be really obscure (bad) Approve a candidate who has studied enough interview brain teasers (once again, you can google em) to recognize the "catch" or knows the answer already (bad). Once again, you're eliminating good candidates and possibly accepting bad candidates.  In these cases, I think testing someone with brain teasers only tests their ability to answer brain teasers, not the ability to craft code. So how do we measure someone's ability to craft code?  Here's a novel idea: have them code!  Give them a computer and a compiler, or a whiteboard and a pen, or paper and pencil and have them construct a piece of code.  It just makes sense that if we're going to hire someone to code we should actually watch them code.  When they're done, we can judge them on several criteria: Correctness - does the candidate's solution accurately solve the problem proposed? Accuracy - is the candidate's solution reasonably syntactically correct? Efficiency - did the candidate write or use the more efficient data structures or algorithms for the job? Maintainability - was the candidate's code free of obfuscation and clever tricks that diminish readability? Persona - are they eager and willing or aloof and egotistical?  Will they work well within your team? It may sound simple, or it may sound crazy, but when I'm looking to hire a developer, I want to see them actually develop well-crafted code.

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  • Thoughts on the Nomination Committee Campaign 2014

    - by Testas
    Congratulations to Erin, Andy and Allen on making the Nomination Committee for 2014. As Mark Broadbent (@retracement) stated in his tweet, there’s a great set of individuals for the Nom Com, and I could not agree more. I know Erin and Allen, and I know how much value they will bring to the process. I don’t know Andy as well, but I am sure he will do a great job and I hope I can meet him at PASS soon. The final candidate appointed by the PASS board is Rick Bolesta, who brings a wealth of experience to the process. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all who have voted. Not just for me, but for all the candidates during the election. Your contribution is greatly appreciated. Would I apply for the Nom Com again?  Yes I would. My first election experience has been a learning experience in itself. So I accept the result and look forward to applying next year. Moving on from this, I do want to express my opinion about the lack of international representation in the election process. One of the tweets that I saw after the result was from Adam Machanic (@AdamMachanic) who commented on the lack of international members on the Nom Com. If truth be told, I was disappointed – when the candidate list was released -- that for the second time in recent elections there was a lack of international candidates on the candidate list. It feels that only Brits and Americans partake in such elections. This is a real shame, and I can’t help thinking why this is the case. Hugo Kornelis (@Hugo_Kornelis) wrote a blog here to express his thoughts. He did raise some valid points. I don’t know why there is an absence of international candidates. I know that the team at PASS are looking to improve the situation, so I do not want to give the impression that PASS are doing nothing. For reference please see Bill Graziano’ s article here to see how PASS are addressing the situation. There is a clear direction to change the rules within PASS to give greater inclusion of international members. In addition to this, I wanted to explore a couple of potential approaches to address the situation. I am not saying that they are the right answer, but when I see challenges, I like to bring potential solutions to the table. 1.       Use the PASS mission statement to define a tactical objective that engages community leaders into the election process. If you are not familiar with the PASS mission statement, let me provide it here as laid out on the PASS website. “Empower data professionals who leverage Microsoft technologies to connect, share, and learn through networking, knowledge sharing, and peer-based learning” PASS fulfil this mission statement regularly. Whether you attend SQL Saturday, SQLRally, SQLPASS and BA conference itself. The biggest value of PASS is the ability to bring our profession together. And the 24 hour hop allows you to learn from the comfort of your own office/home. This mission should be extended to define a tactical objectives that bring greater networking and knowledge sharing between PASS Chapter leaders/Regional Mentors and PASS HQ. It should help educate the leaders about the opportunities of elections and how leaders can become involved. I know PASS engage with Chapter leaders on a regular basis to discuss community matters for the benefit of PASS members. How could this be achieved? Perhaps PASS could perform a quarterly virtual meeting that specifically looks at helping leaders become more involved with the election process 2.       Evolve the Global Growth Strategy into a Global Engagement Strategy. One of the remits of the PASS board over the last couple of years is the Global Growth strategy. This has been very successful as we have seen the massive growth of events across the world. For that, I congratulate the board for this success. Perhaps the time is now right to look at solidifying this success, through a Global Engagement Strategy that starts with the collaboration of Chapter Leaders, Regional Mentors and Evangelists in their respective Countries or Regions. The engagement strategy should look at increasing collaboration between community leaders for the benefit of their respective communities. It should also provide a channel for encouraging leaders to put themselves forward for the elections. How could this be achieved? In the UK, there has been a big growth in PASS Chapters and SQL Server Events that was approaching saturation point. The introduction of the Community Engagement Day -- channelled through the SQLBits conference -- has enabled Chapter Leaders to collaborate, connect and share with PASS, Sponsors and Microsoft. It also provides the ability for Chapter Leaders to speak directly to the PASS representatives from PASSHQ. This brings with it the ability for PASS community evangelists to communicate PASS objectives. It has also been the event where we have found out; and/or encouraged, Chapter Leaders to put themselves forward for elections. People like encouragement and validation when going for something like an election, and being able to discuss this with peers at a dedicated event provides a useful platform. PASS has the people in place already to facilitate such an event. Regional Mentors could potentially help organise such events on an annual basis, with PASSHQ providing support in providing a room/Lync access for the event to take place. It would be really good if a PASSHQ representative could attend in person as well.   3.       Restrict candidates to serve only a limited number of terms. A frequent comment I saw on social networking was that the elections can be seen by some as a popularity conference. Perhaps by limiting the number of terms that an individual can serve on either the Nom Com or the BOD, other candidates may be encouraged to be more actively involved within the PASS election process. I don’t think that the current byelaws deal with this particular suggestion. I also saw a couple of tweets that stated that more active community members did not apply for the Nom Com. I struggled to understand how the individuals of the tweets measured “more active”. It just also further solidified the subjective nature of elections. In the absence of how candidates are put forward for the elections. Then a restriction of terms enables the opportunity to be extended to others. How could this be achieved? Set a resolution that is put to a community vote as to the viability of such a solution. For example, the questions for the vote could be: Should individuals in the Nom Com and BoD be limited to a certain number of terms?  Yes/No. What is the maximum number of terms a candidate could serve?   It would be simple to execute such a vote, and the community will have an opportunity to have a say in an important aspect of the PASS organisation. And is the change is successful, then add it as a byelaw.   So there are some of my thoughts. I am not saying they are right or wrong. But I do hope that there is a concerted effort to encourage more candidates from other reaches of the Globe to become involved with future elections.   It would be good to hear your thoughts   Thanks   Chris

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  • Girl's Day 2012 in Potsdam

    - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Every year in April Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} , technical enterprises and other organisations are invited to organise an open day for girls – called Girl´s Day. It has become a tradition for Oracle for more than 6 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} years, to participate in this special day and to encourage girls to discover technical work environments.   On the 26th of April 2012, 27 pupils aged 12 to 15 came to Oracle’s office in Potsdam in order to obtain interesting insights about Oracle´s business practices. An interactive Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} four-hour program was specifically organized for all participants. At first, all pupils got to know Oracle as an enterprise with it’s different departments and it’s particular „business language“. What is hardware and software? Why do companies need a database? Questions as such were tailored and simply illustrated by 13 colleagues from the areas of Sales, Sales Consulting, Support and Recruitment.   Followed by a short introduction about career paths from our female colleagues and their respective departments, the girls decided, according to their interests, which business area they would like to get more insights from. Based on their decision the groups were set up and the girls than discovered the work places. This helped everyone to dive deep into the everyday work life, how the offices are structured and how communication with clients is done via web conferences. All girls were encouraged to take part in the conference together with their Oracle advisor. 12 o´clock – lunch time. Besides a well-prepared buffet Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} , all girls had now the opportunity to get all open questions clarified or to ask questions they did not dare to ask in front of a big group. After the lunch break, Anja Raack from the Graduate Recruitment team presented more about recruitment topics and gave useful advice on how to write professional emails.   After a short group assignment, where all participants had to identify common mistakes done in an email, a quiz completed this special day. All 5 groups showed a lot of enthusiasm during this game but no one had to worry as every single participant was rewarded with a prize and certificate.   To sum it up, we were very proud to host the girls for half a day and were impressed by their dedication. Hopefully, sooner or later, we will see some of them coming back to Oracle – either for the next Girl´s Day or one of our entry level positions. This day has shown that everyone can start a challenging career within an exciting industry. What matters is dedication and commitment to strive for the best.  Do you want to find out more about our job opportunities? Follow us on http://campus.oracle.com.

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  • The SSIS tuning tip that everyone misses

    - by Rob Farley
    I know that everyone misses this, because I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t have a bit of an epiphany when I describe this. When tuning Data Flows in SQL Server Integration Services, people see the Data Flow as moving from the Source to the Destination, passing through a number of transformations. What people don’t consider is the Source, getting the data out of a database. Remember, the source of data for your Data Flow is not your Source Component. It’s wherever the data is, within your database, probably on a disk somewhere. You need to tune your query to optimise it for SSIS, and this is what most people fail to do. I’m not suggesting that people don’t tune their queries – there’s plenty of information out there about making sure that your queries run as fast as possible. But for SSIS, it’s not about how fast your query runs. Let me say that again, but in bolder text: The speed of an SSIS Source is not about how fast your query runs. If your query is used in a Source component for SSIS, the thing that matters is how fast it starts returning data. In particular, those first 10,000 rows to populate that first buffer, ready to pass down the rest of the transformations on its way to the Destination. Let’s look at a very simple query as an example, using the AdventureWorks database: We’re picking the different Weight values out of the Product table, and it’s doing this by scanning the table and doing a Sort. It’s a Distinct Sort, which means that the duplicates are discarded. It'll be no surprise to see that the data produced is sorted. Obvious, I know, but I'm making a comparison to what I'll do later. Before I explain the problem here, let me jump back into the SSIS world... If you’ve investigated how to tune an SSIS flow, then you’ll know that some SSIS Data Flow Transformations are known to be Blocking, some are Partially Blocking, and some are simply Row transformations. Take the SSIS Sort transformation, for example. I’m using a larger data set for this, because my small list of Weights won’t demonstrate it well enough. Seven buffers of data came out of the source, but none of them could be pushed past the Sort operator, just in case the last buffer contained the data that would be sorted into the first buffer. This is a blocking operation. Back in the land of T-SQL, we consider our Distinct Sort operator. It’s also blocking. It won’t let data through until it’s seen all of it. If you weren’t okay with blocking operations in SSIS, why would you be happy with them in an execution plan? The source of your data is not your OLE DB Source. Remember this. The source of your data is the NCIX/CIX/Heap from which it’s being pulled. Picture it like this... the data flowing from the Clustered Index, through the Distinct Sort operator, into the SELECT operator, where a series of SSIS Buffers are populated, flowing (as they get full) down through the SSIS transformations. Alright, I know that I’m taking some liberties here, because the two queries aren’t the same, but consider the visual. The data is flowing from your disk and through your execution plan before it reaches SSIS, so you could easily find that a blocking operation in your plan is just as painful as a blocking operation in your SSIS Data Flow. Luckily, T-SQL gives us a brilliant query hint to help avoid this. OPTION (FAST 10000) This hint means that it will choose a query which will optimise for the first 10,000 rows – the default SSIS buffer size. And the effect can be quite significant. First let’s consider a simple example, then we’ll look at a larger one. Consider our weights. We don’t have 10,000, so I’m going to use OPTION (FAST 1) instead. You’ll notice that the query is more expensive, using a Flow Distinct operator instead of the Distinct Sort. This operator is consuming 84% of the query, instead of the 59% we saw from the Distinct Sort. But the first row could be returned quicker – a Flow Distinct operator is non-blocking. The data here isn’t sorted, of course. It’s in the same order that it came out of the index, just with duplicates removed. As soon as a Flow Distinct sees a value that it hasn’t come across before, it pushes it out to the operator on its left. It still has to maintain the list of what it’s seen so far, but by handling it one row at a time, it can push rows through quicker. Overall, it’s a lot more work than the Distinct Sort, but if the priority is the first few rows, then perhaps that’s exactly what we want. The Query Optimizer seems to do this by optimising the query as if there were only one row coming through: This 1 row estimation is caused by the Query Optimizer imagining the SELECT operation saying “Give me one row” first, and this message being passed all the way along. The request might not make it all the way back to the source, but in my simple example, it does. I hope this simple example has helped you understand the significance of the blocking operator. Now I’m going to show you an example on a much larger data set. This data was fetching about 780,000 rows, and these are the Estimated Plans. The data needed to be Sorted, to support further SSIS operations that needed that. First, without the hint. ...and now with OPTION (FAST 10000): A very different plan, I’m sure you’ll agree. In case you’re curious, those arrows in the top one are 780,000 rows in size. In the second, they’re estimated to be 10,000, although the Actual figures end up being 780,000. The top one definitely runs faster. It finished several times faster than the second one. With the amount of data being considered, these numbers were in minutes. Look at the second one – it’s doing Nested Loops, across 780,000 rows! That’s not generally recommended at all. That’s “Go and make yourself a coffee” time. In this case, it was about six or seven minutes. The faster one finished in about a minute. But in SSIS-land, things are different. The particular data flow that was consuming this data was significant. It was being pumped into a Script Component to process each row based on previous rows, creating about a dozen different flows. The data flow would take roughly ten minutes to run – ten minutes from when the data first appeared. The query that completes faster – chosen by the Query Optimizer with no hints, based on accurate statistics (rather than pretending the numbers are smaller) – would take a minute to start getting the data into SSIS, at which point the ten-minute flow would start, taking eleven minutes to complete. The query that took longer – chosen by the Query Optimizer pretending it only wanted the first 10,000 rows – would take only ten seconds to fill the first buffer. Despite the fact that it might have taken the database another six or seven minutes to get the data out, SSIS didn’t care. Every time it wanted the next buffer of data, it was already available, and the whole process finished in about ten minutes and ten seconds. When debugging SSIS, you run the package, and sit there waiting to see the Debug information start appearing. You look for the numbers on the data flow, and seeing operators going Yellow and Green. Without the hint, I’d sit there for a minute. With the hint, just ten seconds. You can imagine which one I preferred. By adding this hint, it felt like a magic wand had been waved across the query, to make it run several times faster. It wasn’t the case at all – but it felt like it to SSIS.

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  • Agile Like Jazz

    - by Jeff Certain
    (I’ve been sitting on this for a week or so now, thinking that it needed to be tightened up a bit to make it less rambling. Since that’s clearly not going to happen, reader beware!) I had the privilege of spending around 90 minutes last night sitting and listening to Sonny Rollins play a concert at the Disney Center in LA. If you don’t know who Sonny Rollins is, I don’t know how to explain the experience; if you know who he is, I don’t need to. Suffice it to say that he has been recording professionally for over 50 years, and helped create an entire genre of music. A true master by any definition. One of the most intriguing aspects of a concert like this, however, is watching the master step aside and let the rest of the musicians play. Not just play their parts, but really play… letting them take over the spotlight, to strut their stuff, to soak up enthusiastic applause from the crowd. Maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that Sonny Rollins has been doing this for more than a half-century. Maybe it has something to do with a kind of patience you learn when you’re on the far side of 80 – and the man can still blow a mean sax for 90 minutes without stopping! Maybe it has to do with the fact that he was out there for the love of the music and the love of the show, not because he had anything to prove to anyone and, I like to think, not for the money. Perhaps it had more to do with the fact that, when you’re at that level of mastery, the other musicians are going to be good. Really good. Whatever the reasons, there was a incredible freedom on that stage – the ability to improvise, for each musician to showcase their own specialization and skills, and them come back to the common theme, back to being on the same page, as it were. All this took place in the same venue that is home to the L.A. Phil. Somehow, I can’t ever see the same kind of free-wheeling improvisation happening in that context. And, since I’m a geek, I started thinking about agility. Rollins has put together a quintet that reflects his own particular style and past. No upright bass or piano for Rollins – drums, bongos, electric guitar and bass guitar along with his sax. It’s not about the mix of instruments. Other trios, quartets, and sextets use different mixes of instruments. New Orleans jazz tends towards trombones instead of sax; some prefer cornet or trumpet. But no matter what the choice of instruments, size matters. Team sizes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while. We’re on a quest to rethink how our teams are organized. They just feel too big, too unwieldy. In fact, they really don’t feel like teams at all. Most of the time, they feel more like collections or people who happen to report to the same manager. I attribute this to a couple factors. One is over-specialization; we have a tendency to have people work in silos. Although the teams are product-focused, within them our developers are both generalists and specialists. On the one hand, we expect them to be able to build an entire vertical slice of the application; on the other hand, each developer tends to be responsible for the vertical slice. As a result, developers often work on their own piece of the puzzle, in isolation. This sort of feels like working on a jigsaw in a group – each person taking a set of colors and piecing them together to reveal a portion of the overall picture. But what inevitably happens when you go to meld all those pieces together? Inevitably, you have some sections that are too big to move easily. These sections end up falling apart under their own weight as you try to move them. Not only that, but there are other challenges – figuring out where that section fits, and how to tie it into the rest of the puzzle. Often, this is when you find a few pieces need to be added – these pieces are “glue,” if you will. The other issue that arises is due to the overhead of maintaining communications in a team. My mother, who worked in IT for around 30 years, once told me that 20% per team member is a good rule of thumb for maintaining communication. While this is a rule of thumb, it seems to imply that any team over about 6 people is going to become less agile simple because of the communications burden. Teams of ten or twelve seem like they fall into the philharmonic organizational model. Complicated pieces of music requiring dozens of players to all be on the same page requires a much different model than the jazz quintet. There’s much less room for improvisation, originality or freedom. (There are probably orchestral musicians who will take exception to this characterization; I’m calling it like I see it from the cheap seats.) And, there’s one guy up front who is running the show, whose job is to keep all of those dozens of players on the same page, to facilitate communications. Somehow, the orchestral model doesn’t feel much like a self-organizing team, either. The first violin may be the best violinist in the orchestra, but they don’t get to perform free-wheeling solos. I’ve never heard of an orchestra getting together for a jam session. But I have heard of teams that organize their work based on the developers available, rather than organizing the developers based on the work required. I have heard of teams where desired functionality is deferred – or worse yet, schedules are missed – because one critical person doesn’t have any bandwidth available. I’ve heard of teams where people simply don’t have the big picture, because there is too much communication overhead for everyone to be aware of everything that is happening on a project. I once heard Paul Rayner say something to the effect of “you have a process that is perfectly designed to give you exactly the results you have.” Given a choice, I want a process that’s much more like jazz than orchestral music. I want a process that doesn’t burden me with lots of forms and checkboxes and stuff. Give me the simplest, most lightweight process that will work – and a smaller team of the best developers I can find. This seems like the kind of process that will get the kind of result I want to be part of.

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  • Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

    Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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  • Refactoring Part 1 : Intuitive Investments

    - by Wes McClure
    Fear, it’s what turns maintaining applications into a nightmare.  Technology moves on, teams move on, someone is left to operate the application, what was green is now perceived brown.  Eventually the business will evolve and changes will need to be made.  The approach to those changes often dictates the long term viability of the application.  Fear of change, lack of passion and a lack of interest in understanding the domain often leads to a paranoia to do anything that doesn’t involve duct tape and bailing twine.  Don’t get me wrong, those have a place in the short term viability of a project but they don’t have a place in the long term.  Add to it “us versus them” in regards to the original team and those that maintain it, internal politics and other factors and you have a recipe for disaster.  This results in code that quickly becomes unmanageable.  Even the most clever of designs will eventually become sub optimal and debt will amount that exponentially makes changes difficult.  This is where refactoring comes in, and it’s something I’m very passionate about.  Refactoring is about improving the process whereby we make change, it’s an exponential investment in the process of change. Without it we will incur exponential complexity that halts productivity. Investments, especially in the long term, require intuition and reflection.  How can we tackle new development effectively via evolving the original design and paying off debt that has been incurred? The longer we wait to ask and answer this question, the more it will cost us.  Small requests don’t warrant big changes, but realizing when changes now will pay off in the long term, and especially in the short term, is valuable. I have done my fair share of maintaining applications and continuously refactoring as needed, but recently I’ve begun work on a project that hasn’t had much debt, if any, paid down in years.  This is the first in a series of blog posts to try to capture the process which is largely driven by intuition of smaller refactorings from other projects. Signs that refactoring could help: Testability How can decreasing test time not pay dividends? One of the first things I found was that a very important piece often takes 30+ minutes to test.  I can only imagine how much time this has cost historically, but more importantly the time it might cost in the coming weeks: I estimate at least 10-20 hours per person!  This is simply unacceptable for almost any situation.  As it turns out, about 6 hours of working with this part of the application and I was able to cut the time down to under 30 seconds!  In less than the lost time of one week, I was able to fix the problem for all future weeks! If we can’t test fast then we can’t change fast, nor with confidence. Code is used by end users and it’s also used by developers, consider your own needs in terms of the code base.  Adding logic to enable/disable features during testing can help decouple parts of an application and lead to massive improvements.  What exactly is so wrong about test code in real code?  Often, these become features for operators and sometimes end users.  If you cannot run an integration test within a test runner in your IDE, it’s time to refactor. Readability Are variables named meaningfully via a ubiquitous language? Is the code segmented functionally or behaviorally so as to minimize the complexity of any one area? Are aspects properly segmented to avoid confusion (security, logging, transactions, translations, dependency management etc) Is the code declarative (what) or imperative (how)?  What matters, not how.  LINQ is a great abstraction of the what, not how, of collection manipulation.  The Reactive framework is a great example of the what, not how, of managing streams of data. Are constants abstracted and named, or are they just inline? Do people constantly bitch about the code/design? If the code is hard to understand, it will be hard to change with confidence.  It’s a large undertaking if the original designers didn’t pay much attention to readability and as such will never be done to “completion.”  Make sure not to go over board, instead use this as you change an application, not in lieu of changes (like with testability). Complexity Simplicity will never be achieved, it’s highly subjective.  That said, a lot of code can be significantly simplified, tidy it up as you go.  Refactoring will often converge upon a simplification step after enough time, keep an eye out for this. Understandability In the process of changing code, one often gains a better understanding of it.  Refactoring code is a good way to learn how it works.  However, it’s usually best in combination with other reasons, in effect killing two birds with one stone.  Often this is done when readability is poor, in which case understandability is usually poor as well.  In the large undertaking we are making with this legacy application, we will be replacing it.  Therefore, understanding all of its features is important and this refactoring technique will come in very handy. Unused code How can deleting things not help? This is a freebie in refactoring, it’s very easy to detect with modern tools, especially in statically typed languages.  We have VCS for a reason, if in doubt, delete it out (ok that was cheesy)! If you don’t know where to start when refactoring, this is an excellent starting point! Duplication Do not pray and sacrifice to the anti-duplication gods, there are excellent examples where consolidated code is a horrible idea, usually with divergent domains.  That said, mediocre developers live by copy/paste.  Other times features converge and aren’t combined.  Tools for finding similar code are great in the example of copy/paste problems.  Knowledge of the domain helps identify convergent concepts that often lead to convergent solutions and will give intuition for where to look for conceptual repetition. 80/20 and the Boy Scouts It’s often said that 80% of the time 20% of the application is used most.  These tend to be the parts that are changed.  There are also parts of the code where 80% of the time is spent changing 20% (probably for all the refactoring smells above).  I focus on these areas any time I make a change and follow the philosophy of the Boy Scout in cleaning up more than I messed up.  If I spend 2 hours changing an application, in the 20%, I’ll always spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it or nearby areas. This gives a huge productivity edge on developers that don’t. Ironically after a short period of time the 20% shrinks enough that we don’t have to spend 80% of our time there and can move on to other areas.   Refactoring is highly subjective, never attempt to refactor to completion!  Learn to be comfortable with leaving one part of the application in a better state than others.  It’s an evolution, not a revolution.  These are some simple areas to look into when making changes and can help get one started in the process.  I’ve often found that refactoring is a convergent process towards simplicity that sometimes spans a few hours but often can lead to massive simplifications over the timespan of weeks and months of regular development.

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  • Not attending the LUGM mini-meetup - 05. Oct 2013

    Not attending a meeting of the LUGM can be fun, too. It's getting a bit of a habit that Ish is organising small gatherings, aka mini-meetups, of the Linux User Group Mauritius/Meta (LUGM) almost every Saturday. There they mainly discuss and talk about various elements of using Linux as ones main operating systems and the possibilities you are going to have. On top of course, some tips & tricks about mastering the command line and initial steps in scripting or even writing HTML. In general, sounds like a good portion of fun and great spirit of community. Unfortunately, I'm usually quite busy with private and family matters during the weekend and so I already signalised that I wouldn't be around. Well, at least not physically... But this Saturday a couple of things worked out faster than expected and so I was hanging out on my machine. I made virtual contact with one of Pawan's messages over on Facebook... And somehow that kicked off some kind of an online game fun on basic configuration of Apache HTTPd 2.2.x, PHP 5.x and how to improve the overall performance of a newly installed blog based on WordPress. Default configuration files Nitin's website finally came alive and despite the dark theme and the hidden Apple 'fanboy' advertisement I was more interested in the technical situation. As with any new installation there is usually quite some adjustment to be done. And Nitin's page was no exception. Unfortunately, out of the box installations of Apache httpd and PHP are too verbose and expose too much information under the hood. You might think that this isn't really a problem at all, well, think about it again after completely reading this article. First, I checked the HTTP response headers - using either Chrome Developer Tools or Firefox Web Developer extension - of Nitin's page and based on that I advised him to lower the noise levels a little bit. It's not really necessary that detailed information about web server software and scripting language has to be published in every response made. Quite a number of script kiddies and exploits actually check for version specifics prior to an attack. So, removing at least version details hardens the system a little bit. In particular, I'm talking about these response values: Server X-Powered-By How to achieve that? By tweaking the configuration files... Namely, we are going to look into the following ones: apache2.conf httpd.conf .htaccess php.ini The above list contains some additional files, I'm talking about in the next paragraphs. Anyway, those are the ones involved. Tweaking Apache Open your favourite text editor and start to modify the apache2.conf. Eventually, you might like to have a quick peak at the file to see whether it is necessary to adjust it or not. Following is a handy combination of commands to get an overview of your active directives: # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf | grep -v '^$' | less There you keep an eye on those two Apache directives: ServerSignature Off ServerTokens Prod If that's not the case, change them as highlighted above. In order to activate your modifications you have to restart Apache httpd server. On Debian and Ubuntu you might use apache2ctl for that, on other distributions you might have to use service or run the init-scripts again: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Refresh your website and check the HTTP response header. Tweaking PHP5 (a little bit) Next, check your php.ini file with the following statement: # sudo grep -v ';' /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini | grep -v '^$' | less And check the value of expose_php = Off Again, if it's not as highlighted, change it... Some more Apache love Okay, back to Apache it might also be interesting to improve the situation about browser caching and removing more obsolete information. When you run your website against the usual performance checks like Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow you might see those check points with bad grades on a standard, default configuration. Well, this can be done easily. Configure entity tags (ETags) ETags are only interesting when you run your websites on a farm of multiple web servers. Removing this data for your static resources is very simple in Apache. As we are going to deal with the HTTP response header information you have to ensure that Apache is capable to manipulate them. First, check your enabled modules: # sudo ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep headers And in case that the 'headers' module is not listed, you have to enable it from the available ones: # sudo a2enmod headers Second, check your httpd.conf file (in case it exists): # sudo grep -v '#' /etc/apache2/httpd.conf | grep -v '^$' | less In newer (better said fresh) installations you might have to create a new configuration file below your conf.d folder with your favourite text editor like so: # sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf.d/headers.conf Then, in order to tweak your HTTP responses either check for those lines or add them: Header unset ETagFileETag None In case that your file doesn't exist or those lines are missing, feel free to create/add them. Afterwards, check your Apache configuration syntax and restart your running instances as already shown above: # sudo apache2ctl configtestSyntax OK# sudo apache2ctl restart Add Expires headers To improve the loading performance of your website, you should take some care into the proper configuration of how to leverage the browser's ability to cache certain resources and files. This is done by adding an Expires: value to the HTTP response header. Generally speaking it is advised that you specify a near-future, read: 1 week or a little bit more, for your static content like JavaScript files or Cascading Style Sheets. One solution to adjust this is to put some instructions into the .htaccess file in the root folder of your web site. Of course, this could also be placed into a more generic location of your Apache installation but honestly, I'd like to keep this at the web site level. Following some adjustments I'm currently using on this blog site: # Turn on Expires and set default to 0ExpiresActive OnExpiresDefault A0 # Set up caching on media files for 1 year (forever?)<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">ExpiresDefault A29030400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 1 week<FilesMatch "\.(js|css)$">ExpiresDefault A604800Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> # Set up caching on media files for 31 days<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$">ExpiresDefault A2678400Header append Cache-Control "public"</FilesMatch> As we are editing the .htaccess files, it is not necessary to restart Apache. In case that your web site doesn't load anymore or you're experiencing an error while trying to restart your httpd, check that the 'expires' module is actually an enabled module: # ls -al /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ | grep expires# sudo a2enmod expires Of course, the instructions above a re not feature complete but I hope that they might provide a better default configuration for your LAMP stack. Resume of the day Within a couple of hours, and while being occupied with an eLearning course on SQL Server 2012, I had some good fun in helping and assisting other LUGM members while they were some kilometers away at Bagatelle. According to other blog articles it seems that Nitin had quite some moments of desperation. Just for the records: At no time it was my intention to either kick his butt or pull a leg on him. Simply, providing some input based on the lessons I've learned over the last couple of years configuring Apache HTTPd and PHP. Check out the other blogs, too: LUGM mini-meetup... Epic! Superb Saturday Linux Meetup And last but not least, the man himself: The end of a new beginning Cheers, and happy community'ing! Updates Due to our weekly Code & Coffee sessions in the MSCC community, I had a chance to talk to Nitin directly and he showed me the problems directly on his machine. This led to update this article hence the paragraphs on enabling the modules 'headers' and 'expires'.

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  • Outlook 2013 keeps freezing, semi-consistently

    - by AviD
    I have an oddity of problem with my Outlook's stability. It seems to be freezing up, not at random intervals, but based on a seemingly strange combination of configurations. I have been trying many different combinations, I've even devolved to "Cargo-cult" debugging, since I have no clue what is causing this... Here is my set up - since I don't know for sure which settings are causing the lockup, I'll probably mention irrelevant things: (relatively) clean install of Windows 8 (on hyper-v, if that matters) Clean install of Outlook 2013, fully updated 3 accounts configured: Hotmail account configured with ActiveSync Gmail account Large-ish account (several GB) connected with IMAP Only a few folders are subscribed in IMAP Outlook is set to only display subscribed folders configured to keep messages permanently Google Apps account, connected with IMAP Small account connected with IMAP All folders IMAP subscribed Outlook is set to only display subscribed folders configured to keep messages permanently Several Send/Receive Groups configured, to try different configurations of enabling/disable/partial the different accounts - with different send times, from 60 minutes down to 5 minutes. The problem is that at certain points Outlook completely freezes up and I have to kill it. This is not consistent - there are some things that cause it immediately almost consistently, there are some times that it just happens by itself after some period of time (sometimes a few moments, sometimes a few hours; sometimes while using it, sometimes after I've been away from it for a few hours). I have searched all over, and there seem to be many with similar (apparently) problem, and found numerous "solutions" (some even more cargocultish than mine), but so far none of them worked. I've removed all the accounts, both all together and one at a time, and re-configured them - eventually it freezes up. I've tried uninstalling Outlook, cleaning it up completely - removing files, app settings, registry keys, etc - then reinstalling - eventually it freezes up. I've only enabled the Hotmail account, disabling (but not removing) the Google accounts - apparently this does not lock up. I've enabled the Hotmail and the Gmail accounts, leaving the Apps one disabled - it seems like it does not lock up. With all accounts enabled, it locks up almost immediately after doing a send/receive. With only the Apps account enabled, it seems to not lock up. With the Hotmail and the Apps accounts enabled (Gmail disabled), it seems like it locks up after a random amount of time. With Hotmail enabled, and Gmail and Apps both enabled but set to receive only custom folder downloading (not all subscribed folders) - sometimes it locks up right after a send/receive, sometimes it goes for hours without locking up, and sometimes it only locks up when I send an email. I've tried switching the ports for the Google accounts (SSL/465 vs TLS/587), though I have no idea if this should affect, but no real difference. In short, I honestly have no idea what is actually causing Outlook to lock up, I might be completely barking up the wrong tree. At this point I don't really know what else to try, I'm flipping switches at random here. I would like to have all 3 accounts enabled, ideally in several groups (e.g. pull down only important folders in a group with short interval, and all other folders in a longer interval) - obviously without freezing up at all. I've tried putting in all the important details, if there is anything else important to add please let me know. Another issue that occurred to me might also be connected - the Google accounts don't always synchronize properly, even after a send/receive or "update folder". At least not consistently... though I haven't been able to find a significant connection between this and that.

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  • Hide subdomain AND subdirectory using mod_rewrite?

    - by Jeremy
    I am trying to hide a subdomain and subdirectory from users. I know it may be easier to use a virtual host but will that not change direct links pointing at our site? The site currently resides at http://mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ I want www.ctrc.sk.ca and ctrc.sk.ca to access this folder but still display www.ctrc.sk.ca. If that makes any sense. Here is what our current .htaccess file looks like, we are using Joomla so there already a few rules set up. Help is appreciated. # Helicon ISAPI_Rewrite configuration file # Version 3.1.0.78 ## # @version $Id: htaccess.txt 14401 2010-01-26 14:10:00Z louis $ # @package Joomla # @copyright Copyright (C) 2005 - 2010 Open Source Matters. All rights reserved. # @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU/GPL # Joomla! is Free Software ## ##################################################### # READ THIS COMPLETELY IF YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS FILE # # The line just below this section: 'Options +FollowSymLinks' may cause problems # with some server configurations. It is required for use of mod_rewrite, but may already # be set by your server administrator in a way that dissallows changing it in # your .htaccess file. If using it causes your server to error out, comment it out (add # to # beginning of line), reload your site in your browser and test your sef url's. If they work, # it has been set by your server administrator and you do not need it set here. # ##################################################### ## Can be commented out if causes errors, see notes above. #Options +FollowSymLinks # # mod_rewrite in use RewriteEngine On ########## Begin - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits ## If you experience problems on your site block out the operations listed below ## This attempts to block the most common type of exploit `attempts` to Joomla! # ## Deny access to extension xml files (uncomment out to activate) #<Files ~ "\.xml$"> #Order allow,deny #Deny from all #Satisfy all #</Files> ## End of deny access to extension xml files RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} mosConfig_[a-zA-Z_]{1,21}(=|\%3D) [OR] # Block out any script trying to base64_encode crap to send via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} base64_encode.*\(.*\) [OR] # Block out any script that includes a <script> tag in URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (\<|%3C).*script.*(\>|%3E) [NC,OR] # Block out any script trying to set a PHP GLOBALS variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} GLOBALS(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) [OR] # Block out any script trying to modify a _REQUEST variable via URL RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} _REQUEST(=|\[|\%[0-9A-Z]{0,2}) # Send all blocked request to homepage with 403 Forbidden error! RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [F,L] # ########## End - Rewrite rules to block out some common exploits # Uncomment following line if your webserver's URL # is not directly related to physical file paths. # Update Your Joomla! Directory (just / for root) #RewriteBase / ########## Begin - Joomla! core SEF Section # RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.php|\.html|\.htm|\.feed|\.pdf|\.raw|/[^.]*)$ [NC] RewriteRule (.*) index.php RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},L] # ########## End - Joomla! core SEF Section EDIT Yes, mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ is the root directory. Currently the DNS redirects from ctrc.sk.ca and www.ctrc.sk.ca to mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms. However when it redirects the user still sees the mail.ctrc.sk.ca/cms/ url and I want them to only see www.ctrc.sk.ca.

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  • Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

    - by Roger Brinkley
    A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

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  • Unlocking Productivity

    - by Michael Snow
    Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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  • A Bite With No Teeth&ndash;Demystifying Non-Compete Clauses

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    *DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and this post in no way should be considered legal advice. I’m also in Canada, so references made are to Canadian court cases. I received a signed letter the other day, a reminder from my previous employer about some clauses associated with my employment and entry into an employee stock purchase program. So since this is in effect for the next 12 months, I guess I’m not starting that new job tomorrow. I’m kidding of course. How outrageous, how presumptuous, pompous, and arrogant that a company – any company – would actually place these conditions upon an employee. And yet, this is not uncommon. Especially in the IT industry, we see time and again similar wording in our employment agreements. But…are these legal? Is there any teeth behind the threat of the bite? Luckily, the answer seems to be ‘No’. I want to highlight two cases that support this. The first is Lyons v. Multari. In a nutshell, Dentist hires younger Dentist to be an associate. In their short, handwritten agreement, a non-compete clause was written stating “Protective Covenant. 3 yrs. – 5mi” (meaning you can’t set up shop within 5 miles for 3 years). Well, the young dentist left and did start an oral surgery office within 5 miles and within 3 years. Off to court they go! The initial judge sided with the older dentist, but on appeal it was overturned. Feel free to read the transcript of the decision here, but let me highlight one portion from section [19]: The general rule in most common law jurisdictions is that non-competition clauses in employment contracts are void. The sections following [19] explain further, and discuss Elsley v. J.G. Collins Insurance Agency Ltd. and its impact on Canadian law in this regard. The second case is Winnipeg Livestock Sales Ltd. v. Plewman. Desmond Plewman is an auctioneer, and worked at Winnipeg Livestock Sales. Part of his employment agreement was that he could not work for a competitor for 18 months if he left the company. Well, he left, and took up an important role in a competing company. The case went to court and as with Lyons v. Multari, the initial judge found in favour of the plaintiffs. Also as in the first case, that was overturned on appeal. Again, read through the transcript of the decision, but consider section [28]: In other words, even though Plewman has a great deal of skill as an auctioneer, Winnipeg Livestock has no proprietary interest in his professional skill and experience, even if they were acquired during his time working for Winnipeg Livestock.  Thus, Winnipeg Livestock has the burden of establishing that it has a legitimate proprietary interest requiring protection.  On this key question there is little evidence before the Court.  The record discloses that part of Plewman’s job was to “mingle with the … crowd” and to telephone customers and prospective customers about future prospects for the sale of livestock.  It may seem reasonable to assume that Winnipeg Livestock has a legitimate proprietary interest in its customer connections; but there is no evidence to indicate that there is any significant degree of “customer loyalty” in the business, as opposed to customers making choices based on other considerations such as cost, availability and the like. So are there any incidents where a non-compete can actually be valid? Yes, and these are considered “exceptional” cases, meaning that the situation meets certain circumstances. Michael Carabash has a great blog series discussing the above mentioned cases as well as the difference between a non-compete and non-solicit agreement. He talks about the exceptional criteria: In summary, the authorities reveal that the following circumstances will generally be relevant in determining whether a case is an “exceptional” one so that a general non-competition clause will be found to be reasonable: - The length of service with the employer. - The amount of personal service to clients. - Whether the employee dealt with clients exclusively, or on a sustained or     recurring basis. - Whether the knowledge about the client which the employee gained was of a   confidential nature, or involved an intimate knowledge of the client’s   particular needs, preferences or idiosyncrasies. - Whether the nature of the employee’s work meant that the employee had   influence over clients in the sense that the clients relied upon the employee’s   advice, or trusted the employee. - If competition by the employee has already occurred, whether there is   evidence that clients have switched their custom to him, especially without   direct solicitation. - The nature of the business with respect to whether personal knowledge of   the clients’ confidential matters is required. - The nature of the business with respect to the strength of customer loyalty,   how clients are “won” and kept, and whether the clientele is a recurring one. - The community involved and whether there were clientele yet to be exploited   by anyone. I close this blog post with a final quote, one from Zvulony & Co’s blog post on this subject. Again, all of this is not official legal advice, but I think we can see what all these sources are pointing towards. To answer my earlier question, there’s no teeth behind the threat of the bite. In light of this list, and the decisions in Lyons and Orlan, it is reasonably certain that in most employment situations a non-competition clause will be ineffective in protecting an employer from a departing employee who wishes to compete in the same business. The Courts have been relatively consistent in their position that if a non-solicitation clause can protect an employer’s interests, then a non-competition clause is probably unreasonable. Employers (or their solicitors) should avoid the inclination to draft restrictive covenants in broad, catch-all language. Or in other words, when drafting a restrictive covenant – take only what you need! D

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  • Asus P8P67 Rev. 3.1 Motherboard issues powering on and saving settings

    - by Scott
    Edit: New Information Have some updated information from the old question below: So basically my issue right now is somewhat similar, but I've been able to rule out a couple of things. I don't think this has anything to do with light on the motherboard. No matter what lights are on/off on the motherboard when the computer is off, they don't affect this issue. The main power LED on the Mobo is always lit when the power supply is turned on, and that's what matters anyway. Even when the main power LED is on, the PC will NOT boot up the first time I hit the power switch. I have to go reset the power supply (make all lights turn off on the Mobo and back on), and THEN hit the power switch. Then everything boots up. Also, the BIOS settings are reset every time this happens. Asus Tech Support told me to try jumping the power with something metal to try and rule out that it's a problem with the connectors getting power, or if it's a problem with the case power switch pins - haven't done that yet though. Any ideas? This is a lot simpler than it was before when I thought it had to do with certain LED indicators for RAM, EPU, etc. Original Question So I built my new desktop just about 3 weeks ago. I've been having a few issues which I think are all related to my motherboard, an Asus P8P67 Revision 3.1, but I'm not 100% sure as this is really the first from-scratch build I've ever done. I've posted these questions on the Asus forums, Asus Tech Support, and the Corsair forums as well as I thought it might have something to do with my power supply at one point. None of these avenues have solved my issue until now completely, so I thought I'd come here to see what you guys think. Here's what's happening: My computer is off, and I go to power it on. I press the power switch on the case (Antec Nine Hundred), and nothing seems to happen. Upon further inspection, I see that what this actually does is simply turn on the EPU LED on my motherboard, but doesn't actually boot anything up. I then have to go and flip the main power switch on the power supply off and back on. What this does is turn off all lights on the Motherboard after a few seconds, and turn them all back on (including the EPU LED that was off before I hit the power switch the first time). Now, hitting the power switch works. The machine boots up fine, and starts going through the boot up process. As a side note: My Motherboard is set to "Force BIOS", and every single time I change this to do the opposite, the next time my computer boots up that change reverts itself. I think this may be due to the fact that I am doing the hard reset on the power supply each time, but I'm not sure. I had thought that the Motherboard would keep its BIOS settings unless you did something to the Mobo itself - so this may be a related issue, or something else completely. That's basically it. Once it's on, it's on. It works fine, recognizes all of my hardware, and runs great. All fans/lights in the case work great, and I'm getting standard readings. The next time I go to shut the computer down however, I can expect the same exact process getting it up and running, including being forced to go into BIOS and exit again before I can load Windows. Another side note: If I power on my computer using the power switch DIRECTLY after shutting it down, it powers right back on (I think this is because the EPU LED light doesn't have time to turn off). It looks as if as long as the EPU LED is lit up on the motherboard before I hit the power switch on the case, the thing will boot up fine (although this doesn't explain the "Force BIOS" issue, at least it's something). Any ideas? Thanks guys. P.S. - System Specs Asus P8P67 Rev. 3.1 Motherboard Intel Core i7 2600K Processor 16GB (4x4GB) G-Skill 1600 RAM NVIDIA EVGA GTX 570 Video Card Crucial 128GB SSD HD Corsair 850W Power Supply Seagate 2TB HDD

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  • Hour-long shutdown duration "shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service"

    - by icelava
    I have a Windows 2008 R2 server that is a Hyper-V host (Dell PowerEdge T300). Today for the first time I encountered an odd situation; i lost connection with one of the guest machines but logging on physically it seems the guest OS is still running but no longer contactable via the network. I tried to shut down the guest machine (Windows XP) but it would not shut down, getting stuck in a "Not responding" dialog box that cannot be dismissed. I used the Hyper-V management console to reset the machine and it could not get out of resetting state. I tried to save another Windows 2003 guest machine, and it would be progress with its Saving state (0%). The other running Windows 2003 guest was stuck in the logon dialog. My first suspicion is perhaps one of the Windows update patches this week (10 Nov 2011) may something to do with it, which was still pending a system restart. Well, since I could not do anything with Hyper-V i proceeded with the Windows Update restart, and now it is stuck half an hour at "Shutting down hyper-v virtual machine management service" Prior to restarting I did not observe any hard disk errors reported in the system event log; doubt it is a disk-related condition. Shall I force a hard reboot? UPDATE Ok so i left it hanging over an hour while attending to other matters, and thankfully the host cleanly restarted. I can operate the guest machines fine now. Phew. Hyper-V must have been crawling for some reason. The VMs have been observed to become slow in the past when the host has been up for a long duration (two weeks to a month), but never this slow. Would love to know what types of performance monitoring items i can observe to give a hint why this can happen. UPDATE 2012-02-13 In the months ever since, Hyper-V has stalled into this state another two times. It appears so randomly and without any error event logs to hint what is causing it enter this "drunkard" state. Just an Hyper-V management service timeout. Log Name: System Source: Service Control Manager Date: 13/2/2012 9:16:48 AM Event ID: 7043 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: elune Description: The Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management service did not shut down properly after receiving a preshutdown control. Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" /> <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7043</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2012-02-13T01:16:48.882901900Z" /> <EventRecordID>567844</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="764" ThreadID="8484" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>elune</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data Name="param1">Hyper-V Virtual Machine Management</Data> </EventData> </Event> The only means out of it is to restart the system.

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  • HTG Explains: Should You Buy Extended Warranties?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Buy something at an electronics store and you’ll be confronted by a pushy salesperson who insists you need an extended warranty. You’ll also see extended warranties pushed hard when shopping online. But are they worth it? There’s a reason stores push extended warranties so hard. They’re almost always pure profit for the store involved. An electronics store may live on razor-thin product margins and make big profits on extended warranties and overpriced HDMI cables. You’re Already Getting Multiple Warranties First, back up. The product you’re buying already includes a warranty. In fact, you’re probably getting several different types of warranties. Store Return and Exchange: Most electronics stores allow you to return a malfunctioning product within the first 15 or 30 days and they’ll provide you with a new one. The exact period of time will vary from store to store. If you walk out of the store with a defective product and have to swap it for a new one within the first few weeks, this should be easy. Manufacturer Warranty: A device’s manufacturer — whether the device is a laptop, a television, or a graphics card — offers their own warranty period. The manufacturer warranty covers you after the store refuses to take the product back and exchange it. The length of this warranty depends on the type of product. For example, a cheap laptop may only offer a one-year manufacturer warranty, while a more expensive laptop may offer a two-year warranty. Credit Card Warranty Extension: Many credit cards offer free extended warranties on products you buy with that credit card. Credit card companies will often give you an additional year of warranty. For example, if you buy a laptop with a two year warranty and it fails in the third year, you could then contact your credit card company and they’d cover the cost of fixing or replacing it. Check your credit card’s benefits and fine print for more information. Why Extended Warranties Are Bad You’re already getting a fairly long warranty period, especially if you have a credit card that offers you a free extended warranty — these are fairly common. If the product you get is a “lemon” and has a manufacturing error, it will likely fail pretty soon — well within your warranty period. The extended warranty matters after all your other warranties are exhausted. In the case of a laptop with a two-year warranty that you purchase with a credit card giving you a one-year warranty extension, your extended warranty will kick in three years after you purchase the laptop. In that many years, your current laptop will likely feel pretty old and laptops that are as good — or better — will likely be pretty cheap. If it’s a television, better television displays will be available at a lower price point. You’ll either want to upgrade to a newer model or you’ll be able to buy a new, just-as-good product for very cheap. You’ll only have to pay out-of-pocket if your device fails after the normal warranty period — in over two or three years for typical laptops purchased with a decent credit card. Save the money you would have spent on the warranty and put it towards a future upgrade. How Much Do Extended Warranties Cost? Let’s look at an example from a typical pushy retail outlet, Best Buy. We went to Best Buy’s website and found a pretty standard $600 Samsung laptop. This laptop comes with a one-year warranty period. If purchased with a fairly common credit card, you can easily get a two-year warranty period on this laptop without spending an additional penny. (Yes, such credit cards are available with no yearly fees.) During the check-out process, Best Buy tries to sell you a Geek Squad “Accidental Protection Plan.” To get an additional year of Best Buy’s extended warranty, you’d have to pay $324.98 for a “3-Year Accidental Protection Plan”. You’d basically be paying more than half the price of your laptop for an additional year of warranty — remember, the standard warranties would cover you anyway for the first two years. If this laptop did break sometime between two and three years from now, we wouldn’t be surprised if you could purchase a comparable laptop for about $325 anyway. And, if you don’t need to replace it, you’ve saved that money. Best Buy would object that this isn’t a standard extended warranty. It’s a supercharged warranty plan that will also provide coverage if you spill something on your laptop or drop it and break it. You just have to ask yourself a question. What are the odds that you’ll drop your laptop or spill something on it? They’re probably pretty low if you’re a typical human being. Is it worth spending more than half the price of the laptop just in case you’ll make an uncommon mistake? Probably not. There may be occasional exceptions to this — some Apple users swear by Apple’s AppleCare, for example — but you should generally avoid buying these things. There’s a reason stores are so pushy about extended warranties, and it’s not because they want to help protect you. It’s because they’re making lots of profit from these plans, and they’re making so much profit because they’re not a good deal for customers. Image Credit: Philip Taylor on Flickr     

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  • libvirt upgrade caused vms to not see drives (boot media not found)

    - by bias
    I upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04.1 and now libvirt (via open nebula) successfully runs vms but they aren't finding the 2 drives (specifically, the boot drive). One is "hd" the other is "cdrom". The machine boots but fails and displays something like "boot media not found hd" (this was in a vnc terminal and I didn't copy the output anywhere so that's not the verbatim message). I tried constructing a new disk using the new version of qemu (via vmbuilder) and this new machine has the same problem as the old machine. In case it matters (I can't see why it would) I'm using open nebula to manage the machines. There's nothing relevant in any of the logs: syslog, libvirtd, oned. Which is to say nothing interesting/anomalous is reported when the machine is brought up. Versions libvirt 0.9.8-2ubuntu17.4 qemu-kvm 1.0+noroms-0ubuntu14.3 The libvirt xml config portions (relavent) <os> <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-1.0'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> ... <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/> <source file='/var/lib/one//203/images/disk.0'/> <target dev='sda' bus='scsi'/> <alias name='scsi0-0-0'/> <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' unit='0'/> </disk> <disk type='file' device='cdrom'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/> <source file='/var/lib/one//203/images/disk.1'/> <target dev='sdc' bus='scsi'/> <readonly/> <alias name='scsi0-0-2'/> <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' unit='2'/> </disk> <controller type='scsi' index='0'> <alias name='scsi0'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/> </controller> <memballoon model='virtio'> <alias name='balloon0'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x06' function='0x0'/> </memballoon> ... </devices> The libvirt/qemu log contains 2012-11-25 22:19:24.328+0000: starting up LC_ALL=C PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/bin QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=none /usr/bin/kvm -S -M pc-1.0 -enable-kvm -m 256 -smp 1,sockets=1,cores=1,threads=1 -name one-204 -uuid 4be6c276-19e8-bdc2-e9c9-9ca5352f2be3 -nodefconfig -nodefaults -chardev socket,id=charmonitor,path=/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/one-204.monitor,server,nowait -mon chardev=charmonitor,id=monitor,mode=control -rtc base=utc -no-shutdown -device lsi,id=scsi0,bus=pci.0,addr=0x5 -drive file=/var/lib/one//204/images/disk.0,if=none,id=drive-scsi0-0-0,format=qcow2 -device scsi-disk,bus=scsi0.0,scsi-id=0,drive=drive-scsi0-0-0,id=scsi0-0-0,bootindex=1 -drive file=/var/lib/one//204/images/disk.1,if=none,media=cdrom,id=drive-scsi0-0-2,readonly=on,format=raw -device scsi-disk,bus=scsi0.0,scsi-id=2,drive=drive-scsi0-0-2,id=scsi0-0-2 -netdev tap,fd=18,id=hostnet0 -device rtl8139,netdev=hostnet0,id=net0,mac=02:00:c0:a8:00:68,bus=pci.0,addr=0x3 -netdev tap,fd=19,id=hostnet1 -device rtl8139,netdev=hostnet1,id=net1,mac=02:00:ad:f0:1b:94,bus=pci.0,addr=0x4 -usb -vnc 0.0.0.0:204 -vga cirrus -device virtio-balloon-pci,id=balloon0,bus=pci.0,addr=0x6 kvm: -device rtl8139,netdev=hostnet0,id=net0,mac=02:00:c0:a8:00:68,bus=pci.0,addr=0x3: pci_add_option_rom: failed to find romfile "pxe-rtl8139.rom" kvm: -device rtl8139,netdev=hostnet1,id=net1,mac=02:00:ad:f0:1b:94,bus=pci.0,addr=0x4: pci_add_option_rom: failed to find romfile "pxe-rtl8139.rom"

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  • nconf nagios config no services defined

    - by user1508056
    I've setup Nagios core on OSX 10.7 server via macports fine. It seems to load fine and the sample config files all copied over to /opt/local/etc/nagios/objects/ fine and are specified correctly in the nagios.cfg file. I then installed nconf manually and got it running without much fight. Then I clicked on "Generate Nagios config" in nconf and get 1 warning and 4 errors. When I expand the error box here what I see: Nagios Core 3.5.0 Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad Last Modified: 03-15-2013 License: GPL Website: http://www.nagios.org Reading configuration data... Read main config file okay... Read object config files okay... Running pre-flight check on configuration data... Checking services... Error: There are no services defined! Checked 0 services. Checking hosts... Error: There are no hosts defined! Checked 0 hosts. Checking host groups... Checked 0 host groups. Checking service groups... Checked 0 service groups. Checking contacts... Error: There are no contacts defined! Checked 0 contacts. Checking contact groups... Checked 0 contact groups. Checking service escalations... Checked 0 service escalations. Checking service dependencies... Checked 0 service dependencies. Checking host escalations... Checked 0 host escalations. Checking host dependencies... Checked 0 host dependencies. Checking commands... Checked 0 commands. Checking time periods... Checked 0 time periods. Checking for circular paths between hosts... Checking for circular host and service dependencies... Checking global event handlers... Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands... Checking misc settings... Warning: Nothing specified for illegal_macro_output_chars variable! Total Warnings: 1 Total Errors: 3 I've tried several different things (played with cache settings, changed file permissions/ownership, edited some config files manually, etc.) but nothing gets me past this step. The thing is, when I run 'sudo nagios -v /opt/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg' the output shows it is reading a number of services, a localhost, and a contact in the .cfg files...so I'm pretty confident those are ok and the problem is nconf isnt reading the correct .cfg files or something like that. Any ideas what to double check? I did lots of googling and found nothing on this specific issue--so either I'm special (I'm not) or am overlooking something really simple. The path to nagios binary is listed as /opt/local/bin/nagios, if that matters. Also, all the nagios files are owned by nagios:nagios, wheras nconf files are owned by user, with only the directories/files specified in the nconf docs belonging to the _www user and/or group (things like output, temp, config, etc.). Thanks.

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  • How do I allow mysqld to use more than 24.9% of my cpu?

    - by Joseph Yancey
    I have a Web server running on RHEL that is running Apache and MySQL. It has a Quad core 3.2Ghz Xeon CPU and 8 Gigs of RAM Most of the time, we don't have any issues at all. Our web application is very database intensive. When our usage gets pretty heavy MySQL will peg out at using 24.9% of the cpu. Most of the time, it hangs around below 5%. I have speculated that it is only using one core of the CPU and it is pegging out that core but TOP shows me in the cpu column that mysqld changes cores even while the usage stays at 24.9%. When it does this MySQL gets painfully slow as it is queuing up queries Is there some magic configuration that will tell mysql to use more cpu when it needs to? Also, any other advice on my configuration would be helpful. We run two applications on this server. One that runs Innodb but doesn't get much usage (it has been replaced by the other app), and one that runs MyIsam and gets lots of use. Overall, our whole mysql data directory is something like 13Gigs if that matters at all. Here is my config: [root@ProductionLinux root]# cat /etc/my.cnf [mysqld] server-id = 71 log-bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log binlog-do-db = oldapplication binlog-do-db = newapplication binlog-do-db = support thread_cache_size = 30 key_buffer_size = 256M table_cache = 256 sort_buffer_size = 4M read_buffer_size = 1M skip-name-resolve innodb_data_home_dir = /usr/local/mysql/data/ innodb_data_file_path = InnoDB:100M:autoextend set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=70M set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=10M set-variable = max_connections=500 innodb_log_group_home_dir = /usr/local/mysql/data innodb_log_arch_dir = /usr/local/mysql/data set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=20M set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=8M innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1 log-queries-not-using-indexes log-error = /var/log/mysql/mysql-error.log mysql show variables; +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | auto_increment_increment | 1 | | auto_increment_offset | 1 | | automatic_sp_privileges | ON | | back_log | 50 | | basedir | /usr/local/mysql-standard-5.0.18-linux-x86_64-glibc23/ | | binlog_cache_size | 32768 | | bulk_insert_buffer_size | 8388608 | | character_set_client | latin1 | | character_set_connection | latin1 | | character_set_database | latin1 | | character_set_results | latin1 | | character_set_server | latin1 | | character_set_system | utf8 | | character_sets_dir | /usr/local/mysql-standard-5.0.18-linux-x86_64-glibc23/share/mysql/charsets/ | | collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci | | collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci | | collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci | | completion_type | 0 | | concurrent_insert | 1 | | connect_timeout | 5 | | datadir | /usr/local/mysql/data/ | | date_format | %Y-%m-%d | | datetime_format | %Y-%m-%d %H:%i:%s | | default_week_format | 0 | | delay_key_write | ON | | delayed_insert_limit | 100 | | delayed_insert_timeout | 300 | | delayed_queue_size | 1000 | | div_precision_increment | 4 | | engine_condition_pushdown | OFF | | expire_logs_days | 0 | | flush | OFF | | flush_time | 0 | | | ft_max_word_len | 84 | | ft_min_word_len | 4 | | ft_query_expansion_limit | 20 | | ft_stopword_file | (built-in) | | group_concat_max_len | 1024 | | have_archive | YES | | have_bdb | NO | | have_blackhole_engine | NO | | have_compress | YES | | have_crypt | YES | | have_csv | NO | | have_example_engine | NO | | have_federated_engine | NO | | have_geometry | YES | | have_innodb | YES | | have_isam | NO | | have_ndbcluster | NO | | have_openssl | NO | | have_query_cache | YES | | have_raid | NO | | have_rtree_keys | YES | | have_symlink | YES | | init_connect | | | init_file | | | init_slave | | | innodb_additional_mem_pool_size | 10485760 | | innodb_autoextend_increment | 8 | | innodb_buffer_pool_awe_mem_mb | 0 | | innodb_buffer_pool_size | 73400320 | | innodb_checksums | ON | | innodb_commit_concurrency | 0 | | innodb_concurrency_tickets | 500 | | innodb_data_file_path | InnoDB:100M:autoextend | | innodb_data_home_dir | /usr/local/mysql/data/ | | innodb_doublewrite | ON | | innodb_fast_shutdown | 1 | | innodb_file_io_threads | 4 | | innodb_file_per_table | OFF | | innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit | 1 | | innodb_flush_method | | | innodb_force_recovery | 0 | | innodb_lock_wait_timeout | 50 | | innodb_locks_unsafe_for_binlog | OFF | | innodb_log_arch_dir | /usr/local/mysql/data | | innodb_log_archive | OFF | | innodb_log_buffer_size | 8388608 | | innodb_log_file_size | 20971520 | | innodb_log_files_in_group | 2 | | innodb_log_group_home_dir | /usr/local/mysql/data | | innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct | 90 | | innodb_max_purge_lag | 0 | | innodb_mirrored_log_groups | 1 | | innodb_open_files | 300 | | innodb_support_xa | ON | | innodb_sync_spin_loops | 20 | | innodb_table_locks | ON | | innodb_thread_concurrency | 20 | | innodb_thread_sleep_delay | 10000 | | interactive_timeout | 28800 | | join_buffer_size | 131072 | | key_buffer_size | 268435456 | | key_cache_age_threshold | 300 | | key_cache_block_size | 1024 | | key_cache_division_limit | 100 | | language | /usr/local/mysql-standard-5.0.18-linux-x86_64-glibc23/share/mysql/english/ | | large_files_support | ON | | large_page_size | 0 | | large_pages | OFF | | license | GPL | | local_infile | ON | | locked_in_memory | OFF | | log | OFF | | log_bin | ON | | log_bin_trust_function_creators | OFF | | log_error | /var/log/mysql/mysql-error.log | | log_slave_updates | OFF | | log_slow_queries | OFF | | log_warnings | 1 | | long_query_time | 10 | | low_priority_updates | OFF | | lower_case_file_system | OFF | | lower_case_table_names | 0 | | max_allowed_packet | 1048576 | | max_binlog_cache_size | 18446744073709551615 | | max_binlog_size | 1073741824 | | max_connect_errors | 10 | | max_connections | 500 | | max_delayed_threads | 20 | | max_error_count | 64 | | max_heap_table_size | 16777216 | | max_insert_delayed_threads | 20 | | max_join_size | 18446744073709551615 | | max_length_for_sort_data | 1024 | | max_relay_log_size | 0 | | max_seeks_for_key | 18446744073709551615 | | max_sort_length | 1024 | | max_sp_recursion_depth | 0 | | max_tmp_tables | 32 | | max_user_connections | 0 | | max_write_lock_count | 18446744073709551615 | | multi_range_count | 256 | | myisam_data_pointer_size | 6 | | myisam_max_sort_file_size | 9223372036854775807 | | myisam_recover_options | OFF | | myisam_repair_threads | 1 | | myisam_sort_buffer_size | 8388608 | | myisam_stats_method | nulls_unequal | | net_buffer_length | 16384 | | net_read_timeout | 30 | | net_retry_count | 10 | | net_write_timeout | 60 | | new | OFF | | old_passwords | OFF | | open_files_limit | 2510 | | optimizer_prune_level | 1 | | optimizer_search_depth | 62 | | pid_file | /usr/local/mysql/data/ProductionLinux.pid | | port | 3306 | | preload_buffer_size | 32768 | | protocol_version | 10 | | query_alloc_block_size | 8192 | | query_cache_limit | 1048576 | | query_cache_min_res_unit | 4096 | | query_cache_size | 0 | | query_cache_type | ON | | query_cache_wlock_invalidate | OFF | | query_prealloc_size | 8192 | | range_alloc_block_size | 2048 | | read_buffer_size | 1044480 | | read_only | OFF | | read_rnd_buffer_size | 262144 | | relay_log_purge | ON | | relay_log_space_limit | 0 | | rpl_recovery_rank | 0 | | secure_auth | OFF | | server_id | 71 | | skip_external_locking | ON | | skip_networking | OFF | | skip_show_database | OFF | | slave_compressed_protocol | OFF | | slave_load_tmpdir | /tmp/ | | slave_net_timeout | 3600 | | slave_skip_errors | OFF | | slave_transaction_retries | 10 | | slow_launch_time | 2 | | socket | /tmp/mysql.sock | | sort_buffer_size | 4194296 | | sql_mode | | | sql_notes | ON | | sql_warnings | ON | | storage_engine | MyISAM | | sync_binlog | 0 | | sync_frm | ON | | sync_replication | 0 | | sync_replication_slave_id | 0 | | sync_replication_timeout | 10 | | system_time_zone | CST | | table_cache | 256 | | table_lock_wait_timeout | 50 | | table_type | MyISAM | | thread_cache_size | 30 | | thread_stack | 262144 | | time_format | %H:%i:%s | | time_zone | SYSTEM | | timed_mutexes | OFF | | tmp_table_size | 33554432 | | tmpdir | | | transaction_alloc_block_size | 8192 | | transaction_prealloc_size | 4096 | | tx_isolation | REPEATABLE-READ | | updatable_views_with_limit | YES | | version | 5.0.18-standard-log | | version_comment | MySQL Community Edition - Standard (GPL) | | version_compile_machine | x86_64 | | version_compile_os | unknown-linux-gnu | | wait_timeout | 28800 | +---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 210 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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  • How do I make an external hard drive keep the same drive letter permanently?

    - by andygrunt
    I have a desktop PC (2002 vintage) running Windows XP that I turn on about 2 or 3 times per week. I have a mains powered 250Gb Western Digital hard disk connected to it via USB. I always turn the hard disk on before the PC so it's up and running as the PC boots. When I first connected the external hard disk, the PC assigned it a letter ('i' if it matters) and I've installed software to it, created shortcuts to various files and folders on the disk using that letter. For years everything was fine then I would boot the PC and the hard disk was assigned a different letter. I'd then have to go into 'my computer/manage/disk management' and manually change the letter back to 'i'. If I then rebooted the PC, the hard disk would usually still be 'i' but after the next reboot would be some other random letter and I have to manually change it back to 'i'. This would go on for some time then there'd be periods when the it would always be 'i' then, for no apparent reason (no new devices added, for example), the drive letter would start changing again. At the moment it's in random drive letter mood so I thought I'd ask the following question... How do I assign the external hard disk to be 'i' permanently? Answer: Thanks Molly that seems to have done the trick (after a little fiddling) - slightly disappointed there wasn't a way to do it within Windows without installing something else though. For anyone else trying this, it wasn't completely straightforward so here's what happened with me. I installed USBDLM as per the instructions on its website. I guessed that I had to assign the first USB letter to i so replaced the 'Letter1=' lines to 'Letter=I' in the ini file. To test it, I rebooted the PC only to find it came back up with the display set to 640x480 in 16 colours. After some investigation, I re-installed the display drivers and rebooted and set the display back to its usual setting. The external hard disk now gets set to 'i' but I found I had to re-apply sharing status to it so it was seen from my laptop which is on the same network. The end result of all this is that it now does what I wanted although it does act as though the hard drive has just been plugged in a few seconds after the Windows desktop appears i.e. the little box appears with a progress bar as it searches through the contents of the 'new' hard drive and I eventually get a dialogue box saying 'This disk or device contains more than one type of content. What do you want Windows to do?' and lists options such as play media files, print the pictures or open folder to view the files. This is a tiny pain I wish didn't happen but not exactly a huge price to pay. Other than that - it seems to work fine :) Looks like a spoke too soon... Every time I reboot, I have to re-share the 'i' drive (which I didn't have to do before) so it can be seen by my laptop on the same network. Any ideas how to make that permanent?

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  • USB connection is unstable with Nexus S 2.3.4 on AMD 64 running 64-bit Windows 7, but works with 32-bit Windows Vista

    - by Mike
    The USB connection is unstable with Nexus S (Android 2.3.4) on AMD 64 running 64-bit Windows 7, but it works with 32-bit Windows Vista. Problem Description: On the 64-bit Windows 7 machine my Nexus S appears to connect, but then it disconnects moments later. Neither accessing USB storage or loading an Android application package file (APK) using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) work. On 32-bit Windows Vista using the same USB cable, USB storage works. I haven't tried the ADB on 32-bit Windows Vista. Reproduction steps for USB storage: (I have provided the reproduction steps for USB storage and not ADB, because if one isn't working, then the other isn't working either and the USB storage reproduction steps are shorter to document.) Connect the USB cable to the Nexus S and my Windows 7 machine. Effect: The "USB Mass Storage, USB Connected" dialog appears with the button "Turn on USB storage." Click "Turn on USB Storage" Effect: The "working circle" appears. A dialog briefly appears saying "USB storage in use," then it either returns me to Step 1 (now that I am running 2.3.4) or is replaced with the Nexus S's application homepage (while I was running 2.3.3). I'm not sure if the version matters, but I mention it for completeness. On the 32-bit Windows Vista machine the connection is stable. I am able to navigate through the Nexus S file system create, read, update, and delete files, etc. I haven't tried connecting with the ADB. Troubleshooting summary: Tried and failed: Uninstalling and reinstalling the Android USB drivers including removing the files. Uninstalling my custom software Pulling the Nexus S's battery Restarting the Nexus S Restarting 64-bit Windows 7 Changing USB ports on the 64-bit Windows 7 box Compared the dates and file size on the DLLs in my google-usb_driver\amd64 directory and the windows\System32 directory. They match. The sizes for the google-usb_driver\i386 directory do not match (expected). Turning off Debugging mode on the Nexus S does not resolve the problem. Searching Google. Tried and succeeded: Connecting to another machine (Windows Vista) using the same USB cable and Nexus S phone. Troubleshooting observations: I notice that uninstalling the device drivers and deleting the files, then reinstalling the drivers, then rebooting 64-bit Windows 7 then unplugging the Nexus S, then plugging it back in occasionally helps for a short amount of time (minutes to hours, not days). When it is working, I can both access the Nexus S's drive and load/test applications using the ADB. I have observed some wonky behavior in the Device Manager that I haven't tracked down. Sometimes the black Nexus S image appears in the list of devices. Sometimes the image displays as a computer with a green ISA card. Sometimes it neither appears on the top level of devices nor under “other devices,” but it does appear under "disk drives" as "Android UMS Composite USB Device." System configuration: The Nexus S is running Android OS 2.3.4's "Settings\about phone\System updates" indicates that it is up to date as of May 21st 2011. Both 32-bit Windows Vista and 64-bit Windows 7 are up to date. The Windows Vista system is running on an Intel 32-bit processor. Windows 7 is running on an AMD 64-bit processor. I have done Android development on both systems, but I usually develop on the 64-bit Windows 7 machine.

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  • How to make XAMPP virtual hosts accessible to VM's and other computers on LAN?

    - by martin's
    XAMPP running on Vista 64 Ultimate dev machine (don't think it matters). Machine / Browser configuration Safari, Firefox, Chrome and IE9 on dev machine IE7 and IE8 on separate XP Pro VM's (VMWare on dev machine) IE10 and Chrome on Windows 8 VM (VMware on dev machine) Safari, Firefox and Chrome running on a iMac (same network as dev) Safari, Firefox and Chrome running on a couple of Mac Pro's (same network as dev) IE7, IE8, IE9 running on other PC's on the same network as dev machine Development Configuration Multiple virtual hosts for different projects .local fake TLD for development No firewall restrictions on dev machine for Apache Some sites have .htaccess mapping www to non-www Port 80 is open in the dev machine's firewall Problem XAMPP local home page (http://192.168.1.98/xampp/) can be accessed from everywhere, real or virtual, by IP All .local sites can be accessed from the browsers on the dev machine. All .local sites can be accessed form the browsers in the XP VM's. Some .local sites cannot be accessed from IE10 or Chrome on the W8 VM Sites that cannot be accessed from W8 VM have a minimal .htaccess file No .local sites can be accessed from ANY machine (PC or Mac) on the LAN hosts on dev machine (relevant excerpt) 127.0.0.1 site1.local 127.0.0.1 site2.local 127.0.0.1 site3.local 127.0.0.1 site4.local 127.0.0.1 site5.local 127.0.0.1 site6.local 127.0.0.1 site7.local 127.0.0.1 site8.local 127.0.0.1 site9.local 192.168.1.98 site1.local 192.168.1.98 site2.local 192.168.1.98 site3.local 192.168.1.98 site4.local 192.168.1.98 site5.local 192.168.1.98 site6.local 192.168.1.98 site7.local 192.168.1.98 site8.local 192.168.1.98 site9.local httpd-vhosts.conf on dev machine (relevant excerpt) NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName localhost ServerAlias localhost *.localhost.* DocumentRoot D:/xampp/htdocs </VirtualHost> # ======================================== site1.local <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName site1.local ServerAlias site1.local *.site1.local DocumentRoot D:/xampp-sites/site1/public_html ErrorLog D:/xampp-sites/site1/logs/access.log CustomLog D:/xampp-sites/site1/logs/error.log combined <Directory D:/xampp-sites/site1> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> </VirtualHost> NOTE: The above <VirtualHost *:80> block is repeated for each of the nine virtual hosts in the file, no sense in posting it here. hosts on all VM's and physical machines on the network (relevant excerpt) 127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost 192.168.1.98 site1.local 192.168.1.98 site2.local 192.168.1.98 site3.local 192.168.1.98 site4.local 192.168.1.98 site5.local 192.168.1.98 site6.local 192.168.1.98 site7.local 192.168.1.98 site8.local 192.168.1.98 site9.local None of the VM's have any firewall blocks on http traffic. They can reach any site on the real Internet. The same is true of the real machines on the network. The biggest puzzle perhaps is that the W8 VM actually DOES reach some of the virtual hosts. It does NOT reach site2, site6 and site 9, all of which have this minimal .htaccess file. .htaccess file <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] </IfModule> Adding this file to any of the virtual hosts that do work on the W8 VM will break the site (only for W8 VM, not the XP VM's) and require a cache flush on the W8 VM before it will see the site again after deleting the file. Regardless of whether a .htaccess file exists or not, no machine on the same LAN can access anything other than the XAMPP home page via IP. Even with hosts files on all machines. I can ping any virtual host from any machine on the network and get a response from the correct IP address. I can't see anything in out Netgear router that might prevent one machine from reaching the other. Besides, once the local hosts file resolves to an ip address that's all that goes out onto the local network. I've gone through an extensive number of posts on both SO and as the result of Google searches. I can't say that I have found anything definitive anywhere.

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