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World Record Siebel PSPP Benchmark on SPARC T4 Servers

- by Brian

Oracle's SPARC T4 servers set a new World Record for Oracle's Siebel Platform Sizing and Performance Program (PSPP) benchmark suite. The result used Oracle's Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Industry Applications Release 8.1.1.4 and Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running Oracle Solaris on three SPARC T4-2 and two SPARC T4-1 servers. The SPARC T4 servers running the Siebel PSPP 8.1.1.4 workload which includes Siebel Call Center and Order Management System demonstrates impressive throughput performance of the SPARC T4 processor by achieving 29,000 users. This is the first Siebel PSPP 8.1.1.4 benchmark supporting 29,000 concurrent users with a rate of 239,748 Business Transactions/hour. The benchmark demonstrates vertical and horizontal scalability of Siebel CRM Release 8.1.1.4 on SPARC T4 servers. Performance Landscape Systems Txn/hr Users Call Center Order Management Response Times (sec) 1 x SPARC T4-1 (1 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – Web 3 x SPARC T4-2 (2 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – App/Gateway 1 x SPARC T4-1 (1 x SPARC T4 2.85 GHz) – DB 239,748 29,000 0.165 0.925 Oracle: Call Center + Order Management Transactions: 197,128 + 42,620 Users: 20300 + 8700 Configuration Summary Web Server Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-1 server 1 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 128 GB memory Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 iPlanet Web Server 7 Application Server Configuration: 3 x SPARC T4-2 servers, each with 2 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 256 GB memory 3 x 300 GB SAS internal disks Oracle Solaris 10 8/11 Siebel CRM 8.1.1.5 SIA Database Server Configuration: 1 x SPARC T4-1 server 1 x SPARC T4 processor, 2.85 GHz 128 GB memory Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2) Storage Configuration: 1 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array 80 x 24 GB flash modules Benchmark Description Siebel 8.1 PSPP benchmark includes Call Center and Order Management: Siebel Financial Services Call Center – Provides the most complete solution for sales and service, allowing customer service and telesales representatives to provide superior customer support, improve customer loyalty, and increase revenues through cross-selling and up-selling. High-level description of the use cases tested: Incoming Call Creates Opportunity, Quote and Order and Incoming Call Creates Service Request . Three complex business transactions are executed simultaneously for specific number of concurrent users. The ratios of these 3 scenarios were 30%, 40%, 30% respectively, which together were totaling 70% of all transactions simulated in this benchmark. Between each user operation and the next one, the think time averaged approximately 10, 13, and 35 seconds respectively. Siebel Order Management – Oracle's Siebel Order Management allows employees such as salespeople and call center agents to create and manage quotes and orders through their entire life cycle. Siebel Order Management can be tightly integrated with back-office applications allowing users to perform tasks such as checking credit, confirming availability, and monitoring the fulfillment process. High-level description of the use cases tested: Order & Order Items Creation and Order Updates. Two complex Order Management transactions were executed simultaneously for specific number of concurrent users concurrently with aforementioned three Call Center scenarios above. The ratio of these 2 scenarios was 50% each, which together were totaling 30% of all transactions simulated in this benchmark. Between each user operation and the next one, the think time averaged approximately 20 and 67 seconds respectively. Key Points and Best Practices No processor cores or cache were activated or deactivated on the SPARC T-Series systems to achieve special benchmark effects. See Also Siebel White Papers SPARC T4-1 Server oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-2 Server oracle.com OTN Siebel CRM oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 30 September 2012.

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Heterogeneous Datacenter Management with Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Joe Diemer

The following is a Guest Blog, contributed by Bryce Kaiser, Product Manager at Blue MedoraWhen I envision a perfect datacenter, it would consist of technologies acquired from a single vendor across the entire server, middleware, application, network, and storage stack - Apps to Disk - that meets your organization’s every IT requirement with absolute best-of-breed solutions in every category. To quote a familiar motto, your datacenter would consist of "Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together". In almost all cases, practical realities dictate something far less than the IT Utopia mentioned above. You may wish to leverage multiple vendors to keep licensing costs down, a single vendor may not have an offering in the IT category you need, or your preferred vendor may quite simply not have the solution that meets your needs. In other words, your IT needs dictate a heterogeneous IT environment. Heterogeneity, however, comes with additional complexity. The following are two pretty typical challenges:1) No End-to-End Visibility into the Enterprise Wide Application Deployment. Each vendor solution which is added to an infrastructure may bring its own tooling creating different consoles for different vendor applications and platforms.2) No Visibility into Performance Bottlenecks. When multiple management tools operate independently, you lose diagnostic capabilities including identifying cross-tier issues with database, hung-requests, slowness, memory leaks and hardware errors/failures causing DB/MW issues. As adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) has increased, especially since the release of Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle has seen an increase in the number of customers who want to leverage their investments in EM to manage non-Oracle workloads. Enterprise Manager provides a single pane of glass view into their entire datacenter. By creating a highly extensible framework via the Oracle EM Extensibility Development Kit (EDK), Oracle has provided the tooling for business partners such as my company Blue Medora as well as customers to easily fill gaps in the ecosystem and enhance existing solutions. As mentioned in the previous post on the Enterprise Manager Extensibility Exchange, customers have access to an assortment of Oracle and Partner provided solutions through this Exchange, which is accessed at http://www.oracle.com/goto/emextensibility. Currently, there are over 80 Oracle and partner provided plug-ins across the EM 11g and EM 12c versions. Blue Medora is one of those contributing partners, for which you will find 3 of our solutions including our flagship plugin for VMware. Let's look at Blue Medora’s VMware plug-in as an example to what I'm trying to convey. Here is a common situation solved by true visibility into your entire stack:Symptoms• My database is bogging down, however the database appears okay internally. Maybe it’s starved for resources?• My OS tooling is showing everything is “OK”. Something doesn’t add up. Root cause• Through the VMware plugin we can see the problem is actually on the virtualization layer Solution• From within Enterprise Manager -- the same tool you use for all of your database tuning -- we can overlay the data of the database target, host target, and virtual machine target for a true picture of the true root cause. Here is the console view: Perhaps your monitoring conditions are more specific to your environment. No worries, Enterprise Manager still has you covered. With Metric Extensions you have the “Next Generation” of User-Defined Metrics, which easily bring the power of your existing management scripts into a single console while leveraging the proven Enterprise Manager framework. Simply put, Oracle Enterprise manager boasts a growing ecosystem that provides the single pane of glass for your entire datacenter from the database and beyond. Bryce can be contacted at [email protected]

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Type of computer for a developer on the road

- by nabucosound

Hi developers: I am planning to be traveling through eurasia and asia (russia, china, korea, japan, south east asia...) for a while and, although there are plenty of marvelous things to see and to do, I must keep on working :(. I am a python developer, dedicated mainly to web projects. I use django, sqlite3, browsers, and ocassionaly (only if I have no choice) I install postgres, mysql, apache or any other servers commonly used in the internets. I do my coding on vim, use ssh to connect, lftp to transfer files, IRC, grep/ack... So I spend most of my time in the terminal shells. But I also use IM or Skype to communicate with my clients and peers, as well as some other software (that after all is not mandatory for my day-to-day work). I currently work with a Macbook Pro (3 years old now) and so far I am very happy with the performance. But I don't want to carry it if I am going to be "on transit" for long time, it is simply huge and heavy for what I am planning to load in my rather small backpack (while traveling, less is more, you know). So here I am reading all kind of opinions about netbooks, because at first sight this is the kind of computer I thought I had to choose. I am going to use Linux for it, Microsoft is not my cup of tea and Mac is not available for them, unless I were to buy a Macbook air, something that I won't do because if I am robbed or rain/dust/truck loaders break it I would burst in tears. I am concerned about wifi performance and connectivity, I am going to use one of those linux distros/tools to hack/test on "open" networks (if you know what I mean) in case I am not in a place with real free wifi access and I find myself in an emergency. CPU speed should be acceptable, but since I don't plan to run Photoshop or expensive IDEs, I guess most of the time I won't be overloading the machine. Apart from this, maybe (surely) I am missing other features to consider. With that said (sorry about the length) here it comes my question, raised from a deep ignorance regarding the wars betweeb betbooks vs notebooks (I assume tablet PCs are not for programming yet): If I buy a netbook will I have to throw it away after 1 month on the road and buy a notebook? Or will I be OK? Thanks! Hector Update I have received great feedback so far! I would like to insist on the fact that I will be traveling through many different countries and scenarios. I am sure that while in Japan I will be more than fine with anything related to technology, connectivity, etc. But consider that I will be, for example, on a train through Russia (transsiberian) and will cross Mongolia as well. I will stay in friends' places sometimes, but most of the time I will have to work from hostel rooms, trains, buses, beaches (hey this last one doesn't sound too bad hehe!). I think some of your answers guys seem to focus on the geek part but loose the point of this "on the road" fact. I am very aware and agree that netbooks suck compared to notebooks, but what I am trying to do here is to find a balance and discover your experiences with netbooks to see first hand if a netbook will be a fail in the mid-long term of the trip for my purposes. So I have resumed the main concepts expressed here on this small list, in no particular order: keyboard/touchpad feel: I use vim so no need of moving mouse pointers that much, unless I am browsing the web, but intensive use of keyboard screen real state: again, terminal work for most of the time battery life: I think something very important weight/size: also very important looks not worth stealing it, don't give a shit if it is lost/stolen/broken: this may depend on kind of person, your economy, etc. Also to prevent losing work, I will upload EVERYTHING to the cloud whenever I'll have a chance. wifi: don't want to discover my wifi is one of those that cannot deal with half the routers on this planet or has poor connectivity. Thanks again for your answers and comments!

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ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 2 of 2 – Memory Profiler)

- by ToStringTheory

One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS memory profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction – Part 2 In my last post, I reviewed the feature packed Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler. Separate from the Red Gate Performance Profiler is the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler – a simple, easy to use utility for checking how your application is handling memory management… A tool that I wish I had had many times in the past. This post will be focusing on the ANTS Memory Profiler and its tool set. The memory profiler has a large assortment of features just like the Performance Profiler, with the new session looking nearly exactly alike: ANTS Memory Profiler Memory profiling is not something that I have to do very often… In the past, the few cases I’ve had to find a memory leak in an application I have usually just had to trace the code of the operations being performed to look for oddities… Sadly, I have come across more undisposed/non-using’ed IDisposable objects, usually from ADO.Net than I would like to ever see. Support is not fun, however using ANTS Memory Profiler makes this task easier. For this round of testing, I am going to use the same code from my previous example, using the WPF application. This time, I will choose the ‘Profile Memory’ option from the ANTS menu in Visual Studio, which launches the solution in its currently configured state/start-up project, and then launches the ANTS Memory Profiler to help. It prepopulates all of the fields with the current project information, and all I have to do is select the ‘Start Profiling’ option. When the window comes up, it is actually quite barren, just giving ideas on how to work the profiler. You start by getting to the point in your application that you want to profile, and then taking a ‘Memory Snapshot’. This performs a full garbage collection, and snapshots the managed heap. Using the same WPF app as before, I will go ahead and take a snapshot now. As you can see, ANTS is already giving me lots of information regarding the snapshot, however this is just a snapshot. The whole point of the profiler is to perform an action, usually one where a memory problem is being noticed, and then take another snapshot and perform a diff between them to see what has changed. I am going to go ahead and generate 5000 primes, and then take another snapshot: As you can see, ANTS is already giving me a lot of new information about this snapshot compared to the last. Information such as difference in memory usage, fragmentation, class usage, etc… If you take more snapshots, you can use the dropdown at the top to set your actual comparison snapshots. If you beneath the timeline, you will see a breadcrumb trail showing how best to approach profiling memory using ANTS. When you first do the comparison, you start on the Summary screen. You can either use the charts at the bottom, or switch to the class list screen to get to the next step. Here is the class list screen: As you can see, it lists information about all of the instances between the snapshots, as well as at the bottom giving you a way to filter by telling ANTS what your problem is. I am going to go ahead and select the Int16[] to look at the Instance Categorizer Using the instance categorizer, you can travel backwards to see where all of the instances are coming from. It may be hard to see in this image, but hopefully the lightbox (click on it) will help: I can see that all of these instances are rooted to the application through the UI TextBlock control. This image will probably be even harder to see, however using the ‘Instance Retention Graph’, you can trace an objects memory inheritance up the chain to see its roots as well. This is a simple example, as this is simply a known element. Usually you would be profiling an actual problem, and comparing those differences. I know in the past, I have spotted a problem where a new context was created per page load, and it was rooted into the application through an event. As the application began to grow, performance and reliability problems started to emerge. A tool like this would have been a great way to identify the problem quickly. Overview Overall, I think that the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler is a great utility for debugging those pesky leaks. 3 Biggest Pros: Easy to use interface with lots of options for configuring profiling session Intuitive and helpful interface for drilling down from summary, to instance, to root graphs ANTS provides an API for controlling the profiler. Not many options, but still helpful. 2 Biggest Cons: Inability to automatically snapshot the memory by interval Lack of complete integration with Visual Studio via an extension panel Ratings Ease of Use (9/10) – I really do believe that they have brought simplicity to the once difficult task of memory profiling. I especially liked how it stepped you further into the drilldown by directing you towards the best options. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do. Features (7/10) – A really great set of features all around in the application, however, I would like to see some ability for automatically triggering snapshots based on intervals or framework level items such as events. Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good. their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (9/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find. With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (9/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Memory Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel. Thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead – I told you it would be shorter! Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think! I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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Arcball Problems with UDK

- by opdude

I'm trying to re-create an arcball example from a Nehe, where an object can be rotated in a more realistic way while floating in the air (in my game the object is attached to the player at a distance like for example the Physics Gun) however I'm having trouble getting this to work with UDK. I have created an LGArcBall which follows the example from Nehe and I've compared outputs from this with the example code. I think where my problem lies is what I do to the Quaternion that is returned from the LGArcBall. Currently I am taking the returned Quaternion converting it to a rotation matrix. Getting the product of the last rotation (set when the object is first clicked) and then returning that into a Rotator and setting that to the objects rotation. If you could point me in the right direction that would be great, my code can be found below. class LGArcBall extends Object; var Quat StartRotation; var Vector StartVector; var float AdjustWidth, AdjustHeight, Epsilon; function SetBounds(float NewWidth, float NewHeight) { AdjustWidth = 1.0f / ((NewWidth - 1.0f) * 0.5f); AdjustHeight = 1.0f / ((NewHeight - 1.0f) * 0.5f); } function StartDrag(Vector2D startPoint, Quat rotation) { StartVector = MapToSphere(startPoint); } function Quat Update(Vector2D currentPoint) { local Vector currentVector, perp; local Quat newRot; //Map the new point to the sphere currentVector = MapToSphere(currentPoint); //Compute the vector perpendicular to the start and current perp = startVector cross currentVector; //Make sure our length is larger than Epsilon if (VSize(perp) > Epsilon) { //Return the perpendicular vector as the transform newRot.X = perp.X; newRot.Y = perp.Y; newRot.Z = perp.Z; //In the quaternion values, w is cosine (theta / 2), where //theta is the rotation angle newRot.W = startVector dot currentVector; } else { //The two vectors coincide, so return an identity transform newRot.X = 0.0f; newRot.Y = 0.0f; newRot.Z = 0.0f; newRot.W = 0.0f; } return newRot; } function Vector MapToSphere(Vector2D point) { local float x, y, length, norm; local Vector result; //Transform the mouse coords to [-1..1] //and inverse the Y coord x = (point.X * AdjustWidth) - 1.0f; y = 1.0f - (point.Y * AdjustHeight); length = (x * x) + (y * y); //If the point is mapped outside of the sphere //( length > radius squared) if (length > 1.0f) { norm = 1.0f / Sqrt(length); //Return the "normalized" vector, a point on the sphere result.X = x * norm; result.Y = y * norm; result.Z = 0.0f; } else //It's inside of the sphere { //Return a vector to the point mapped inside the sphere //sqrt(radius squared - length) result.X = x; result.Y = y; result.Z = Sqrt(1.0f - length); } return result; } DefaultProperties { Epsilon = 0.000001f } I'm then attempting to rotate that object when the mouse is dragged, with the following update code in my PlayerController. //Get Mouse Position MousePosition.X = LGMouseInterfacePlayerInput(PlayerInput).MousePosition.X; MousePosition.Y = LGMouseInterfacePlayerInput(PlayerInput).MousePosition.Y; newQuat = ArcBall.Update(MousePosition); rotMatrix = MakeRotationMatrix(QuatToRotator(newQuat)); rotMatrix = rotMatrix * LastRot; LGMoveableActor(movingPawn.CurrentUseableObject).SetPhysics(EPhysics.PHYS_Rotating); LGMoveableActor(movingPawn.CurrentUseableObject).SetRotation(MatrixGetRotator(rotMatrix));

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Capgemini Global Business Process Management Report

- by JuergenKress

Welcome to the Capgemini Global Business Process Management (BPM) Report. This report is an exploration of key trends in BPM as seen by CXOs across a broad selection of sectors and geographies. BPM is perhaps at a tipping point - it’s certainly at an exciting stage in its evolution. As both an engineer and an Operational Research practitioner in my early career, and subsequently as a consultant, I have seen BPM through its development over the last 26 years. BPM has its roots in management practices such as Total Quality Management, Business Process Reengineering & Model Based Development; but the advent of the new generation of sophisticated modelling and process execution technologies has greatly enhanced BPM’s power to truly transform businesses. This has created one of the most rapidly growing and attractive market sectors for both services and technology. We see BPM as a critical management discipline that when executed against clear, cross organizational business objectives, can deliver exceptional value to that organization. However, we also see that the potential for BPM is not well understood. Our decision to conduct this global survey stemmed from discussions with our clients. We sought to gain a better impression of their understanding of BPM, how they measure its value, and how far it is prioritized within their Business and Technology Transformation efforts. This research confirms our belief that BPM needs to be a jointly owned Business and IT discipline. It also demonstrates that it is starting to gain significant traction in the market and investments are starting to pay dividends to the early adopters. At Capgemini we are being asked by our clients to help them simplify and improve their business models and the technology that supports them and we are already seeing BPM become an integral and key part of this proposition. Business Process Management is becoming ever more relevant to both large and small organizations in the current economic climate. At a time when many different market sectors are facing slow revenue growth, customer churn and increased pressures on costs, BPM becomes a critical weapon in the battle for efficiency and effectiveness in processes. Furthermore, in a challenging and changing business environment that is characterized by uncertainty, it allows organizations to adapt, be more agile and fleet of foot. Capgemini is seeing strong demand for BPM services in markets such as the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and France; and there are clear signs of increased interest in other geographies such as, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy and Australia. In sector terms, the financial services industry has led the way in BPM adoption over the recent past, driven by increased focus on customer- centricity and regulatory compliance. Other sectors, public sector, utilities, telco, retail and manufacturing are now not only catching up, but are starting o use BPM in new ways to create new business models to serve customers and outsmart the competition. The research findings also show however that this is a complex landscape, and we are not seeing adoption of BPM in a clear and consistent way. This report also looks at some of the barriers to adoption, with organizational silos being a major obstacle. Waters are further muddied by fragmented budgets, lack of clear governance and ownership and internal politics. The objective of our investment in this research project was to shed some light on these elements with a view to assisting organizations to create strategies that avoid or at least mitigate some of these barriers to success. Management of change in such endea vours is a key part in enabling the appropriate alignment of business and technology to support their transformation efforts. I hope that you find this report of benefit in the further adoption of Business Process Management. Get the full report here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Technorati Tags: Capgemini,bpm report,bpm market,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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Minimum team development sizes

- by MarkPearl

Disclaimer - these are observations that I have had, I am not sure if this follows the philosophy of scrum, agile or whatever, but most of these insights were gained while implementing a scrum scenario. Two is a partnership, three starts a team For a while I thought that a team was anything more than one and that scrum could be effective methodology with even two people. I have recently adjusted my thinking to a scrum team being a minimum of three, so what happened to two and what do you call it? For me I consider a group of two people working together a partnership - there is value in having a partnership, but some of the dynamics and value that you get from having a team is lost with a partnership. Avoidance of a one on one confrontation The first dynamic I see missing in a partnership is the team motivation to do better and how this is delivered to individuals that are not performing. Take two highly motivated individuals and put them together and you will typically see them continue to perform. Now take a situation where you have two individuals, one performing and one not and the behaviour is totally different compared to a team of three or more individuals. With two people, if one feels the other is not performing it becomes a one on one confrontation. Most people avoid confrontations and so nothing changes. Compare this to a situation where you have three people in a team, 2 performing and 1 not the dynamic is totally different, it is no longer a personal one on one confrontation but a team concern and people seem more willing to encourage the individual not performing and express their dissatisfaction as a team if they do not improve. Avoiding the effects of Tuckman’s Group Development Theory If you are not familiar with Tuckman’s group development theory give it a read (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman's_stages_of_group_development) In a nutshell with Tuckman’s theory teams go through these stages of Forming, Storming, Norming & Performing. You want your team to reach and remain in the Performing stage for as long as possible - this is where you get the most value. When you have a partnership of two and you change the individuals in the partnership you basically do a hard reset on the partnership and go back to the beginning of Tuckman’s model each time. This has a major effect on the performance of a team and what they can deliver. What I have seen is that you reduce the effects of Tuckman's theory the more individuals you have in the team (until you hit the maximum team size in which other problems kick in). While you will still experience Tuckman's theory with a team of three, the impact will be greatly reduced compared to two where it is guaranteed every time a change occurs. It's not just in the numbers, it's in the people One final comment - while the actual numbers of a team do play a role, the individuals in the team are even more important - ideally you want to keep individuals working together for an extended period. That doesn't mean that you never change the individuals in a team, or that once someone joins a team they are stuck there - there is value in an individual moving from team to team and getting cross pollination, but the period of time that an individual moves should be in month's or years, not days or weeks. Why? So why is it important to know this? Why is it important to know how a team works and what motivates them? I have been asking myself this question for a while and where I am at right now is this… the aim is to achieve the stage where the sum of the total (team) is greater than the sum of the parts (team members). This is why we form teams and why understanding how they work is a challenge and also extremely stimulating.

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Linux: Apple Wireless A1314 Fn key not registered, looks like software bug

- by ramplank

I'm trying to set up my Apple Wireless Keyboard with my Kubuntu systems. These are PC hardware powered by Intel Atom and Intel i5 respectively. The keyboard has a US keyboard layout and has model number A1314 written on the back. It takes two AA batteries. I'm saying that because it appears there are multiple types of model A1314. I have tried this on a 10.04, 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 system with no success. Every time using a bluetooth dongle and the KDE bluetooth notification tray applet, the keyboard can be connected. In both cases it shows up as "Apple Wireless Keyboard". Almost everything works as expected, in fact, I'm typing on it right now. But one thing doesn't: The Fn key. I'd like to use Fn + Down Arrow as PgDn / Page Down, I understand this is default behaviour on Apple keyboards. And of course I'd like the same for Page Up, Home and End. I'll stick to Page Down in my example. I used the xev tool to see the keycodes the system receives, and if I press on Fn nothing happens, and nothing is registered. If I press Fn + Down Arrow, xev only registers the down arrow. Here's the output from my 11.04 system to illustrate: Press just the Fn key: no output Press Down Arrow key: KeyPress event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x15d, subw 0x4400002, time 2699773, (44,45), root:(1352,298), state 0x10, keycode 116 (keysym 0xff54, Down), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x15d, subw 0x4400002, time 2699860, (44,45), root:(1352,298), state 0x10, keycode 116 (keysym 0xff54, Down), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False Press Fn+Down Arrow Keys together: KeyPress event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x15d, subw 0x4400002, time 2701548, (44,45), root:(1352,298), state 0x10, keycode 116 (keysym 0xff54, Down), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False KeyRelease event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x4400001, root 0x15d, subw 0x4400002, time 2701623, (44,45), root:(1352,298), state 0x10, keycode 116 (keysym 0xff54, Down), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False I've been searching this forum and other Linux-related forums for hours but I still have not found a solution. I mostly found advice on how to fix this when using an actual apple laptop or desktop, but I don't have that. They said to try something like the following echo 2 > /sys/module/hid_apple/ ... But since there's no hid_apple directory present on my systems, I've needed to modprobe hid_apple first. That didn't help either. I'm cool with changing some config files, or compiling my own patched kernel if that's necessary. I currently have a 10.04 and 12.04 system available to test. The same issue occurs when hooked up to Windows 7. Fn key still does nothing, not by itself or in combination with other keys. With some AutoHotkey fiddling, I was able to confirm the key is registered as pressed, but ignored by default. A custom AutoHotkey script can fix that. But AutoHotkey is only for Windows, I want my problem fixed on Linux. Hooked up to an iPad 2 it only works in combination with the F1-F12 keys. Not with the arrow keys. If the screen of the ipad is off, and I press just the Fn key, the screen will come on, so the key itself is registered as pressed. So to sum up my question: Can anyone help me get Page Up, Page Down, Home and End to work on this keyboard, when that requires me to use an Fn key which is currently not registered?

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Server-Sent Events using GlassFish (TOTD #179)

- by arungupta

Bhakti blogged about Server-Sent Events on GlassFish and I've been planning to try it out for past some days. Finally, I took some time out today to learn about it and build a simplistic example showcasing the touch points. Server-Sent Events is developed as part of HTML5 specification and provides push notifications from a server to a browser client in the form of DOM events. It is defined as a cross-browser JavaScript API called EventSource. The client creates an EventSource by requesting a particular URL and registers an onmessage event listener to receive the event notifications. This can be done as shown var url = 'http://' + document.location.host + '/glassfish-sse/simple';eventSource = new EventSource(url);eventSource.onmessage = function (event) { var theParagraph = document.createElement('p'); theParagraph.innerHTML = event.data.toString(); document.body.appendChild(theParagraph);} This code subscribes to a URL, receives the data in the event listener, adds it to a HTML paragraph element, and displays it in the document. This is where you'll parse JSON and other processing to display if some other data format is received from the URL. The URL to which the EventSource is subscribed to is updated on the server side and there are multipe ways to do that. GlassFish 4.0 provide support for Server-Sent Events and it can be achieved registering a handler as shown below: @ServerSentEvent("/simple")public class MySimpleHandler extends ServerSentEventHandler { public void sendMessage(String data) { try { connection.sendMessage(data); } catch (IOException ex) { . . . } }} And then events can be sent to this handler using a singleton session bean as shown: @Startup@Statelesspublic class SimpleEvent { @Inject @ServerSentEventContext("/simple") ServerSentEventHandlerContext<MySimpleHandler> simpleHandlers; @Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="*/10") public void sendDate() { for(MySimpleHandler handler : simpleHandlers.getHandlers()) { handler.sendMessage(new Date().toString()); } }} This stateless session bean injects ServerSentEventHandlers listening on "/simple" path. Note, there may be multiple handlers listening on this path. The sendDate method triggers every 10 seconds and send the current timestamp to all the handlers. The client side browser simply displays the string. The HTTP request headers look like: Accept: text/event-streamAccept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdchAccept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.8Cache-Control: no-cacheConnection: keep-aliveCookie: JSESSIONID=97ff28773ea6a085e11131acf47bHost: localhost:8080Referer: http://localhost:8080/glassfish-sse/faces/index2.xhtmlUser-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3) AppleWebKit/536.5 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/19.0.1084.54 Safari/536.5 And the response headers as: Content-Type: text/event-streamDate: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 21:16:10 GMTServer: GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0Transfer-Encoding: chunkedX-Powered-By: Servlet/3.0 JSP/2.2 (GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.0 Java/Apple Inc./1.6) Notice, the MIME type of the messages from server to the client is text/event-stream and that is defined by the specification. The code in Bhakti's blog can be further simplified by using the recently-introduced Twitter API for Java as shown below: @Schedule(hour="*", minute="*", second="*/10") public void sendTweets() { for(MyTwitterHandler handler : twitterHandler.getHandlers()) { String result = twitter.search("glassfish", String.class); handler.sendMessage(result); }} The complete source explained in this blog can be downloaded here and tried on GlassFish 4.0 build 34. The latest promoted build can be downloaded from here and the complete source code for the API and implementation is here. I tried this sample on Chrome Version 19.0.1084.54 on Mac OS X 10.7.3.

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Portable class libraries and fetching JSON

- by Jeff

After much delay, we finally have the Windows Phone 8 SDK to go along with the Windows 8 Store SDK, or whatever ridiculous name they’re giving it these days. (Seriously… that no one could come up with a suitable replacement for “metro” is disappointing in an otherwise exciting set of product launches.) One of the neat-o things is the potential for code reuse, particularly across Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps. This is accomplished in part with portable class libraries, which allow you to share code between different types of projects. With some other techniques and quasi-hacks, you can share some amount of code, and I saw it mentioned in one of the Build videos that they’re seeing as much as 70% code reuse. Not bad. However, I’ve already hit a super annoying snag. It appears that the HttpClient class, with its idiot-proof async goodness, is not included in the Windows Phone 8 class libraries. Shock, gasp, horror, disappointment, etc. The delay in releasing it already caused dismay among developers, and I’m sure this won’t help. So I started refactoring some code I already had for a Windows 8 Store app (ugh) to accommodate the use of HttpWebRequest instead. I haven’t tried it in a Windows Phone 8 project beyond compiling, but it appears to work. I used this StackOverflow answer as a starting point since it’s been a long time since I used HttpWebRequest, and keep in mind that it has no exception handling. It needs refinement. The goal here is to new up the client, and call a method that returns some deserialized JSON objects from the Intertubes. Adding facilities for headers or cookies is probably a good next step. You need to use NuGet for a Json.NET reference. So here’s the start: using System.Net; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; namespace MahProject { public class ServiceClient<T> where T : class { public ServiceClient(string url) { _url = url; } private readonly string _url; public async Task<T> GetResult() { var response = await MakeAsyncRequest(_url); var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(response); return result; } public static Task<string> MakeAsyncRequest(string url) { var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url); request.ContentType = "application/json"; Task<WebResponse> task = Task.Factory.FromAsync( request.BeginGetResponse, asyncResult => request.EndGetResponse(asyncResult), null); return task.ContinueWith(t => ReadStreamFromResponse(t.Result)); } private static string ReadStreamFromResponse(WebResponse response) { using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream()) using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream)) { var content = reader.ReadToEnd(); return content; } } } } Calling it in some kind of repository class may look like this, if you wanted to return an array of Park objects (Park model class omitted because it doesn’t matter): public class ParkRepo { public async Task<Park[]> GetAllParks() { var client = new ServiceClient<Park[]>(http://superfoo/endpoint); return await client.GetResult(); } } And then from inside your WP8 or W8S app (see what I did there?), when you load state or do some kind of UI event handler (making sure the method uses the async keyword): var parkRepo = new ParkRepo(); var results = await parkRepo.GetAllParks(); // bind results to some UI or observable collection or something Hopefully this saves you a little time.

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Inside Red Gate - Exercising Externally

- by simonc

Over the next few weeks, we'll be performing experiments on SmartAssembly to confirm or refute various hypotheses we have about how people use the product, what is stopping them from using it to its full extent, and what we can change to make it more useful and easier to use. Some of these experiments can be done within the team, some within Red Gate, and some need to be done on external users. External testing Some external testing can be done by standard usability tests and surveys, however, there are some hypotheses that can only be tested by building a version of SmartAssembly with some things in the UI or implementation changed. We'll then be able to look at how the experimental build is used compared to the 'mainline' build, which forms our baseline or control group, and use this data to confirm or refute the relevant hypotheses. However, there are several issues we need to consider before running experiments using separate builds: Ideally, the user wouldn't know they're running an experimental SmartAssembly. We don't want users to use the experimental build like it's an experimental build, we want them to use it like it's the real mainline build. Only then will we get valid, useful, and informative data concerning our hypotheses. There's no point running the experiments if we can't find out what happens after the download. To confirm or refute some of our hypotheses, we need to find out how the tool is used once it is installed. Fortunately, we've applied feature usage reporting to the SmartAssembly codebase itself to provide us with that information. Of course, this then makes the experimental data conditional on the user agreeing to send that data back to us in the first place. Unfortunately, even though this does limit the amount of useful data we'll be getting back, and possibly skew the data, there's not much we can do about this; we don't collect feature usage data without the user's consent. Looks like we'll simply have to live with this. What if the user tries to buy the experiment? This is something that isn't really covered by the Lean Startup book; how do you support users who give you money for an experiment? If the experiment is a new feature, and the user buys a license for SmartAssembly based on that feature, then what do we do if we later decide to pivot & scrap that feature? We've either got to spend time and money bringing that feature up to production quality and into the mainline anyway, or we've got disgruntled customers. Either way is bad. Again, there's not really any good solution to this. Similarly, what if we've removed some features for an experiment and a potential new user downloads the experimental build? (As I said above, there's no indication the build is an experimental build, as we want to see what users really do with it). The crucial feature they need is missing, causing a bad trial experience, a lost potential customer, and a lost chance to help the customer with their problem. Again, this is something not really covered by the Lean Startup book, and something that doesn't have a good solution. So, some tricky issues there, not all of them with nice easy answers. Turns out the practicalities of running Lean Startup experiments are more complicated than they first seem! Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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Moving abroad - Relocation advice

- by Tim Koekkoek

Oracle offers graduates from different European countries the opportunity to start their career abroad. Some already have experience with living abroad as they have done an exchange semester or internship in another county, for others it is the first time they will move abroad. Rui started in October 2011 as a Business Development Consultant in Dublin and moved from Portugal to Dublin, Ireland to start his career. For those planning to leave their home country and who desire to work abroad, he will share some tips and tricks in this article. When you’re faced with an opportunity like this, there are lots of things that will come to your mind. Sometimes it can be either very exciting, or even stressful. 1. First of all, try to relax. If you are certain you are moving abroad, all you need to do is some research about the country where you’re going to live, get to know its culture (gastronomy, important dates and events, its economy and effective ways to keep you in touch with your family and friends – such as mobile companies and Internet services), and start to understand the best locations (with good access) you could/should live in are. Don’t forget that initially you can be limited by transport and therefore it is important to explore the ideal places for you. During this time, Oracle provides everything you’ll need (papers, documents, etc.) to cross borders. 2. When you arrive, you understand that you are in a new country, in a new place, where all things (or most) are unknown to you. Before you panic, try to see it as a new challenge where new opportunities will come. Sometimes, it’s not easy I know, but the very best a new place has to give to you, is the opportunity to understand a new culture, get to know other people, other ways of working, and grow both as a person and professionally. So, you have nothing to lose in this kind of experiment. 3. When you arrive at Oracle, there’s a fantastic team that will help you with settling in, HR, Payroll, Relocation, IT. In my case, Oracle helped me with the relocation, they supported me to arrange everything such as helping out with all the paperwork and finding a new apartment. As you can see they will do their best to help you to be successful! 4. Engage with your new co-workers. Going to a place where you don’t know anyone can be tough sometimes but see it as an opportunity to meet people from all over the world and share experiences. Embrace it. 5. Plan ahead, try to get the most information possible and use it. Oracle is a multinational enterprise that will allow you to get to know a new labour market and give you the flexibility you need to understand your view of employment and occupation, giving you the very best opportunities to join different teams and working areas, so that you can work where you fit best. Good luck! If you’re thinking about starting a career abroad, read the following article: http://www.overseasdigest.com/movingtips.htm it can be very useful to you. Interested in starting your career at Oracle like Rui has? Please have a look at https://campus.oracle.com for all of our latest vacancies.

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ADO and Two Way Storage Tiering

- by Andy-Oracle

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 We get asked the following question about Automatic Data Optimization (ADO) storage tiering quite a bit. Can you tier back to the original location if the data gets hot again? The answer is yes but not with standard Automatic Data Optimization policies, at least not reliably. That's not how ADO is meant to operate. ADO is meant to mirror a traditional view of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) where data will be very volatile when first created, will become less active or cool, and then will eventually cease to be accessed at all (i.e. cold). I think the reason this question gets asked is because customers realize that many of their business processes are cyclical and the thinking goes that those segments that only get used during month end or year-end cycles could sit on lower cost storage when not being used. Unfortunately this doesn't fit very well with the ADO storage tiering model. ADO storage tiering is based on the amount of free and used space in the source tablespace. There are two parameters that control this behavior, TBS_PERCENT_USED and TBS_PERCENT_FREE. When the space in the tablespace exceeds the TBS_PERCENT_USED value then segments specified in storage tiering clause(s) can be moved until the percent of free space reaches the TBS_PERCENT_FREE value. It is worth mentioning that no checks are made for available space in the target tablespace. Now, it is certainly possible to create custom functions to control storage tiering, but this can get complicated. The biggest problem is insuring that there is enough space to move the segment back to tier 1 storage, assuming that that's the goal. This isn't as much of a problem when moving from tier 1 to tier 2 storage because there is typically more tier 2 storage available. At least that's the premise since it is supposed to be less costly, lower performing and higher capacity storage. In either case though, if there isn't enough space then the operation fails. In the case of a customized function, the question becomes do you attempt to free the space so the move can be made or do you just stop and return false so that the move cannot take place? This is really the crux of the issue. Once you cross into this territory you're really going to have to implement two-way hierarchical storage and the whole point of ADO was to provide automatic storage tiering. You're probably better off using heat map and/or business access requirements and building your own hierarchical storage management infrastructure if you really want two way storage tiering. /* 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;}

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Data breakpoints to find points where data gets broken

- by raccoon_tim

When working with a large code base, finding reasons for bizarre bugs can often be like finding a needle in a hay stack. Finding out why an object gets corrupted without no apparent reason can be quite daunting, especially when it seems to happen randomly and totally out of context. Scenario Take the following scenario as an example. You have defined the a class that contains an array of characters that is 256 characters long. You now implement a method for filling this buffer with a string passed as an argument. At this point you mistakenly expect the buffer to be 256 characters long. At some point you notice that you require another character buffer and you add that after the previous one in the class definition. You now figure that you don’t need the 256 characters that the first member can hold and you shorten that to 128 to conserve space. At this point you should start thinking that you also have to modify the method defined above to safeguard against buffer overflow. It so happens, however, that in this not so perfect world this does not cross your mind. Buffer overflow is one of the most frequent sources for errors in a piece of software and often one of the most difficult ones to detect, especially when data is read from an outside source. Many mass copy functions provided by the C run-time provide versions that have boundary checking (defined with the _s suffix) but they can not guard against hard coded buffer lengths that at some point get changed. Finding the bug Getting back to the scenario, you’re now wondering why does the second string get modified with data that makes no sense at all. Luckily, Visual Studio provides you with a tool to help you with finding just these kinds of errors. It’s called data breakpoints. To add a data breakpoint, you first run your application in debug mode or attach to it in the usual way, and then go to Debug, select New Breakpoint and New Data Breakpoint. In the popup that opens, you can type in the memory address and the amount of bytes you wish to monitor. You can also use an expression here, but it’s often difficult to come up with an expression for data in an object allocated on the heap when not in the context of a certain stack frame. There are a couple of things to note about data breakpoints, however. First of all, Visual Studio supports a maximum of four data breakpoints at any given time. Another important thing to notice is that some C run-time functions modify memory in kernel space which does not trigger the data breakpoint. For instance, calling ReadFile on a buffer that is monitored by a data breakpoint will not trigger the breakpoint. The application will now break at the address you specified it to. Often you might immediately spot the issue but the very least this feature can do is point you in the right direction in search for the real reason why the memory gets inadvertently modified. Conclusions Data breakpoints are a great feature, especially when doing a lot of low level operations where multiple locations modify the same data. With the exception of some special cases, like kernel memory modification, you can use it whenever you need to check when memory at a certain location gets changed on purpose or inadvertently.

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Windows 7 disk errors after a few hours of runtime

- by GFK

I'm having trouble understanding what is going on with my work PC. Whenever I boot it, it runs fine for a while, then starts to randomly show disk errors. The displayed error often contains the message "not enough storage is available to process this command", although depending on the application that fails it can be different. This has happened for weeks now and is getting worse. This is what troubles me: It never seems to impact critical parts of the system (no BSOD, no freeze). Only some applications seem impacted, refusing to function correctly after a while: Outlook 2010 cannot download RSS feeds anymore, Firefox 6 or IE9 cannot download anything bigger than 3MB without failing, Windows Update fails, all msi installers fail, Visual Studio 2010 starts failing in weird manners... It only happens after a while using it (typically 3 hours, but it seems that installing a program or compiling several times makes it shorter) Rebooting solves it (temporarily). The system: The OS is Windows 7 Pro Spanish SP1, 32 bits The system is an HP Compaq 6000 Pro with 4 GB memory (only 3.4GB usable since the system is 32bit), one 500GB hard drive. Installed applications include: Visual Studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, VMWare Workstation 7, Microsoft Security Essentials, Office 2010. Shutting down all related services and processes doesn't seem to change anything. The diagnostics I've run so far: Hard drive : 465GB, 165GB free Process Explorer : physical and virtual memory seem ok (pagefile is 5.3GB, physical memory usage 70%, system commit 39%) Windows Memory diagnostic tool: OK CHKDSK returned: 488282111 KB total disk space. 281668248 KB in 265779 files. 150188 KB in 62949 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 571755 KB in use by the system. The log file has occupied 65536 kilobytes. 205891920 KB available on disk. For non-spanish speakers, that means all ok. SMART diagnostic tools (DiskCheckup) report all values normal. temperatures are in the normal range (HWinfo). The event viewer doesn't seem to contain any significant message. ran CCleaner 3, without any noticeable effect. I was thinking about some file number limit (between Visual Studio projects and other applications, there are around 300.000 files on the hard drive), but I couldn't find any. It's possible there is something related with the use of the temporary folders (it's the only explanation I have for why applications fail but Windows doesn't), but I cannot confirm that. Only thing I cannot find out is if chkdsk reporting 65MB for the log is normal. It seems since Vista it always reports this. Any other cleaning/diagnostic tool you might know of? Edit: I ran several other tools since I first published the question: Seagate SeaTools (the HD manufacturer's analysis tool): complete test run OK. Intel Rapid 10.1 (the HD controller manufacturer's troubleshooting tool): the HD's ok. Microsoft Desktop Heap Monitor: Desktop Heap Information Monitor Tool (Version 8.1.2925.0) Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Session ID: 1 Total Desktop: ( 46464 KB - 11 desktops) WinStation\Desktop Heap Size(KB) Used Rate(%) WinSta0\Winlogon (s1) 128 3.6 WinSta0\Disconnect (s1) 64 3.8 WinSta0\Default (s1) 20480 3.0 msswindowstation\mssrestricteddesk (s0) 1024 0.2 __X78B95_89_IW__A8D9S1_42_ID (s0) 1024 0.2 Service-0x0-3e5$\Default (s0) 1024 0.6 Service-0x0-3e4$\Default (s0) 1024 0.3 Service-0x0-3e7$\Default (s0) 1024 2.1 WinSta0\Winlogon (s0) 128 1.9 WinSta0\Disconnect (s0) 64 3.8 WinSta0\Default (s0) 20480 0.0 All ok, desktop heap usage < 5% Edit 2: I tried totally resetting my account by creating a new one, logging under this new one and delete the first one (local rights and files), then logging back with this deleted account (it is a domain account). No luck. Also, I found out often the error is "not enough storage is available to process this command". Searching on the internet, I found an old troubleshooting tip (setting a registry key to raise the IRP stack limit, whatever it is) which did not change anything.

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Obfuscation is not a panacea

- by simonc

So, you want to obfuscate your .NET application. My question to you is: Why? What are your aims when your obfuscate your application? To protect your IP & algorithms? Prevent crackers from breaking your licensing? Your boss says you need to? To give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? Obfuscating code correctly can be tricky, it can break your app if applied incorrectly, it can cause problems down the line. Let me be clear - there are some very good reasons why you would want to obfuscate your .NET application. However, you shouldn't be obfuscating for the sake of obfuscating. Security through Obfuscation? Once your application has been installed on a user’s computer, you no longer control it. If they do not want to pay for your application, then nothing can stop them from cracking it, even if the time cost to them is much greater than the cost of actually paying for it. Some people will not pay for software, even if it takes them a month to crack a $30 app. And once it is cracked, there is nothing stopping them from putting the result up on the internet. There should be nothing suprising about this; there is no software protection available for general-purpose computers that cannot be cracked by a sufficiently determined attacker. Only by completely controlling the entire stack – software, hardware, and the internet connection, can you have even a chance to be uncrackable. And even then, someone somewhere will still have a go, and probably succeed. Even high-end cryptoprocessors have known vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone with a scanning electron microscope and lots of free time. So, then, why use obfuscation? Well, the primary reason is to protect your IP. What obfuscation is very good at is hiding the overall structure of your program, so that it’s very hard to figure out what exactly the code is doing at any one time, what context it is running in, and how it fits in with the rest of the application; all of which you need to do to understand how the application operates. This is completely different to cracking an application, where you simply have to find a single toggle that determines whether the application is licensed or not, and flip it without the rest of the application noticing. However, again, there are limitations. An obfuscated application still has to run in the same way, and do the same thing, as the original unobfuscated application. This means that some of the protections applied to the obfuscated assembly have to be undone at runtime, else it would not run on the CLR and do the same thing. And, again, since we don’t control the environment the application is run on, there is nothing stopping a user from undoing those protections manually, and reversing some of the obfuscation. It’s a perpetual arms race, and it always will be. We have plenty of ideas lined about new protections, and the new protections added in SA 6.6 (method parent obfuscation and a new control flow obfuscation level) are specifically designed to be harder to reverse and reconstruct the original structure. So then, by all means, obfuscate your application if you want to protect the algorithms and what the application does. That’s what SmartAssembly is designed to do. But make sure you are clear what a .NET obfuscator can and cannot protect you against, and don’t expect your obfuscated application to be uncrackable. Someone, somewhere, will crack your application if they want to and they don’t have anything better to do with their time. The best we can do is dissuade the casual crackers and make it much more difficult for the serious ones. Cross posted from Simple Talk.

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Multichannel Digital Engagement: Find Out How Your Organization Measures Up

- by Michael Snow

This article was originally published in the September 2013 Edition of the Oracle Information InDepth Newsletter ORACLE WEBCENTER EDITION Thanks to mobile and social technologies, interactive online experiences are now commonplace. Not only that, they give consumers more choices, influence, and control than ever before. So how can you make your organization stand out? The key building blocks for delivering exceptional cross-channel digital experiences are outlined below. Also, a new assessment tool is available to help you measure your organization's ability to deliver such experiences. A clearly defined digital strategy. The customer journey is growing increasingly complex, encompassing multiple touchpoints and channels. It used to be easy to map marketing efforts to specific offline channels; for example, a direct mail piece with an offer to visit a store for a discounted purchase. Now it is more difficult to cultivate and track such clear cause-and-effect relationships. To deliver an integrated digital experience in this more complex world, organizations need a clearly defined and comprehensive digital marketing strategy that is backed up by an integrated set of software, middleware, and hardware solutions. Strong support for business agility and speed-to-market. As both IT and marketing executives know, speed-to-market and business agility are key to competitive advantage. That means marketers need solutions to support the rapid implementation of online marketing initiatives—plus the flexibility to adapt quickly to a changing marketplace. And IT needs tools with the performance, scalability, and ease of integration to support marketing efforts. Both teams benefit when business users are empowered to implement marketing initiatives on their own, with minimal IT intervention. The ability to deliver relevant, personalized content. Delivering a one-size-fits-all online customer experience is no longer acceptable. Customers expect you to know who they are, including their preferences and past relationship with your brand. That means delivering the most relevant content from the moment a visitor enters your site. To make that happen, you need a powerful rules engine so that marketers and business users can easily define site visitor segments and deliver content accordingly. That includes both implicit targeting that is based on the user’s behavior, and explicit targeting that takes a user’s profile information into account. Ideally, the rules engine can also intelligently weight recommendations when multiple segments apply to a specific customer. Support for social interactivity. With the advent of Facebook and LinkedIn, visitors expect to participate in and contribute to your web presence—and share their experience on their own social networks. That requires easy incorporation of user-generated content such as comments, ratings, reviews, polls, and blogs; seamless integration with third-party social networking sites; and support for social login, which helps to remove barriers to social participation. The ability to deliver connected, multichannel experiences that include powerful, flexible mobile capabilities. By 2015, mobile usage is projected to surpass that of PCs and other wired devices. In other words, mobile is an essential element in delivering exceptional online customer experiences. This requires the creation and management of mobile experiences that are optimized for delivery to the thousands of different devices that are in use today. Just as important, organizations must be able to easily extend their traditional web presence to the mobile channel and deliver highly personalized and relevant multichannel marketing initiatives while also managing to minimize the time and effort required to manage mobile sites. Are you curious to know how your organization measures up when it comes to delivering an engaging, multichannel digital experience? If so, take this brief, 15-question online assessment and see how your organization scores in the areas of digital strategy, digital agility, relevance and personalization, social interactivity, and multichannel experience.

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When should I use a Process Model versus a Use Case?

- by Dave Burke

This Blog entry is a follow on to https://blogs.oracle.com/oum/entry/oum_is_business_process_and and addresses a question I sometimes get asked…..i.e. “when I am gathering requirements on a Project, should I use a Process Modeling approach, or should I use a Use Case approach?” Not surprisingly, the short answer is “it depends”! Let’s take a scenario where you are working on a Sales Force Automation project. We’ll call the process that is being implemented “Lead-to-Order”. I would typically think of this type of project as being “Process Centric”. In other words, the focus will be on orchestrating a series of human and system related tasks that ultimately deliver value to the business in a cost effective way. Put in even simpler terms……implement an automated pre-sales system. For this type of (Process Centric) project, requirements would typically be gathered through a series of Workshops where the focal point will be on creating, or confirming, the Future-State (To-Be) business process. If pre-defined “best-practice” business process models exist, then of course they could and should be used during the Workshops, but even in their absence, the focus of the Workshops will be to define the optimum series of Tasks, their connections, sequence, and dependencies that will ultimately reflect a business process that meets the needs of the business. Now let’s take another scenario. Assume you are working on a Content Management project that involves automating the creation and management of content for User Manuals, Web Sites, Social Media publications etc. Would you call this type of project “Process Centric”?.......well you could, but it might also fall into the category of complex configuration, plus some custom extensions to a standard software application (COTS). For this type of project it would certainly be worth considering using a Use Case approach in order to 1) understand the requirements, and 2) to capture the functional requirements of the custom extensions. At this point you might be asking “why couldn’t I use a Process Modeling approach for my Content Management project?” Well, of course you could, but you just need to think about which approach is the most effective. Start by analyzing the types of Tasks that will eventually be automated by the system, for example: Best Suited To? Task Name Process Model Use Case Notes Manage outbound calls Ö A series of linked human and system tasks for calling and following up with prospects Manage content revision Ö Updating the content on a website Update User Preferences Ö Updating a users display preferences Assign Lead Ö Reviewing a lead, then assigning it to a sales person Convert Lead to Quote Ö Updating the status of a lead, and then converting it to a sales order As you can see, it’s not an exact science, and either approach is viable for the Tasks listed above. However, where you have a series of interconnected Tasks or Activities, than when combined, deliver value to the business, then that would be a good indicator to lead with a Process Modeling approach. On the other hand, when the Tasks or Activities in question are more isolated and/or do not cross traditional departmental boundaries, then a Use Case approach might be worth considering. Now let’s take one final scenario….. As you captured the To-Be Process flows for the Sales Force automation project, you discover a “Gap” in terms of what the client requires, and what the standard COTS application can provide. Let’s assume that the only way forward is to develop a Custom Extension. This would now be a perfect opportunity to document the functional requirements (behind the Gap) using a Use Case approach. After all, we will be developing some new software, and one of the most effective ways to begin the Software Development Lifecycle is to follow a Use Case approach. As always, your comments are most welcome.

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glm matrix conversion for DirectX

- by niktehpui

For on of the coursework specification I need to work with DirectX, so I tried to implement a DirectX Renderer in my small cross-platform framework (to have it optionally available for Windows). Since I want to stick to my dependencies I want use glm for vector/matrix/quaternions math. The vectors seem to be fully compatible with DirectX, but the glm::mat4 is not working properly in DirectX Effects Framework. I assumed the reason is that DirectX uses row majors layouts and OpenGL column majors (although if I remember right internally in HLSL DX uses column major as well), so I transposed the matrix, but I still get no proper results compared to using XNA-Math. XNA-Version of the code (works): XMMATRIX world = XMMatrixIdentity(); XMMATRIX view = XMMatrixLookAtLH(XMVectorSet(5.0, 5.0, 5.0, 1.0f), XMVectorZero(), XMVectorSet(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f)); XMMATRIX proj = XMMatrixPerspectiveFovLH(0.25f*3.14f, 1.25f, 1.0f, 1000.0f); XMMATRIX worldViewProj = world*view*proj; m_fxWorldViewProj->SetMatrix(reinterpret_cast<float*>(&worldViewProj)); This works flawlessly and displays the expected colored cube. GLM-Version (does not work): glm::mat4 world(1.0f); glm::mat4 view = glm::lookAt(glm::vec3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), glm::vec3(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f), glm::vec3(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f)); glm::mat4 proj = glm::perspective(0.25f*3.14f, 1.25f, 1.0f, 1000.0f); glm::mat4 worldViewProj = glm::transpose(world*view*proj); m_fxWorldViewProj->SetMatrix(glm::value_ptr(worldViewProj)); Displays nothing, screen stays black. I really would like to stick to glm on all platforms.

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motion computation from video using pyglet in python

- by kuaywai

Hi, I am writing a simple motion detection program but i want it to be cross platform so im using python and the pyglet library since it provides a simple way to load videos in different formats (specially wmv and mpeg). So far i have the code given below which loads the movie and plays it in a window. Now i need to: 1) grab frame at time t and t-1 2) do a subtraction to see which pixels are active for motion detection. any ideas on how to grab frames and to skip over frames and is it possible to put the pixel values into a matrix in numpy or something directly from pyglet? or should look into using something other than pyglet? thanks kuaywai import pyglet import sys window = pyglet.window.Window(resizable=True) window.set_minimum_size(320,200) window.set_caption('Motion detect 1.0') video_intro = pyglet.resource.media('movie1.wmv') player = pyglet.media.Player() player.queue(video_intro) print 'calculating movie size...' if not player.source or not player.source.video_format: sys.exit myWidth = player.source.video_format.width myHeight = player.source.video_format.height if player.source.video_format.sample_aspect 1: myWidth *= player.source.video_format.sample_aspect elif player.source.video_format.sample_aspect < 1: myHeight /= player.source.video_format.sample_aspect print 'its size is %d,%d' % (myWidth,myHeight) player.play() @window.event def on_draw(): window.clear() (w,h) = window.get_size() player.get_texture().blit(0, h-myHeight, width=myWidth, height=myHeight) pyglet.app.run()

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Stateful vs. Stateless Webservices

- by chrsk

Imagine a more complex CRUD application which has a three-tier-architecture and communicates over webservices. The client starts a conversation to the server and doing some wizard like stuff. To process the wizard the client needs feedback given by the server. We started a discussion about stateful or stateless webservices for this approach. I made some research combined with my own experience, which points me to the question mentioned later. Stateless webservices having the following properties (in our case): + high scalability + high availability + high speed + rapid testing - bloated contract - implementing more logic on server-side But we can cross out the first two points, our application doesn't needs high scalability and availability. So we come to the stateful webservice. I've read a bunch of blogs and forum posts and the most invented point implementing a stateful webservice was: + simplifies contract (protocol) - bad testing - runs counter to the basic architecture of http But doesn't almost all web applications have these bad points? Web applications uses cookies, query strings, session ids, and all the stuff to avoid the statelessness of http. So why is it that bad for webservices?

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C# Can I return HttpWebResponse result to iframe - Uses Digest authentication

- by chadsxe

I am trying to figure out a way to display a cross-domain web page that uses Digest Authentication. My initial thought was to make a web request and return the entire page source. I currently have no issues with authenticating and getting a response but I am not sure how to properly return the needed data. // Create a request for the URL. WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("http://some-url/cgi/image.php?type=live"); // Set the credentials. request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(username, password); // Get the response. HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse(); // Get the stream containing content returned by the server. Stream dataStream = response.GetResponseStream(); // Open the stream using a StreamReader for easy access. StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(dataStream); // Read the content. string responseFromServer = reader.ReadToEnd(); // Clean up the streams and the response. reader.Close(); dataStream.Close(); response.Close(); return responseFromServer; My problems are currently... responseFromServer is not returning the entire source of the page. I.E. missing body and head tags The data is encoded improperly in responseFromServer. I believe this has something to do with the transfer encoding being of the type chunked. Further more... I am not entirely sure if this is even possible. If it matters, this is being done in ASP.NET MVC 4 C#. Thanks, Chad

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Visual Studio 2010 64-bit COM Interop Issue

- by Adam Driscoll

I am trying to add a VC6 COM DLL to our VS2010RC C# solution. The DLL was compiled with the VC6 tools to create an x86 version and was compiled with the VC7 Cross-platform tools to generate a VC7 DLL. The x86 version of the assembly works fine as long as the consuming C# project's platform is set to x86. It doesn't matter whether the x64 or the x86 version of the DLL is actually registered. It works with both. If the platform is set to 'Any CPU' I receive a BadImageFormatException on the load of the Interop.<name>.dll. As for the x64 version, I cannot even get the project to build. I receive the tlbimp error: TlbImp : error TI0000: A single valid machine type compatible with the input type library must be specified. Has anyone seen this issue? EDIT: I've done a lot more digging into this issue and think this may be a Visual Studio bug. I have a clean solution. I bring in my COM assembly with language agnostic 'Any CPU' selected. The process architecture of the resulting Interop DLL is x86 rather than MSIL. May have to make the Interop by hand for now to get this to work. If anyone has another suggestion let me know.

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.NET Remoting Exception not handled Client-Side

- by DanJo519

I checked the rest of the remoting questions, and this specific case did not seem to be addressed. I have a .NET Remoting server/client set up. On the server side I have an object with a method that can throw an exception, and a client which will try to call that method. Server: public bool MyEquals(Guid myGuid, string a, string b) { if (CheckAuthentication(myGuid)) { logger.Debug("Request for \"" + a + "\".Equals(\"" + b + "\")"); return a.Equals(b); } else { throw new AuthenticationException(UserRegistryService.USER_NOT_REGISTERED_EXCEPTION_TEXT); } } Client: try { bool result = RemotedObject.MyEquals(myGuid, "cat", "dog"); } catch (Services.Exceptions.AuthenticationException e) { Console.WriteLine("You do not have permission to execute that action"); } When I call MyEquals with a Guid which causes CheckAuthentication to return false, .NET tries to throw the exception and says the AuthenticationException was unhandled. This happens server side. The exception is never marshaled over to the client-side, and I cannot figure out why. All of the questions I have looked at address the issue of an exception being handled client-side, but it isn't the custom exception but a base type. In my case, I can't even get any exception to cross the remoting boundary to the client. Here is a copy of AuthenticationException. It is in the shared library between both server and client. [Serializable] public class AuthenticationException : ApplicationException, ISerializable { public AuthenticationException(string message) : base(message) { } public AuthenticationException(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) : base(info, context) { } #region ISerializable Members void ISerializable.GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) { base.GetObjectData(info, context); } #endregion }

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ajax redirect dillema, how to get redirect URL OR how to set properties for redirect request

- by Anthony

First, I'm working in Google Chrome, if that helps. Here is the behavior: I send an xhr request via jquery to a remote site (this is a chrome Extension, and I've set all of the cross-site settings...): $.ajax({ type: "POST", contentType : "text/xml", url: some_url, data: some_xml, username: user, password: pass, success: function(data,status,xhr){ alert(data); }, error: function(xhr, status, error){ alert(xhr.status); } }); The URL that is being set returns a 302 (this is expected), and Chrome follows the redirect (also expected). The new URL returns a prompt for credentials, which are not being pulled from the original request, so Chrome shows a login dialog. If I put in the original credentials, I get back a response about invalid request sent (it's a valid HTTP request -- 200 -- the remote server just doesn't like one of the headers). When viewing the developer window in Chrome, there are two requests sent. The first is to the original URL with all settings set in the ajax request. The second is to the redirect URL, with a method of "GET", nothing from the "POST" field, and no credentials. I am at a loss as to what I can do. I either need to: Get the redirect URL so I can send a second request (xhr.getResponseHeader("Location") does NOT work), Have the new redirect request preserver the settings from the original request, or Get the final URL that the error came from so I can send another request. Ideally I don't want the user to have to put in their credentials a second time in this dialog box, but I'll take what I can get if I can just get the final URL.

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