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  • SQL SERVER – Finding Different ColumnName From Almost Identitical Tables

    - by pinaldave
    I have mentioned earlier on this blog that I love social media – Facebook and Twitter. I receive so many interesting questions that sometimes I wonder how come I never faced them in my real life scenario. Well, let us see one of the similar situation. Here is one of the questions which I received on my social media handle. “Pinal, I have a large database. I did not develop this database but I have inherited this database. In our database we have many tables but all the tables are in pairs. We have one archive table and one current table. Now here is interesting situation. For a while due to some reason our organization has stopped paying attention to archive data. We did not archive anything for a while. If this was not enough we  even changed the schema of current table but did not change the corresponding archive table. This is now becoming a huge huge problem. We know for sure that in current table we have added few column but we do not know which ones. Is there any way we can figure out what are the new column added in the current table and does not exist in the archive tables? We cannot use any third party tool. Would you please guide us?” Well here is the interesting example of how we can use sys.column catalogue views and get the details of the newly added column. I have previously written about EXCEPT over here which is very similar to MINUS of Oracle. In following example we are going to create two tables. One of the tables has extra column. In our resultset we will get the name of the extra column as we are comparing the catalogue view of the column name. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO CREATE TABLE ArchiveTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(10), Col2 VARCHAR(100), Col3 VARCHAR(100)); CREATE TABLE CurrentTable (ID INT, Col1 VARCHAR(10), Col2 VARCHAR(100), Col3 VARCHAR(100), ExtraCol INT); GO -- Columns in ArchiveTable but not in CurrentTable SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'ArchiveTable' EXCEPT SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'CurrentTable' GO -- Columns in CurrentTable but not in ArchiveTable SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'CurrentTable' EXCEPT SELECT name ColumnName FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_NAME(OBJECT_ID) = 'ArchiveTable' GO DROP TABLE ArchiveTable; DROP TABLE CurrentTable; GO The above query will return us following result. I hope this solves the problems. It is not the most elegant solution ever possible but it works. Here is the puzzle back to you – what native T-SQL solution would you have provided in this situation? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL System Table, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Don't Forget To Enjoy Life

    - by Justin
    I have a pretty clear stance on posting personal information in my blogs. I tend to avoid it almost instinctively. Part of that is because I am a somewhat private person. And the other is because I know how easy it is for personal information to be gathered and collected from sources such as blogs. So, this has remained a tech only blog for me. I've only posted topics mostly related to issues I have encountered at work. In a way this blog is a 'bookmark' for me. If I post something here and run into the issue again it allows me to refer back to a convenient place where the 'fix' is documented in a way that I understand. But today, I am posting something that speaks to everyone. Something PERSONAL. Honestly, I expect this entry to receive zero views. But if nothing else, I can come back to this blog one day when I'm having a bad day or something and run across this post. And I will be reminded... DON'T FORGET TO ENJOY LIFE. Say this to yourself out loud, right now. People, we can get caught up in some rather mundane details as we trek through life. It's so easy to lose track of what really matters that it should be no surprise to find yourself reading something like this and thinking to yourself 'Yeah. You are right, man. Some of this crap I'm clinging on to right now is so small in the grand scheme of things'. I have no reservation, no shame, in saying that I am more often than not caught up in the ever evolving world of 'shit that does not matter'. When you work in technology, you are surrounded by deadlines, upgrades, new versions, support 'end of life', etc. And by time you get done with your 8 hours you go home and put in a few more because you are STILL CAUGHT UP in the things you dealt with at work all day. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. DO YOUR FAMILY AND FRIEND A FAVOR. When you are done for the day, and you drive home, get those work-related things out of your head before you pull into the driveway. If you are still thinking on them when you park the car, leave the engine running, close your eyes and take a deep breath. If you believe in God, pray. If you don't then meditate for a second with the INTENTION of letting go of the day and becoming the 'real you'. You may have forgotten who the real you is so I'll remind you.... THE REAL YOU IS THAT GUY OR GAL THAT LAUGHS, LOVES, AND LIVES. Be the real you as often as possible. If you can't do it during your 9 - 5, do it at home. YOUR RELATIONSHIPS AND YOUR PERSONAL HAPPINESS DEPEND ON IT. I am going to make you a promise right now. If you do what I've just said, your days will be longer and your joy will be exponential. I can't explain why I know this to be true. But I do know it. And if you are there reading this right now, you know it is true too. We both know it is true because it COMES FROM WITHIN EVERY MAN, WOMAN and CHILD. We are born into love and happiness. Lets not fade away into the darkness so easily found in this world. Lets keep the flame burning. The flame of passion. Passion for LIFE. Peace be with you.

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  • Three Buckets of Knowledge

    - by BuckWoody
    As I learn more and more about SQL Server every day, I divide up my information into three “buckets”: Concepts In the first bucket are the general concepts about the topic. What is it? What does it do (or sometimes, what is is supposed to do?) How does one operation flow to another? For this information I use books, magazine articles and believe it or not – Wikipedia. I don’t always trust that last source, but I do use it to see how others lay out their thoughts around a concept. I really like graphical charts that show me the process flow if I can get it, and this is an ideal place for a good presentation. In fact, this may be the only real use for a presentation – I’ll explain what I mean in a moment. Reference The references for a topic include things like Transact-SQL (T-SQL) syntax, or the screen layout on a panel, things like that. Think Dictionary. The only reference I trust for this information is Books Online – presentations are fine, but we’re talking about a dictionary. Ever go to a movie that just reads through a dictionary? Me neither. But I have gone to presentations where people try to include tons of reference materials in their slides. Even if you give me the presentation material later, it’s not really a searchable, readable medium. How To A how-to for me is an example, or even better, a tutorial about an example. Whatever it is shows me a practical use for the concepts and of course involves the syntax. The important thing here is that you need to be able to separate out the example the person is showing you from the stuff you need to know. I can’t tell you how many times folks have told me, “well, sure, if yours is red then that works. But mine is blue.” And I have to explain, “then use “blue” for the search word here.” You get the idea. No one will do your work for you – the examples are meant as a teaching tool only. I accept that, learn what I can, and then run off to create my own thing. You might think a How To works well in a presentation, and it does, for the most part. For a complex example or tutorial, I still prefer the printed word (electronic if possible) so that I can go over the example multiple times, skip around and so on.   The order here isn’t actually that important. Most of the time I start with a concept, look at an example, and then read the reference material. But sometimes I look up an example, read a little of concepts and then check the reference. The only primary thing I try to enforce is to read something from each of them. It’s dangerous to base your work on any single example, reference or concept.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • The Evolution of Oracle Direct EMEA by John McGann

    - by user769227
    John is expanding his Dublin based team and is currently recruiting a Director with marketing and sales leadership experience: http://bit.ly/O8PyDF Should you wish to apply, please send your CV to [email protected] Hi, my name is John McGann and I am part of the Oracle Direct management team, based in Dublin.   Today I’m writing from the Oracle London City office, right in the heart of the financial district and up to very recently at the centre of a fantastic Olympic Games. The Olympics saw individuals and teams from across the globe competing to decide who is Citius, Altius, Fortius - “Faster, Higher, Stronger" There are lots of obvious parallels between the competitive world of the Olympics and the Business environments that many of us operate in, but there are also some interesting differences – especially in my area of responsibility within Oracle. We are of course constantly striving to be the best - the best solution on offer for our clients, bringing simplicity to their management, consumption and application of information technology, and the best provider when compared with our many niche competitors.   In Oracle and especially in Oracle Direct, a key aspect of how we achieve this is what sets us apart from the Olympians.  We have long ago eliminated geographic boundaries as a limitation to what we can achieve. We assemble the strongest individuals across multiple countries and bring them together in teams focussed on a single goal. One such team is the Oracle Direct Sales Programs team. In case you don’t know, Oracle Direct EMEA (Europe Middle East and Africa) is the inside sales division in Oracle and it is where I started my Oracle career.  I remember that my first role involved putting direct mail in envelopes.... things have moved on a bit since then – for me, for Oracle Direct and in how we interact with our customers. Today, the team of over 1000 people is located in the different Oracle Direct offices around Europe – the main ones are Malaga, Berlin, Prague and Dubai plus the headquarters in Dublin. We work in over 20 languages and are in constant contact with current and future Oracle customers, using the latest internet and telephone technologies to effectively communicate and collaborate with each other, our customers and prospects. One of my areas of responsibility within Oracle Direct is the Sales Programs team. This team of 25 people manages the planning and execution of demand generation, leading the process of finding new and incremental revenue within Oracle Direct. The Sales Programs Managers or ‘SPMs’ are embedded within each of the Oracle Direct sales teams, focussed on distinct geographies or product groups. The SPMs are virtual members of the regional sales management teams, and work closely with the sales and marketing teams to define and deliver demand generation activities. The customer contact elements of these activities are executed via the Oracle Direct Sales and Business Development/Lead Generation teams, to deliver the pipeline required to meet our revenue goals. Activities can range from pan-EMEA joint sales and marketing campaigns, to very localised niche campaigns. The campaigns might focus on particular segments of our existing customers, introducing elements of our evolving solution portfolio which customers may not be familiar with. The Sales Programs team also manages ‘Nurture’ activities to ensure that we develop potential business opportunities with contacts and organisations that do not have immediate requirements. Looking ahead, it is really important that we continue to evolve our ability to add value to our clients and reduce the physical limitations of our distance from them through the innovative application of technology. This enables us to enhance the customer buying experience and to enable the Inside Sales teams to manage ever more complex sales cycles from start to finish.  One of my expectations of my team is to actively drive innovation in how we leverage data to better understand our customers, and exploit emerging technologies to better communicate with them.   With the rate of innovation and acquisition within Oracle, we need to ensure that existing and potential customers are aware of all we have to offer that relates to their business goals.   We need to achieve this via a coherent communication and sales strategy to effectively target the right people using the most effective medium. This is another area where the Sales Programs team plays a key role.

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  • JFall 2012

    - by Geertjan
    JFall 2012 was over far too soon! Seven tracks going on simultaneously in a great location, with many artifacts reminding me of JavaOne, and nice snacks and drinks afterwards. The day started, as such things always do, with a keynote. Thanks to @royvanrijn for the photo below, I didn't take any myself and without a picture this report might have been too dry: What you see above is Steve Chin riding into the keynote hall on his NightHacking bike. The keynote was interesting, I can't be too complimentary about it, since I was part of it myself. Bert Ertman introduced the day and then Steve Chin took over, together with Sharat Chander, Tom Eugelink, Timon Veenstra, and myself. We had a strict choreography for the keynote, one that would ensure a lot of variation and some unexpected surprises, such as Steve being thrown off the stage a few times by Bert because of mentioning JavaOne too many times, rather than the clearly much cooler JFall. Steve talked about JavaOne and the direction Java is headed in, Sharat talked about JavaME and embedded devices, Steve and Tom did a demo involving JavaFX, I did a Project Easel demo, and Timon from Ordina talked about his Duke's Choice Award winning AgroSense project. I think the Project Easel demo (which I repeated later in a screencast for Parleys arranged by Eugene Boogaart) came across well and several people I spoke to especially like the roundtrip/bi-directional work that can be done, from browser to IDE and back again, very simply and intuitively. (In a long conversation on the drive back home afterwards, the scenario of a designer laying out the UI in HTML and then handing the HTML to a developer for back-end work, a developer who would then find it convenient to open the HTML in a browser and quickly navigate from the browser to the resources within the IDE, was discussed and considered to be extremely interesting and worth considering adopting NetBeans for, for no other reason than that.) Later I attended a session by David Delabassee on Java EE 7, Hans Dockter on Gradle, and Sander Mak on cross-build injection attacks. I was sorry to have missed Martijn Verburg's session, which sounded like it was really fantastic, among others, such as Gerrit Grunwald. I did a session too, entitled "Unlocking the Java EE 6 Platform", which was very well attended, pretty much a full room, and the demo went very smoothly. I talked to many people, e.g., a long time with Hans Dockter about how cool Gradle is and how great the Gradle/NetBeans plugin is turning out to be. I also had a long conversation (and did a demo) with Chris Chedgey, from Structure101, after his session, which was incredibly well attended; very interesting how popular modularity is. I met several people for the first time, as well as some colleagues from past places I've worked at. All in all, it was a great conference, unfortunately too short, which was very well attended (clearly over 1000) people, with several international speakers, as well as international attendees such as Mattias Karlsson, Sweden JUG leader. And, unsurprisingly, I came across NetBeans Platform applications again, none of which I had ever heard of before. In each case, "our fat client application" was mentioned in passing, never as a main application, and never in a context where there are plans for the application to be migrated to the web or mobile, simply because doing so makes no business sense at all. Great times at JFall, looking forward to meeting with some of the people I met again soon.

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  • SQLAuthority News – Advantages of Distance Learning

    - by Pinal Dave
    Distance education is extremely popular – almost overnight, it seems.  Almost everyone has taken an online course, or knows someone who has, or is considering joining an online school.  There are many advantages and disadvantages to attending an online school – but the same can be said of attending a physical school!  Let’s take a look at the top reasons to use distance education. 1) Flexibility.  Physical universities are usually willing to make some concessions to student – like night classes, study hours, and online networks.  However, nothing is going to beat the flexibility of distance education.  You can attend classes and take notes anytime, anywhere, wearing anything you’d like! 2) Affordability.  We don’t need to get into hard numbers to understand how an expensive university can be.  Students are taking on more and more debt just to get an education.  Many of these fees pay for room, board, and facilities.   Distance education cuts out all these costs, and makes attending school much more affordable for the average student. 3) Try before you buy.  Did you know that the average college student changes his or her major 10 times before they graduate?  You can imagine that this kind of indecision plays a huge part in WHEN you graduate – not being able to make up your mind can cost you big bucks if you have to stay in school for extra years!  Distance education allows you to take different classes from a wide range of disciplines.  Do you want to study forensic science or English literature?  Now you don’t have to pay for classes you can’t afford just to find out. 4) Pace yourself.  Some students struggle in a traditional classroom setting – classes can be taught too fast, too slow, or there are too many distractions.  Distance education allows mature students to set the pace themselves.  They can rewatch lectures they didn’t catch the first time, or go through classes quickly if they are already familiar with the material – cutting out the chance of burning out or getting bored. 5) Lifelong learning.  Maybe you already have a degree, but would like to learn more about your field, or a related field, or maybe even about something completely unrelated – just because you are curious!  Distance education allows you to learn whatever you want ,whenever you want (and yes, wearing anything you’d like!). 6) Attend whatever college you want.  Because of the popularity of distance education, physical campuses are getting in on the game by offering online courses – often just uploaded versions of classes already taught at their campus.  Ever wanted to attend Harvard, but knew you couldn’t get in?  Take a class online!  Of course, you probably should not attempt to lie and say you have a Harvard degree, but Ivy League colleges are prestigious because they are the best in their field – take advantage of the best by taking an online course! I am a big believer in continuing education, whether it is online courses, returning to school, or even take informal classes online.  Distance education can be a great way to accomplish these goals and become a lifelong learner. My friends at provides training through virtual classrooms for students who want to avoid travelling. Distance learning course allows IT aspirants to connect with trainers using the internet.  I encourage everyone to check it out! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, T SQL, Technology

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  • Are Chief Digital Officers the Result of CMO/CIO Refusal to Change?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Apparently CDO no longer just stands for “Collateralized Debt Obligations.”  It stands for Chief Digital Officer. And they’re the ones who are supposed to answer the bat signal CEO’s are throwing into the sky, swoop in and POW! drive the transition of the enterprise to integrated digital systems. So imagine being a CMO or a CIO at such an enterprise and realizing it’s been determined that you are not the answer that’s needed. In fact, IntelligentHQ author Ashley Friedlein points out the very rise of the CDO is an admission of C-Suite failure to become savvy enough, quickly enough in modern technology. Is that fair? Despite the repeated drumbeat that CMO’s and CIO’s must enter a new era of cooperation and collaboration to enact the social-enabled enterprise, the verdict seems to be that if it’s happening at all, it’s not happening fast enough. Therefore, someone else is needed with the authority to make things happen. So who is this relatively new beast? Gartner VP David Willis says, “The Chief Digital Officer plays in the place where the enterprise meets the customer, where the revenue is generated, and the mission accomplished.” In other words, where the rubber meets the road. They aren’t just another “C” heading up a unit. They’re the CEO’s personal SWAT team, able to call the shots necessary across all units to affect what has become job one…customer experience. And what are the CMO’s and CIO’s doing while this is going on? Playing corporate games. Accenture reports 38% of CMOs say IT deliberately keeps them out of the loop, with 35% saying marketing’s needs aren’t a very high priority. 31% of CIOs say marketers don’t understand tech and regularly go around them for solutions. Fun! Meanwhile the CEO feels the need to bring in a parental figure to pull it all together. Gartner thinks 25% of all orgs will have a CDO by 2015 as CMO’s and particularly CIO’s (Peter Hinssen points out many CDO’s are coming “from anywhere but IT”) let the opportunity to be the agent of change their company needs slip away. Perhaps most interestingly, these CDO’s seem to be entering the picture already on the fast track. One consultancy counted 7 instances of a CDO moving into the CEO role, which, as this Wired article points out, is pretty astounding since nobody ever heard of the job a few years ago. And vendors are quickly figuring out that this is the person they need to be talking to inside the brand. The position isn’t without its critics. Forrester’s Martin Gill says the reaction from executives at some traditional companies to someone being brought in to be in charge of digital might be to wash their own hands of responsibility for all things digital – a risky maneuver given the pervasiveness of digital in business. They might not even be called Chief Digital Officers. They might be the Chief Customer Officer, Chief Experience Officer, etc. You can call them Twinkletoes if you want to, but essentially anyone who has the mandate direct from the CEO to enact modern technology changes not currently being championed by the CMO or CIO can be regarded as “boss.” @mikestiles @oraclesocialPhoto: freedigitalphotos.net

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  • Managing Social Relationships for the Enterprise – Part 2

    - by Michael Snow
    12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Reggie Bradford, Senior Vice President, Oracle  On September 13, 2012, I sat down with Altimeter Analyst Jeremiah Owyang to talk about how enterprise businesses are approaching the management of both their social media strategies and internal structures. There’s no longer any question as to whether companies are adopting social full throttle. That’s exactly the way it should be, because it’s a top online behavior across all age groups. For your consumers, it’s an ingrained, normal form of communication. And beyond connecting with friends, social users are reaching out for information and service from brands. Jeremiah tells us 29% of Twitter followers follow a brand and 58% of Facebook users have “Liked” a brand. Even on the B2B side, people act on reviews and recommendations. Just as in the early 90’s we saw companies move from static to dynamic web sites, businesses of all sizes are moving from just establishing a social presence to determining effective and efficient ways to use it. I like to say we’re in the 2nd or 3rd inning of a 9-inning game. Corporate social started out as a Facebook page, it’s multiple channels servicing customers wherever they are. Social is also moving from merely moderating to analyzing so that the signal can be separated from the noise, so that impactful influencers can be separated from other users. Organizationally, social started with the marketers. Now we’re getting into social selling, commerce, service, HR, recruiting, and collaboration. That’s Oracle’s concept of enterprise social relationship management, a framework to extend social across the entire organization real-time in as holistic a way as possible. Social requires more corporate coordination than ever before. One of my favorite statistics is that the average corporation at enterprise has 178 social accounts, according to Altimeter. Not all of them active, not all of them necessary, but 178 of them. That kind of fragmentation creates risk, so the smarter companies will look for solutions (as opposed to tools) that can organize, scale and defragment, as well as quickly integrate other networks and technologies that will come along. Our conversation goes deep into the various corporate social structures we’re seeing, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each. There are also a couple of great examples of how known brands used an integrated, holistic approach to achieve stated social goals. What’s especially exciting to me is the Oracle SRM framework for the enterprise provides companywide integration into one seamless system. This is not a dream. This is going to have substantial business impact in the next several years.

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  • What You Can Learn from the NFL Referee Lockout

    - by Christina McKeon
    American football is a lot like religion. The fans are devoted followers that take brand loyalty to a whole new level. These fans that worship their teams each week showed that they are powerful customers whose voice has an impact. Yesterday, these fans proved that their opinion could force the hand of a large and powerful institution. With a three-month NFL referee lockout that seemed like it was nowhere close to resolution, the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks competed last Monday night. For those of you that might have been out of the news cycle the past few days, Green Bay lost the game due to a controversial call that many experts and analysts agree should have resulted in Green Bay winning the game. Outrage ensued. The NFL had pulled replacement referees from the high school ranks, and these replacements did not have the knowledge and experience to handle high intensity NFL games. Fans protested about their customer experience. Their anger-filled rants were heard in social media, in the headlines of newspapers, on radio, and on national TV. Suddenly, the NFL was moved to reach an agreement with the referees. That agreement was reached late in the night on Wednesday with many believing that the referees had the upper hand forcing the owners into submission. Some might argue that the referees benefited, not the fans. Since the fans wanted qualified and competent referees, I would say the fans did benefit. The referees are scheduled to return to the field this Sunday, so the fans got what they wanted. What can you learn from this negative customer experience? Customers are in control. NFL owners thought they were controlling this situation with the upper hand over referees. The owners figured out they weren’t in control when their fans reacted negatively. Customers can make or break you more now than ever before, which is why it is more important to connect with them, engage them in a personal manner, and create rewarding relationships. Protect your brand. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, the NFL put their brand and each team’s brand at risk with replacement referees. Think about each business decision you make, and how it may impact your brand at different points in time. A decision that results in a gain today could result in a larger loss down the road. Customer experience matters. The NFL likely foresaw declining revenues in ticket sales, merchandising, advertising, and other areas if the lockout continued. While fans primarily spoke with their minds in the days following the Green Bay debacle, their wallets would be the next things to speak. Customer experience directly affects your success and is one of the few areas where you can differentiate your business. What would you do if your brand got such negative attention? Would you be prepared to navigate such stormy waters? Would you be able to prevent such a fiasco? If you don’t have a good answer to these questions, consider joining us October 3-5, 2012 at the Oracle Customer Experience Summit in San Francisco. You’ll have the opportunity to learn even more about customer experience from industry experts such as best-selling author Seth Godin, Paul Hagen and Kerry Bodine from Forrester Research, Inc., George Kembel from the Stanford d.School, Bruce Temkin of The Temkin Group, and Gene Alvarez from Gartner Inc.. There will also be plenty of your peers and customer experience experts available for networking and discussions.

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  • October in Review

    - by Richard Bingham
    With OpenWorld over October was time to get back to serious work for everyone, including the Fusion Applications Developer Relations team. Don't forget the OpenWorld content is still available, including presentation downloads, for a limited period of time so be sure to grab anything you found useful or take another scan for anything you might have missed. Of all the announcements, the continued evolution of the Oracle Cloud services for extending and integrating with Fusion Applications is increasing in popularity, and certainly the Cloud Marketplace is something we're becoming involved in. More details to follow. Fusion Concepts Last week Vik from our team started the new "Fusion Concepts" series of articles, providing those new to Fusion Applications an explanation of the architectural basics, with the aim to reduce the learning curve and lay the platform for more efficient and effective development. The series begun with an insightful first post on the different schemas that exist in the Fusion Applications database. Look out for upcoming posts on multi-lingual entities, profile options, look-ups and more. New Learning Resources Our YouTube channel continued to expand with more 'how to' videos on using page composer, extending the Simplified UI (aka FUSE), and integrating BI reports and analytics. Also the Oracle Learning Library is now well established as a central resource for knowledge, now with thousands of tutorials, videos, and documents. Of particular note are the great new extensibility-related videos added by the CRM Product Management team, including more on the ever-expanding capabilities of Application Composer. To see some examples of these search using keyword 'customization' or the product 'Sales Cloud'. Finally on learning resources, as Oliver mentioned the Oracle Press book on Fusion Application Customization and Extensibility is now available for pre-order on Amazon (due out 1st Jan). Out And About October also saw us attend the annual Apps Conference held by the UK Oracle User Group in London. Interestingly there was an Applications Transformation stream of sessions and content that included Fusion Applications with all the latest in the Oracle Applications evolution, as always focused around the three tenets of social, mobile, and cloud. Read more in Richard's post-event write up. Other teams around Oracle have also been busy. Angelo from the Platform Technical Services group has done quite a bit of work using web services with Fusion SaaS and has published many interesting findings on his blog. It's definitely recommended reading if you are working on any related integration projects. The middleware-for-applications group has built a new tool called "AppAdvantage" offering an online assessment of your use of Fusion Middleware technologies with Oracle Applications. As the popularity of integrating cloud applications with on-premises systems continued to grow, leveraging existing middleware technologies (and licenses) to support the integration solution is likely to be of paramount importance. Similarly the "Build Enterprise Application Extensions with Ease" section of the related webpage has AppsUX director Killan Evers speaking about customization using the composer tools. Both are useful resources for those just getting started with a move to Fusion Applications. The Oracle A-Team, specialists in middleware technical architecture, always publish superb content via their 'chronicles' site, now with a substantial amount specifically related to Fusion Applications. Click on the Fusion Applications menu on the top right of their homepage to see more. Last month of particular note was an article on customizing the timeout pop-up message that shows to inactive users, providing design-time insight and easy-to-follow steps. Finally if you're looking at using Oracle Middleware and Cloud to tailor and extend your applications then you may also be interested in this new blog post on the roadmap for Oracle SOA and the latest on-demand Cloud Development webcast.

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  • New spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly 6.0 provides statistics for prioritizing bug fixes

    - by Jason Crease
    One problem developers face is how to prioritize the many voices providing input into software bugs. If there is something wrong with a function that is the darling of a particular user, he or she tends to want action - now! The developer's dilemma is how to ascertain that the problem is major or minor, and when it should be addressed. Now there is a new spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly that provides exactly that information in an objective manner. This might upset those used to getting their way by being the loudest or pushiest, but ultimately it will ensure that the biggest problems get the priority they deserve. Here's how it works: Feature Usage Reporting (FUR) in SmartAssembly 6.0 provides a wealth of data about how your software is used by its end-users, but in the SmartAssembly UI the data isn't mined to its full extent. The new Excel spreadsheet for FUR extracts statistics from that data and presents them in easy-to-understand forms. I developed the spreadsheet feature in Microsoft Excel, using a fair amount of VBA. The spreadsheet connects directly to the database which stores the feature-usage data, and shows a wide variety of statistics and tables extracted from that data.  You want to know what percentage of users have used the 'Export as XML' button?  No problem.  How popular is v5.3 is compared to v5.1?  There's graphs for that. You need to know whether you have more users in Russia or Brazil? There's a big pie chart for that. I recently witnessed the spreadsheet in use here at Red Gate Software. My bug is exposed as minor While testing new features in .NET Reflector, I found a usability bug in the Refresh button and filed it in the Red Gate bug-tracking system. The bug was labelled "V.NEXT MINOR," which means it would be fixed in the next point release. Although I'm a professional tester, I'm not much different than most software users when they discover a bug that affects them personally: I wanted it fixed immediately. There was an ulterior motive at play here, of course. I would get to see my colleagues put the spreadsheet to work. The Reflector team loaded up the spreadsheet to view the feature-usage statistics that SmartAssembly collected for the refresh button. The resulting statistics showed that only 8% of users have ever pressed the Refresh button, and only 2.6% of sessions involve pressing the button. When Refresh is used, it's only pressed on average 1.6 times a session, with a maximum of 8 times during a session. This was in stark contrast to what I was doing as a conscientious tester: pressing it dozens of times per session. The spreadsheet provides evidence that my bug was a minor one. On to more serious things Based on the solid evidence uncovered by the spreadsheet, the Reflector team concluded that my experience does not represent that of the vast majority of Reflector's recorded users. The Reflector team had ample data to send me back to my desk and keep the bug classified as "V.NEXT MINOR." The team then went back to fixing more serious bugs. If I'm in the shoes of the user, I might not be thoroughly happy, but I cannot deny that the evidence clearly placed me in a very small minority. Next time I'm hoping the spreadsheet will prove that my bug is more important. Find out more about Feature-Usage Reporting here. The spreadsheet is available for free download here.

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  • Join us on our Journey to be #1 in SaaS!

    - by jessica.ebbelaar(at)oracle.com
    WHY ORACLE? Oracle is a robust organization that has proven to maintain growth and innovation at all levels with a constant evolving attitude. The main ingredient of Oracles success is the 105.000 talented employees who constantly amaze each other in building a better and more innovative organization. Oracle is a company where YOU can make a difference. What is OD? Oracle Direct is a state-of-the-art, multi-channel EMEA sales operation bringing to life the benefits of Oracle’s complete technology stack. It offers you the unique opportunity to work with the most talented and like-minded sales professionals in the industry.  You will have access to world class training and structured career development programmes allowing you to accelerate your Solution Sales career across a multitude of product lines and a choice of attractive locations. What positions are OD Hiring?   Oracle is on a journey to be the #1 SaaS vendor in EMEA.  Due to recent expansion and acquisitions within our Cloud Business, we are now growing our EMEA Cloud Applications Sales Group in Dublin. We have many exciting NEW opportunities across our CRM and HCM SaaS Sales teams. As a SaaS Sales Account Manager, you will proactively manage an assigned territory / vertical with responsibility for the full sales cycle. This role requires strong business development, solution selling, account management and closing skills. WHY ORACLE? Oracle is a robust organization that has proven to maintain growth and innovation at all levels with a constant evolving attitude. The main ingredient of Oracles success is the 105.000 talented employees who constantly amaze each other in building a better and more innovative organization. Oracle is a company where YOU can make a difference. What is OD? Oracle Direct is a state-of-the-art, multi-channel EMEA sales operation bringing to life the benefits of Oracle’s complete technology stack. It offers you the unique opportunity to work with the most talented and like-minded sales professionals in the industry.  You will have access to world class training and structured career development programmes allowing you to accelerate your Solution Sales career across a multitude of product lines and a choice of attractive locations. What positions are OD Hiring? Oracle is on a journey to be the #1 SaaS vendor in EMEA.  Due to recent expansion and acquisitions within our Cloud Business, we are now growing our EMEA Cloud Applications Sales Group in Dublin. We have many exciting NEW opportunities across our CRM and HCM SaaS Sales teams. As a SaaS Sales Account Manager, you will proactively manage an assigned territory / vertical with responsibility for the full sales cycle. This role requires strong business development, solution selling, account management and closing skills. What is the Business Development Group (BDG) The Business Development Group is the key entry point in Oracle for the future Sales and Management talent of the organisation. We are the Demand Generation engine for Oracle in EMEA. We provide revenue generating, quality sales pipeline to our Inside and Field Sales professionals as well as to our Channel Partners. Our current focus is to provide an agile and flexible service offering to our customers and stakeholders to meet ever changing business needs, whilst constantly striving to improve the customer experience, quality of our pipeline, market coverage and penetration. As a SaaS Business Development Consultant (BDC) you will be the first touch point with new customers. Your goal is to proactively identify and qualify business opportunities leading to revenue for Oracle. You will work closely with your Inside Sales colleagues who will progress your qualified pipeline and opportunities. Work for us Work for the only multi-pillar SaaS vendor in the market Be part of a FUN, fast paced and truly International sales team  Develop you solution sales EXPERTISE Drive your CAREER development within a structured and supportive environment The Profile You have a passion for selling cutting-edge technology You thrive in a fast paced and dynamic work environment where being the best is paramount Your priority is always the customer You live for a challenge and you love to win Join us on our Journey to be #1 in SaaS and be part of our Cloud Success Story! You will find more information about open roles here

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  • Selecting the correct installer to install Oracle Weblogic Server

    - by PratikS -- Oracle
    When ever we start learning about a software product, the first step is to get the software installer and install it.Before we start with "How to install Oracle Weblogic Server?", lets understand the different kinds of installers available for Oracle Weblogic Server and select the correct installer.There are three different kinds of Weblogic server Installers: Package Installer Development-only and supplemental installers Upgrade Installer 1) Package Installer: If you have never installed Oracle Weblogic Server and this is the first time you are installing it, then what you need is a Oracle Weblogic Server's Package Installer.Again there are two different kinds of Package Installers:    a) Generic Package installer:         It does not include JAVA runtime. (When using "Generic Package installer" it is a prerequisite that a supported JDK should be installed)         If you want to install weblogic server with 64bit JVM, you have to use "Generic Package installer".         "Generic Package installer" is platform independent and can be used to install weblogic server on any supported 32bit or 64bit platform.     b) OS-specific Package installer         As the name suggests the installer is platform specific.         It is meant for installation with a 32bit JVM only.         Both SUN and JROCKIT 32 bit JDKs come bundled with "OS-specific Package installer", so no need to install the JDK in advance. 2) Development-only and supplemental installers:         If you have no plans to use the Oracle Weblogic Server in Production and need a simple installer for testing purpose only, then use this installer.         Download the zip distribution, unzip it and its ready to use. 3) Upgrade Installer:         Upgrade installer is used to upgrade a Oracle Weblogic Server installation from one minor version to a higher minor version.         There are no installers available to upgrade Oracle Weblogic Server Installation from one major version to another, though Domain Upgrade is always available. Note:Following are the different versions of Oracle Weblogic Server in ascending order(excluding versions before WLS 9.2): WLS 9.2.x WLS 10.0.x WLS 10.3.x WLS 12.1.x Where "x" denotes the minor version, 9.2, 10.0,10.3 and 12.1 are the major versions.So you may use the upgrade installer to upgrade from WLS 10.3.1 to 10.3.6, or 10.0.1 to 10.0.2 etc.  ------------------------------------- Important links to refer: Oracle Weblogic Server Documentation Supported Configuration Installation Guide for Oracle WebLogic Server

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  • Is it worth to learn Experimental Languages?

    - by Xander Lamkins
    I'm a young programmer who desires to work in the field someday as a programmer. I know Java, VB.NET and C#. I want to learn a new language (as I programmer, I know that it is valuable to extend what I know - to learn languages that make you think differently). I took a look online to see what languages were common. Everybody knows C and C++ (even those muggles who know so little about computers in general), so I thought, maybe I should push for C. C and C++ are nice but they are old. Things like Haskell and Forth (etc. etc. etc.) are old and have lost their popularity. I'm scared of learning C (or even C++) for this same reason. Java is pretty old as well and is slow because it's run by the JVM and not compiled to native code. I've been a Windows developer for quite a while. I recently started using Java - but only because it was more versatile and spreadable to other places. The problem is that it doesn't look like a very usable language for these reasons: It's most used purpose is for web application and cellphone apps (specifically Android) As far as actual products made with it, the only things that come to mind are Netbeans, Eclipse (hurrah for making and IDE with the language the IDE is for - it's like making a webpage for writing HTML/CSS/Javascript), and Minecraft which happens to be fun but laggy and bipolar as far as computer spec. support. Other than that it's used for servers but heck - I don't only want to make/configure servers. The .NET languages are nice, however: People laugh if I even mention VB.NET or C# in a serious conversation. It isn't cross-platform unless you use MONO (which is still in development and has some improvements to be made). Lacks low level stuff because, like Java with the JVM, it is run/managed by the CLR. My first thought was learning something like C and then using it to springboard into C++ (just to make sure I would have a strong understanding/base), but like I said earlier, it's getting older and older by the minute. What I've Looked Into Fantom looks nice. It's like a nice middleman between my two favorite languages and even lets me publish between the two interchangeably, but, unlike what I want, it compiles to the CLR or JVM (depending on what you publish it to) instead of it being a complete compile. D also looks nice. It seems like a very usable language and from multiple sources it appears to actually be better than C/C++. I would jump right with it, but I'm still unsure of its success because it obviously isn't very mainstream at this point. There are a couple others that looked pretty nice that focused on other things such as Opa with web development and Go by GOOGLE. My Question Is it worth learning these "experimental" languages? I've read other questions that say that if you aren't constantly learning languages and open to all languages that you aren't in the right mindset for programming. I understand this and I still might not quite be getting it, but in truth, if a language isn't going to become mainstream, should I spend my time learning something else? I don't want to learn old (or any going to soon be old) programming languages. I know that many people see this as something important, *but would any of you ever actually consider (assuming you didn't already know) FORTRAN? My goal is to stay current to make sure I'm successful in the future. Disclaimer Yes, I am a young programmer, so I probably made a lot of naive statements in my question. Feel free to correct me on ANYTHING! I have to start learning somewhere so I'm sure a lot of my knowledge is sketchy enough to have caused to incorrect statements or flaws in my thinking. Please leave any feelings you have in the comments.

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  • JavaOne User Group Sunday

    - by Tori Wieldt
    Before any "official" sessions of JavaOne 2012, the Java community was already sizzling. User Group Sunday was a great success, with several sessions offered by Java community members for anyone wanting to attend. Sessions were both about Java and best practices for running a JUG. Technical sessions included "Autoscaling Web Java Applications: Handle Peak Traffic with Zero Downtime and Minimized Cost,"  "Using Java with HTML5 and CSS3," and "Gooey and Sticky Bits: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Java." Several sessions were about how to start and run a JUG, like "Getting Speakers, Finding Sponsors, Planning Events: A Day in the Life of a JUG" and "JCP and OpenJDK: Using the JUGs’ “Adopt” Programs in Your Group." Badr ElHouari and Faiçal Boutaounte presented the session "Why Communities Are Important and How to Start One." They used the example of the Morocco JUG, which they started. Before the JUG, there was no "Java community," they explained. They shared their best practices, including: have fun, enjoy what you are doing get a free venue to have regular meetings, a University is a good choice run a conference, it gives you visibility and brings in new members students are a great way to grow a JUG Badr was proud to mention JMaghreb, a first-time conference that the Morocco JUG is hosting in November. They have secured sponsors and international speakers, and are able to offer a free conference for Java developers in North Africa. The session also included a free-flowing discussion about recruiters (OK to come to meetings, but not to dominate them), giving out email addresses (NEVER do without permission), no-show rates (50% for free events) and the importance of good content (good speakers really help!). Trisha Gee, member of the London Java Community (LJC) was one of the presenters for the session "Benefits of Open Source." She explained how open sourcing the LMAX Disruptor (a high performance inter-thread messaging library) gave her company LMAX several benefits, including more users, more really good quality new hires, and more access to 3rd party companies. Being open source raised the visibility of the company and the product, which was good in many ways. "We hired six really good coders in three months," Gee said. They also got community contributors for their code and more cred with technologists. "We had been unsuccessful at getting access to executives from other companies in the high-performance space. But once we were open source, the techies at the company had heard of us, knew our code was good, and that opened lots of doors for us." So, instead of "giving away the secret sauce," by going open source, LMAX gained many benefits. "It was a great day," said Bruno Souza, AKA The Brazilian Java Man, "the sessions were well attended and there was lots of good interaction." Sizzle and steak!

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  • How to Speed Up Any Android Phone By Disabling Animations

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Android phones — and tablets, too — display animations when moving between apps and screens. These animations look very slick, but they waste time — especially on fast phones, which could switch between apps instantly if not for the animations. Disabling these animations will speed up navigating between different apps and interface screens on your phone, saving you time. You can also speed up the animations if you’d rather see them. Access the Developer Options Menu First, we’ll need to access the Developer Options menu. It’s hidden by default so Android users won’t stumble across it unless they’re actually looking for it. To access the Developer Options menu, open the Settings screen, scroll down to the bottom of the list, and tap the About phone or About tablet option. Scroll down to the Build number field and tap it repeatedly. Eventually, you’ll see a message appear saying “You are now a developer!”. The Developer options submenu now appears on the Settings screen. You’ll find it near the bottom of the list, just above the About phone or About tablet option. Disable Interface Animations Open the Developer Options screen and slide the switch at the top of the screen to On. This allows you to change the hidden options on this screen. If you ever want to re-enable the animations and revert your changes, all you have to do is slide the Developer Options switch back to Off. Scroll down to the Drawing section. You’ll find the three options we want here — Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale. Tap each option and set it to Animation off to disable the associated animations. If you’d like to speed up the animations without disabling them entirely, select the Animation .5x option instead. If you’re feeling really crazy, you can even select longer animation durations. You can make the animations take as much as ten times longer with the Animation 10x setting. The Animator duration scale option applies to the transition animation that appears when you tap the app drawer button on your home screen.  Your change here won’t take effect immediately — you’ll have to restart Android’s launcher after changing the Animator duration scale setting. To restart Android’s launcher, open the Settings screen, tap Apps, swipe over to the All category, scroll down, and tap the Launcher app. Tap the Force stop button to forcibly close the launcher, then tap your device’s home button to re-launch the launcher. Your app drawer will now open immediately, too. Now whenever you open an app or transition to a new screen, it will pop up as quickly as possible — no waiting for animations and wasting processing power rendering them. How much of a speed improvement you’ll see here depends on your Android device and how fast it is. On our Nexus 4, this change makes many apps appear and become usable instantly if they’re running in the background. If you have a slower device, you may have to wait a moment for apps to be usable. That’s one of the big reasons why Android and other operating systems use animations. Animations help paper over delays that can occur while the operating system loads the app.     

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  • Slick2D Rendering Lots of Polygons

    - by Hazzard
    I'm writing an little isometric game using Slick. The world terrain is made up of lots of quadrilaterals. In a small world that is 128 by 128 squares, over 16,000 quadrilaterals need to be rendered. This puts my pretty powerful computer down to 30 fps. I've though about caching "chunks" of the world so only single chunks would ever need updating at a time, but I don't know how to do this, and I am sure there are other ways to optimize it besides that. Maybe I'm doing the whole thing wrong, surely fancy 3D games that run fine on my machine are more intensive than this. My question is how can I improve the FPS and am I doing something wrong? Or does it actually take that much power to render those polygons? -- Here is the source code for the render method in my game state. It iterates through a 2d array or heights and draws polygons based on the height. public void render(GameContainer container, StateBasedGame game, Graphics gfx) throws SlickException { gfx.translate(offsetX * d + container.getWidth() / 2, offsetY * d + container.getHeight() / 2); gfx.scale(d, d); for (int y = 0; y < placeholder.length; y++) {// x & y are isometric // diag for (int x = 0; x < placeholder[0].length; x++) { Polygon poly; int hor = TestState.TILE_WIDTH * (x - y);// hor and ver are orthagonal int W = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x];//points to go off of int S = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y + 1][x + 1]; int E = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x + 1]; int N = TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y) - 1 * heights[y][x]; if (placeholder[y][x] == null) { poly = new Polygon();//Create actual surface polygon poly.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); poly.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); poly.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); poly.addPoint(hor, N - TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); float z = ((float) heights[y][x + 1] - heights[y + 1][x]) / 32 + 0.5f; placeholder[y][x] = new Tile(poly, new Color(z, z, z)); //ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); } if (true) {//ONLY draw tile if it's on screen gfx.setColor(placeholder[y][x].getColor()); ShapeRenderer.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //gfx.fill(placeholder[y][x]); //placeholder[y][x]. //DRAW EDGES if (y + 1 == placeholder.length) {//draw South foundation edges gfx.setColor(Color.gray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, W); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(-TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); } if (x + 1 == placeholder[0].length) {//north gfx.setColor(Color.darkGray); Polygon found = new Polygon(); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, E); found.addPoint(hor, S + TestState.TILE_HEIGHT); found.addPoint(hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y + 1)); found.addPoint(TestState.TILE_WIDTH + hor, TestState.TILE_HEIGHT * (x + y)); gfx.fill(found); }//*/ } } } }

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  • Open a File Browser From Your Current Command Prompt/Terminal Directory

    - by The Geek
    Ever been doing some work at the command line when you realized… it would be a lot easier if I could just use the mouse for this task? One command later, you’ll have a window open to the same place that you’re at. This same tip works in more than one operating system, so we’ll detail how to do it in every way we know how. Open a File Browser in Windows We’ve actually covered this before when we told you how to open an Explorer window from the command prompt’s current directory, but we’ll briefly review: Just type the follow command into your command prompt: explorer . Note: You could actually just type “start .” instead. And you’ll then see a file browsing window set to the same directory you were previous at. And yes, this screenshot is from Vista, but it works the same in every version of Windows. If that wasn’t good enough, you should really read how you can navigate in the File Open/Save dialogs with just the keyboard—now that’s a Stupid Geek Trick! Open a File Browser in Linux For this exercise, we’re going to assume that you’re using Gnome under a Linux flavor like Ubuntu, because that’s the most common. From your terminal window, just type in the following command: nautilus . And the next thing you know, you’ll have a file browser window open at the current location. You’ll see some type of error message at the prompt, but you can pretty much ignore that. You can also use “gnome-open .” if you want. Open Finder in Mac OS X All the Mac computers in this office are running Linux, so we haven’t had a chance to verify, but you should be able to use the following command on OS X to open Finder in the current terminal location: open . Open Dolphin on Linux KDE4 dolphin . Got any extra tips to help out your fellow readers? How do you do the same thing in KDE3? What about OS X? Leave your savvy advice in the comments, and maybe we’ll update the article. Or not. Either way, it’ll help somebody! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Keyboard Ninja: Concatenate Multiple Text Files in WindowsStupid Geek Tricks: Open an Explorer Window from the Command Prompt’s Current DirectoryHow to automate FTP uploads from the Windows Command LineShell Geek: Rename Multiple Files At OnceAdd "Open with gedit" to the right click menu in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon

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  • Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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  • What is the best practice, point of view of well experienced developers

    - by Damien MIRAS
    My manager pushes me to use his self defined best practices. All of these practices are based on is own assumptions. I disagree with them and I would like to have some feedback of well experienced people about these practices. I would prefer answers from people involved in the maintenance of huge products and people whom have maintained the product for years. Developers with 15+ years of experience are preferred because my manager has that much experience himself. I have 7 years of experience. Here are the practices he wants me to use: never extends classes, use composition and interface instead because extending classes are unmaintainable and difficult to debug. What I think about that Extend when needed, respect "Liskov's Substitution Principle" and you'll never be stuck with a problem, but prefer composition and decoration. I don't know any serious project which has banned inheriting, sometimes it's impossible to not use that, i.e. in a UI framework. Design patterns are just unusable. In PHP, for simple use cases (for example a user needs a web interface to view a database table), his "best practice" is: copy some random php code wich we own, paste and modify it, put html and php code in same file, never use classes in PHP, it doesn't work well for small jobs, and in fact it doesn't work well at all, there is no good tool to work with. Copy & paste PHP code is good practice for maintenance because scripts are independent, if you have a bug somewhere you can fix it without side effects. What I think about that: NEVER EVER COPY code or do it because you have five minutes to deliver something, you will do some refactoring after that. Copy & paste code is a beginners error, if you have errors you'll have the error everywhere any time you have pasted it's a nightmare to maintain. If you repsect the "Open Close Principle" you'll rarely get edge effects, use unit test if you are afraid of that. For small jobs in PHP use at least something you get or write the HTML separately from the PHP code and reuse it any time you need it. Classes in PHP are mature, not as mature as other languages like python or java, but they are usable. There is tools to work with classes in PHP like Zend Studio that work very well. The use of classes or not depends not on the language you use but the programming paradigm you have choosen. I'm a OOP developer, I use PHP5, why do I have to shoot myself in the foot? When you find a simple bug in the code, and you can fix it simply, if you are not working on the code where you have found it, never fix it, even if it takes 5 seconds. He says to me his "best practices" are driven by the fact that he has a lot of experience in maintaining software in production (14 years) and he now knows what works and what doesn't work, what the community says is a fad, and the people advocating such principles as never copy & paste code, are not evolved in maintaining applications. What I think about that: If you find a bug fix it if you can do it quickly inform the people who've touched that code before, check if you have not introduced a new bug, ideally add a unit test for it. I currently work on a web commerce project, which serves 15k unique users per day. The code base has to be maintained and has been maintained this way since 2005. Ideally you include a short description of your position and experience in terms of years effectively maintaining an application which has been in production for real.

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  • Crime Scene Investigation: SQL Server

    - by Rodney Landrum
    “The packages are running slower in Prod than they are in Dev” My week began with this simple declaration from one of our lead BI developers, quickly followed by an emailed spreadsheet demonstrating that, over 5 executions, an extensive ETL process was running average 630 seconds faster on Dev than on Prod. The situation needed some scientific investigation to determine why the same code, the same data, the same schema would yield consistently slower results on a more powerful server. Prod had yet to be officially christened with a “Go Live” date so I had the time, and having recently been binge watching CSI: New York, I also had the inclination. An inspection of the two systems, Prod and Dev, revealed the first surprise: although Prod was indeed a “bigger” system, with double the amount of RAM of Dev, the latter actually had twice as many processor cores. On neither system did I see much sign of resources being heavily taxed, while the ETL process was running. Without any real supporting evidence, I jumped to a conclusion that my years of performance tuning should have helped me avoid, and that was that the hardware differences explained the better performance on Dev. We spent time setting up a Test system, similarly scoped to Prod except with 4 times the cores, and ported everything across. The results of our careful benchmarks left us truly bemused; the ETL process on the new server was slower than on both other systems. We burned more time tweaking server configurations, monitoring IO and network latency, several times believing we’d uncovered the smoking gun, until the results of subsequent test runs pitched us back into confusion. Finally, I decided, enough was enough. Hadn’t I learned very early in my DBA career that almost all bottlenecks were caused by code and database design, not hardware? It was time to get back to basics. With over 100 SSIS packages and hundreds of queries, each handling specific tasks such as file loads, bulk inserts, transforms, logging, and so on, the task seemed formidable. And yet, after barely an hour spent with Profiler, Extended Events, and wait statistics DMVs, I had a lead in the shape of a query that joined three tables, containing millions of rows, returned 3279 results, but performed 239K logical reads. As soon as I looked at the execution plans for the query in Dev and Test I saw the culprit, an implicit conversion warning on a join predicate field that was numeric in one table and a varchar(50) in another! I turned this information over to the BI developers who quickly resolved the data type mismatches and found and fixed “several” others as well. After the schema changes the same query with the same databases ran in under 1 second on all systems and reduced the logical reads down to fewer than 300. The analysis also revealed that on Dev, the ETL task was pulling data across a LAN, whereas Prod and Test were connected across slower WAN, in large part explaining why the same process ran slower on the latter two systems. Loading the data locally on Prod delivered a further 20% gain in performance. As we progress through our DBA careers we learn valuable lessons. Sometimes, with a project deadline looming and pressure mounting, we choose to forget them. I was close to giving into the temptation to throw more hardware at the problem. I’m pleased at least that I resisted, though I still kick myself for not looking at the code on day one. It can seem a daunting prospect to return to the fundamentals of the code so close to roll out, but with the right tools, and surprisingly little time, you can collect the evidence that reveals the true problem. It is a lesson I trust I will remember for my next 20 years as a DBA, if I’m ever again tempted to bypass the evidence.

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  • Problems with moving 2D circle/box collision detection

    - by dario3004
    This is my first game ever and I'm a newbie in computer physics. I've got this code for the collision detection and it works fine for BOTTOM and TOP collision.It miss the collision detection with the paddle's edge and angles so I've (roughly) tried to implement it. Main method that is called for bouncing, it checks if it bounce with wall, or with top (+ right/left side) or with bottom (+ right/left side): protected void handleBounces(float px, float py) { handleWallBounce(px, py); if(mBall.y < getHeight()/4){ if (handleRedFastBounce(mRed, px, py)) return; if (handleRightSideBounce(mRed,px,py)) return; if (handleLeftSideBounce(mRed,px,py)) return; } if(mBall.y > getHeight()/4 * 3){ if (handleBlueFastBounce(mBlue, px, py)) return; if (handleRightSideBounce(mBlue,px,py)) return; if (handleLeftSideBounce(mBlue,px,py)) return; } } This is the code for the BOTTOM bounce: protected boolean handleRedFastBounce(Paddle paddle, float px, float py) { if (mBall.goingUp() == false) return false; // next position tx = mBall.x; ty = mBall.y - mBall.getRadius(); // actual position ptx = px; pty = py - mBall.getRadius(); dyp = ty - paddle.getBottom(); xc = tx + (tx - ptx) * dyp / (ty - pty); if ((ty < paddle.getBottom() && pty > paddle.getBottom() && xc > paddle.getLeft() && xc < paddle.getRight())) { mBall.x = xc; mBall.y = paddle.getBottom() + mBall.getRadius(); mBall.bouncePaddle(paddle); playSound(mPaddleSFX); increaseDifficulty(); return true; } else return false; } As long as I understood it should be something like this: So I tried to make the "left side" and "right side" bounce method: protected boolean handleLeftSideBounce(Paddle paddle, float px, float py){ // next position tx = mBall.x + mBall.getRadius(); ty = mBall.y; // actual position ptx = px + mBall.getRadius(); pty = py; dyp = tx - paddle.getLeft(); yc = ty + (pty - ty) * dyp / (ptx - tx); if (ptx < paddle.getLeft() && tx > paddle.getLeft()){ System.out.println("left side bounce1"); System.out.println("yc: " + yc + "top: " + paddle.getTop() + " bottom: " + paddle.getBottom()); if (yc > paddle.getTop() && yc < paddle.getBottom()){ System.out.println("left side bounce2"); mBall.y = yc; mBall.x = paddle.getLeft() - mBall.getRadius(); mBall.bouncePaddle(paddle); playSound(mPaddleSFX); increaseDifficulty(); return true; } } return false; } I think I'm quite near to the solution but I'm having big troubles with the new "yc" formula. I tried so many versions of it but since I don't know the theory behind it I can't adjust for the Y axis. Since the Y axis is inverted I even tried this: yc = ty - (pty - ty) * dyp / (ptx - tx); I tried Googling it but I can't seem to find a solution for it. Also this method fails when ball touches the angle and I don't think is a nice way because it just test "one" point of the ball and probably there will be many cases in which the ball won't bounce.

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  • Give a session on C++ AMP – here is how

    - by Daniel Moth
    Ever since presenting on C++ AMP at the AMD Fusion conference in June, then the Gamefest conference in August, and the BUILD conference in September, I've had numerous requests about my material from folks that want to re-deliver the same session. The C++ AMP session I put together has evolved over the 3 presentations to its final form that I used at BUILD, so that is the one I recommend you base yours on. Please get the slides and the recording from channel9 (I'll refer to slide numbers below). This is how I've been presenting the C++ AMP session: Context (slide 3, 04:18-08:18) Start with a demo, on my dual-GPU machine. I've been using the N-Body sample (for VS 11 Developer Preview). (slide 4) Use an nvidia slide that has additional examples of performance improvements that customers enjoy with heterogeneous computing. (slide 5) Talk a bit about the differences today between CPU and GPU hardware, leading to the fact that these will continue to co-exist and that GPUs are great for data parallel algorithms, but not much else today. One is a jack of all trades and the other is a number cruncher. (slide 6) Use the APU example from amd, as one indication that the hardware space is still in motion, emphasizing that the C++ AMP solution is a data parallel API, not a GPU API. It has a future proof design for hardware we have yet to see. (slide 7) Provide more meta-data, as blogged about when I first introduced C++ AMP. Code (slide 9-11) Introduce C++ AMP coding with a simplistic array-addition algorithm – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 12-13) index<N>, extent<N>, and grid<N>. (Slide 14-16) array<T,N>, array_view<T,N> and comparison between them. (Slide 17) parallel_for_each. (slide 18, 21) restrict. (slide 19-20) actual restrictions of restrict(direct3d) – the slides speak for themselves. (slide 22) bring it altogether with a matrix multiplication example. (slide 23-24) accelerator, and accelerator_view. (slide 26-29) Introduce tiling incl. tiled matrix multiplication [tiling probably deserves a whole session instead of 6 minutes!]. IDE (slide 34,37) Briefly touch on the concurrency visualizer. It supports GPU profiling, but enhancements specific to C++ AMP we hope will come at the Beta timeframe, which is when I'll be spending more time talking about it. (slide 35-36, 51:54-59:16) Demonstrate the GPU debugging experience in VS 11. Summary (slide 39) Re-iterate some of the points of slide 7, and add the point that the C++ AMP spec will be open for other compiler vendors to implement, even on other platforms (in fact, Microsoft is actively working on that). (slide 40) Links to content – see slide – including where all your questions should go: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/parallelcppnative/threads.   "But I don't have time for a full blown session, I only need 2 (or just 1, or 3) C++ AMP slides to use in my session on related topic X" If all you want is a small number of slides, you can take some from the session above and customize them. But because I am so nice, I have created some slides for you, including talking points in the notes section. Download them here. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Book Review (Book 12) - 20 Master Plots

    - by BuckWoody
    This is a continuation of the books I challenged myself to read to help my career - one a month, for a year. You can read my first book review here, and the entire list is here. The book I chose for May 2012 was:20 Master Plots by Ronald B. Tobias. This is my final book review - at least for this year. I'll explain what I've learned in this book in particular, and in the last twelve months in general. Why I chose this book: Stories and themes are part of software, presenting, and working in teams. This book claims there are only 20 plots, ever. I wanted to find out. What I learned: Probably my most favorite read of the year. Deceptively small, amazingly insightful. The premise is that there are only a few "base" themes, and that once you learn them you can put together an interesting set of stories on most any topic. Yes, the author admits that this number has been different throughout history - some have said 50, others 14, and still others claim only one or two basic plots. This doesn't change the fact that you can build very complex stories from a simple set of circumstances and characters. Be warned - if you read this book it takes away much of the wonder from almost every movie or book you'll read from here on! I loved it. My favorite part is that the author gives you exercises to build stories, right from the start. I've actually used these as the start of a meeting to foster creativity. Amazing stuff. One of my favorite sections of the book deals with plot and story. Plot: The king died, and the queen died. Story: The king died, and the queen died of heartbreak. Add one or two words, and you have the essence of storytelling. A highly recommended read, for all folks of all ages. You'll like it, your spouse will like it, and your kids will like it. I learned to be a better storyteller, and it helped me understand that plots and stories are not just things in books - they are a direct reflection of human nature. That makes me a better manager of myself and others.   And this is the last of the reviews - at least for this year. I probably won't post many more book reviews here, but I will keep up the practice. As a reminder, the goal was to select 12 books that will help you reach your career goals. They don't have to be technical, or even apply directly to your job - but they do need to be books that you mindfully select as getting you closer to what you want to be. Each month, jot down what you learned from the work. And see if it doesn't in fact get you closer to your goals. These readings helped me - I got a promotion this year, and I attribute at least some of that to the things I learned.

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  • Social HCM: Is Your Team Listening?

    - by Mike Stiles
    Does integrating Social HCM into your enterprise make sense? Consider Sam and Christina. Sam is a new hire at a big company. On the job 3 weeks, a question has come up on how to properly file an expense report to get reimbursed. It was covered in the onboarding session, but shockingly enough, Sam didn’t memorize or write down every word of the session. The answer is probably in a handout, in a stack of handouts 2 inches thick. It also might be on the employee web site…somewhere. Christina is a new hire at a different big company. She has the same question. She logs into her company’s social network, goes to the “new hires” group, asks her question and gets an answer in seconds. Christina says, “Cool!” Sam says, “Grrrr.” It’s safe to say the qualified talent your company wants is accustomed to using social platforms to communicate and get quick answers. As such, Christina is comfortable at her new company, whereas Sam is wondering what he’s gotten himself into. Companies that cling to talent communication and management systems that don’t speak to talent’s needs or expectations put themselves at risk. Right from the recruiting stage, prospects can determine if a company has embraced the communications tools of the 21st century. If they don’t see it, alarm bells go off. With great talent more in demand than ever, enterprises should reconsider making “this is the way we do it, you adapt to us” their mantra. Other blogs have clearly outlined that apart from meeting top recruits’ expectations, Social HCM benefits the organization itself in terms of efficiency, talent performance & measurement. Recruiting: Jobvite shows 64% of companies hired using social. 89% of job seekers are using social in their search. Social can give employers access to relevant communities of prospects and advance the brand. Nucleus Research found general hiring software can provide over 1,000% ROI by reducing churn and improving screening. Social talent acquisition should perform at least as well. Learning & Development:Employees, learning from the company or from peers, can be kept on top of the latest needed skillsets and engage in self-paced training so as to advance within the company. Performance Management:Just as gamers are egged on by levels and achievements, talent can reach for workplace kudos, be they shout-outs from peers & managers or formally established milestones. Plus employee reviews become consistent and fair as managers have access to the cumulative feedback social offers. Workflow and Collaboration:With workforces dispersing in terms of physical location, social provides a platform that helps eliminate drawbacks that would have brought just 10 years ago. Finding and connecting with just the right colleague to get the most relevant info at any given time has never been more possible…or expected. While yes, marketing has taken the social lead inside the enterprise, HCM (with the word “human” right there in its name) is the obvious locale for the next big integration of social in business. The technology is there. At Oracle, Fusion HCM apps are deeply embedded with Social HCM…just one example of systems taking social across the enterprise. Christina’s company is communicating with her in ways she’s used to. Sam’s company may as well be trying to talk to him using signal flags. @mikestilesPhoto via stock.xchng

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