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• UK Partner Briefing – Business Analytics - 24 Sept 2012

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Monday 24th September 2012 - Oracle City Office, London Register Here for this important, free briefing Oracle Partners are invited to attend this Business Analytics Partner Briefing on 24th September 2012 in Oracle’s London Moorgate Offices with Particular focus on Exalytics, Endeca and, BI Mobile. Who should attend? Oracle Business Analytics is one of our fastest growing product lines, hence this briefing will be of value to any executives looking for new business opportunities or extending their existing Analytics line of business Background This half day event will inform you of Oracle's Business Analytics strategy, how your organisation can gain commercial advantage from reselling and deploying Oracle's BI portfolio, and the tools and resources to support your sales engagements. Agenda 13:45 – Registration, Coffee, and iPad set up 14:30 – Briefing Commences: Welcome & Introduction to the Business Analytics FY13 Strategy from Mike Pell, VP UK Business Analytics Sales 15:15 – Exalytics: Speed of Thought Analytics 16:00 – Mobile BI & Endeca 16:45 – Event Wrap-up and Q&A 17:00 – Meet the UK BI Sales Team: Networking Please note – If you have an iPad please bring it with you to the session, as we will be helping to set these up with BI Mobile from 13:45 onwards. Click here to register now for this briefing for Oracle Partners. Best regards, Mike Pell                                  Duncan Fitter                           Mike Thompson VP UK Analytics Sales             BA Business Development       Alliances & Channels

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• Database continuous integration step by step

  - by David Atkinson

  This post will describe how to set up basic database continuous integration using TeamCity to initiate the build process, SQL Source Control to put your database under source control, and the SQL Compare command line to keep a test database up to date. In my example I will be using Subversion as my source control repository. If you wish to follow my steps verbatim, please make sure you have TortoiseSVN, SQL Compare and SQL Source Control installed. Downloading and Installing TeamCity TeamCity (http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/index.html) is free for up to three agents, so it a great no-risk tool you can use to experiment with. 1. Download the latest version from the JetBrains website. For some reason the TeamCity executable didn't download properly for me, stalling frustratingly at 99%, so I tried again with the zip file download option (see screenshot below), which worked flawlessly. 2. Run the installer using the defaults. This results in a set-up with the server component and agent installed on the same machine, which is ideal for getting started with ease. 3. Check that the build agent is pointing to the server correctly. This has caught me out a few times before. This setting is in C:\TeamCity\buildAgent\conf\buildAgent.properties and for my installation is serverUrl=http\://localhost\:80 . If you need to change this value, if for example you've had to install the Server console to a different port number, the TeamCity Build Agent Service will need to be restarted for the change to take effect. 4. Open the TeamCity admin console on http://localhost , and specify your own designated username and password at first startup. Putting your database in source control using SQL Source Control 5. Assuming you've got SQL Source Control installed, select a development database in the SQL Server Management Studio Object Explorer and select Link Database to Source Control. 6. For the Link step you can either create your own empty folder in source control, or you can select Just Evaluating, which just creates a local subversion repository for you behind the scenes. 7. Once linked, note that your database turns green in the Object Explorer. Visit the Commit tab to do an initial commit of your database objects by typing in an appropriate comment and clicking Commit. 8. There is a hidden feature in SQL Source Control that opens up TortoiseSVN (provided it is installed) pointing to the linked repository. Keep Shift depressed and right click on the text to the right of 'Linked to', in the example below, it's the red Evaluation Repository text. Select Open TortoiseSVN Repo Browser. This screen should give you an idea of how SQL Source Control manages the object files behind the scenes. Back in the TeamCity admin console, we'll now create a new project to monitor the above repository location and to trigger a 'build' each time the repository changes. 9. In TeamCity Adminstration, select Create Project and give it a name, such as "My first database CI", and click Create. 10. Click on Create Build Configuration, and name it something like "Integration build". 11. Click VCS settings and then Create And Attach new VCS root. This is where you will tell TeamCity about the repository it should monitor. 12. In my case since I'm using the Just Evaluating option in SQL Source Control, I should select Subversion. 13. In the URL field paste your repository location. In my case this is file:///C:/Users/David.Atkinson/AppData/Local/Red Gate/SQL Source Control 3/EvaluationRepositories/WidgetDevelopment/WidgetDevelopment 14. Click on Test Connection to ensure that you can communicate with your source control system. Click Save. 15. Click Add Build Step, and Runner Type: Command Line. Should you be familiar with the other runner types, such as NAnt, MSBuild or Powershell, you can opt for these, but for the same of keeping it simple I will pick the simplest option. 16. If you have installed SQL Compare in the default location, set the Command Executable field to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Red Gate\SQL Compare 10\sqlcompare.exe 17. Flip back to SSMS briefly and add a new database to your server. This will be the database used for continuous integration testing. 18. Set the command parameters according to your server and the name of the database you have created. In my case I created database RedGateCI on server .\sql2008r2 /scripts1:. /server2:.\sql2008r2 /db2:RedGateCI /sync /verbose Note that if you pick a server instance that isn't on your local machine, you'll need the TCP/IP protocol enabled in SQL Server Configuration Manager otherwise the SQL Compare command line will not be able to connect. 19. Save and select Build Triggering / Add New Trigger / VCS Trigger. This is where you tell TeamCity when it should initiate a build. Click Save. 20. Now return to SQL Server Management Studio and make a schema change (eg add a new object) to your linked development database. A blue indicator will appear in the Object Explorer. Commit this change, typing in an appropriate check-in comment. All being good, within 60 seconds (a TeamCity default that can be changed) a build will be triggered. 21. Click on Projects in TeamCity to get back to the overview screen: The build log will show you the console output, which is useful for troubleshooting any issues: That's it! You now have continuous integration on your database. In future posts I'll cover how you can generate and test the database creation script, the database upgrade script, and run database unit tests as part of your continuous integration script. If you have any trouble getting this up and running please let me know, either by commenting on this post, or email me directly using the email address below. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• Why does VIM say there is trailing whitespace on this command?

  - by Jesse Atkinson

  I am trying to write a beautify CSS command in vim that sorts and alphabetizes all of the CSS properties as well as checks to see if there is not a space after the colon and inserts one. Here is my code: nnoremap <leader>S :g#\({\n\)\@<=#.,/}/sort | %s/:\(\S\)/: \1/g<CR> :command! SortCSSBraceContents :g#\({\n\)\@<=#.,/}/sort | %s/:\(\S\)/: \1/g These work independently. However, I am trying to pipe them into one command. On save VIM says: Error detected while processing /var/home/jesse-atkinson/.vimrc: line 196: E488: Trailing characters Any ideas?

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• Add 2 values to 1 key in a PHP array

  - by Mike Munroe

  I have a result set of data that I want to write to an array in php. Here is my sample data: **Name** **Abbrev** Mike M Tom T Jim J Using that data, I want to create an array in php that is of the following: 1|Mike|M 2|Tom|T 3|Jim|j I tried array_push($values, 'name', 'abbreviation') [pseudo code], which gave me the following: 1|Mike 2|M 3|Tom 4|T 5|Jim 6|J I need to do a look up against this array to get the same key value, if I look up "Mike" or "M". What is the best way to write my result set into an array as set above where name and abbreviation share the same key?

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• Silverlight Cream for December 11, 2010 -- #1007

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mike Wolf, Colin Eberhardt, Mike Snow(-2-, -3-), David Kelley(-2-, -3-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Erik Mork, Jeff Blankenburg, Laurent Duveau, and Jeremy Likness(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "The definitive guide to Notification Window in Silverlight 4" Laurent Duveau WP7: "Making the MS Adcontrol REALLY work on phone 7" David Kelley Silverlight 5: "Silverlight 5: In the Trenches" Mike Wolf From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 5: In the Trenches How many people can discuss Silverlight 5 'In the Trenches' ... apparently Mike Wolf can, and that's just what he's done in the post to whet your whistle (do people say that any more?) for when we can all get our hands on the bits. Visiblox, Visifire, DynamicDataDisplay – Charting Performance Comparison Colin Eberhardt responds to reader requests, and revisits his Charting Performance after also some discussion with David Anson about the Silverlight Toolkit. This time including Dynamic Data Display which is quite impressive in the ratings... check out the post and the code. Win7 Mobile Back Arrow Key Interception The simple fact is heavy bloggers rise, like Cream, to the top of my list, and I've been missing some goodness from Mike Snow... he's blogging WP7 stuff now... first up of the 'missed' ones is this one on intercepting the Back Arrow Key. Animating the Color of an Object Switching back to Silverlight in general, Mike Snow's next post is on Animating color of an object, such as text foreground. Tombstoning on the Win7 Mobile Platform And now back to WP7, Mike Snow is discussing Tombstoning... discussing the various aspects of it, and some code to use, if you haven't gotten your head around this one yet. What I tell Designers to give me... Integrating and Digital Zen David Kelley has a post up describing what he needs from designers to get his job done... I heard him discussing this at the Firestarter, and didn't realize he had written it up... these 8 items are things learned by doing, and should be discussed with your designers. Making the MS Adcontrol REALLY work on phone 7 David Kelley also has a post up discussing how to really get the Ad control working on WP7 apps... since I've seen lots of posts about this, having a definitive explanation from someone that's doing it is a good thing. Performance Optimization on Phone 7 In a break from his norm of discussing UX, David Kelley is talking about performance on WP7 devices in this post. Windows Phone From Scratch #10 – Visual State Part 2 When I saw Jesse Liberty's latest post, I realized I had missed his Part 2 of VSM for WP7 ... don't you miss it... this completes the good stuff from number 9 :) Windows Phone From Scratch #11 – Behaviors Jesse Liberty's latest Windows Phone from Scratch is up... and he's talking about Behaviors this time out... more of an overview or introduction to behaviors, but all good Show 112: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 5 Erik Mork's latest Sparkling Client podcast is up and he was able to get some time with Scott Guthrie at the Firestarter. What I Learned in WP7 – Issue #1 Jeff Blankenburg decided to do another series, only this one isn't promised as every day... it's "What I Learned in WP7" ... and the first is up... good interesting bits found surrounding the WP7 device. The definitive guide to Notification Window in Silverlight 4 Laurent Duveau has a great post up that will have you doing Silverlight 'toast' notifications in no time... good descriptions and source. Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 1: Dynamic XAML Jeremy Likness has rebuilt his personal website in Silverlight and is sharing some of that experience on his blog. This first post discusses the dynamic content. He used Jounce, of course, and included the Silverlight Navigation Framework, and... you can download all the source Lessons Learned in Personal Web Page Part 2: Enter the Matrix Jeremy Likness's second post about building his website is all about the 'Matrix' page ... pretty cool stuff... check it out... I think it looks great Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Silverlight 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4.0 released

  - by vladimirl

  Technorati Tags: Silverlight OK, now that Silverlight 4.0 finally is out (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/04/15/silverlight-4-released.aspx) its time to learn it. Also VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 released (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/04/12/visual-studio-2010-and-net-4-released.aspx). And remember about Windows Phone! There is more than enough information on the web. One thing that I would like to see from Microsoft is a complete reference example of business application. Personally I like what Nikhil Kothari is doing (check out his Mix 10 session “Developing with WCF RIA Services Quickly and Effectively” and his blog http://www.nikhilk.net/). Also there is Mike Taulty – the best presenter ever - http://mtaulty.com/communityserver/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/default.aspx Currently I’m watching this three part series: 1. What's new in Silverlight 4 Part 1 by Mike Taulty - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Whats-new-in-Silverlight-4-Part-1-by-Mike-Taulty/ 2. What's new in Silverlight 4: Part 2 by Mike Taulty - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Whats-new-in-Silverlight-4-Part-2-by-Mike-Taulty/ 3. Silverlight 4 - A Guided Tour of the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Silverlight-4-A-Guided-Tour-of-the-Managed-Extensibility-Framework-MEF/

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• 9 New BizTalk Wencasts in the Light & Easy Series

  - by Alan Smith

  During the MVP summit in February I managed to catch up with a few of the BizTalk MVPs who had recorded new webcasts for the “BizTalk Light & Easy” series. The 9 new webcasts are online now at CloudCasts. ·         BizTalk 2010 and Windows Azure – Paul Somers ·         BizTalk and AppFabric Cache Part 1 – Mike Stephenson ·         BizTalk and AppFabric Cache Part 2 – Mike Stephenson ·         Integration to SharePoint 2010 Part 1 – Mick Badran ·         Integration to SharePoint 2010 Part 2 – Mick Badran ·         Better BizTalk Testing by Taking Advantage of the CAT Logging Framework – Mike Stephenson ·         Calling Business Rules from a .NET Application – Alan Smith ·         Tracking Rules Execution in a .NET Application – Alan Smith ·         Publishing a Business Rules Policy as a Service – Alan Smith The link is here. Big thanks to Paul, Mike and Mick for putting the time in. “BizTalk Light & Easy” is an ongoing project, if you are feeling creative and would like to contribute feel free to contact me via this blog. I can email you some tips on webcasting and the best formats to use.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 04, 2010 -- #855

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: John Papa, Adam Kinney, Mike Taulty, Kirupa, Gunnar Peipman, Mike Snow(-2-, -3-), Jesse Liberty, and Lee. Shoutout: Jeff Wilcox announced Silverlight Unit Test Framework: New version in the April 2010 Silverlight Toolkit From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight TV 23: MVP Q&A with WWW (Wildermuth, Wahlin and Ward) John Papa has Silverlight 23 up which is a panel discussion between Shawn Wildermuth, Dan Wahlin, Ward Bell and John... wow... what a crew! Design-time Resources in Expression Blend 4 RC Adam Kinney reports on the new feature of Expresseion Blend RC to load resources at design time. Adam also has a project available to demonstrate the concepts he's explaining. Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (1 - Overview) Mike Taulty is starting a series on WCF RIA Services. This first one is an overview and looks to be a good series as expected. Introduction to Sample Data - Page 1 Kirupa has a great 5-part post up about sample data in Expression Blend. Windows Phone 7 development: Using WebBrowser control Gunnar Peipman posted about using the web browser control in WP7 to display RSS data. Good stuff, and all the code too. Silverlight Tip of the Day #10 – Converting Client IP to Geographical Location Mike Snow's Tip #10 is about taking an IP address and getting a geographical location from it. Combine this with his Tip #9 that retrieves the IP address. Silverlight Tip of the Day #11 – Deploying Silverlight Applications with WCF web services. Mike Snow's Tip #11 is much bigger than most ... it's almost an end-to-end solution for creating and deploying a WCF service, including resolving problems. Silverlight Tip of the Day #12 – Getting an Images Source File Name Mike Snow also has tip #12 up, and it's a quick one on getting the original source file name for an image you've loaded. Screen Scraping – When All You Have Is A Hammer… Jesse Liberty posted his solution to a self-imposed problem and ended up writing a 'mini tutorial on using Silverlight for creating desk-top utilities' ... all with source. RIA services and combobox lookups Lee has a post up about RIA Services and setting up comboboxes for lookups. Lots of source in the post and full project download. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• iCal CalDAV multiple alarm notification

  - by user13332755

  In case you work with Apple iCal CalDAV Client you might noticed an issue with several alarm notification was send / received. So Alice add Calendar of Mike in iCal, Mike created an event with email alarm notification for Tom. Guess what, Tom will receive an email alarm notification from Mike and Alice. So whenever you add Calendars which are not your own Calendar in iCal you should use the Option Ignore Alarms

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• How do I fix skype on x86 11.10 desktop which garbles audio both ways in connection with a Windows user?

  - by keepitsimpleengineer

  Strange phenomena ? I have a friend I connect with and talk to regularly occasionally using video. He runs Windows XP with a Logitech webcam and mike. I run Windows XP with a Logitech webcam and mike, and a laptop with built in webcam and mike running both 11.10 x86 Desktop and Windows XP Home. We gab and ogle fine with these. But when I installed 11.10 x86 with GNOME 3.2 dual boot on the same machine with the Logitech webcam and mike, whenever I try to ogle and gab the audio is total garbled. When I make a test call to skype or call somebody on a landline or cell - there's no problem. In summary, everything works except for when running 11.10 x86 GNOME 3.2 connected to his Windows XP. Stumped on this end.

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• How to write Sql or LinqToSql for this scenario?

  - by Mike108

  How to write Sql or LinqToSql for this scenario? A table has the following data: Id UserName Price Date Status 1 Mike 2 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Success 2 Mike 3 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Fail 3 Mike 2 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Success 4 Lily 5 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Success 5 Mike 1 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Fail 6 Lily 5 2010-4-25 0:00:00 Success 7 Mike 2 2010-4-26 0:00:00 Success 8 Lily 5 2010-4-26 0:00:00 Fail 9 Lily 2 2010-4-26 0:00:00 Success 10 Lily 1 2010-4-26 0:00:00 Fail I want to get the summary result from the data, the result should be: UserName Date TotalPrice TotalRecord SuccessRecord FailRecord Mike 2010-04-25 8 4 2 2 Lily 2010-04-25 10 2 2 0 Mike 2010-04-26 2 1 1 0 Lily 2010-04-26 8 3 1 2 The TotalPrice is the sum(Price) groupby UserName and Date The TotalRecord is the count(*) groupby UserName and Date The SuccessRecord is the count(*) groupby UserName and Date where Status='Success' The FailRecord is the count(*) groupby UserName and Date where Status='Fail' The TotalRecord = SuccessRecord + FailRecord The sql server 2005 database script is: /****** Object: Table [dbo].[Pay] Script Date: 04/28/2010 22:23:42 ******/ SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[Pay]') AND type in (N'U')) BEGIN CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Pay]( [Id] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [UserName] [nvarchar](50) COLLATE Chinese_PRC_CI_AS NULL, [Price] [int] NULL, [Date] [datetime] NULL, [Status] [nvarchar](50) COLLATE Chinese_PRC_CI_AS NULL, CONSTRAINT [PK_Pay] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ( [Id] ASC )WITH (PAD_INDEX = OFF, STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ) END GO SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ON INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (1, N'Mike', 2, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (2, N'Mike', 3, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Fail') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (3, N'Mike', 2, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (4, N'Lily', 5, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (5, N'Mike', 1, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Fail') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (6, N'Lily', 5, CAST(0x00009D6300000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (7, N'Mike', 2, CAST(0x00009D6400000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (8, N'Lily', 5, CAST(0x00009D6400000000 AS DateTime), N'Fail') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (9, N'Lily', 2, CAST(0x00009D6400000000 AS DateTime), N'Success') INSERT [dbo].[Pay] ([Id], [UserName], [Price], [Date], [Status]) VALUES (10, N'Lily', 1, CAST(0x00009D6400000000 AS DateTime), N'Fail') SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[Pay] OFF

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• BI Publisher at Collaborate 2010

  - by mike.donohue

  Noelle and I are heading to Collaborate 2010 next week. There are over two dozen sessions on BI Publisher including a Hands On Lab (see below). Very excited to see what our customers and partners will be presenting and how they are using BI Publisher to get better reports and reduce costs. My only regret is that many sessions are scheduled at the same time so I won't get to see all of them. Noelle and I will be presenting the following: Monday, April 19 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Session: 227 Location: Reef F By: Mike 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm The Reporting Platform for Applications: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Session: 73170 Location: South Seas Ballroom J By: Noelle 3:45 pm - 4:45 pm Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Hands On Lab (1) Session: 217 Location: Palm D By: Noelle and Mike Tuesday, April 20 8:00 am - 9:00 am Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Best Practices Session: 218 Location: Palm D By: Noelle and Mike We will also be at the BI Technology demo pod in the exhibt hall so please stop by and say hello. All BI Publisher related Sessions Sunday, April 18 2:00 pm - 2:50 pm Customizing your Invoices in a Flash! 3:00 pm - 3:50 pm BI Publisher SIG Meeting - Part 1 4:00 pm - 4:50 pm BI Publisher SIG Meeting - Part 2 Monday, April 19 8:00 am - 9:00 am XML Publisher and FSG for Beginners 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Introduction to Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm The Reporting Platform for Applications: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Bay Ballroom A What it Takes to Make Your Business Intelligence Implementation a Success 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm XML Publisher-More Than Just Form Letters 3:45 pm - 4:45 pm JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Reporting and Batch Discussions presented by Technology SIG 3:45 pm - 4:45 pm Hands On Lab: Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (1) Tuesday, April 20 8:00 am - 9:00 am Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher Best Practices 8:00 am - 9:00 am Creating XML Publisher Documents with PeopleCode 10:30 am - 11:30 am Moving to BI Publisher, Now What? Automated Fax and Email from Oracle EBS 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Smart Reporting in Oracle Financials Release 12.1 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm Custom Check Printing Framework using XML Publisher 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm BI Publisher and Oracle BI for JD Edwards Wednesday, April 21 8:00 am - 9:00 am XML Publisher Tips for PeopleTools 10:30 am - 11:30 am JD Edwards World - Technical Upgrade Considerations 10:30 am - 11:30 am Data Visualization Best Practices: Know how to design and improve your BI & EPM reports, dashboards, and queries 10:30 am - 11:30 am Oracle BIEE End-to-End 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Empower JD Edwards Users with Oracle BI Publisher for Ad Hoc Reporting 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm BIP and JD Edwards World - Good Stuff! 2:15 pm - 3:15 pm Proven Strategies for Increasing ROI with PeopleSoft HCM 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm Using Oracle BI Delivers to Send Reports to JD Edwards Users Thursday, April 22 9:45 am - 10:45 am PeopleSoft Recruiting Enhancements You Can Use 9:45 am - 10:45 am Reducing Cost with Oracle's BI Publisher Note (1) the Hands On Lab was not showing in the joint scheduler as of this posting but, it is definitely ON.

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• Oracle Open World starts on Sunday, Sept 30

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Oracle Open World 2012 starts on Sunday this week - and we are really looking forward to see you in one of our presentations, especially theDatabase Upgrade on SteriodsReal Speed, Real Customers, Real Secretson Monday, Oct 1, 12:15pm in Moscone South 307(just skip the lunch - the boxed food is not healthy at all): Monday, Oct 1, 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM - Moscone South - 307 Database Upgrade on Steroids:Real Speed, Real Customers, Real Secrets Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Georg Winkens - Technical Manager, Amadeus Data Processing Carol Tagliaferri - Senior Development Manager, Oracle  Looking to improve the performance of your database upgrade and learn about other ways to reduce upgrade time? Isn’t everyone? In this session, you will learn directly from Oracle’s Upgrade Development team about what you can do to speed things up. Find out about ways to reduce upgrade downtime such as using a transient logical standby database and/or Oracle GoldenGate, and get other hints and tips. Learn about new features that improve upgrade performance and reduce downtime. Hear Georg Winkens, DB Services technical manager from Amadeus, speak about his upgrade experience, and get real-life performance measurements and advice for a successful upgrade. . And don't forget: we already start on Sunday so if you'd like to learn about the SAP database upgrades at Deutsche Messe: Sunday, Sep 30, 11:15 AM - 12:00 PM - Moscone West - 2001Oracle Database Upgrade to 11g Release 2 with SAP Applications Andreas Ellerhoff - DBA, Deutsche Messe AG Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Jan Klokkers - Sr.Director SAP Development, Oracle Deutsche Messe began to use Oracle6 Database at the end of the 1980s and has been using Oracle Database technology together with SAP applications successfully since 2002. At the end of 2010, it took the first steps of an upgrade to Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), and since mid-2011, all SAP production systems there run successfully with Oracle Database 11g. This presentation explains why Deutsche Messe uses Oracle Database together with SAP applications, discusses the many reasons for the upgrade to Release 11g, and focuses on the operational top aspects from a DBA perspective. . And unfortunately the Hands-On-Lab is sold out already ... We would like to apologize but we have absolutely ZERO influence on either the number of runs or the number of available seats.  Tuesday, Oct 2, 10:15 AM - 12:45 PM - Marriott Marquis - Salon 12/13 Hands On Lab:Upgrading an Oracle Database Instance, Using Best Practices Roy Swonger - Senior Director, Software Development, Oracle Carol Tagliaferri - Senior Development Manager, Oracle Mike Dietrich - Consulting Member Technical Staff, Oracle Cindy Lim - PMTS, Oracle Carol Palmer - Principal Product Manager, Oracle This hands-on lab gives participants the opportunity to work through a database upgrade from an older release of Oracle Database to the very latest Oracle Database release available. Participants will learn how the improved automation of the upgrade process and the generation of fix-up scripts can quickly help fix database issues prior to upgrading. The lab also uses the new parallel upgrade feature to improve performance of the upgrade, resulting in less downtime. Come get inside information about database upgrades from the Database Upgrade development team. . See you soon

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• After 12.10, no GUI can authenticate for administration, such as Software Center

  - by Mike Crowe

  I upgraded to 12.10, and now I can't use Software Center or Network Administration. It keeps giving me an authentication errors. When I check /var/log/auth.log, I see: Oct 31 21:10:45 mike polkit-agent-helper-1[4665]: pam_unix(polkit-1:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=1000 euid=0 tty= ruser=root rhost= user=root Oct 31 21:10:51 mike polkit-agent-helper-1[4667]: pam_unix(polkit-1:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=1000 euid=0 tty= ruser=root rhost= user=root I found a post which said to change my password, which I've done (both through the Ubuntu settings GUI tool, and through recovery mode. No avail. Any suggestions? TIA M

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• Innovative SPARC: Lighting a Fire Under Oracle's New Hardware Business

  - by Paulo Folgado

  "There's a certain level of things you can do with commercially available parts," says Oracle Executive Vice President Mike Splain. But, he notes, you can do so much more if you design the parts yourself. Mike Splain,EVP, OracleYou can, for example, design cryptographic accelerators into your microprocessors so customers can run their networks fully encrypted if they choose.Of course, it helps if you've already built multiple processing "cores" into those chips so they can handle all that encrypting and decrypting while still getting their other work done.System on a ChipAs the leader of Oracle Microelectronics, Mike knows how implementing clever innovations in silicon can give systems a real competitive advantage.The SPARC microprocessors that his team designed at Sun pioneered the concept of multiple cores several years ago, and the UltraSPARC T2 processor--the industry's first "system on a chip"--packs up to eight cores per chip, each running as many as eight threads at once. That's the most cores and threads of any general-purpose processor. Looking back, Mike points out that the real value of large enterprise-class servers was their ability to run a lot of very large applications in parallel."The beauty of our CMT [chip multi-threading] machines is you can get that same kind of parallel-processing capability at a much lower cost and in a much smaller footprint," he says.The Whole StackWhat has Mike excited these days is that suddenly the opportunity to innovate is much bigger as part of Oracle."In my group, we used to look up the software stack and say, 'We can do any innovation we want, provided the only thing we have to change is what's in the Solaris operating system'--or maybe Java," he says. "If we wanted to change things beyond that, we'd have to go outside the walls of Sun and we'd have to convince the vendors: 'You have to align with us, you have to test with us, you have to build for us, and then you'll reap the benefits.' Now we get access to the entire stack. We can look all the way through the stack and say, 'Okay, what would make the database go faster? What would make the middleware go faster?'"Changing the WorldMike and his microelectronics team also like the fact that Oracle is not just any software company. We're #1 in database, middleware, business intelligence, and more."We're like all the other engineers from Sun; we believe we can change the world, if we can just figure out how to get people to pay attention to us," he says. "Now there's a mechanism at Oracle--much more so than we ever had at Sun."He notes, too, that every innovation in SPARC has involved some combination of hardware and softwareoptimization."Take our cryptography framework, for example. Sure, we can accelerate rapidly, but the Solaris OS has to provide the right set of interfaces that applications can tap into," Mike says. "Same thing with our multicore architecture. We have to have software that can utilize all those threads and run in parallel." His engineers, he points out, have never been interested in producing chips that sell as mere components."Our chips are always designed to go into systems and be combined with various pieces of software," he says. "Our job is to enable the creation of systems."

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• Silverlight Cream for February 13, 2011 -- #1046

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Loek van den Ouweland, Colin Eberhardt, Rudi Grobler, Joost van Schaik, Mike Taulty(-2-, -3-), Deborah Kurata, David Kelley, Peter Foot, Samuel Jack(-2-), and WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Simple MVVM Commanding" Deborah Kurata WP7: "WP7 CustomInputPrompt control with Cancel button" WindowsPhoneGeek Expression Blend: "Silverlight Templated Image Button with two images" Loek van den Ouweland Shoutouts: Dave Campbell posted a write-up about the project he's on and the use of Sterling: Sterling Object-Oriented Database for ISO 1.0 Released!... Also see Jeremy Likness' post on the 1.0 release: Sterling Object-Oriented Database 1.0 RTM Not necessarily Silverlight, but darn cool, a great control by Sasha Barber: WPF : A Weird 3d based control snoutholder announced new content: Windows Phone 7 QuickStarts Live! From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight Templated Image Button with two images Loek van den Ouweland has a video tutorial up for creating an ImageButton with a hover state... Expression Blend coolness, and check out the external links he has to their training site. Windows Phone 7 Performance Measurements – Emulator vs. Hardware Colin Eberhardt's latest is a popular post comparing performance metrics between the WP7 emulator and a real device. Mileage may vary, but I'm pretty sure the overall results are conculsive, and should help the way you view your app as you're building in the emulator. WP7: WebClient vs HttpWebRequest Rudi Grobler's latest is a discussion of WebClient and HttpWebRequest, gives coding examples of each plus discussion of why you may choose one over the other... and pay attention to his comment about mobile providers. A Blendable Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight clipping behavior Joost van Schaik posted this WP7/Silverlight clipping behavior he developed because all the other solutions were not blendable. Another really useful piece of code from Joost! Blend Bits 22–Being Stylish Mike Taulty has 3 more episodes in his Blend Bits series... first up is on one Styles... explicit, implicit, inheriting... you name it, he's covering it! Blend Bits 23–Templating Part 1 MIke Taulty then has the beginning of a series within his Blend Bits series on Templating. This is something you just have to either bite the bullet and go with Blend to do, or consume someone else's work. Mike shows us how to do it ourself by tweaking the visual aspects of a checkbox Blend Bits 24–Templating Part 2 In part 2 of the Templating series, Mike Taulty digs deeper into Blend and cracks open the Listbox control to take a bunch of the inner elements out for a spin... fun stuff and great tutorial, Mike! Silverlight Simple MVVM Commanding Deborah Kurata has another great MVVM post up... if you don't have your head wrapped around commanding yet, this is a good place to start that process... VB and C# as always. App Development for Windows Phone 7 101 David Kelley goes through the basics of producing a WP7 app both from the Silverlight and XNA side... good info and good external links to get you going. Copyable TextBlock for Windows Phone Peter Foot takes a look at the Copy/Paste functionality in WP7 and how to apply it to a TextBlock... which is NOT an out-of-the-box solution. How to deploy to, and debug, multiple instances of the Windows Phone 7 emulator Samuel Jack has a couple posts up this week... first is this clever one on running multiple copies of the emulator at once... too cool for debugging a multi-player game! Multi-player enabling my Windows Phone 7 game: Day 3 – The Server Side Samuel Jack's latest is a detailed look at his day 3 adventure of taking his multi-player game to WP7... lots of information and external links... what do you say, give him another day? :) WP7 CustomInputPrompt control with Cancel button WindowsPhoneGeek has a couple more posts up... first is this "CustomInputPrompt" control based off the InputPrompt from Coding4Fun. Implementing Windows Phone 7 DataTemplateSelector and CustomDataTemplateSelector In his latest post, WindowsPhoneGeek writes a DataTemplateSelector to allow different data templates for different list elements based on the type of the element. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• BI-Applications Special Price Promotion for Partners

  - by Mike.Hallett(at)Oracle-BI&EPM

  Partners should keep in mind the “Midsize Market” pricing promotion for BI-Applications solution packages, with reduced minimums applicable to Oracle's Business Intelligence Products, and a pre-approved 50% discount. ·       Partners additionally get their normal e-business reseller discount. This now makes it most attractive to offer the pre-built BI-Applications such as Manufacturing Analytics, Financial Analytics, Procurement and Spend Analytics, Project Analytics, and Human Resources Analytics, to both customers newly implementing Oracle ERP, and for the many existing Oracle ERP (eBusiness suite, Peoplesoft and JDE) customers. To answer any questions, and to get the partner document with further details of this offer, or to work with us on our local sales campaigns targeting existing ERP customers, please send your query to Mike[email protected] or [email protected]: or discuss it with your local Oracle Sales or Channel representative for Applications to Midsize Enterprises.  This promotion is ONLY for End Customers whose organisations have an Annual Revenue (or Public Sector Budget) below $500 million, and who are based in Europe, the Middle East or Africa. For more information see the orginal article, “New fy13 BI-Applications Price Promotion for MIDSIZE CUSTOMERS”  and send your query to Mike[email protected].

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• PHP find first of occurrence of string

  - by mike

  I have a string of data like below and I've been struggling trying to figure out how to split it up so that I can use it efficiently. "United States FirstName: Mike LastName: Wolf City: Chicago" I need to split up the string in to substrings and the list may not always be in the same order. For example it could vary like below: "United States City: Chicago FirstName: Mike LastName: Wolf" "United States FirstName: City: Chicago Mike LastName: Wolf" I need to find which parameter comes first after 'United States'. It could be 'City:', 'FirstName:' or 'LastName:'. And, I also need to know the start position of the first parameter. Thanks in advance!

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• Latest Ubuntu stuck on "completing the ubuntu installation"

  - by Joesph Atkinson

  So my issue is after installing 12.10 Ubuntu using wubi.exe on a dedicated parition and rebooting the computer I am given the option to boot ubuntu, as I choose ubuntu I am brought to the "completing the ubuntu installation page" after it hits 0 on the countdown it just sits doing nothing. I left my computer on all day and still the same issue so I know its not just a slow install. Some say its because ubuntu cannot find a video driver for my card (xfx radeon 5770) which if that is the case is there a way i can run the install without it needing to look for drivers?

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you’ll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll be aware that I’ve been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a “production”-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it’s not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn’t I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn’t an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley’s “Continuous Delivery” teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you’ve been allotted. 2. It’s not just about the storage requirements, it’s also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I’m just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what’s the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I’m sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server’s point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no ‘duplicate’ storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly “release test” process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual FROM DISK=N'D:\VirtualDatabase\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the ‘virtual’ restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• SQL Server source control from Visual Studio

  - by David Atkinson

  Developers have long since had to context switch between two IDEs, Visual Studio for application code development and SQL Server Management Studio for database development. While this is accepted, especially given the richness of the database development feature set in SSMS, loading a separate tool can seem a little overkill. This is where SQL Connect comes in. This is an add-in to Visual Studio that provides a connected development experience for the SQL Server developer. Connected database development involves modifying a development sandbox database, as opposed to offline development, where SQL text files are modified independently of the database. One of the main complaints of Data Dude (VS DBPro) is that it enforces the offline approach. This gripe is what SQL Connect addresses. If you don't already use SQL Source Control, you can get up and running with SQL Connect by adding a new project to your Visual Studio solution as follows: Then choose your existing development database and you're ready to go. If you already use SQL Source Control, you will need to link SQL Connect to your existing database scripts folder repository, so SQL Connect and SQL Source Control can be used collaboratively (note that SQL Source Control v.3.0.9.18 or later is required). Locate the repository (this can be found in the Setup tab in SQL Source Control). .and create a working folder for it (here I'm using TortoiseSVN). Back in Visual Studio, locate the SQL Connect panel (in the View menu if it hasn't auto loaded) and select Import SQL Source Control project Locate your working folder and click Import. This creates a Red Gate database project under your solution: From here you can modify your development database, and manage your changes in source control. To associate your development database with the project, right click on the project node, select Properties, set the database and Save. Now you're ready to make some changes. Locate the object you'd like to modify in the Solution Explorer, and double click it to invoke a query window or table designer. You also have the option to edit the creation SQL directly using Edit SQL File in Project. Keeping the development database and Visual Studio project in sync is as easy as clicking on a button. One you've made your change, you can use whichever mechanism you choose to commit to source control. Here I'm using the free open-source AnkhSVN to integrate Subversion with Visual Studio. Maintaining your database in a Visual Studio solution means that you can commit database changes and application code changes in the same changeset. This is desirable if you have continuous integration set up as you want to ensure that all files related to a change are committed atomically, so you avoid an interim "broken build". More discussion on SQL Connect and its benefits can be found in the following article on Simple Talk: No More Disconnected SQL Development in Visual Studio The SQL Connect project team is currently assessing the backlog for the next development effort, and they'd appreciate your feature suggestions, as well as your votes on their suggestions site: http://redgate.uservoice.com/forums/140800-sql-connect-for-visual-studio- A 28-day free trial of SQL Connect is available from the Red Gate website. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• How the "migrations" approach makes database continuous integration possible

  - by David Atkinson

  Testing a database upgrade script as part of a continuous integration process will only work if there is an easy way to automate the generation of the upgrade scripts. There are two common approaches to managing upgrade scripts. The first is to maintain a set of scripts as-you-go-along. Many SQL developers I've encountered will store these in a folder prefixed numerically to ensure they are ordered as they are intended to be run. Occasionally there is an accompanying document or a batch file that ensures that the scripts are run in the defined order. Writing these scripts during the course of development requires discipline. It's all too easy to load up the table designer and to make a change directly to the development database, rather than to save off the ALTER statement that is required when the same change is made to production. This discipline can add considerable overhead to the development process. However, come the end of the project, everything is ready for final testing and deployment. The second development paradigm is to not do the above. Changes are made to the development database without considering the incremental update scripts required to effect the changes. At the end of the project, the SQL developer or DBA, is tasked to work out what changes have been made, and to hand-craft the upgrade scripts retrospectively. The end of the project is the wrong time to be doing this, as the pressure is mounting to ship the product. And where data deployment is involved, it is prudent not to feel rushed. Schema comparison tools such as SQL Compare have made this latter technique more bearable. These tools work by analyzing the before and after states of a database schema, and calculating the SQL required to transition the database. Problem solved? Not entirely. Schema comparison tools are huge time savers, but they have their limitations. There are certain changes that can be made to a database that can't be determined purely from observing the static schema states. If a column is split, how do we determine the algorithm required to copy the data into the new columns? If a NOT NULL column is added without a default, how do we populate the new field for existing records in the target? If we rename a table, how do we know we've done a rename, as we could equally have dropped a table and created a new one? All the above are examples of situations where developer intent is required to supplement the script generation engine. SQL Source Control 3 and SQL Compare 10 introduced a new feature, migration scripts, allowing developers to add custom scripts to replace the default script generation behavior. These scripts are committed to source control alongside the schema changes, and are associated with one or more changesets. Before this capability was introduced, any schema change that required additional developer intent would break any attempt at auto-generation of the upgrade script, rendering deployment testing as part of continuous integration useless. SQL Compare will now generate upgrade scripts not only using its diffing engine, but also using the knowledge supplied by developers in the guise of migration scripts. In future posts I will describe the necessary command line syntax to leverage this feature as part of an automated build process such as continuous integration.

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• How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

  - by David Atkinson

  Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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• What is Database Continuous Integration?

  - by David Atkinson

  Although not everyone is practicing continuous integration, many have at least heard of the concept. A recent poll on www.simple-talk.com indicates that 40% of respondents are employing the technique. It is widely accepted that the earlier issues are identified in the development process, the lower the cost to the development process. The worst case scenario, of course, is for the bug to be found by the customer following the product release. A number of Agile development best practices have evolved to combat this problem early in the development process, including pair programming, code inspections and unit testing. Continuous integration is one such Agile concept that tackles the problem at the point of committing a change to source control. This can alternatively be run on a regular schedule. This triggers a sequence of events that compiles the code and performs a variety of tests. Often the continuous integration process is regarded as a build validation test, and if issues were to be identified at this stage, the testers would simply not 'waste their time ' and touch the build at all. Such a ‘broken build’ will trigger an alert and the development team’s number one priority should be to resolve the issue. How application code is compiled and tested as part of continuous integration is well understood. However, this isn’t so clear for databases. Indeed, before I cover the mechanics of implementation, we need to decide what we mean by database continuous integration. For me, database continuous integration can be implemented as one or more of the following: 1)      Your application code is being compiled and tested. You therefore need a database to be maintained at the corresponding version. 2)      Just as a valid application should compile, so should the database. It should therefore be possible to build a new database from scratch. 3)     Likewise, it should be possible to generate an upgrade script to take your already deployed databases to the latest version. I will be covering these in further detail in future blogs. In the meantime, more information can be found in the whitepaper linked off www.red-gate.com/ci If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly or post a comment to this blog post.

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